The Midnight Palace (Niebla 2)

Roshan slowly shook his head.

‘I don’t know. There was something about the house I didn’t like.’

‘Did you see anything?’ asked Seth.

Roshan shook his head again. Ian and Ben exchanged glances, but didn’t say a word.

‘Has it occurred to anyone that this might all be a trap?’ asked Roshan.

Again Ian and Ben gave each other a meaningful look. They were both thinking the same thing.

‘We’ll have to take that risk,’ said Ben, feigning as much conviction as possible.

WITH TREMBLING HANDS ARYAMI BOSE lit another match and reached forward to light the wick of the white candle that stood in front of her. The flickering flame cast hazy shadows across the dark room. A gentle draught caressed her hair and the back of her neck. Aryami turned round. A sudden gust of cold air, infused with an acrid stench, tugged at her shawl and blew out the candle. Darkness enveloped her again and the old lady heard two sharp knocks on the front door. She clenched her fists; a faint reddish light was filtering through the doorway. The banging was repeated, this time louder. The old woman felt a cold sweat rising through the pores on her forehead.

‘Sheere?’ she called out weakly.

Her voice echoed in the gloom of the house. There was no answer. A few seconds later the two knocks sounded again.

In the dark Aryami fumbled around on the mantelpiece. The only source of light came from the dying remains of a few coals in the fireplace below. She knocked over several objects before her fingers found the long metal sheath of the dagger she kept there, and as she drew out the weapon, the curved blade shone in the glow. A razor-sharp streak of light appeared beneath the front door. Aryami held her breath and slowly walked towards it. She stopped when she reached the door and heard the sound of the wind through the leaves of the bushes in the courtyard.

‘Sheere?’ she whispered again. There was no reply.

Holding the dagger firmly, she placed her left hand on the door handle and gently pulled it down. The rusty mechanism groaned after years of disuse. Gradually the door opened and the bluish brightness of the night sky cast a fan of light into the interior of the house. There was nobody there. The undergrowth stirred, the murmur of an ocean of small dry leaves. Aryami peered round the door and looked, first to one side, then to the other, but the courtyard was deserted. Just then, the old woman’s leg bumped against something and she looked down to discover a small basket at her feet. It was covered with a thick veil which did not block the light coming from within the basket. Aryami knelt down and cautiously removed the cloth.

Inside she found two small wax figures shaped like naked babies. From each head emerged a lit cotton wick and the two effigies were melting, like candles in a temple. A shudder ran through Aryami’s body. She threw the basket down the broken stone steps, stood up and was about to return indoors when she noticed something coming towards her along the corridor that led to the other end of her house: footsteps, invisible but aflame. The old woman felt the dagger slipping from her fingers as she slammed the front door shut.

As she stumbled down the steps, not daring to turn her back on the front door, Aryami tripped over the basket she’d thrown there a few seconds earlier. Lying helpless on the ground, she watched in astonishment as a tongue of flame licked at the base of the doorway and the old wood caught fire. She crawled a few metres until she reached the bushes, then pulled herself up and stared impotently as flames burst through the windows.

Aryami ran out into the street, and she didn’t stop to look back until she was at least a hundred metres away from what had once been her home. Now it was a blazing pyre spitting red-hot sparks and ash into the sky. Neighbours began to lean out of their windows and come into the streets to gaze in alarm at the huge fire that had spread through the house in a matter of seconds. Aryami heard the crash of the roof as it collapsed and fell, engulfed in flames. A dazzling flash, like scarlet lightning, illuminated the faces of the crowd which had gathered to watch, and people looked at one another, bemused, unable to comprehend what had happened.

Aryami Bose wept bitterly for what had once been her childhood home, the home where she had given birth to her daughter. And as she melted into the confusion of Calcutta’s streets, she bade goodbye to it for ever.

IT WASN’T DIFFICULT TO determine the exact location of the engineer’s house, following the cryptogram Siraj had decoded. According to the instructions, duly checked against the fieldwork Roshan had carried out, Chandra Chatterghee’s house stood in a quiet street that led from Jatindra Mohan Avenue to Acharya Profullya Road, about a kilometre and a half north of the Midnight Palace.

As soon as Siraj was satisfied that the fruits of his research had been properly digested by his friends, he expressed his urgent desire to go in search of Isobel. All his friends’ attempts at reassuring him and suggesting he should wait for her as she was certain to return fell on deaf ears, and in the end, true to his promise, Roshan offered to accompany him. The two set off into the night after agreeing they would meet the others at Chandra Chatterghee’s house as soon as they had any news of Isobel.

‘What have you two managed to find out?’ asked Ian, turning to Seth and Michael.

‘I wish our results were as spectacular as Siraj’s, but to be honest the only thing we’ve discovered is a mass of loose ends,’ Seth replied. He went on to tell them about their visit to Mr de Rozio, whom they’d left in the museum, continuing the research. They’d promised they would return in a couple of hours to help him.

‘What we’ve discovered until now only goes to confirm what Sheere’s grandmother – sorry, your grandmother – told us. At least in part.’

‘There are some gaps in the engineer’s story it won’t be easy to fill in,’ said Michael.

‘Exactly,’ Seth agreed. ‘In fact, I think that what we haven’t discovered is far more interesting than what we have …’

‘What do you mean?’ Ben asked.

‘Well,’ Seth went on, warming his hands by the fire, ‘Chandra’s story is documented from the moment he became a member of the official Institute of Industry. There are papers confirming that he refused a number of offers from the British government to work for the army building military bridges, as well as a railway line that was to join Bombay and Delhi, for the exclusive use of the navy.’

‘Aryami told us how much he loathed the British,’ Ben commented. ‘He blamed them for many of the things that have gone wrong in this country.’

‘That’s right,’ Seth continued. ‘But the curious thing is that, despite his open dislike of the British, of which there were many public displays, Chandra Chatterghee participated in a strange project for the British military between 1914 and 1915, a year before he died in the Jheeter’s Gate tragedy. It was a mysterious business with a peculiar name: the Firebird.’

Sheere raised her eyebrows and drew closer to Seth, looking concerned.

‘What was the Firebird?’