Ellis Peters - George Felse 09 - Mourning Raga by Ellis Peters Page B

nuts and seeds and spices, the unknown vegetables, the fantastic sweetmeats. Horse-drawn tongas, scooter-rickshaws, cars, bicycles, stray dogs, pedestrians, all mingled in the roadway in a complicated and hair-raising dance. The noise was deafening. So next, because according to the map they were less than a mile from it and could easily walk there, they went to Rajghat, the spot close to the river bank where Mahatma Gandhi’s body was burned after his assassination, and where now a white balustrade encloses a paved space and a flower-covered dais. And there, though there were plenty of people, there was silence.
    At the end of the first day they half expected that Cousin Vasudev would telephone or send them a note, either to follow up his tentative recognition of Anjli’s identity and admit his own family responsibility for her, or to effect a careful withdrawal and leave the whole thing in abeyance, pending legal consultations. But there was no message.
    ‘I suppose he has got his hands full,’ Tossa said dubiously. ‘And after all, he is only a cousin, and you could hardly hold him responsible as long as we’ve got Dorette to go back to, could you?’
    ‘I expect,’ said Anjli cynically, ‘he’s just holding his breath and keeping his eyes shut in the hope that if he doesn’t look at us or speak to us we’ll go away.’
    On the second evening there was still no message. They had spent the afternoon prowling round all the government and state shops in New Delhi, among the leathers and silks and cottons and silverware and copperware and ivory carvings, well away from the banks of the Yamuna where the rites of death are celebrated. Nobody mentioned funerals. Everybody thought privately of the little, shrunken body that had hardly swelled the bedclothes, swathed now in white cotton for the last bath and the last fire. By the time they came back to Keen’s Hotel, after a Chinese meal at Nirula’s, Purnima was ash and spirit.
    And there was no message for them at the desk, and no one had telephoned.
    ‘Maybe he’s got a whole party of funeral guests on his hands still,’ said Tossa, ‘and hasn’t had time to think about us yet. I don’t know what happens, there may be family customs… I know there don’t seem to be any more near relatives, but there must be some distant ones around somewhere… and then all the business connections, with a family like that…’
    ‘We’ve got to find out,’ said Dominic. ‘I’d better ring him, if he won’t ring us.’
    He made the call from their own sitting-room upstairs. A high, harassed voice answered in Hindi, and after a wait of some minutes Cousin Vasudev’s agitated English flooded Dominic’s ear with salutations, apologies and protestations, effusive with goodwill but fretful with weariness and hagridden with responsibilities.
    ‘It is unfilial, one cannot understand such behaviour. Everything I have had to do myself, everything. And into the bargain, with these newspapermen giving me no peace… It is a decadent time, Mr Felse, in all countries of the world duties are shirked, family ties neglected… The old order breaks down, and nothing is sacred any longer. What can we do? It is left for the dutiful to carry other people’s burdens as well as their own…’
    It seemed that Dominic’s question had not merely answered itself, somewhere in the flood of words, but also been washed clean away on the tide. Nevertheless, when he could get a word in he asked it.
    ‘Do you mean that Anjli’s father has not come home? Not even for the funeral?’
    ‘He has not. Everything is left to me. One cannot understand how a son could…’
    ‘And he hasn’t written, either? After all, he might be abroad somewhere…’
    ‘I assure you, Mr Felse, certain preliminaries are necessary before Indian citizens go abroad. The authorities would know if that was the case, and of course I did, very discreetly, you understand… strictly private enquiries… My aunt did not