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Overview
Landlords are never popular, and there is little mourning when the greedy, ruthless Mahendralal Bakhle is blown up on his boat on the beautiful Periyar Lake. Suspicion falls on the boat-boy who died with him, but Dominic Felse, one of a party of young tourists visiting the landlord’s game reserve, is not convinced of the boy’s guilt. And when the party moves on to the next destination, the terror pursues all the way to the southernmost tip of India.
The police blame local terrorists targeting wealthy landlords, but what would that have to do with a group of innocent travelers? To get to the bottom of this trail of violence, Dominic Felse must unravel a deadly Indian rope trick of hatred and murder.
Death to the Landlords is the 11th book in the Felse Investigations, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504027168 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MysteriousPress.com/Open Road |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2015 |
| Series: | Felse Investigations Series , #11 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 221 |
| Sales rank: | 504,969 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Ellis Peters is a pseudonym of Edith Mary Pargeter (1913–1995), a British author whose Chronicles of Brother Cadfael are credited with popularizing the historical mystery. Cadfael, a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in the first half of the twelfth century, has been described as combining the curious mind of a scientist with the bravery of a knight-errant. The character has been adapted for television, and the books drew international attention to Shrewsbury and its history.
Pargeter won an Edgar Award in 1963 for Death and the Joyful Woman, and in 1993 she won the Cartier Diamond Dagger, an annual award given by the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain. She was appointed officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1994, and in 1999 the British Crime Writers’ Association established the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award, later called the Ellis Peters Historical Award.
Read an Excerpt
Death to the Landlords
The Felse Investigations: Book 11
By Ellis Peters
MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
Copyright © 1972 Ellis PetersAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2716-8
CHAPTER 1
Thekady: Saturday Evening
There were two cars already parked in front of the long, low, ochre-yellow bungalow when the Land-Rover wheeled into line beside the porch; and at sight of the first of them, the ancient, sky-blue Ford with the grazed door and the retouched wing, they all three uttered a hoot of recognition, at once derisive and appreciative.
'Here we go again!' said Larry Preisinger, switching off the engine. 'Didn't I say we would be running into the whole circus again before we reached the Cape? It's always the same. I drove this thing round Gujarat State, and the same folks I saw at the first halt haunted me all the way. Might skip an overnight stop here and there, but give 'em a few days and they'd show up again. An Indian couple from South Africa with three kids, visiting the home country, a middle-aged pair from New Zealand doing the world by easy stages and two young Czechs draped with about four cameras each. Now we've got the French for a change.'
'We might do worse,' said Dominic Felse thoughtfully.
'Yeah, we might, at that!' On the whole, in a wary fashion, they had approved of the Bessancourts. He looked doubtfully at the second car, a big black saloon, battered but imposing, but it told him nothing about its incumbents. A tourist car, probably, hired out for the weekend with driver, from Madurai. 'Looks like we'll be camping tonight. With two car-loads they must be full up inside.' Not that he minded; they were well equipped, with light sleeping bags, and a mosquito net that rolled up into the roof when not in use. Three can manage without too much discomfort in a Land-Rover, given a little ingenuity, and he had provided the ingenuity before he ever set out on this marathon drive round India, picking up co-drivers for sections of the route wherever he could, for company and to share the expenses. Dominic, acquired in Madras and on leave from some farming job, was one of the luckiest breaks he'd had so far, around his own age, a congenial enough companion, a good driver, and prepared to stick with him as far as Cape Comorin, and probably all the way back to Madras, too.
Lakshman unfolded his slender length from among the baggage, and slid out of the Land-Rover. 'I will go and talk to the khanasama.' He paused to look back and inquire, in his gentle, dutiful voice that balanced always so delicately between the intonations of friend and servant: 'If there are no beds, you would like at least food? It would be a change from my cooking.'
'It might be a change for the worse, but sure, let's risk it.'
Larry had been travelling with Lakshman Ray for nearly six weeks now, and had given up trying to get on to closer terms with him. Lakshman, whether he knew his place or not, certainly knew his employer's place, and firmly kept him there. With the greatest of deference, amiability and consideration, but implacably. He had done this sort of courier-interpreter job before, with other lone tourists, and had encountered, or so Larry judged, patrons with very different views on this relationship from those Larry himself held. Give him time, and he'd make any necessary adjustments himself; no sense in trying to rush him. Lakshman was the youngest of the three of them, barely twenty and still a student, until want of funds had driven him out to earn money for further study by such journeys as this. He had to get everything right, and he was taking no risks. Perhaps he didn't even want to slide unsuspectingly into a friendship for which he hadn't bargained. A cool young person, shy, soft-voiced, self-possessed and efficient, he spoke both Tamil and Malayalam in addition to his own Hindi, so he was equally effective in the north or the south. Sometimes, Larry suspected, Lakshman had difficulty in remembering to keep Dominic at the same distance as Larry himself; Dominic wasn't paying his wages.
