The Rose Behind the Verdict - The Shot in Darkness - Part 7

 For one breathless instant, Bishan House became nothing but sound.

A woman’s scream.

Running feet.

Rain against stone.

Then darkness swallowed the courtyard.

Mira grasped the wall. Niraj collided with a flower urn and apologized to it instinctively. Harish shouted for lamps while servants scattered in panic.

Arindam moved toward the source of the gunshot without hesitation.

“Stay where you are!” he ordered.

“No one obeys me when I say that,” Niraj muttered from somewhere nearby.

The main hall was black except for brief silver flashes of lightning through high windows. By memory more than sight, Arindam climbed the staircase two steps at a time.

At the landing he found Sarojini Devi holding a brass lamp just lit, her face pale but steady.

“You heard it?” he asked.

“I saw the flash,” she said.

“Where?”

She lifted the lamp toward the west corridor.

“Raghav’s study.”

The room had been locked since the old master’s death, Mira had said earlier.

Arindam ran there.

The study door stood ajar.

Inside, the smell of burnt powder lingered sharply.

The lamp revealed overturned chairs, papers scattered across the carpet, and a shattered glass cabinet. Near the desk lay a revolver.

Beside it lay Harish Bishan.

Alive—but bleeding from the shoulder.

Mira cried out and rushed forward.

“Do not touch him,” Arindam said.

He knelt beside the wounded man. The bullet had grazed rather than pierced deeply.

Harish grimaced.

“He... he tried to kill me.”

“Who?”

Harish raised a trembling hand toward the open window.

“Dev.”

Niraj, arriving late and breathless, looked at the open window bars.

“Interesting,” he said. “Because no full-grown man has recently liquefied enough to pass through those rods.”

Arindam’s eyes moved at once to the window.

The bars were fixed.

No one had escaped through them.

He turned to the desk. A ledger lay open, pages torn. One sheet remained, bearing columns of figures and a repeated initial:

L

Loans? Leela? Land?

He pocketed the page.

Then he examined the revolver.

One shot fired.

But the cylinder smelled faintly older than moments ago.

Recently cleaned.

Prepared.

“Mira,” he said, “who kept this weapon?”

“It belonged to Father. It was locked here.”

“Who had the key?”

Harish, still groaning, answered first.

“I... did.”

That interested Arindam more than the wound.

Sarojini Devi stepped to the doorway, lamp steady.

“Your brother feared enemies,” she said to Harish. “Strange that only after his death did the gun become useful.”

Harish glared at her. “Witch.”

“No,” she replied calmly. “Witness.”

Thunder rolled again.

Then from the corridor behind them came a soft clap.

All turned.

Dev Bishan stood in the doorway, hands raised, rain on his coat.

“I leave for one hour,” he said, “and uncle shoots himself for sympathy.”

Harish roared, “Arrest him!”

Arindam did not move.

Instead he asked only one question.

“Dev... if you are here now, who locked the study door from outside ten minutes ago?”