“Arsenic and the Shepherd” by Nev March, author of The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret

“Arsenic and the Shepherd”

Eyebrows knotted, Superintendent McIntyre said, “Mee-thay?”

My superior officer’s grasp of the vernacular was questionable, even after a decade in charge of the growing Bombay police force. 1892 had not been a good year for him—the hot summer air that the three-bladed punkha fans barely circulated, complaints from the Governor’s council, and constant interference from Home Office left him red-faced and steely eyed most days.

“Mithai, sir,” I said. “Sweetmeats. He found a box of sweets at the scene of the crime and secured it.” I nodded at Sub-inspector Sabrimal with an encouraging look. “Go on.”

Despite my urging him in English, he launched his explanation in Hindustani.

“Captain Agnihotri!” Superintendent McIntyre’s growl at me held a note of exasperation.

My junior by seven years but already the father of four, Sabrimal would have taken the confections home to his family. My insistence that it be analyzed had brought us to this juncture. I prompted Sabrimal. “You took it to the Medical Examiner, yes?”

He protested in his mother tongue. “But Captain saheb, you sent me to him!”

I clicked my tongue. “Tell the chief.”

Sub-inspector Sabrimal straightened to attention and gazed above our heads. He’d begged for more work in the hope of advancement. I could have told him that was useless—he was too damn well-meaning. A good detective needs a healthy dose of skepticism. Sabrimal had not an ounce of it on his well-padded frame.

I cast a look over his pillow-like posture, eyes bulging with effort, as he assembled some English. “Doctor said, poison!”

McIntyre’s eyes snapped to me as I added, “Arsenic. Jameson said, in sufficient dozes to ‘fell a small elephant, or a good-sized rhino.’”

McIntyre’s gaze sharpened. “Where was the box found?”

“It lay near the victim, Bhanu Kamgar, who owned the tea stall. He’d retired from a Bombay Infantry division some years ago.” That the deceased was an ex-serviceman, however humble, had elevated this ordinary crime to my attention. Pre-empting his next question, I added, “Sweetmeats are usually wrapped in old newspaper. The fancy box could give us a lead. Two pieces were missing, presumed consumed by the victim. He died quickly. Frothing at the mouth and rictus witnessed by a customer.”

“Did he see who delivered the sweets?”

“Apparently not. I’ll question him again this afternoon.”

McIntyre’s mouth twisted as though he’d tasted something sour. “Wrap it up quickly, Agnihotri. We’ve got real work to do.”

Real work. I wondered why, if he disliked policing so much, he’d refused a much-touted promotion back into the British army in Africa. Who was supposed to watch over the populace of Bombay, if not us? How many insidious little crimes escaped justice because we were too busy with the grand work of empire?

“The chaiwallah case” brought grins and chuckles from my colleagues. I’d been expected to promptly file it, since it was too minor to merit much investigation. But a peculiar sensation crept down the back of my neck each time I glanced at the thin file, like seeing the tail of a snake sticking out of the ground. Where was the rest of it?

I snatched up my coat and tracked down the witness, an elderly watchman, in front of a brick factory.

“Did you see who gave Bhanu the box?”

“Bhanu?”

“The chaiwallah.”

His reply was a downturned mouth.

“What was he like?”

“Who?”

“The chaiwallah!”

The watchman only shook his head and shrugged in answer to each question. I squinted at his squat nose and pudgy chin, pondering how to pry loose some intelligence. A carriage approached, so he hurried to open the gate, raising a hand to his forehead in a sloppy salute that, in the army, would have won him three sprints around camp and a hundred pushups. A dozen questions later I gave it up as a lost cause.

Hours later I still had no leads. The box of deadly sweets lacked any distinguishing mark and resembled hundreds sold each day in Fort market. The victim had no family, his wife having died the year before. He lived at the chai stall.

As I prowled through the hovels neighboring the stall, a bicycle repairman looked up at my approach.

Pointing toward the deserted chai-stall where crumpled newspaper and blowing leaves already accumulated, I asked, “Do you know the chaiwallah?”

He glanced away but not before I caught his lips pucker with dislike. Then he said, “He died yesterday.”

Wondering at his grimace, I probed. “Will you attend his cremation at the shamshan ghat?”