The bungalow, seen by the glow from its own windows and the Land-Rover's side-lights, was a pleasant, solid building of brick and plaster, with a deep, arcaded porch, and looked big enough to house quite a number of travellers, if the usual tourist bedroom-cum-livingroom in India had not been about as big as a barn, and with its own bathroom or shower attached. Three such suites, say, plus the kitchen quarters, and there would be no room left. No matter, the Land-Rover was good enough.
Lakshman came back gesturing mildly from a distance, and shaking his head; and behind his back the khansama stuck out a bearded head in a loose cotton turban from the kitchen door to take a look at his latest guests.
'The place is quite full, but he will feed us. And there is a chowkidar.' The security of the bungalow's grounds and the protection of its watchman were not to be despised.
'Good, then how about borrowing a shower, before the proper tenants get to that stage?'
'It can be arranged.' He was looking from them to the anonymous black car, and his smile was less demure than usual. 'Do you know who is also here?'
His look and his tone said that they were hardly likely to thank him for the information, though it might enliven their stay in its own fashion. It was not often that Lakshman looked mischievous, and even now he had his features well in hand.
'Sure we know,' said Larry obtusely, his mind on his shower, 'madame la patronne and her mari.'
Prompt on the close of his sentence, as if responding to a clue, a high, clacking voice screeched: 'Sushil Dastur! Sushil Dastur!' from an open window, in a rising shriek that could have been heard a mile into the forest; and light, obsequious footsteps slapped hurriedly along the hallway inside the open door to answer the summons.
'Oh, no!' groaned Larry. 'Not the Manis! So that's the chauffeur-driven party, is it? We might have known! What did I tell you? Start touring anywhere you like, and within a hundred miles radius you keep seeing the same faces.'
'And hearing the same voices,' Dominic remarked ruefully. 'Poor little Sushil, he certainly hears plenty of that one. I wonder he stands it. And Bengali women don't usually squawk – they have soft, pleasant voices.'
'Not this one!' It was scolding volubly now in Bengali, somewhere within the house, punctuated by placating monosyllables from a man's voice, anxious, inured and resigned. 'Maybe he doesn't even listen, really, just makes the right sounds and shuts up his mind. Otherwise he'd go up the wall. And his boss is worse, if anything, even if he doesn't split the eardrums quite like his missus. Jobs must be hard to come by, or Sushil would have quit long ago.'
'I get the impression he is a relative,' Lakshman said with sympathy. 'Of the lady, perhaps – a poor cousin. And you are quite right, for a clerk with no paper qualifications it is not at all easy to find a good post. And perhaps he is more comfortable with this one than we suppose. It is security of a kind.'
They had run into the Manis twice since leaving Madras, once briefly at Kancheepuram, plodding doggedly round that fantastic city's many temples, and once at an overnight stop at Tiruchirapalli, where Mr Mani had constituted himself chairman of the evening gathering of guests at the travellers' bungalow, and unfolded his and his wife's life story in impressive detail. They were from Calcutta, where they had several textile shops, and they had come south to Madras for the first time to visit their married daughter, whose husband ran a highly successful travel agency. Thus they had the best possible help and advice in planning an extended tour of the south of India. Ganesh had made all the arrangements, Ganesh had ensured that they should not miss one famous sight while they were here. They had certainly missed none in Tiruchi. They had been observed in the early morning, before the stone steps were too hot for comfort, toiling dauntlessly all up the exposed face of the rock, Mrs Mani with her elaborate sari kilted in both hands, and Sushil Dastur scurrying behind with her handbag, her husband's camera and the scarf she had dispensed with after the first morning chill passed; and again later taking pictures of the budding lotus in the temple tank below. And in the afternoon they had taken a taxi out to Srirangam, and toiled relentlessly round every inch of that tremendous temple, with very little in their faces to indicate what they thought of its stunning sculptures, or indeed whether they thought at all.
