The Inspector de Silva Mysteries Read online

  The Inspector de Silva Mysteries

  Box Set

  Books 1 – 4

  Trouble in Nuala

  Dark Clouds over Nuala

  Offstage in Nuala

  Fatal Finds in Nuala

  Kindle edition box set published 2019

  Copyright © Harriet Steel

  The author or authors assert their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author or authors of this work. All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  A Welcome from the Author

  Trouble in Nuala

  An Inspector de Silva Mystery

  Harriet Steel

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Dark Clouds Over Nuala

  An Inspector de Silva Mystery

  Harriet Steel

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  An Inspector de Silva Mystery

  Offstage in Nuala

  Harriet Steel

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Historical Note

  An Inspector de Silva Mystery

  Fatal Finds in Nuala

  Harriet Steel

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  A Welcome from the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I’m delighted that you’ve found your way to this box set which contains the first four books in The Inspector de Silva Mysteries. I think it’s a great introduction to Inspector Shanti de Silva, his wife, Jane, and their colourful, exotic world, and I hope that when you come to the end, you’ll be eager to follow more of their adventures in the series. (There are currently two more books and another one coming soon.)

  A few years ago, I had the great good fortune to visit the island of Sri Lanka, the former Ceylon. I fell in love with the country straight away, awed by its tremendous natural beauty and the charm and friendliness of its people who seem to have recovered extraordinarily well from the tragic civil war between the two main ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils. I had been planning to write a new detective series for some time and when I came home, I decided to set it in Ceylon in the 1930s, a time when British Colonial rule created interesting contrasts, and sometimes conflicts, with traditional culture. Thus, Inspector Shanti de Silva and his friends were born.

  My thanks go to my editor, John Hudspith, for all the excellent work he has done on The Inspector de Silva Mysteries, and to Jane Dixon Smith for designing covers that realised my dreams. As always, I am extremely grateful to my husband, Roger, for his patient encouragement, advice and support. Thanks are also due to my daughters, Louise and Ellie, for their helpful comments and to Alan Jenkins for his expert advice on cricket. Any mistakes are my own.

  If any characters resemble persons living or dead, this is purely coincidental. The town of Nuala is also fictitious.

  I love to hear from readers, so if you would like to subscribe to my newsletter and hear about new publications and special offers among other things, the link to my blog, where you can do so, is below. You’ll also see links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Looking forward to being in touch!

  Twitter https://twitter.com/harrietsteel1?lang=en

  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/harrietsteelauthor/

  Blog http://harrietsteel.blogspot.com/

  Glossary

  Some readers have mentioned that an explanation of a few unfamiliar culinary terms would be helpful. I hope the following are of use:

  A hopper: a kind of crispy pancake cooked in a bowl shape. It’s usually served at breakfast with egg or curry in it.

  String hoppers: noodles.

  Brinjal: a special curry dish made from eggplant (aubergine).

  Readers from countries where cricket is not played have also pointed out that some of the references in the novel are rather obscure to them. The lore and rules of cricket would fill volumes, and this is a murder mystery not a guide, but I hope a few pointers will help.

  In amateur and one day matches, the convention is that the team who win the toss and choose whether to bat or bowl first declare their score (so many runs for the number of players caught or bowled out) roughly halfway through the day allowing equal time for the other team to change over.

  Googlies, leg spin and top spinners occur when a spin bowler uses various kinds of wrist action to deliver the ball in different ways in an attempt to confuse the batsman and bowl him out by hitting the wicket he is guarding.

  Lbw – As well as being bowled out, or caught out by a fielder, the umpire may rule a batsman out lbw (leg before wicket) if he considers that t
he ball would have hit the wicket had it not hit some part of the batsman’s body (usually the leg) first.

  Note on language: the main three languages spoken on the island are Sinhalese, Tamil and English. An educated man like Shanti de Silva would speak all three.

