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142 pages

English

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Sitara said, with awful distinctness, ‘I think I’m going to die’.And that’s how I got stuck with the annual corpse. Half an hour later I stood in an empty flat, along with a stranger who was very recently, and very violently, dead.Rushing to Sitara’s aid, Lalli’s niece Sita is distracted by Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Why is it monochrome? And what does it have to do with the body on the living-room floor?Such questions are hardly relevant to the police in their hunt for the murderer. But Lalli is a detective who revels in curiosities, and she thinks otherwise.A brisk thriller of deceit and intrigue, The Monochrome Madonna has Lalli at her most astute as she interprets the nuances of a murder without motive.

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Publié par	Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
Date de parution	25 mai 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789352141661
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Kalpana Swaminathan

THE MONOCHROME MADONNA
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
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Copyright
1
I ve always known I d be stuck with a corpse some day, probably in the first week of October.
Every year, on the 1st of October, Lalli vanishes. She leaves no forwarding address, no phone number, never calls. She s back punctually on the morning of the 8th. She never explains, and naturally, I don t ask. This annual disappearance is the only predictable thing about my aunt.
Just as predictable is the corpse that turns up mid-week. It s never worried me so far. Savio fields it. I watch from the sidelines, take notes, and wait for Lalli to return and sort out the mess.
I ve lived here for three years now, and it s been the same every year. The first year I hardly noticed it. They kept it from me, feeling the need to shield me from such indecent haste, with the corpses at Ardeshir Villa scarcely cold yet. I didn t learn the details until it was all over, but the subway scandal still brings a shudder every time it s mentioned.
The next October saw the Police Commissioner running for cover as feminist groups bayed for his blood over the notorious Ladies Special case. Six commuters were found dead on the 5.35 Ladies Special from Churchgate-on three successive Tuesdays. I had never seen Lalli so baffled. Would she have cracked it if we hadn t spotted that poster in the compartment?
Last year we had the tragic Almyra murder. You remember how every teenager in the city stood accused till Lalli revealed, very literally, the bare bones of the truth.
I had been lucky three Octobers running, but this year Savio had taken off as well. When Savio takes flight, it s either towards or away from a girl, and I do not investigate. Lalli suffers his romances, I don t. He has his life, I have mine.
When Lalli left, I was happy working on my book on Bombay s sewers. From the 1st to the 5th, I was without a care in the world. When the annual corpse came calling, I just hoped it wouldn t be at our door.
It wasn t.
The morning of 5th October went the usual way; hot, rushed and frustrating. It was a Wednesday, which meant I would be home by noon, so that my real life, the one that counts, could seriously begin.
At half-past twelve then, showered and cool at last in a soft T-shirt and a skirt tamed to gossamer limpness, I brewed a tall mug of coffee, slid a fresh white sheet of Executive Bond into the typewriter-when, of course, the doorbell rang.
It was Ramona, distraught. She brandished a dented tin of insecticide in my face and demanded a can opener. After half a lifetime lived in hostels, I know a dumpee when I see one. (Why does bug poison always seem the right adhesive for a broken heart? It stinks, tastes awful, and kills before the dumper s ready to grovel.)
I dragged her in. There was a can opener in the kitchen drawer, but I think a hearty brunch is much more inspiring than suicide.
By the time I had her fed, showered and dead to the world on my bed, it was past two o clock. It took me another ten minutes to clear the place of sharp objects, scarves, belts and other potential aids to suicide.
At half-past two I crumpled the paper wilting in the typewriter, chucked the congealed coffee, returned with a bottle of iced water and was reaching for a crisp new sheet of paper when my cellphone rang.
I let it ring.
It would have stopped eventually if I d let it alone. I didn t.
I picked it up.
It was Sitara.
I barely recognized her voice, it was so faint.
Oh thank god you re there! Please, please get here . . .
Sitara, what s happening?
I . . . I don t know, just come quickly. Please . . . Her voice trailed off. I waited. Then she said with awful distinctness, I think I m going to die.
And that s how I got stuck with the annual corpse.
Half an hour later I stood in an empty flat, alone with a stranger who was very recently, and very violently, dead.
2
T he man lay face down in a pool of blood.