In answer he spat to one side. I took that as a no.

So he didn’t like the chaiwallah and wasn’t particular who knew it.

I said, “Tell me, how did his wife die?”

“How? She vomited blood. And fell down. And died.”

But that did not explain his tone of disgust. “You think the chaiwallah…?”

He met my gaze. “What happens at home is private. But neighbors hear. We hear crying. We hear beating. He beats too much, she vomits blood.”

But other neighbors disagreed. The carpenter next door said, “Bhanu and his wife argued a lot, but he could not be ten minutes without her. Always keeping her in sight, he was. Where is she going? Why is she taking so long. Married five years, they were.”

So, I spent the next few hours poring through Records Hall on Esplanade Road. Champa Kamgar’s death registration said she had died of natural causes at the age of twenty-five. I frowned. Years ago, a sepoy in my company had collapsed and died during our morning drill—an autopsy found he’d had a brain aneurism: natural causes. So, it could happen, I supposed, but the cyclewalla’s words made me doubtful. Champa had no known relatives. Her maiden name was not listed. Her cremation was paid for by Bhanu Kamgar, chaiwallah at Warden Road.

Another dead end. I sighed, returning the file.

Back at headquarters, my colleagues grinned at my bachelor’s meager dinner of vada-pav from a street-cart as they departed for their bustling homes. I added my notes to the chaiwallah file and feeling morose, went to the drawers that contained Bombay’s unsolved cases. They were filed alphabetically but that didn’t help at all, because each officer named his file whatever he wished. I frowned, undecided. Should I place it under B for Bhanu, or K for Kamgar? S for Sweets? P for Poison or A for Arsenic? Labelling the file MITHAI, 1 pulled open the drawer marked M.

There, among three Military murders, seven Meat-market robberies and a Milkman’s arrest for assault, I found an old file marked MITHAI-SWEETS.

Staring, I grabbed the file and took it over to my desk. The story was spread over a few scan pages: A week before last Dussehra, a low-level clerk of the P&O shipping office had been poisoned. Just before lunchtime, an urchin boy delivered a small package to his desk and run off. The red and gold box contained almond burfi, a popular confection. The clerk ate some and died within minutes. The report noted in a postscript that his widow and child had moved to Dehra Dun to be with her family.

No point swearing, since no one could hear me. Silence pressed against my ears. Starting at the drawer marked A-C, I hauled it out and rifled through the file labels. No, it would not be easy. I yanked out a batch and took them to my desk.

Four hours later I’d found a file parked under B: BOX OF SWEETS and another under H HARVANTRAI. For both, cause of death was listed as: Arsenic poisoning. I shooed away a mouse nosing at the crumbs on my desk and compared the different cases.

At one o’clock, the station guard came to check if someone had left a gas lamp burning by mistake. Around three, I heard the fire truck go out on an alarm. I found under S: SWEETMEATS, a milkman deceased after consuming halva mithai from a red and gold box.

At five, after the temple bells chimed next door, under P, a thin folder noted that a law-clerk named Bisvas PATIL had also been poisoned with sweetmeats from a red and gold box before the Ganesh-Chaturti festival. All five deaths had occurred in the last three years. Six, if you included my chaiwallah.

Sometime later the muezzin called his mournful song in the distance. The water pipes made a ruckus as the mali began the lengthy process of watering the street outside to keep down the dust. The water wagon would not arrive until noon, spraying from hoses to cool the sidewalks. Light glimmered along the windows as cool night gave way to day. Our station’s stone walls were usually pleasantly cool, but already a warm gust blew through my window.

Mopping my forehead, I gazed at the slim files on my table, their yellowing pages containing scant details. The victims had all lived in the northern parts of Bombay but that meant nothing; the elite south held mostly British residences. They had different occupations. Some had families, others did not. Their ages ranged from thirty to sixty-seven. Five were male, one female. Different religions, ethnicities, occupations. They hailed from different cities. Nothing in common.

Setting out a foolscap sheet, I marked out six columns down the page and began to fill in the comparable details. When it was full, I started another sheet. Studying these, I stifled a groan. What little information I gleaned for one victim was frequently missing for others. It seemed a vain exercise, but I could not stop. I was focused on the puzzle like a mongoose pawing at a snake-hole. Perhaps some part of me relished the obsessive oblivion, for I could see nothing else.