  Trouble in Nuala

  An Inspector de Silva Mystery

  Harriet Steel

  Kindle Edition first published 2016

  Copyright © Harriet Steel

  The author or authors assert their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author or authors of this work. All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Chapter 1

  Ceylon

  February 1934

  Inspector Shanti de Silva exhaled a deep sigh of relief as the train left the sweltering lowlands of Colombo and commenced the long climb to Kandy. From his seat in the polished teak and leather opulence of the First Class carriage, he watched the forest become denser with every mile, plantations of banana, king coconut and rubber trees jostling for space in the rich, red earth.

  From time to time, the trees retreated to make way for the startling lime-green splash of a paddy field where egrets stood like white question marks, hungry for water snails and frogs. Elsewhere he saw dusty villages slumbering in the heat of the afternoon. Their elders squatted outside the huts, huddled in little oases of shade cast by overhanging roofs thatched with palm leaves. Village children, their energy less sapped by the heat, jumped up and ran alongside the tracks, waving and shouting until they tired of the race to keep up.

  The train stopped at Kandy, obliging de Silva to pay a few rupees for a rickshaw man to take him on to the nearby station at Peradeniya where he had to wait an hour for the hill train. Even in the waiting room, there was no escape from the heat. It seemed to have coalesced into a damp, solid block that pressed down on the air, squeezing out every trace of freshness. He pushed a finger between the limp collar of his starched shirt and his perspiring neck and ran it around, then fanned himself with his hat.

  A summons to attend as a witness in a trial at the High Court in Colombo had been the cause of this uncongenial journey. He consoled himself with the thought that his evidence had made a considerable contribution to the conviction of a gang of thieves who would no longer be at liberty to ply their nefarious trade in the city’s bazaars and public places. It had been a nuisance though that the trial had run into an extra day. He had hoped to be home for the weekend, but it hadn’t been practical to make the slow journey after Friday’s hearing, only to return on Sunday in time for court the following day.

  He looked at the clock on the waiting room wall. How was it possible that only ten minutes had passed? A chai wallah passed the door and de Silva called him in and handed over a few annas in exchange for a battered tin cup of tea. The brew was more stewed than he liked, but it gave some relief to his parched throat.

  He thought wistfully of the cool drawing room at Sunnybank, the pleasant bungalow built in the English style where his wife would be waiting. Jane always served tea in the bone china cups they had been given for a wedding present. Cook would be instructed to make finger sandwiches filled with finely sliced cucumber and hard-boiled egg; slices of his favourite butter cake would tempt his appetite. He drained the brackish tea and closed his eyes. Leaning back against the bench, he fell into a doze.

  Thirty minutes later, the tinny sound of the clock striking the hour woke him. A moment passed before he remembered where he was and jumped up briskly. Out on the platform, a gaggle of other travellers waited, a few of them Europeans who appeared to be suffering from the heat even more than he was; the rest had the dark skin of locals. The men wore loose, white cotton trousers and tunics and the women colourful saris. They seemed in festive spirits. Hindus, he guessed, going up to the Sita temple.

  The hill train came into sight and a short time passed while it unloaded its passengers and edged its way onto the turntable to be turned around ready to begin its last climb of the day. Despite the number of times he had made the journey, de Silva felt a pleasant rush of anticipation as he took his seat. The trains on the line up to Nanu Oya, where he would alight for his home at Nuala, were not as modern and comfortable as those on the Colombo – Kandy line, but the views were magnificent.

  In fact, he reflected, the whole line was a miracle of engineering. Something the British must be given credit for. Relentless gradients, walls of rock, steep hillsides: nothing had stood in the way of those doughty Victorians who had come from their damp, misty isle to colonise his own lush, exotic one. When the coffee they had first planted in the hill country failed, they had turned their energies to cultivating tea. Now Ceylon supplied half the world.

  The train lumbered higher and higher and the tea terraces came into view. Endless vistas of vivid green made up of gracefully curving, neat lines of bushes, kept low so that the supply of leaves that the women pluckers took would always be newly sprouted and tender. Here and there were small lakes, their surfaces smothered with water lilies.

  By the time they reached Nanu Oya, the beauty of it all had fully restored de Silva’s good humour. He stepped out from the station and smiled at the sight that met his eyes. The last rays of the sun gleamed on the dark-blue paintwork and spotless chrome of the Morris Cowley 2-Seater Tourer, his most beloved possession, except, of course, his darling wife.