Mr Mani's name was Gopal Krishna, and he was a firm, thickset, compact person of perhaps fifty, smoothly golden-brown of face, with crisp greying hair and large, imperious eyes that fixed the listener like bolts shackling him to his chair. He was so clean-shaven that it was difficult to believe he ever grew any whiskers to shave, and so immaculate, whether in spotless cream silk suit or loose white cotton shirt and trousers, or even, occasionally, a dhoti, that he made everyone else around feel crumpled, angular and grubby. He walked ponderously and impressively; one thought of a small, lightweight but inordinately pompous elephant. His voice was mellifluous but pedantic; it acquired an edge only when it addressed Sushil Dastur.
Sudha Mani was softer, rounder and plumper than her husband, and some years younger, and to do her justice, she was a pretty woman, with her pale gold cheeks and huge, limpid eyes, and curled, crisp rosebud of a mouth. But the eyes stared almost aggressively, and the tightness of the rosebud never moved a degree nearer blooming; and when the petals did part, she squawked like a parrot. She wore beautiful, expensive saris and rather too much jewellery, all of it genuine; but everyone here put capital into gold and silver ornaments. And she wore flowers in the huge knot of black hair coiled on her neck, but the flowers never seemed to survive long.
From her they had heard all about her first grandchild, and her troubles with servants, and the extreme sensitivity of her temperament. And from Gopal Krishna all about the state of the textile business, and his own commercial astuteness and consequent wealth.
Only almost accidentally had they ever discovered more than his name about Sushil Dastur, who fetched and carried, ran errands, took dictation, conferred long-distance with the management of the Calcutta shops and generally did everything that needed doing and many things that didn't around the Mani menage. His name they couldn't help discovering within half an hour. 'Sushil Dastur!' echoed and re-echoed at ten minute intervals, and in varying tones of command, displeasure, reproach and menace, wherever the Manis pitched camp. Private secretary, clerk, general factotum, travelling servant, he was everything in one undersized, anxious body.
In reality Sushil Dastur was not by any means so fragile as at first he appeared, but he was short, and seemed shorter because he was always hurrying somewhere, head-down, on his master's business; and the amount of prominent bone that showed in his jutting brow and slightly hooked nose contrasted strongly with the plump smoothness of the Manis, making him look almost emaciated. His brow was usually knotted in a worried frown above his large, apprehensive dark eyes, and his manner was chronically apologetic. Curly dark hair grew low on his forehead. Subservience had so far declassed and denatured him that it seemed appropriate he should always wear nondescript European jackets and trousers of no special cut, in a self-effacing beige colour. On the rare occasions when he appeared in an achkan he looked a different person.
'Looks like being old home week, all right,' Larry remarked glumly. For nothing was more certain than that all these people would be heading for the Periyar Lake in time for the early watering the next morning. There was nowhere else for them to be going in these parts. From the coast as from Madurai, from the west as from the east, the roads merely led here and crossed here; and few people passed by without halting at the lake to go out by boat and watch elephants. Other game, too, with luck, sambur, deer, wild boar, occasionally even leopard and tiger, though these last two rarely appeared; but above all, elephants, which never failed to appear, and in considerable numbers. 'You know, without wanting to seem intolerant, I'd enjoy my cruise more without the Mani commentary.'
'We could have a small private boat, if you wish,' said Lakshman tentatively. 'But it would cost more, of course.'
'Could we?' Larry perceptibly brightened. 'They have small launches there, too?' He looked at Dominic. 'How about it? We've stuck to our shoestring arrangements so far, what about plunging for once?'
'I'm willing. Why not?'
'I'll go and telephone, if you really wish it,' offered Lakshman. 'It would be better to make sure.'
'Yes, do that! Let's indulge ourselves.'
The advantage, perhaps, of being a shoe-string traveller, is that you can, on occasion, break out of the pattern where it best pleases you, and do something unusually extravagant. The thought of having a boat to themselves, and all the huge complex of bays and inlets of the lake in which to lose the other launches, was curiously pleasing. Even on a popular Sunday they might be able to convince themselves that they were the only game-spotters in the whole sanctuary. Dominic was whistling as he reached into the back of the Land-Rover for his towels and washing tackle.
It was at that moment that the two clear, female voices began to approach through the darkness from the direction of the gate, and there emerged into the light from the windows two girls, one Indian and dark, one English and pallidly fair, carrying nets of green oranges and bunches of rose-coloured bananas in their arms.