Daylight brought my colleagues, but some tacit understanding kept them from disturbing me. The chaiwallah boy silently placed a tiny glass on the corner of my table and departed without his usual chatter. I turned over my handwritten sheets, troubled by the gaps that littered the columns.

“Well?” McIntyre asked with a narrowing of his eyes.

I tapped my page. “At least six people were poisoned with arsenic-laced mithai in the last three years. Not counting those poisoned with tainted milk, or other things ingested. No connection that I can see, except that in each case a red and gold box shows up.”

“Hm,” he said, and walked away. For him that was high praise, indeed.

Sub-inspector Sabrimal was staring at me so I said, “Yes?”

“Captain saheb, You didn’t salute!”

I stretched and shrugged the ache off my shoulders, then went to clean up and see Dr. Jameson, the medical examiner.

*

“Arsenic isn’t that rare,” said Doctor Jameson, military physician and our de facto Medical Examiner, leaning back in his chair. “It’s used in all sorts of things. Ladies’ face powder, dyes, wallpaper, chemicals that kill bugs and weeds…”

“Face powder!”

“Oh yes. Lightens the skin. Did you know Queen Elizabeth used a paste of lead and vinegar called Venetian ceruse, or the spirits of Saturn. Awful stuff, lead.”

“But arsenic?”

“Well, it’s sold to American women as wafers, a sort of biscuit.”

“They consume it?”

He smiled at my incredulous tone and rattled off like a hawker in Chor Bazaar, “Dr. James P. Campbell’s Safe Arsenic Complexion Wafers! Good for dyspepsia, constipation, malaria, neuralgia, rheumatism, loss of appetite, lackluster eyes, low spirits, want of vitality, mal-assimilation of food, headache, hay fever. Le-ja-oh, Lejaoh!”

I stared.

Chuckling, he said, “I met the inventor on a steamer in 1890. My last trip home.”

“And it doesn’t kill the ladies?”

His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Well, I suppose they imagine a little might not cause harm. In sufficient doses, it could be very nasty indeed. It would have to be concentrated, dissolved and the water boiled away, perhaps. Planning to poison someone?” he said idly.

“Could one buy Arsenic wafers here?”

“Possibly. You’d have to consult a chemist.”

“Right.” I got to my feet.

“And Agnihotri!”

I stopped at the door.

“Get some sleep for God’s sake. You can’t go around like that. What if you bump into the Framjis?”

Not likely, I thought, touching my forehead and bowing like a lowly orderly. He grinned at my salaam, and I went back to my new digs, still cluttered with boxes I could not find the will to unpack. It was part of what I was determined to avoid so I bathed and shaved, and even went down to lunch with my fellow boarders. But that was as far as my return to human society would go: scarfing down the Goan fish curry and white rice, the masala bhurji and fried plantains. At another time I’d have savored the deep curry spice that could make a Hyderabadi sweat, but not today. Ignoring the wide-eyed looks around the table, I hurried back to my room.

The small stack of files was as mulishly untalkative as before, but feeling refreshed, I glared at them and started over with my interrogation.

Hours passed. Sighing, I leaned on my forearms. I was going around in circles. By now I knew each page as well as the rooms of Poona Cantonment Hospital where I’d spent months recuperating.

Feeling lightheaded, I glanced at the light fading in the window. I’d turn in early, I promised my aching shoulders. One more shot at the bugger and then I’d rest, I thought, returning to my handwritten pages.

And then, I saw it…

Scrawled in my own hand, sitting there as pretty as you please on page three. DEATH REGISTERED BY: Two columns contained the same name. Dr Mehra, and Dr A Mehra. His address was given as Plot #7, Agiyari lane, Fort market.

He’d recorded two of the poisoning deaths. It was late, almost sunset, but I scampered down the stairs like Romeo off to see his girl.

*

Plot #7 Agiyari lane was a small house sandwiched between the Parsi Fire temple on one side and a two story chawl whose balconies were festooned with wash drying on clotheslines. Twilight hung over the narrow lane, bathing it in indigo and violet. Windows flickered with candle or gaslight as families prepared for supper. The gate of #7 creaked as I entered and stepped toward the old bungalow.

