My Lady of the Bog by Peter Hayes Page B

informing me that Jai was dead. She gave no details, only asking that I come to their apartment “straight away.”
    Ordinarily, I would have been skittish about walking the streets of London alone at that ungodly hour, but the spirit of death that had slithered through the wires accompanied me, its rod and its staff keeping lesser anxieties at bay.
    I’d expected to see an ambulance or police, but the street before their mews was empty. Vidya answered their apartment door. She was stunningly dressed in a sheer white, gold-embroidered sari. There was blood on her hands. To my look of astonishment, she lowered her eyes. A bloodstain on her shoulder was in the shape of the state of Florida. The hall inside was overbright.
    I followed her inside to Jai’s study. What greeted us were flies. They orbited the room like a miniature, gleaming belt of asteroids. On the floor lay Jai, wounded beyond description. Cut down , I remember thinking. Slain ! For the violence done unto him cried out somehow for archaic language to describe it.
    I didn’t check his vital signs. It would have served no end. Death was proclaimed by the stillness of his corpse. It looked bereft, its spirit fled. Jai’s eyes were half-open, their blind whites half-showing beneath their lids like in portraits of yogis in sam ā dhi . A pool of blood on his chest had dried at its edges, congealing like gravy. Everywhere was splatter: on the walls, rug, desk, ceiling. Hundreds of flies were clustered on Jai’s face, drinking from his nose and eyes, so that it seemed as if his face were moving. I remember for an instant clinging to the notion that he had died naturally—fallen, perhaps, and cut himself on broken glass—and then in the next instant, admitting he’d been slaughtered.
    “Would you care for some coffee?”
    I looked at Vidya. She wasn’t staring at the body but at some meaningless juncture of the floor and wall.
    “Coffee?” And only then did I realize she was in shock. Her eyes were glazed, and as she turned and passed into the living room, she performed a series of meaningless rituals: fluffing pillows, straightening chairs, brushing nonexistent dust from the arm of the couch.
    I turned back to Jai’s corpse. He lay atop a shattered lamp, surrounded by the wooden splinters and spindles of the chair in which he’d apparently been sitting. A shatoosh shawl was wound around his throat.
    The ancient book lay open on the rug before him. I recognized its vellum cover inset with semiprecious stones. Two drops of Jai’s blood were drying on its leather, as though hardening into jewels themselves. Reflexively, I picked it up. I called to Vidya, “Did you phone the police?”
    “Police?” she repeated, in a tone that clearly said she hadn’t.
    And so, I dialed 999. While it rang, I stared at the body of my mentor and dear, dear friend, and waited for something, a thud in my heart—but there was as yet only a smoke-filled vacuum.
    “How may I help you?” an operator answered.
    “Send the police. There’s been a murder.” I hung up. The 999 system logs the caller’s address and I wasn’t about to stay on the line to answer questions. I looked down once more at Jai, then backed out and shut the study door. For dying—like sleep, like making love—is something one does behind closed doors.
    Vidya was in the kitchen, watching a coffee filter drip. I looked into her face—so beautiful and exotic—though marred now by a flicker of something like static electricity around her eyes.
    Discovering I had the book in my hands, I placed it on the table. Vidya looked at it, but said nothing. “What happened?”
    She shivered. “I . . . just found him . . . like that . . . when I came home.”
    “When?”
    “Oh,” she said fretfully. “Three thirty, four.”
    “In the morning ?”
    She looked about her, and I followed her eyes. The kitchen was extremely neat, except for a pile of torn circulars and magazines on the counter.
    I looked at the