The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [50]
‘That’s right,’ Seth continued. ‘But the curious thing is that, despite his open dislike of the British, of which there were many public displays, Chandra Chatterghee participated in a strange project for the British military between 1914 and 1915, a year before he died in the Jheeter’s Gate tragedy. It was a mysterious business with a peculiar name: the Firebird.’
Sheere raised her eyebrows and drew closer to Seth, looking concerned.
‘What was the Firebird?’
‘It’s hard to tell,’ Seth replied. ‘Mr de Rozio thinks that it might have had something to do with a military experiment. Some of the official correspondence that turned up among the engineer’s papers was signed by a colonel called Sir Arthur Llewelyn. According to de Rozio, Llewelyn held the dubious honour of heading the forces that were responsible for repressing the peaceful demonstrations for independence that took place between 1905 and 1915.’
‘Held?’ asked Ben.
‘That’s what’s so intriguing,’ Seth explained. ‘Sir Arthur Llewelyn, His Majesty’s official butcher, died in the Jheeter’s Gate fire. What he was doing there is a mystery.’
The five friends looked at one another, confused.
‘Let’s try to put some order to this,’ Ben suggested. ‘On the one hand we have a brilliant engineer who repeatedly refuses generous offers of employment from the British government due to his dislike of colonial rule. Up to there everything makes sense. But suddenly this mysterious colonel appears on the scene and involves him in an operation which, whatever way you look at it, must have made Chandra Chatterghee’s stomach turn: a secret weapon, an experimental way of controlling crowds. And he accepts. It doesn’t make sense. Unless …’
‘Unless Llewelyn had uncanny powers of persuasion,’ said Ian.
Sheere raised her hands in protest.
‘My father would never have taken part in any kind of military project, it’s impossible. Certainly not for the British, and not for the Bengalis either. My father despised the military – he thought they were nothing but brutes blindly carrying out the dirty work of corrupt governments and colonial companies. He would never have allowed his skills to be used to invent something that would massacre his own people.’
Seth watched her quietly, weighing her words.
‘And yet, Sheere, there are documents to prove that he did take part, in some way,’ he said.
‘There has to be some other reason,’ she replied. ‘My father built things and wrote books. He wasn’t a murderer.’
‘Leaving aside his ideals, there must be some other explanation,’ Ben remarked. ‘And that’s what we’re trying to discover. Let’s go back to Llewelyn and his powers of persuasion. What could he have done to force Chandra to collaborate?’
‘Perhaps his power didn’t lie in what he could do,’ Seth stated, ‘but in what he could choose not to do.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Ian.
‘This is my theory,’ Seth continued. ‘In all the engineer’s records we haven’t found a single mention of Jawahal, this childhood friend, except in a letter from Colonel Llewelyn addressed to Chandra and postmarked November 1911. In it our friend the colonel adds a postscript in which he briefly suggests that, if Chandra refuses to take part in the project, he will be forced to offer the post to his old friend Jawahal. What I think is this: Chandra had managed to conceal his relationship with Jawahal, who was by then in prison, and had developed his career without anybody knowing that he had once covered up for the man. But let’s suppose that this Llewelyn had come across Jawahal in prison and Jawahal had revealed the true nature of their relationship. This would put Llewelyn in an excellent position for blackmailing the engineer and forcing him to collaborate.’
‘How do we know that Llewelyn and Jawahal met one another?’ Ian asked.
‘It’s only a supposition,’ Seth replied. ‘Sir Arthur Llewelyn, a colonel in the British army, decides to ask for the help of an exceptional engineer. The engineer refuses. Llewelyn investigates him and discovers a murky past, a trial to which the engineer is linked. He