It must have been pretty, once. The bamboo lattice work was now the color of wet sand, the shingles bleached to grey. The top floor was a residence, I saw, one window lit by a kerosene lantern. So, Doctor Mehra probably had rooms above his ancient clinic. Brown moss covered an old mounting block that stood by the rusted wrought-iron railing. Peeling paint on the crooked shutters. Old brick stairs still serviceable.

I headed toward the wooden door that stood ajar, and almost didn’t see the old man on the front porch. Swaddled in an oversized shawl, he looked up from his tiny desk and laid down his fountain pen, his white beard bobbing. “Yes, Saheb?”

“I want to see Dr Mehra.”

“Doctor-ji…” he began.

A young woman wearing spectacles swung open the door and cut him off. Speaking in Hindustani, she said, “Vasant babu, you carry on home. I will close up the clinic.”

Mumbling goodnights, the old man shuffled away. The woman retreated into the clinic, so I followed, entering a room lined with bookshelves. A row of chairs cluttered one side and a corner was screened off into a little nook. Here, a window cut in the wood screen had a small shelf to dispense syrups and powders.

After closing the rear windows, the woman returned. Her sari was blue washed to grey, but she did not wear it in the old-fashioned way over her hair, which was parted in the middle and braided. Neither overtly traditional nor modern, she moved with natural grace, arranging objects with practiced ease as she closed up the clinic.

I asked, “Where is Doctor Mehra?”

The women sent me a glance. “Do you need treatment?”

“No, I have some questions. I’m Captain Agnihotri, Bombay police.”

“Police?”

“Are you his daughter?”

She smiled and gestured at a chair. “Please.”

I sat. “Your mother…?”

“Died when I was born,” she said, completing my sentence.

“Is the doctor called away, then?”

She stood to one side, clasped hands resting over her sari and said, “People seek a physician when they have trouble. And trouble does not keep banker’s hours.”

“No,” I agreed, wondering whether to postpone my visit for the morning. But the poisoner must be someone with a close understanding of chemicals, so I questioned the woman, “Where does the doctor live?”

She raised a finger, pointing to the floor above.

I tilted my head in the direction of the old man’s departure. “Vasant babu, who is he?”

“Our compounder. He has been with us more than forty years.”

He compounded medicines. Wouldn’t he know about chemicals and their properties? With only an old doctor and his daughter around, how hard would it be to siphon some of the physician’s supplies for his own needs? The room’s silence pushed at my skin. Miss Mehra stood with her hands modestly before her, waiting.

“Is this a busy practice?”

She shrugged. “No more than most, I suppose. We have been here for decades, so we get to know the families. They bring their neighbors, the new daughter-in-law, her child. Then the child grows up and marries. And it goes on.”

Her voice had a pleasant intonation. Calm, but also competent, instilling confidence. But someone was poisoning the old doctor’s patients. I paused, watching the physician’s daughter quietly worry. Had age eroded the old man’s mind? Yet that would not explain the deliberate use of arsenic in sweets. I was willing to bet all six boxes were prepared by the same hand.

“So Dr. Mehra is popular?”

She smiled. “A shepherd. Tending the flock.”

That was a curiously biblical allusion. “And the wolves too?”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “How can you tell them apart? You are police, yes? How can you tell innocent from guilty?”

I smiled. “That’s a job for the court. I see victims and…suspects.”

“Is Dr. Mehra suspected of something?” Her demeanor was calm but tension tightened her eyes.

“He may be able to help me. Two of his patients died of arsenic poisoning.”

“Oh!” She frowned. “Recently?”

“No, last year.” I searched her troubled face. “But he signed the register for both deaths, so the two victims may have known each other. And possibly, also…the one responsible.”

“It cannot be a medical error. Vasant babu checks all the prescriptions with great care.”

I shook my head, then nodded at the rows of bottles behind the nook. “Who else has access to these chemicals?”

“Me. But I do not dispense the pills and powders. Sometimes I fetch them from the chemist, sometimes Vasant babu.”

Jameson had said the sweets were not just laced with arsenic, but prepared with a large dose of it. That was six deliberate acts, spread over three years.