I ve known a few corpses in my time, enough to recognize signs that help fix the time of death. The blood leaking out from his head still looked liquid. The skin of his out-flung arm was still warm. I felt in vain for a pulse. His other hand, the right one, was enveloped in the folds of a tablecloth. Clearly he had attempted to rise, reached for support and grabbed the tablecloth instead, dragging it down as he fell. Blood was seeping through the tablecloth like a map, forming a growing continent.
He had been dead for less than an hour.
It had taken me half that time to get here.
The moment I put down the phone, I had dashed off a note to Ramona and jumped into Lalli s old Fiat. At this hour, the labyrinths of Vile Parle are daunting. Pedestrians shuffle through the leafy maze of lanes in a post-prandial haze. Rickshaws and trucks linger to gossip in the centre of the road. The college khao galli seethes with hormones and gluttony. The air rasps with acrolein fumes from fryers bubbling with oil that hit smoke point last week. That, with the stench of charred onions, is reason enough to hold your breath till you ve cleared the lane. I got past it all with my lungs bursting and hit the highway in ten minutes flat. From then on it was a five-minute drive.
Sitara s address was 4, Kalina Sputnik. All I knew was the name of the building, I had no idea where in Kalina I d find it. I hardly knew Sitara. We d met at Veena s wedding two days ago when she had greeted me with inexplicable heartiness. We had been to the same college; that was all the past we shared.
I remembered her as small and dumpy, but five years had changed the format from plain text to bold italic. She was larger now, with the finials emphasized.
Festive in a hot pink and purple chaniya-choli, she looked like a designer candle, solid, waxy, sequined. Besides, I didn t like her voice. It rang like a coin at the end of every sentence, metallic, definite, with an exact sense of its value.
It took me a moment to place her when she came up to me saying, rather breathlessly, that she wanted to consult my aunt.
I ve heard so much about her, she said, by way of preamble. Adding, with hasty kindness, And about you too, Seeta.
Sita, I corrected her, mechanically. Thirty-four years of hearing my name mangled hasn t stopped my protests. Of course, she purred, Sita. Our names are almost alike! You must introduce me to your aunt; I ll call you next week to make an appointment. She d given me her address and phone number. Naturally, I had lost the scrap of paper, but the bizarre address stuck: 4, Kalina Sputnik.
I got to Kalina and asked the way of the first lounger at the traffic signal. His directions got me to Sputnik in five minutes.
Sitara s flat had a side entrance. I spotted the metal 4 glinting in the sun before I could dive into the gloom of the building. The nameplate said S. Shah & V. Dasgupta, more law firm than m nage. I rang the doorbell and waited.
I rang again. No answer.
I pushed the door without much hope, but it gave.
It opened directly into the living room.
My eyes adjusted to the gloom and I gasped, dazzled by a sudden blaze of gold.
I blinked at the flash of brightness as my eyes slowly took in its shape.
There was a picture on the wall opposite me, a large framed print of Raphael s Sistine Madonna. It was startlingly different from my memory of the painting. This one was monochrome, tinted in tones of burnished sepia and bright gold.
I know the Sistine Madonna backwards. I spent six years staring at it in school-we had a copy in every classroom.
I shut my eyes and the warm palette of skin tones, brown, crimson, olive and gold, so harmoniously balanced by the cool swirl of blue, rose up in instant recall.
The picture before me had no such pleasures. In the callous parlance of the day, the Sistine Madonna had been Photoshopped. The figures in the foreground had been edited out. The woman stepping out of the splash of glory, was not, strictly speaking, Madonna at all. She carried no babe. And that wasn t all. Raphael s Madonna hadn t looked so like Sitara. This was Sitara s face, tinted in tedious monochrome, staring at me in placid irony.
That jolted me back to the moment.
With growing alarm I called out to Sitara, but there was no response.
I went into the house.
The living room opened on a small passage that led to the bedroom. Bathroom and kitchen branched off on either side, the usual one-bedroom-hall-kitchen floor plan. All the rooms were empty. There was no sign of Sitara. There were no signs of disorder or haste, to suggest a hurried removal to hospital.
What could be wrong with her? There had been no panic in her voice. It carried the same sharp finality that had so irritated me at that wedding. I think I m going to die.
Women of thirty don t die suddenly, not if they looked as fit as Sitara. Probably something obstetric, I decided. A miscarriage, appallingly bloody. She d reached out for sisterhood and called me.
Perhaps she called the husband just after and he rushed in and rescued her. Unless he worked right across the street, he couldn t have dispatched of all that without a trace in so short a time. It was now a quarter past three.
Perhaps he did work across the street, but-
I went back to the living room to check if I d missed anything.
I certainly had.
The Madonna was in the direct line of vision when I entered the flat, and I hadn t looked around the room. Now I noticed the white blur to my right was the edge of a tablecloth slumped on the floor. Prompted by some housewifely atavism, I moved impatiently towards it.
And froze.