Seth watched her quietly, weighing her words.
‘And yet, Sheere, there are documents to prove that he did take part, in some way,’ he said.
‘There has to be some other reason,’ she replied. ‘My father built things and wrote books. He wasn’t a murderer.’
‘Leaving aside his ideals, there must be some other explanation,’ Ben remarked. ‘And that’s what we’re trying to discover. Let’s go back to Llewelyn and his powers of persuasion. What could he have done to force Chandra to collaborate?’
‘Perhaps his power didn’t lie in what he could do,’ Seth stated, ‘but in what he could choose not to do.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Ian.
‘This is my theory,’ Seth continued. ‘In all the engineer’s records we haven’t found a single mention of Jawahal, this childhood friend, except in a letter from Colonel Llewelyn addressed to Chandra and postmarked November 1911. In it our friend the colonel adds a postscript in which he briefly suggests that, if Chandra refuses to take part in the project, he will be forced to offer the post to his old friend Jawahal. What I think is this: Chandra had managed to conceal his relationship with Jawahal, who was by then in prison, and had developed his career without anybody knowing that he had once covered up for the man. But let’s suppose that this Llewelyn had come across Jawahal in prison and Jawahal had revealed the true nature of their relationship. This would put Llewelyn in an excellent position for blackmailing the engineer and forcing him to collaborate.’
‘How do we know that Llewelyn and Jawahal met one another?’ Ian asked.
‘It’s only a supposition,’ Seth replied. ‘Sir Arthur Llewelyn, a colonel in the British army, decides to ask for the help of an exceptional engineer. The engineer refuses. Llewelyn investigates him and discovers a murky past, a trial to which the engineer is linked. He decides to pay a visit to Jawahal, and Jawahal tells him what he wants to hear. Simple.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Sheere.
‘Sometimes the truth is the hardest thing to believe. Remember what Aryami told us,’ Ben said. ‘But let’s not rush into anything. Is de Rozio still investigating this?’
‘He is, yes,’ replied Seth. ‘The number of documents is so vast that he’d need an army of library rats to make sense of anything.’
‘You’ve made quite a good job of it,’ remarked Ian.
‘We weren’t expecting anything less,’ said Ben. ‘Why don’t you go back to the librarian, and don’t lose sight of him for a moment. I’m sure we’re missing something …’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Michael, although he already knew the answer.
‘We’ll go to the engineer’s house,’ Ben replied. ‘Perhaps what we’re looking for is there.’
‘Or something else …’ Michael pointed out.
Ben smiled.
‘As I said, we’ll take that risk.’
Sheere, Ian and Ben arrived outside the gates that guarded Chandra Chatterghee’s house shortly before midnight. To the east, the narrow tower of the Shyambazar was silhouetted against the moon’s sphere, projecting its shadow over the garden of palm trees and bushes that hid the building.
Ben leaned on the gate of metal spears and examined their threatening sharp points.
‘We’ll have to climb over,’ he remarked. ‘It doesn’t look easy.’
‘We won’t have to,’ said Sheere next to him. ‘Our father described every inch of this house in his book before he built it, and I’ve spent years memorising every detail. If what he wrote is correct, and I have no doubt that it is, there’s a small lake behind these shrubs and the house stands further back.’
‘What about these spears?’ asked Ben. ‘Did he write about them too? I’d rather not end up skewered like a roast chicken.’
‘There’s another way of getting into the house without having to jump over them,’ said Sheere.
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Ben and Ian asked together.
Sheere led them through what was barely an alleyway, a small gap between the railings surrounding the property and the walls of an adjacent building with Moorish features. Soon they reached a circular opening that looked as if it served as the main sewer for all the drains in the house. From it came a sour biting stench.
‘In here?’ asked Ben sceptically.
‘What did you expect?’ snapped Sheere. ‘A Persian carpet?’
Ben scanned the inside of the sewage tunnel and sniffed.
‘Divine,’ he concluded, turning to Sheere. ‘You first.’
They emerged from the tunnel beneath a small wooden bridge that arched over the lake, a dark velvety mantle of murky water stretching in front of Chandra Chatterghee’s house. Sheere led the two boys along a narrow bank, their feet sinking into the clay, until they reached the other end of the lake. There she stopped to gaze at the building she had dreamed about all her life. Ian and Ben stood quietly by her side.
The two-storey building was flanked by two towers, one on either side. It featured a mix of architectural styles, from Edwardian lines to Palladian extravaganzas and features that looked as if they belonged to some castle tucked away in the mountains of Bavaria. The overall effect, however, was elegant and serene, challenging the critical eye of the spectator. The house seemed to possess a bewitching charm, so that although the first impression was one of bewilderment you then had the feeling that the impossible jumble of styles and forms had been chosen on purpose to create a harmonious whole.
‘Is this how your father described it?’ asked Ian.
Sheere nodded in amazement and walked towards the steps leading to the front door. Ben and Ian watched her hesitantly, wondering how she thought she was going to enter such a fortress. But Sheere seemed to move about the mysterious surroundings as if they had been her childhood home. The ease with which she dodged obstacles, almost invisible in the dark, made the two boys feel like trespassers in the dream Sheere had nurtured during her nomadic years. As they watched her walk up the steps, Ben and Ian realised that this deserted place was the only real home the girl had ever had.
‘Are you going to stay there all night?’ Sheere called from the top of the stairs.
‘We were wondering how to get in,’ Ben pointed out. Ian nodded in agreement.
‘I have the key.’
‘The key?’ asked Ben. ‘Where?’
‘Here,’ Sheere replied, pointing to her head with her forefinger. ‘You don’t open the locks in this house with a normal key. There’s a code.’
Intrigued, Ben and Ian came up the steps to join her. When they reached the door, they saw that at its centre was a set of four wheels on a single axle. Each wheel was smaller than the one behind it, and different symbols were carved on the metal rim of each, like the hours on the face of a clock.
‘What do these symbols mean?’ asked Ian, trying to decipher them in the dark.
Ben pulled a match from the box he always carried with him and struck it in front of the lock mechanism. The metal shone in the light of the flame.
‘Alphabets!’ cried Ben. ‘Each wheel has an alphabet carved on it. Greek, Latin, Arab and Sanskrit.’
‘Fantastic,’ sighed Ian. ‘Piece of cake …’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Sheere. ‘The code is simple. All you have to do is make a four-letter word using the different alphabets.’
Ben looked at her intently.
‘What is the word?’
‘Dido,’ replied Sheere.
‘Dido?’ asked Ian. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s the name of a mythological Phoenician queen,’ Ben explained.
Sheere smiled approvingly and Ian was momentarily jealous of the spark that seemed to exist between the two siblings.
‘I still don’t understand,’ Ian objected. ‘What have the Phoenicians got to do with Calcutta?’
‘Queen Dido threw herself on a funeral pyre to appease the anger of the gods in Carthage,’ Sheere explained. ‘It’s the purifying power of fire. The Egyptians also had their own myth, about the phoenix.’