“Dr. Mehra must keep a record of his patients?” Reading the reluctance on her face, I added, “Their occupations?”

“What work they do? Oh, we don’t ask that. What does it matter? Most Indian names denote some ancestral occupation. Mehras were once weavers, in Punjab.”

“Can you recall a ‘mithaivala’ among the patients?”

It was a long shot and it went wide. She smiled, shaking her head, hands wide.

Returning her smile, I picked up my hat and said, “I’ll take no more of your time, Miss Mehra. Thank you for seeing me. Please tell you father I will return at another time.”

*

The next day, as I crossed toward Dhobi Talav, I saw the peeling, crooked sign of a chemist hung over a store, so I walked over.

The counter was empty of customers. An elderly attendant nudged his glasses higher and greeted me. “How can I help, Afsar-saheh?”

Afsar…Officer. Even in civilian garb, he’d taken me for a serviceman. “Are you the chemist?’

“Yes, come, come,” he said. “If you want a good doctor, I can tell you where to go. We also have cures for common ailments. Hemorrhoids?” he asked, kindly.

“I want to know about arsenic. Have you sold any in the last three years?”

He looked surprised. “Of course, sahib. It is an ingredient of many Arurvedic medicines. Native Indian vaids use it all the time.”

I asked for the addresses of the nearest three practitioners and jotted them down in my notebook, then asked, “Does Dr. Mehra get ingredients from you?”

He took off his glasses and polished them. “Aahh. There is a compounder, Vasant babu. He comes for the usual hydrogen-peroxide, mercurochrome, iodine, ammonia.”

“Arsenic?”

He shrugged. “Yes.”

“Other doctors too?”

He nodded, looking anxious. “Some.”

“Dr. Mehra. When did he last order it?”

“He?” The chemist put up his glasses and peered at me. “But old Dr Mehra died 4 years ago!”

*

I returned to the clinic with long strides, only to find a crowd gathered around the gate. Clad in traditional dhoti and shawl, the old compounder seemed besieged on all sides. Palms out, he seemed to be pleading with unhappy customers.

“What’s the matter?” I demanded over their crowded heads.

A pathway miraculously cleared in front of me. As I approached, the lines in the old man’s face seemed deeper, his stoop more pronounced than yesterday.

He opened the gate to admit me. “Sahib, I am telling them, but they are not listening. Doctor-ji cannot see any patients. She cannot see anyone. She has gone away.”

Doctorji. She.

Bollocks.

Now I recalled his initial words to Miss Mehra. “Doctorji…” And she’d cut him off, saying she would wait and close up the clinic. Bloody hell.

I stepped close. “Where did she go?”

He pressed his folded hands together, the skin creased around his eyes.

“Where?”

Realizing that he would not reply until I’d disbanded our audience, I turned and announced, “The clinic is closed. See another doctor.”

The crowd replied with protests. “But saheb! We cannot afford them!”

“Where shall we go? My son has fever!”

“The gora doctor is too far! We cannot pay his fees!”

“Only Doctorji comes when we need her. Hai hai! What will I do?”

I set my shoulders back and gave them my best impression of McIntyre. Grumbling protests, they shuffled away.

Then we were alone in the small green courtyard with its jasmine and ferns, glossy leaves of elephant-ear waving under the drooping roots of the old peepul tree like ropes hanging from an abandoned sail.

I turned to the old compounder. “Well?”

He shuffled away taking small steps on the flagstone path.

No, not this time. I stalked after him, preparing a choice rebuke. Before I could deliver it, he handed me an envelope.

It was marked, CAPTAIN AGNIHOTRI in a neat flowing script.

My heart jerked a beat, then settled into a warning pace. Careful; this is dangerous terrain, a thin veneer that may not take our weight.

Somewhere above me a koyal cooed, “Who-oo? You-oo?” A hot breeze brushed my forehead. Taking out the pages, I knew what they would say before I read them.

Captain Saheb, I did not mislead you. No, I admit, I allowed you to mislead yourself. But everything I told you was true. We few native doctors treat whoever comes to our door. We see the pieces, the ragged torn flesh, the bruises, the burns, the tears. Papa sewed them up and treated the pain. Vasant babu Compounder served him for decades, and I helped since I was ten years old.

