Trouble in Nuala
by
Harriet Steel
by
Harriet Steel
When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves
with his English wife, Jane, to a new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala, he
anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails.
However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer,
and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will
need all his experience to solve.
Set on the exotic island of Ceylon in
the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an
entertaining and relaxing mystery spiced with humour and a colourful cast of
characters.
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Excerpt
Trouble in Nuala
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 round, 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.