Two pairs of eyes, one pair purple-black, one zircon blue, took in the Land-Rover and its attendant figures in a long, bright, intelligent stare.
'Well, hullo!' said the fair girl, in the bracing social tone of one privately totting up the odds. 'You must be the outfit that passed us just down the road, when we were haggling for this lot. Staying over? I thought they were full up.'
'They are,' said Dominic. By this time he was well aware that Larry never responded to any overtures, especially from females, until he had had time to adjust, and to review his defences. Some girl must once have done something pretty mean to him, and all others had better step delicately. 'We sleep out in the moke. But yes, we're staying.'
'We came up by the bus. No use going on to the hotel, until tomorrow, anyhow,' she said simply. 'We couldn't afford to stay here, and it was too late for this afternoon's cruise when we got here. I suppose you'll be heading for the lake tomorrow morning?' Her eyes flickered thoughtfully towards the Land-Rover again; he didn't blame her for taking thought for the morrow, public transport was liable to be both unreliable and, on a Sunday, overcrowded. But she didn't ask, not yet. It was too early, and she wasn't going to be as crude as all that. As for the Indian girl, she stood a little apart, cool and still, watching them with a thoughtful and unsmiling face.
'So will everyone around, I imagine,' Larry said cautiously.
'You're American, aren't you?' she said, interested.
'That's right. My name's Preisinger, and this is Dominic Felse – he's English. As I think you must be.'
'Not much good trying to hide it, is it?' She shook her pale locks and laughed. 'I'm Patti Galloway, and this is my friend Priya Madhavan. If I had the colouring I'd like to sink myself into the background, and all that, but I decided long ago that it was no good. Priya's from Nagarcoil, we're making our way there gradually, and taking in the sights on the way. Where are you heading?'
'Oh, south. Down to the Cape, and then by Trivandrum and Cochin back to Madras. Dominic drops off at Madras. After that I don't know yet.'
Her eyes had opened wide. 'You must have a lot of time to spare. What do you do? Have you been working here? Or do you live here all the time?' She was restlessly full of questions, but there was something artless and disarming about her directness; and if it was disconcerting that she waited for no answers, at least that gave Larry time to make up his mind. Why not, after all? Lakshman was just coming out from the arcaded porch with a slight, contented smile that said he had been successful, and there would be a private boat for them tomorrow. And the girls had their own plans, which apparently involved the family of one partner, and therefore were hardly likely to be changed as the result of a chance meeting like this. He could afford to be generous without any risk of getting in too deeply.
'We were just going to sneak in and cadge a shower, as a matter of fact, before eating. If you two are on your own, and would care to join us, we should have a boat of our own for tomorrow morning. Why don't we eat together and fix everything up over the meal?'
The furniture of the bungalow's public room was of the simplest, but there were two tables, chairs enough and electric lighting that flickered alarmingly at times, but survived; and the khansama's omelettes were good, and the fruit from the stall fresh and excellent. Since the tables were of the same size, it was natural to break up the guests into two equal parties of five; and that made it easy for the first on the scene – and inevitably that was Lakshman – to appropriate one of them for his employer's party and his employer's guests. Whether he approved of the addition of the girls to their number there was no way of knowing; his manners, as always, were graceful and correct.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Death to the Landlords by Ellis Peters. Copyright © 1972 Ellis Peters. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Prologue: On the Road to Thekady: Saturday Evening,Chapter 1: Thekady: Saturday Evening,
Chapter 2: Thekady: Sunday,
Chapter 3: Thekady: Sunday Evening,
Chapter 4: Thekady: Monday Morning,
Chapter 5: Malaikuppam: Monday Evening: Tuesday,
Chapter 6: Malaikuppam: Wednesday Morning,
Chapter 7: Malaikuppam: Wednesday Evening,
Chapter 8: Malaikuppam: Thursday,
Chapter 9: Nagarcoil: Friday Morning,
Chapter 10: Cape Comorin: Friday Afternoon,
Chapter 11: Cape Comorin: Friday Evening,
Chapter 12: Cape Comorin: Friday Night to Saturday Dawn,
Chapter 13: Cape Comorin: Saturday Morning,
Chapter 14: Cape Comorin: Saturday Morning, Continued,
Chapter 15: Cape Comorin: Saturday Evening,
Epilogue: Malaikuppam,
Preview: City of Gold and Shadow,
About the Author,
