‘As I watched him, I realized that if I let him go, we would never see the paintings again.
‘My mind went back to 1995, to when the thugs had mangled your legs forever. It went back to how you lay broken, within an inch from death that morning. The Künzi Brothers had done it to you for their own selfish ends. They had done it to a good man, an innocent man. They had done it to the only father I had known.
‘After a long struggle, your father and your wife had helped me finally convince you to keep the paintings. Now, Jacob Lopez, the snake in human form, posing as your friend Phillip, was stealing them from you. I had to stop him.
‘By now, Jacob had pulled out the fourth painting and they all lay together on the pew. Beside them was something long and slender, glinting in the soft glow from Jacob’s torch. It was the dagger the mongrel had dropped. Phillip had taken it from the drawer in the hall. His intent could not have been honourable.
‘As Jacob returned to the wheelchair to close the altar, I reached for the dagger. My blood was boiling. I knew what I had to do.’
‘Sebastian!’ Bhaskar hissed in horror, half rising from his chair. Blood had drained from his face, and his eyes were open wide in alarm. ‘What did you do?’
‘I slit his throat.’
Chapter 21
Twelve people sat in the drawing room once more. This time in uneasy silence, not knowing what to expect from the gathering Athreya had called. The five members of the Fernandez family sat together. The four neighbours were there in Abbas, Ganesh, Jilsy and Father Tobias. Two outsiders—Varadan and Athreya—made the count eleven, and the twelfth was a surprise. Murthy had been prevailed upon to join the group.
Athreya waited for a few minutes, and when it was precisely 7 p.m., he rose.
‘We were here less than seventy-two hours ago,’ he began. ‘The people were much the same then, with a few exceptions, but the mood was very different. A lot has happened since then, and many illusions have been shattered. I’ve called you all together now to conclude this sordid chapter in your lives.
‘Some of you, especially those from the Fernandez family, have a shadow hanging over you. When you will walk out of here later this evening, the shadow will be gone. That was the assignment Mr. Fernandez gave me: to lift the shadow of suspicion from the innocent. I intend to do exactly that over the next fifteen minutes.
‘Let me begin with Mr. Fernandez’s first will, which he wrote a year ago. It bequeathed certain assets to some of you unconditionally. By unconditionally, I mean that the assets would come to you irrespective of how Mr Fernandez died.
‘But once he wrote that will, strange things began happening. His car’s brakes failed; a venomous snake materialized in his bed; he was almost run over in Coonoor. And, to top it all, an intruder broke in and tried to kill him. Someone was trying to hasten Mr. Fernandez’s death.
‘Let’s look at it from a motive perspective. It was at once apparent that multiple people potentially had motives. It was not only Mr. Fernandez’s relatives who would want him dead, but others too, including his neighbours. Phillip, Father Tobias and Abbas stood to gain from his death.
‘It didn’t take much for Mr. Fernandez to realize that someone had hired an outsider to kill him. And so he decided to scrap his earlier will and write two new ones. The first would take effect if he died naturally, and the second, if he was killed. The attacks stopped after that, but it was not clear if they had stopped because of the new wills, or because the wounded intruder was lying low.
‘It so turned out that he was lying low and was planning to return. And return he did, on the night
Phillip was killed. For those of you who don’t know, the intruder’s nickname is “the mongrel”. We know now that it was Phillip who had let the mongrel into the mansion that night three months ago. It was amply clear that someone here had hired the mongrel to kill Mr. Fernandez.
‘So Phillip’s death begged the obvious question: Did the mongrel kill Phillip by mistake? Did he think Phillip was Mr. Fernandez?
‘That was certainly a possibility, as some of you have suggested except that it didn’t answer one all-important question: What was Phillip doing in the chapel in the wheelchair?
‘That meant that there was more than one crime playing out at Greybrooke Manor. The first was the attempted murder of Mr. Fernandez, but there was at least one other plot that needed to be unearthed. To do that, I went into the past, and to Vienna.
‘Soon, I discovered two things. First, it was very likely that Mr. Fernandez possessed four very valuable paintings: the Balsano landscapes. Enrico confirmed that Mr. Fernandez had spoken to him about them. Second, there was an art thief called Jacob Lopez, who might have come to India under an assumed name. Not just to India, but to this valley. Lopez was the son of Indian parents who had emigrated to Europe when he was a boy.
‘When I looked at the chronology of events that unfolded in Vienna, I discovered that Jacob Lopez had been released from jail late in 2007. And Phillip, who was a newcomer to Vienna, appeared in early 2008. Then, had Jacob reappeared as Phillip?
‘Simultaneously, I was investigating the chapel here, and it became apparent that the altar was the most important piece of the puzzle—all roads seemed to lead to it. On closer examination, I found that the altar was a hiding place. Something of great value had been hidden there. The obvious candidates were the Balsano landscapes.
‘It didn’t take much to put two and two together. Phillip had somehow found
