‘Grandmother, none of us is a child any more. That’s why I’m not taking that train,’ said Sheere. ‘And you know it.’
Aryami glared at her granddaughter but said nothing.
After a long pause she finally spoke again. ‘I’ll be waiting for both of you tomorrow at dawn, in Howrah Station.’
Sheere sighed and Ben noticed her face going red again. He touched her arm and motioned for her to drop the argument. Aryami turned away and her footsteps disappeared inside the house.
‘I can’t leave things like this,’ Sheere murmured.
Ben let go of his sister’s arm and she followed Aryami into the candlelit living room, where the old lady had sat down once more. Aryami didn’t turn her head when she came in, ignoring her granddaughter’s presence. Sheere drew closer and put her arms around her.
‘Whatever happens, Grandmother,’ she said, ‘I’ll always love you.’
Silently Aryami nodded, and her eyes filled with tears as her granddaughter walked back to the courtyard. Ben and Ian, who were waiting outside, greeted Sheere with the most optimistic expressions they could manage.
‘Where will we go?’ asked Sheere, trying to hold back her tears, her hands trembling.
‘To the best place in Calcutta,’ replied Ben. ‘The Midnight Palace.’
The last light of day was beginning to fade as Isobel caught sight of the ghostly angular structure of Jheeter’s Gate Station emerging from the mist by the river. Holding her breath she stopped to gaze at the eerie sight before her: a thick framework of hundreds of steel beams, arches and domes, a vast labyrinth of metal and glass shattered by the fire. Spanning the river to the station’s entrance on the opposite bank was an old ruined bridge.
Isobel approached the bridge and began to negotiate the rails that traversed it, a siding that led into the heart of the monumental carcass the station had become. The sleepers were rotten and black, with wild vegetation creeping over them. The rusty structure of the bridge groaned beneath her feet and Isobel noticed signs forbidding trespassers and warning of an impending demolition order. No train had crossed that bridge since the fire, and judging from its condition nobody had bothered to repair it, or even walk over it, she thought.
As the east bank of the Hooghly receded behind her and Jheeter’s Gate loomed in front of her, silhouetted against the scarlet canopy of sunset, Isobel began to toy with the idea that perhaps her decision to come to this place had not been so sensible after all. From the dark tunnels hidden in the bowels of the station came a breath of wind impregnated with ash and soot, accompanied by an acrid stench. She focused on the distant lights of the barges that ploughed the Hooghly River and tried to conjure up the company of their anonymous crews as she covered the final stretch of the bridge separating her from the station. When she reached the end she stood and looked up at the huge steel pediment before her. There, obscured by the damage from the fire but still visible, were the carved letters announcing the station’s name, like the entrance to a grandiose mausoleum: JHEETER’S GATE.
Isobel took a deep breath and readied herself to do the thing she had least wanted to do in her sixteen years of life: enter that place.
Seth and Michael wore the saintly smiles of model students as they faced the merciless scrutiny of Mr de Rozio, head librarian of the Indian Museum.
‘That’s the most ridiculous request I’ve heard in my life,’ de Rozio concluded. ‘At least since the last time you were here, Seth.’
‘Let me explain, Mr de Rozio,’ Seth improvised. ‘We know that normally you’re only open in the morning, and what my friend and I are asking you might seem a little extravagant-’
‘Coming from you, nothing is extravagant,’ de Rozio interrupted.
Seth suppressed a smile. Mr de Rozio’s caustic sarcasm was always a sign that he was interested. There was not a person on earth who knew his first name, except perhaps his mother and his wife, if in fact there was a woman in India brave enough to marry such a specimen. Beneath his Cerberus-like appearance, de Rozio had a renowned Achilles heel: his curiosity and love of gossip, albeit with an academic slant, made even the loud-mouthed women in the bazaar look like rank amateurs.
Seth and Michael eyed one another and decided to offer him some bait.
‘Mr de Rozio,’ Seth began in a melodramatic tone, ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but I feel obliged and must rely on your well-known discretion … There are a number of crimes connected with this matter, and we very much fear there’ll be more unless we put a stop to it.’
