Secret Gardener , livre ebook
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2013
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105
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English
Ebook
2013
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Publié par
Date de parution
15 février 2013
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9788184759242
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
15 février 2013
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9788184759242
Langue
English
Kalpana Swaminathan
THE SECRET GARDENER
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Epilogue
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE SECRET GARDENER
Kalpana Swaminathan lives in Mumbai, a few streets away from her detective. This is her fifth Lalli novel; the two previous novels published by Penguin are The Monochrome Madonna and I Never Knew It Was You . Her earlier books include Bougainvillea House and Ambrosia for Afters . Venus Crossing , a collection of short stories, won the Vodafone Crossword Fiction Award in 2009.
Kalpana also writes with Ishrat Syed as Kalpish Ratna. Their most recent novel is The Quarantine Papers .
PRAISE FOR I NEVER KNEW IT WAS YOU
Memorable for its characters, dark comic undertones and liberal extension of the traditionally male detective horizons, I Never Knew It Was You is a breath of fresh air - Asian Age
A page turner - Deccan Herald
A very independent-minded detective story - Mint
Every great city deserves at least one paperback detective. London has Adam Dalgliesh Shanghai has earnest Inspector Chen and Mumbai has razor-sharp retired policewoman Lalli LR - Times of India
PRAISE FOR THE MONOCHROME MADONNA
A romp as well as a challenging problem to chew on, [ The Monochrome Madonna ] promises to be a gripping read - The Telegraph
The characters are interesting and will keep the intelligent crime fan engrossed - Financial Express
Graceful, lean and witty murder caper - Mint
Inventive, mischievous and sporadically serious-as much a rapier-sharp social satire as a murder mystery - Tehelka
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Ambrosia for Afters
Jaldi s Friends
Bougainvillea House
Venus Crossing: Twelve Stories of Transit
The Monochrome Madonna
I Never Knew It Was You
Prologue
June found Lalli exhausted. For the first time I saw my aunt refuse first one case, then another. The Sada Suhagan affair had ended badly. Despite Lalli s vigilance, Aaftab Shirazi did not escape Rassiwalla s wrath.
He was found dead in his cell, strangled with a pink nylon clothesline. His family refused to claim the body. Shukla, who had visited him often in prison, took care of the funeral.
The next day, Lalli received a package by courier. It contained a small pendant of gold filigree. There was a typewritten note:
Keep this with you always. One day you will wear it for me.
I was disturbed to see my aunt obey that to the letter. The trinket was never far from her, though she would not wear it on her person.
Savio asked her several times to throw it away.
Would you? she asked, knowing the answer.
She was biding time. It made her silent and Savio edgy. I found myself constantly seeking out Dr Q.
I liked the way Dr Q kept the world at bay. His day swung like a pendulum between the dead at work and his books at home. He noticed nothing in between.
But then, I did.
Dr Q had a secret life.
At the end of June, quite without warning, we found ourselves in the midst of it.
1
Dr Q, our police surgeon, is addicted to gardens. Other people s mostly, though he s not above traffic islands and public parks. His addiction takes a peculiar form: he admires them from across the fence. I ve never seen him enter a garden, leave alone explore one, and I suspect he s never so much as sprouted a bean in his life. He can t tell a peepul from a rain tree. But a bright patch of bougainvillea on a whitewashed wall, or a prayer mat of marigold, or even a silver and mauve stir of thistles in a patch of grass can derail him. He stops. He stares. And walks away with wounded eyes.
It s understood that one does not mention gardens to Dr Q. Who likes to be reminded of a lost love?
Nothing so romantic, says Savio. He thinks it s a kind of minor epilepsy, the motor response to intense colour, highly predictable in a man who perpetually wears white.
Savio has been making deductions of this sort for the last few months, ever since he decided the missing element in his career is neurology. Its criminal fringe, that is. He sits up nights with scans from assorted criminals, muttering things like amygdal cortical index as he squints at slices of brain. To me, this sounds like Lombroso all over again, a wired version of that antique scam, phrenology. Anyway, Savio thinks Dr Q s fascination for gardens is probably just an added curlicue in his brain.
It s neither lost love nor epilepsy, Lalli broke into our argument one evening.
What do you think, then? I challenged.
I don t, she said shortly.
I didn t either, after that.
Not till the Wednesday afternoon when, driving home through an unfamiliar lane, I noticed Dr Q s car parked at the kerb just outside a cottage. The cottage had no noticeable garden as yet. The wilderness had been cleared, the soil was being hoed. In the midst of the furrowed field, talking with the gardener, was Dr Q.
