At that moment the policeman, Sub-Inspector Gupta, knocked at the front door and came in. “Ah,” he said, seeing the suitcase, “has Mr Darling arrived?”
“He arrived,” Mr Dubashi said, “and then left in a great hurry, very upset after reading the will that his mother had left in the hotel safe, to see the lawyers who drew it up.”
“Really? Any idea why he was upset?”
So Mr Dubashi told him.
“To an ashram? Golly. Do you know which one?”
Mr Dubashi told him that too, and then added, with a disingenuous air, “By an amazing coincidence the business manager of that ashram came here earlier this morning, insisting on reading that will, which gave her a great deal of satisfaction. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? What amazing timing! Mrs Darling writes a new will in their favour and they only have to wait two days until her fortune drops into their laps, like a ripe mango, before her son arrives and has the chance to talk her out of it.”
“Are you suggesting…?”
“Oh, dear me, no! But you know what some of these ashrams are like, Inspector, only interested in milking tourists for their dollars, and I must say that business manager was a pretty ruthless type. If I weren’t such a trusting man I might imagine her capable of, well, almost anything.”
“Hmm.” Sub-Inspector Gupta pondered that. “Well, my superiors have taken over the running of the case now. Clearly it is very high-profile, and they are worried about the possible terrorist angle. I only came by to meet Mr Darling, and also to make sure that you were all right, especially you, Christine.”
“That’s very kind of you, Sub-Inspector.”
He gave her one of his beautiful big smiles. “I was extremely concerned by the report in the Aaj. I want to give you my mobile number, and you must contact me, day or night, if you see anything suspicious.” He gave her a card.
“Thank you.”
He grinned, looking suddenly coy and very young. “Promise you will contact me.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now, Mr Dubashi, perhaps you can give me the details of this dodgy ashram.”
“With the greatest pleasure, Inspector.”
That afternoon Christine set out to explore Varanasi, using the map and guidebook given her by Mr Dubashi. She took a tricycle rickshaw to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, a complex of shrines dedicated to Shiva, the destroyer god, and one of the most sacred sites in the Hindu religion. The place was crammed with visitors, its entrance protected by armed guards. It left a vivid impression, but she found it hard to penetrate its meaning. From there she walked through narrow streets to the river, and followed the great terraces of the ghats along the shore of the Ganges, seeing the columns of smoke from the funeral pyres rising into the hot still air. After a while she found herself not far from the ashram, which Mr Dubashi had marked with a cross on the map, and she struck back into the densely packed city, trying to maintain her bearings until she came to a sign with a painted image of a venerable figure squatting in the lotus position beneath the name Atmapriksa Ashram.
She cautiously pushed through a screen of beads and entered a dark corridor down which echoed a sound of distant chanting. She came to a door marked Office, and was confronted by the impressive figure of Dorothy Yanamandra scolding a typist. She whirled around and beamed at Christine.
“Ah! The lady from the Dubashi Guesthouse. You have come to us!”
“Yes. I thought I should find out more about the ashram.”
“Excellent. Come into my office.”
It had rough whitewashed walls, but contained smart office furniture and the latest computer equipment.
“Atmapriksa is Hindi meaning soul-searching, Christine,” the business manager said. “That is what we do here, following the ancient spiritual tradition of guru-shishya, in which shishya, or disciples, are mentored in their soul-searching by a guru, which in our case is Swami Bhatti. I have many leaflets here that will be of interest to you, but first I would ask you to fill in a questionnaire.”
Christine filled in the sheet asking for basic information about herself, but with a blank space left at the end to answer the question, Why are you here? Christine wrote, To come to terms with the death of my mother, then wondered if that was really the right way to put it. Could you come to terms with death? Perhaps Swami Bhatti would tell her.
Mrs Yanamandra studied her answers, nodding sagely over the final reply. “You have come to the right place, Christine.” She typed into her computer an appointment time for the following morning for her to meet the guru. “Now I shall take you on a quick tour of our facilities.”
They followed the corridor to an open courtyard paved with stone flags. In the arcade that surrounded it Christine saw about a dozen people, mostly young and Western in appearance, performing exercises or domestic chores – washing sheets by hand in a large tub, sewing and cleaning.
“It is part of the discipline by which the shishya learns respect for the guru,” Mrs Yanamandra explained. “There are other Australians here, and Americans, and people from all over.”
They moved on to a wing of rooms, very simply furnished, in which disciples slept, then to a yoga class and another courtyard in which people sat in meditation. As they moved on again Christine tried to imagine Mrs Darling here.
“Now we’ll collect your leaflets and say goodbye until tomorrow,” Mrs Yanamandra said, and led her back to the street door. Christine went out with a feeling of hope that this peaceful place in the heart of the ancient city might be able to help her.
Unfortunately the map wasn’t able to help her find her way back to the hotel, and she became lost in the labyrinth of narrow streets. At one point she stopped, realizing that she was going around in circles, and turned to go back, and as she did so she saw a man watching her from a doorway. She had a split-second image of an evil-looking face, a grubby dhoti and a red turban, before he darted away into the shadows and disappeared around the corner of an alley.
Christine took a deep breath, feeling her heart pounding, and wondered if she should ring Sub-Inspector Gupta, but by the time she got back to the hotel she decided that she had been overreacting.
Mr Dubashi and his wife were having an argument when Christine came down after breakfast the next morning. She gathered that it had been sparked by her mentioning her appointment to meet the Swami Bhatti.
“Christine is here to learn,” Mrs Dubashi said. “Why should she not find out what the ashram has to offer?”
“All I’m saying is that she should be careful what those people’s motives are,” her husband said stubbornly.
“You should never have said those things to the police inspector yesterday. You made it sound as if Mrs Yanamandra had stabbed Mrs Darling with her own hands.”
“Well, that wouldn’t surprise me!” Mr Dubashi insisted truculently.
“Rubbish! I admired Mrs Yanamandra’s nitty-gritty approach. She calls a spade a spade. I bet she keeps those mystics in line.”
“A strong woman,” Mr Dubashi groaned.
Christine left them to it. She found her way to the ashram more easily this time, with only one disturbing moment, when she thought she caught another glimpse of the dirty red turban belonging to the evil-looking man she suspected had followed her the previous day, but she couldn’t be sure.
She was met by a young woman of about her own age, with an American accent, dressed in an orange sari. She was one of the Swami’s shishyas, she explained, and launched into a gushing account of the life of the ashram, the sense of comradeship among its guests, and the profound experience of its spiritual life. By the end of it Christine felt that she had been thoroughly softened up.