For a few seconds the librarian’s penetrating eyes seemed to grow.
‘Are you sure Thomas Carter is aware of this?’ he enquired.
‘He’s the one who sent us here,’ replied Seth.
De Rozio observed them once more, searching their faces for clues that might betray some skulduggery.
‘And your friend …’ de Rozio retorted, pointing at Michael. ‘Why is he so quiet?’
‘He was born a mute, sir. A very sad story,’ Seth explained.
Michael gave a tiny nod as if he wished to confirm this statement. De Rozio cleared his throat tentatively.
‘You mentioned this had something to do with some crimes?’ he said with studied indifference.
‘Murders, sir,’ Seth confirmed. ‘Quite a few.’
De Rozio checked his watch and, after a few moments’ reflection, he shrugged.
‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘But let this be the last time. What’s the name of the man you want to investigate?’
‘Lahawaj Chandra Chatterghee, sir,’ Seth replied quickly.
‘The engineer? Didn’t he die in the Jheeter’s Gate fire?’
‘Yes, sir, but there was someone with him who didn’t die. Someone who is very dangerous and who started the fire. That person is still out there, ready to commit new crimes.’
De Rozio smiled. ‘Sounds vaguely interesting,’ he murmured.
Suddenly a shadow crossed the librarian’s face. De Rozio leaned his considerable bulk towards the boys and pointed at them sternly.
‘This isn’t some invention of that friend of yours?’ he asked. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Ben doesn’t know anything about this, Mr de Rozio,’ Seth reassured him. ‘We haven’t seen him for months.’
‘Just as well,’ de Rozio declared. ‘Follow me.’
With Trepidation Isobel stepped inside the station, allowing her eyes to adapt to the darkness. Tens of metres above her was the main dome, with its great arches of steel and glass. Most of the panes had melted in the flames or had simply burst, shattering into red-hot fragments that had rained down over the entire station. Dusky light filtered through cracks in the darkened metal. The platforms faded into the shadows, forming a gentle curve beneath the huge vaulted ceiling, their surface covered with the remains of burnt benches and collapsed beams.
The large station clock, which once had presided over the central platform, was now just a sombre mute sentry standing by. As she walked under its dial, Isobel noticed that the hands had dropped down towards the ground like tongues of melted wax.
Nothing seemed to have changed in that place, were it not for the traces left by years of dirt and the impact of the rainwater torrential monsoons had swept through ventilation shafts and gaps in the roof.
Isobel stopped in the centre of the grand station and gazed around her.
A fresh gust of hot humid air blew through the building, ruffling her hair and scattering specks of dust over the platforms. Isobel shivered as she scanned the black mouths of the tunnels that went underground at the far end of each platform. She wished the other members of the Chowbar Society were with her, now that the situation was beginning to look far too similar to the stories Ben liked to invent for his evenings at the Midnight Palace. Isobel felt in her pocket and pulled out the drawing Michael had made of the Chowbar Society members standing by a pond in which their faces were reflected. She smiled when she saw the picture Michael had drawn of her and wondered if this was really how he saw her. She missed her friends.
Then she heard it for the first time, far away and muffled by the murmur of the breezes that blew through those tunnels. It was the sound of distant voices, rather like the rumble of the crowds she remembered hearing years ago after she dived into the Hooghly River, the day Ben taught her how to swim underwater, only this time Isobel was sure that these were not the voices of pilgrims approaching from the depths of the tunnels. What she heard were the voices of children, hundreds of them. And they were howling in terror.
De Rozio meticulously stroked the three rolls of his regal chin and once again examined the pile of documents, cuttings and papers he had collected during various expeditions to the digestive tract of the Indian Museum’s labyrinthine library. Seth and Michael watched him with a mixture of impatience and hope.
‘Well,’ the librarian began. ‘This matter is rather more complicated than it seems. There’s quite a bit of information about this Lahawaj Chandra Chatterghee. Most of the documentation I’ve seen is not that significant, but I’d need at least a week to get the papers on this person into some sort of order.’
‘What have you found, sir?’ asked Seth.