  The only servant he trusted to drive the Morris held the driver’s door open for him to get in. De Silva gestured to his bags and as he slid into the seat, inhaling the aromas of leather and wax polish, the servant strapped them on the back. Moments later, the engine roared into life. The gearstick moved into first like a hot knife into butter and the Morris glided forward. He liked to boast that she could reach a top speed of forty-five miles per hour, but that opportunity only arose when the roads of Nuala were empty of rickshaws and buffalo carts for one of the town’s celebrated rallies. This afternoon, he and the servant proceeded at a stately twenty in the direction of Sunnybank.

  **

  ‘Jane? I’m home!’

  He strode into the drawing room where his wife looked up from her book with a smile and offered him her cheek to kiss. ‘So you are. How was Colombo?’

  ‘Hot. Noisy. The air full of dust as usual.’

  She made a face, reached for the small brass bell on the table at her side and rang it briskly. ‘I’ll have some iced tea prepared, shall I?’

  ‘Excellent. I’ll go and wash in the meantime.’

  A silent-footed servant appeared in the doorway and Jane de Silva nodded to him. ‘Take clean towels to the master’s room and tell Cook to serve tea in fifteen minutes. Iced tea for the master.’

  ‘Yes, memsahib.’ The servant disappeared as unobtrusively as he had come.

  Half an hour later, fortified by iced tea and scones with thick cream and wood apple jam, de Silva recounted the events in Colombo’s High Court that had led to ten members of the Black Lotus gang being put behind bars for the next twenty years.

  ‘The first case you were working on when I met you,’ his wife mused when he reached the end. ‘I must admit, I was afraid for you sometimes. Some of these Hong Kong Chinese are such violent people.’

  ‘Certainly, the criminal element is. And that is precisely why we don’t want them here.’ De Silva helped himself to another scone and slathered it with jam and cream. He took a bite and patted his stomach. ‘These are too good. I shall have to ration myself in future.’

  His wife raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve said that before, dear.’

  He chuckled. ‘I’ll take a turn round the garden before dinner. That will make all the difference.’

  In a far co
rner of the garden, an outdoor servant was engaged in the perpetual task of sweeping up, his broom making a faint scratching noise through the dry leaves. De Silva felt the springiness of the lawn under his feet; he smelt the sweet aromas of frangipani and jasmine and all the many scents of his roses: musk, apricot, spice, honey, even tea. He had always had a very acute sense of smell and he picked each one out with ease. What a lucky man he was to have all this to enjoy.

  His prized roses stood in glossy profusion in their beds, immaculately tended under his instruction by his Tamil gardener to produce only the finest flowers. Beyond the clipped privet hedge, a tidy vegetable garden contained straight rows of carrots, beans, peas, potatoes and eggplants. If only such ordered and productive beauty characterised all human affairs.

  He touched a deep-red, velvety bloom. The rose Black Prince was one of his favourites, and not just on account of its colour and scent. For him, the name conjured up romantic visions of medieval castles where armoured knights had once jousted and ladies in embroidered gowns waited in ivory towers. An England of Gothic cathedrals where sumptuously robed clergy processed down candlelit naves to the strains of solemn music. It was the England he liked to dream of, even if Jane laughed and told him that the reality was far more complicated.

  ‘There are lovely places, but a lot of England is ugly. We have plenty of poor housing and dingy streets, as well as factories with chimneys belching smoke.’

  ‘Just like Colombo then.’

  ‘But not so hot.’

  De Silva ran his fingertips over the cool, moist petals of another rose, this one the palest of shell pinks. Well, whatever England was really like, he would never cease to thank the gods that Jane had left it and come to Colombo as governess to one of the British families.

  He had been part of the Colombo force then. The moment he had set eyes on her, he’d known she was the one for him. Both in their forties, with no relations to tut over the unsuitability of a marriage between a Sinhalese Buddhist, who might also owe some of his bloodline to a Portuguese settler from the dim and distant past, and an Anglican Englishwoman, they had been free to please themselves. The offer of promotion and a job in the cooler climate of Nuala had been the perfect wedding gift.