The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown Read Online Free

picked up the phone and ordered a lime water and a dampened handkerchief from the kitchen.
    He then slumped back in his padded chair and allowed his thoughts to return to the tumultuous events at the Prince of Wales Museum, going over the details Jha had let slip during his ham-fisted interrogation.
    The robbery had been immaculate.
    The thief or thieves had entered the Tata Gallery from the rear, blasting a hole through the unguarded, sealed door at the back of the gallery with a shaped explosive charge. Once inside, they had rendered the occupants of the gallery unconscious by using pressurised gas canisters. The thieves had then somehow broken through the reinforced glass of the display case housing the Crown of Queen Elizabeth, as well as shattering some of the surrounding cases. Puzzlingly, they had taken only the crown and, with this single prized possession, had fled the scene through the destroyed rear door. The door led to a passage that connected the Tata Gallery to the Jahangir Gallery in the east wing of the museum. The thieves, it was presumed, had taken the unguarded fire exit stairs, halfway along the passage, down to the ground floor… where they had promptly vanished into thin air.
    Clearly, the ring of Force One guards stationed around the perimeter of the museum had not spotted anyone fleeing the scene. The instant that the glass display case had been shattered an alarm had gone off, placing each commando on red alert. Not even Houdini could have slipped through the net. The museum had been instantly locked down and every single person in the building had been rounded up and searched, as well as every corner of the museum premises.
    Nothing.
    The sound of a truck backfiring on the main road returned Chopra to the present.
    He stood up and made his way through the restaurant’s kitchen to the compound at the rear.
    The generous space was lit by a single yellow tubelight around which a cloud of midges roiled. The compound was walled in on three sides by crumbling brick walls topped by a confetti of multicoloured shards of bottle glass. A narrow alley ran from the compound back along the side of the restaurant and out on to Guru Rabindranath Tagore Road.
    The noise of late-evening traffic drifted in, punctuated by the occasional blood-curdling scream as a pedestrian came too close to the passing vehicles.
    Chopra walked to the rear of the space and lowered himself into the rattan armchair that he had installed under the tubelight. The light was suspended from a line strung between the compound’s single mango tree and a TV antenna on the roof of the restaurant. It swung gently in a sudden breeze that leavened the muggy December heat.
    Beneath the mango tree, a grey shape stirred.
    A flush of warmth moved through Chopra as Ganesha raised his trunk and gently ran the tip over his face. ‘How are you, boy?’ he murmured.
    The moment lasted only an instant before the elephant turned away huffily and hunkered back down into the mudbath in which he had been wallowing.
    Chopra knew that Ganesha was upset with him. It was just another sign of the young calf’s burgeoning personality.
    When he had first been sent the baby elephant by his Uncle Bansi Chopra had not known what to do with the creature. What did he, a retired police officer, know about caring for an elephant? But gradually, as Ganesha had accompanied – and then actively helped – him in solving the murder of a local boy, he had come to realise that there was something mysterious and unique about the little creature. His uncle’s words, set down in the letter that had arrived with his strange gift, had come back to him then: ‘remember… this is no ordinary elephant’.
    Once a sceptic, Chopra was now a believer.
    There was something improbable about Ganesha, something quite beyond Chopra’s ability to slot him into the neat little boxes of rationality and logic that he had lived by his whole life. There