Leaving Bhaskar’s door open, he ran out of the back door, toward the chapel. When he got there, he found Manu and Ganesh bending over Sebastian, who was lying in the aisle, close to the door. His nightshirt was drenched in blood from two very visible, gaping wounds. His eyes had glazed over and he didn’t seem to be breathing. In his hand was a ripped piece of cloth.
‘Call Michelle!’ Manu yelled to Athreya.
Athreya spun around and ran back to the back door of the mansion, where Murugan and Gopal were standing, having just emerged from the staff quarters. Athreya ran into the gallery’s corridor, calling for Michelle at the top of his voice.
‘Coming!’ she yelled back and ran down the stairs with her medical bag.
‘Sebastian has been shot!’ Athreya called to Bhaskar through his open door and ran to the chapel with Michelle.
Within a minute, he knew that there was little hope. The bullet wounds were near the heart, and Sebastian’s eyes had rolled upward. As Athreya stepped around the fallen man, his foot touched something on the floor. It was a soft leather pouch, flat and rectangular. It must have fallen when Sebastian ripped the killer’s jacket. At once he knew what the pouch was: a set of lock picks.
Taking a paper napkin from Michelle’s medical bag, he picked it up and dropped it into his pocket. Lock-picking, he knew from experience, was notoriously difficult to do with gloved hands. Moreover, the metal handles of the lock picks carried fingerprints very well.
He walked slowly down the aisle and stopped a yard or two from the altar. Someone had opened the two small cabinets built into the wooden stands that supported the ends of the altar stone.
He looked up at the mural of Jesus on the cross. It was looking down at him and the altar. At that moment, things fell into place. He knew what his subconscious mind had been trying to tell him through the last sketch. He knew whose fingerprints he would find on the lock picks.
Chapter 18
An hour later, Athreya stood where Phillip had been killed, in front of the dais and the altar that stood on it. So, both murders had something to do with the altar. Blood had been spilled before it, the wooden cabinets below it had been forced open, and the candles on had been moved around. Something about the altar had instigated two murders. He climbed up the steps, switched on the lights above the altar and stood behind it, studying it.
From his wallet, he pulled out a very thin, flexible strip of plastic. This he inserted between two of the stone slabs—the ones in the middle and on the left side—that formed the top of the altar. The plastic strip slid inside easily. He held it in place and moved it along the hairline crack between the two stones. It went all the way to the far edge of the altar.
He repeated the exercise along the crack between the middle and right-side slabs. The strip slid through the length without resistance. The forensic man had been right. The three slabs that made up the altar stone were not attached to each other.
This meant two things. First, the altar top had been designed as three separate pieces that were structurally independent of each other. And second, if they were structurally separate, they should be able to move independently of each other.
He crouched on the floor and shone his torch into one of the small cabinets—more cubbyholes than cabinets—built into the wooden supports that held up the ends of the altar top. It was empty. He did the same thing at the cubbyhole at the other end of the altar. Same result: it, too, was empty.
Athreya stood up and considered the possibilities. Had the cubbyholes contained something? Had Sebastian’s murderer taken away whatever they had contained? Or did the cubbyholes serve an entirely different purpose? If they did, they warranted a closer examination.
He lay down on the floor with his head at the opening of one of the cubbyholes. Resting one cheek on the floor, he peered into the dark recess. The torch that was pressed to his other cheek cast a beam into the space. At first glance, the black-painted interior seemed empty and featureless.
After a few moments, he noticed what seemed to be a small plastic box, also black, attached to the roof of the compartment at the very corner. It seemed to be a small connection box or some sort of device that came along with electronic gadgets. On closer examination, he saw the bulge of a tiny LED bulb peeping out of a hole in the box. It was the kind of LED that served as an indicator whether the box was receiving power or not.
Athreya rose and went to the large cupboard at one end of the dais and opened it. He had seen a row of switches there. Several of them were already on. He flipped down the rest, one by one. A few more lights came to life, but two switches seemed to do nothing.
Leaving them on, he returned to the cubbyhole and peered into it. The tiny LED was now glowing red. Still lying down with his cheek pressed against the floor, he probed the box with his fingers. He found a small gap between it and the side wall of the compartment. At once, he saw four wires: two black and two red, running from the plastic box into the wood.
He raised himself on his elbows and sat cross-legged on the floor, his mind churning. He was beginning to see why the altar had attracted so much attention. He now viewed the gilded altar with fresh eyes, taking in the solid combination of wood, stone and metal. Two polished wood cabinets and five metal pillars supported the heavy altar stone,
