CRIME FICTION
The Envelope
In the Shade of Mango Blossoms: Chapter 3
Mrittika returned home to find the main door unlocked. She recalled the morning rush and instantly regretted it. As she stepped inside, a sealed envelope greeted her. She stared in disbelief for some time before she stooped to pick up the parcel. Nervous, she quickly locked the door behind her and scurried to her bedroom.
The envelope bore no name or address and this flustered Mrittika. She was too tired to think about possible senders and couldn’t decide whether to empty the contents or call someone first. She hid the parcel in her sock drawer and carried a fresh set of clothes to the shower.
Although reluctant, the handyman and his apprentice carried Nayab into the living room. The doctor fell unconscious in the driveway as soon as she stepped out of her car. Her face was covered in blood trickling from a wound in the temple she sustained when she crashed into the curb on her way home. With the bonnet dented and the headlights broken, it was beyond anyone’s imagination how the gynaecologist escaped the attention of fellow drivers on the highway.
Stirring oats in a pan of almond milk, Mrittika replayed the events of the previous day in her mind. She did not know what to make of the janitor’s gesture. “Why did she smile at me like that? Does she know something about the photograph that I do not?”
As she removed the pan from the heat, her thoughts turned to the envelope she found in the evening. Nothing inside the apartment was disturbed, which was a relief. She was perplexed by the incident even so.
A navy blue bento box fit snugly inside the chiller drawer, ready to unravel the fusion of colours in its neat little compartments the next morning. Just as Mrittika was going to shut the fridge, something unusual caught her eye.
Outside the emergency room, Sahil and his assistant desperately waited for someone to take charge of the situation. They furnished the attending doctor with as much information as they knew about the injured gynaecologist and were eager to return to their families. It was only when the police arrived that they realised why they were being detained at the hospital.
The pot-bellied superintendent sat across from Sahil and his apprentice in the hospital corridor. After a few routine questions, the policeman instructed them to stay in the county as long as the matter was being investigated.
Once home, the handyman offered isha prayers and enjoyed a home-cooked meal of chapati and dal with his wife while the children were asleep. A stone’s throw away, Abeer joined his grandmother for a meal of rice and curds on the concrete patio of their bamboo hut. An hour before midnight, every oil lamp in the neighbourhood was dimmed except for one.
Squinting, Abeer struggled to read the five-word message scribbled on the topmost note of the bundle he had pocketed from the chest that morning. Tucking the money carefully inside his pillowcase, he vowed to try again when it was daylight and went to bed.
Members of the detective branch were already swarming Nayab’s palatial home when the grandfather clock in her living room struck twelve. Fingerprints glowed in the dark as every object in the living room was dusted with a special kind of powder. The chest piqued the superintendent’s interest not only for the bundles of foreign currency it carried but also because of a sealed envelope stacked neatly between the notes.
