Mahdar Iqbal, “A Grain of Mustard Seed”
The protagonist of this very short story is a Muslim shoemaker who made sandals for the Hindu family of the narrator as well as a family friend. The narrator’s father was more than a friend back to Mahdar, he was a savior whose influence led to business success which helped free the shoemaker from debt. The crux of the story, however, turns on the very last day they saw each other for the last time as the Hindus were forces to exile Pakistan. What seems to be a horrific display of a violent lack of loyalty by Mahdar to his friend turns out in the end to be quite ironically different in reality.
“The Golden Girl”
The title character of this story is a passenger on a ship heading from Liverpool to Bombay. The title derives from her golden blonde hair which when combined with her blinding beauty and her very pregnant stomach serves to make memorable from the first. Even more memorable, however, are the circumstances of her death. When a fire breaks out and spreads fast, it’s everyone to the lifeboats and the purser—against the frantic cries of the woman’s husband—picks her and drops her into the water just a few yards from the waiting boat at which point the husband seems to lose all grip on his sanity and flies over the railing himself. But he is too late and catch only watch as his wife sinks like a stone through the surface. Of course, that’s bound to happen when instead of carrying an unborn baby you are really camouflaging thirty pounds of smuggled gold.
Cadfael, “A Light on the Road to Woodstock”
The author is most famous for a series of novels featuring her medieval detective Brother Cadfael. After his introductory novel, Peters decided against taking the long-form approach to divulging the backstory of how Cadfael became a monk and instead introduced this material into the canon through short stories. In this story, Cadfael is serving as man-at-arms to a knight of King Henry I. The plot is an intricate tale of political intrigue which ends Cadfael deciding to leave the service of the knight.
Eileen Willard, “The Man Who Met Himself”
Peters is a writer most famous for crafting British medieval mysteries solved by a monk, but this story proves she might well have enjoyed an equally fine career in the cinema of American film noir. In this then-contemporary crime thriller, Eileen Willard is a femme fatale ranking up there in terms of devious greed alongside Phyllis Dietrichson and Matty Walker. And her husband Frank is twice the sap of Walter Neff and only slightly smarter than Ned Racine.