 

Factory accidents, falls, broken bones. Colds and aches and fevers. Scrawny women depleted from multiple childbirths. Women with broken noses and black eyes. Burns and bruises. So many bruises.

 

Papa would worry there was internal damage. “Is there blood when you make water?” he would ask. We feared the answer, sometimes, for there is only little we could do. And next month we’d see another broken bone, a finger that “got caught in the rope of the well.” We tried to question them; the women’s haunted eyes spoke such awful truth they could not look at papa. So they cast sideways glances at me, begging me to answer for them, to make excuses, to hide their shame. Before I was thirteen, I learned the language of their silence.

 

You assumed that papa was Doctor Mehra. He was.

 

By now you know he has been dead four years. Since you are reading this, I know our old chemist babu has blabbed to you. If you turned your eyes upon him, no doubt he would keep talking until you looked satisfied. But you know the power of your official vardi, and your stare.

 

I had assisted papa since childhood, taking on more duties as he grew infirm over the last decade. He died when we were traveling in Ajmer, and no one questioned it when I continued his practice.

 

But how could I keep on treating broken ribs and cigarette burns? In the bruises I could see the shape of the husband’s fist, the imprint of his shoe.

 

Many years ago, an old customer gave me her face powder—a gift, so I could someday claim a handsome husband. Papa scoffed, shaking his head and would not let me apply it, because it contained arsenic. Still, how could I throw it away—it was so expensive! Later I found a use for it after all.

 

Captain Saheh, I did not kill indiscriminately. Some wives would have become destitute without their abusive husbands. So I waited. Others would be on their way to the shamshan burial ghat if I did not act. Who can know the future? I agonized over each one. Each year at festivals grateful patients gifted papa laddus in pretty boxes. Papa was so thrifty. Each page, newspaper or brown paper cover used over and over. Magazine covers and cardboard I cut into tapers to light the chulha. Somehow, we had saved a stack of seven mithai boxes. So, I made good use of them. The face power, sugar and almond paste concentrated into a tasty burfi. Then I ran out of arsenic and had to get some from Chemist Babu. He was surprised, because I usually do not make ayurvedic golis for patients.

 

The shepherd must use whatever means are at hand.

 

I have no regrets. By the time you have read this, I will be on a ship to Shanghai. I have joined Christian missionaries who care for the poor in rural China.

 

Who will protect my flock now? Captain Saheb, in another time and place, we might have been friends. This janam, it is not to be. I can only remain,

 

your devoted,

 

Dr. Mehra

A Note on “Arsenic and the Shepherd” by Nev March:

Verena Rose, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Rita Owen have created a new initiative called “Mystery Patrons.” The royalties earned from this year’s anthology, Mystery Most International, which will feature “Arsenic and the Shepherd,” will go towards this initiative. Each year Mystery Patrons will produce an anthology with a different theme and they will select a convention such as Bouchercon, Crime Fest (UK), Left Coast Crime, SleuthFest, etc. as the recipient of the monies for that year.

About The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret by Nev March:

In The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret, award-winning author Nev March explores the vivid nineteenth-century world of the transatlantic voyage, one passenger’s secret at a time.

Captain Jim Agnihotri and his wife Lady Diana Framji are embarking to England in the summer of 1894. Jim is hopeful the cruise will help Diana open up to him. Something is troubling her, and Jim is concerned.

On their first evening, Jim meets an intriguing Spaniard, a fellow soldier with whom he finds an instant kinship. But within twenty-four hours, Don Juan Nepomuceno is murdered, his body discovered shortly after he asks rather urgently to see Jim.

When the captain discovers that Jim is an investigator, he pleads with Jim to find the killer before they dock in Liverpool in six days, or there could be international consequences. Aboard the beleaguered luxury liner are a thousand suspects, but no witnesses to the locked-cabin crime. Jim would prefer to keep Diana safely out of his investigation, but he’s doubled over, seasick. Plus, Jim knows Diana can navigate the high society world of the ship’s first-class passengers in ways he cannot.

Together, using the tricks gleaned from their favorite fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, Jim and Diana must learn why one man’s life came to a murderous end.