Dr Q s finally broken the taboo, I told Lalli when I returned. He s actually crossed the fence. I saw him chatting up a gardener in the middle of a garden.
Really? What kind of a garden was it?
Before I could answer, the man himself arrived. One look at his face told me he might have ventured closer to the garden, but the gardener hadn t improved the view.
He waved away the idea of coffee, thoughtfully sipped a glass of water with the air of one savouring a rare vintage and settled into a morose silence. Lalli returned to her book.
I found it difficult to endure this limbo and would have left the room if he hadn t said, Lalli, I suppose to you nothing is sacred.
He made it sound like an accusation, and I wondered what my aunt had been up to.
No, nothing is sacred, Lalli agreed.
Would you still say that if something you treasured were defiled?
Lalli laughed. Her clear ringing dangerous laugh. If you treasure something, can it ever be defiled?
I thought you d use that argument, he grumbled. But I tell you some things are sacred. Gardens. Gardens are sacred. To some people. He fell silent again.
To you, Dr Q? Lalli suggested.
He nodded. Nobody knows about it, but I m a secret gardener.
Our surprise encouraged him to continue. I ve never had a garden, or even grown anything, but He shrugged.
It s what you are, Lalli said.
Exactly. I know most of the gardens around here. Big, small, showy, modest, even the little bursts of colour on balconies and windows, I know them all. I worry when they re missing.
Naturally.
There was a garden beyond Patwardhan Park, in one of those old cottages. Small house, big garden. No trees. That used to disturb me. It needed a tree. Beautiful flowers, those big red ones. What are those, Sita?
Hibiscus?
Probably. I don t know their names, but there were lots of flowers, and er shrubs and, you know His hands described vague undulations I suppose he pictured as masses of green. And there was a girl.
Ah, said Lalli.
A girl like a lily. Growing in that garden with all those red flowers. I never saw her face. She was always working in the garden. A girl like a lily.
His face darkened. He drank some more water and continued. And then, without warning, it all went away. The flowers died on their stalks, leaves shrivelled, weeds choked the drying shrubs. Everything decayed. The girl was no longer there. The cottage was shut. They had left. Sold the place to the builders, I imagined. That was two years ago.
But you haven t forgotten it.
Forgotten? No, no. I kept expecting it all to come back.
The girl?
Her too, yes, but she was part of the garden. It was all so complete. And today, suddenly, like a light switched on, it s back.
As it was?
No, I m not talking impossibilities, Lalli. The weeds have been cleared, the soil is being prepared, the garden is coming back.
Why are you unhappy, then?
He hesitated. His voice sank a note. I went inside, he said. I I couldn t help it. The gate was open, a gardener was at work no, not the girl, a man as old as me, as gnarled and beaten down by life. I thought I could ask him. I thought he might know.
About how?
Yes, yes, exactly. Seeds and soil, such things. Maybe I could watch and learn. I shouldn t have gone in.
What happened?
What happened ? It was as if it was all waiting to happen, Lalli. Before I could speak, the gardener said, Sahib, does this look like a dog or a cat to you? And he handed me this.
Dr Q produced his usual immaculate kerchief and carefully opened its folds. Lalli drew in her breath as she leaned forward, cutting off my view.
I caught sight of it as she drew back, eyes glittering, a faint flush on her forehead. Cuddled in snowy linen was a blackened shard, like a fragment of coconut shell. I took a closer look. There was a pretty shape to it, delicate, fragile, winged, like something meant to hover. It looked more like a bird than a dog or a cat to me. Still, if Dr Q was clinging to it, it was a safe bet that it was human.
Skull fragment? I ventured.
It s a sphenoid, Lalli said. Part of the base of the skull. Actually, the part the thinking brain sits on.
You see? Dr Q sighed. It s all spoilt for me.
Lalli and Dr Q had moved to the dining table and were hunkered down over the bone when the doorbell rang.
It s not epilepsy, I whispered as I let in Savio.
What? I m starving, what have you got? he demanded, steering me into the kitchen. He always asks that, though the answer never varies.
I had his usual stopgap waiting. It s wonderful what a small cup of chocolate and two coconut biscuits can accomplish by way of evolution. It fast-forwards Savio from Neanderthal to his usual self. I enjoy the silence during the metamorphosis, so it wasn t till he d washed up that I told him about Dr Q s find.
It s just a bone, Sita, he responded. Could have come from anywhere. Rats, birds, dogs.
A sphenoid, Lalli said. A skull bone, Savio.
Yeah, I know what a sphenoid is. Looks like a bat. So? Dig deep enough and you ll hit a grave, the whole bloody city is one big cemetery. I
