by Satyajit Ray
H. Evans, John Lewis. Selfridges, I knew, was at one end of Oxford Street. But I had no idea it was so big.
‘Let’s go in,’ I said and pushed Lalmohan Babu through a revolving door. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it. It was crammed with people. We could hardly take a step forward without being pushed and jostled. I held Lalmohan Babu’s hand tightly, in case he got lost. Every conceivable consumer product appeared to be available in this shop.
‘I never knew,’ Lalmohan Babu remarked as we finally emerged in the stationery department, which was relatively less crowded, ‘that it was possible to have a human traffic jam. But, dear boy, how can we go back without buying anything here?’
‘What would you like to buy?’
‘See the number of pens and writing material they’ve got? If I could buy a pen, that would be enough. I mean, I could write my next novel with a pen I bought in London, couldn’t I?’
‘Of course. Why don’t you choose one?’
It took him five minutes to find one he liked. ‘Three pounds thirty pence. What’s that in rupees?’ he asked.
‘Nearly seventy-five,’ I replied.
‘Good. A pen like this in Calcutta would cost not less than two hundred.’
‘Really? Well then, take it. The payment counter’s over there.’
‘What . . . what do I have to tell them?’
‘Nothing. Just give this pen to that lady over there, and she’ll tell you what you have to pay. Then you give her a five pound note because I know you haven’t got any coins, and she’ll give you the change, and put your pen in a Selfridges paper bag. That’s all.’
‘How do you know all this? This is only your first day!’
‘I have been looking at other people. So have you, but you haven’ really observed anything.’
Two minutes later, he returned smiling, clutching his pen wrapped in a bag.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I asked.
‘Good idea, but where could we go?’
‘There’s a cafe here, upstairs.’
‘Very well, let’s go.’
We took the escalator to the top floor and found the cafe and, luckily, an empty table. It didn’t take us long to finish our tea. By the time we crossed the ‘ocean of humanity’ in Oxford Street again and reached our hotel, it was half past four. Feluda was back already.
‘Did you get an idea of what England is like?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Oh Felu Babu, I haven’t got words to describe my feelings.’
‘Why? The books you write seem to suggest you have an endless stock of adjectives. Why are words failing you now?’
‘There’s only one word I can think of: super-sensational. I am caught in a dilemma, Felu Babu.’
‘A dilemma? How come?’
‘Should I simply see the sights of London, or should I see how you’re conducting your enquiries?’
‘My enquiries have only just begun. There’s nothing to see. I suggest you see as much of London as you can. If I come across anything interesting, I shall certainly let you know.’
‘Did you get to meet that doctor?’
‘Yes, but he was so busy with his patients there was no time to talk. He told me to go to his house tomorrow morning. He lives in Richmond.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘We can take the tube from Piccadilly and change to District Line at South Kensington. That will take us straight to Richmond. Dr Sen will meet us at the station. Bikash was right. He is very friendly and kind. But all he could tell me today was that he knew Ranjan Majumdar’s father, nothing more.’
We spent the evening watching television in our room, then had an early dinner. I fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.
Six
I woke the next morning to an overcast sky and a faint drizzle. Feluda and Lalmohan Babu put on their macintoshes and I wore my waterproof jacket when we left the hotel soon after breakfast.
‘Mr Jatayu,’ said Feluda, ‘this is the normal weather in England. The bright sunshine you saw yesterday was really the exception, not the rule.’
‘But I bet roads here don’t get waterlogged!’ Lalmohan Babu commented.
‘No; but then, a really heavy downpour—so common in Calcutta—is something of a rarity here. A steady, soft drizzle is what the English are used to.’
Passengers on the underground seemed in as much of a hurry as the people in Oxford Street.
‘This speed is infectious, isn’t it?’ Lalmohan Babu said, walking as fast as he could. ‘Look, even we are walking far more quickly than we’d do back home.’
We reached Richmond at eleven o’clock. Dr Sen had told Feluda how long it would take us to get there from Piccadilly. We found him waiting outside the station. He was a good-looking man in his early sixties.
‘Welcome to Richmond!’ he said, smiling at Feluda. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still grey.
Feluda returned his greeting and introduced us. ‘You are a writer?’ Dr Sen asked Lalmohan Babu. ‘I can’t remember when I last read something written by an Indian writer.’
‘Why, don’t you go back home from time to time?’
‘The last time I went was in 1973. There’s no reason for me to go back, really. My whole family is here in Britain. I have two sons and two daughters who have all grown up and left home. They are married with children and live in different parts of the country. My wife and I live here in Richmond.’
His car was parked little way away. ‘It’s not so bad here,’ he said, unlocking the doors, ‘but in London the parking problem is quite a serious one. If you went to see a film somewhere in central London, you might well have to park half a mile away from the cinema.’
We got into the car. Feluda sat in the front and fastened his seat belt. Lalmohan Babu looked at me enquiringly. ‘It’s the law in this country,’ I explained quickly. ‘Front seat passengers, and of course the driver, are required to have their seat belts on.’
Dr Sen’s house was a little more than a mile from the underground station. On our way there, I saw a few branches of some of the shops in Oxford Street. Richmond was clearly not a small area.
His house was in a quiet spot, surrounded by trees. Their large, green leaves had patches of yellow and brown. There was a small, immaculate front garden, behind which stood a beautiful two-storey house, like something out of a picture postcard.
We were shown into the living room. A fire burnt in the fireplace, for which I was glad since it was cold and damp outside. A middle-aged English lady entered the room as soon as we were seated.
‘This is my wife, Emily,’ Dr Sen said. We introduced ourselves. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ she asked with a smile.
‘That would be very kind, thank you,’ Feluda replied.
Dr Sen sat down on a couch and turned to Feluda. Mrs Sen left the room.
‘All right. What is it that you want to know, Mr Mitter?’ Dr Sen asked.
‘You told me yesterday you knew Ranjan Majumdar’s father. I am collecting information on Ranjan.’
‘I see. Ranjan’s father, Rajani Majumdar and I came to England together in 1948. He was older than me by about sixteen years. By the time I got to know him, I had finished studying medicine in Edinburgh and was working in London. Rajani Majumdar was attached to St Mary’s Hospital. We happened to sit next to each other at a play. I even remember which play it was: Major Barbara. We got talking during the intermission and I realized he was a doctor too. His wife was with him. They used to live in Golders Green, and I in Hampstead. I wasn’t married at the time.’
‘What about his son?’
‘His son was in school.’
‘Do you remember which school he went to?’
‘Yes. It was Warrendel, in Epping. Then he went to Cambridge.’
‘Which college?’
‘As far as I can recall, it was Trinity.’
‘What kind of a man was Dr Rajani, Majumdar?’
Dr Sen was quiet for a minu
te. Then he said, ‘Peculiar.’
‘Peculiar? Why do you say that?’
‘Well, I think there was a certain rather strange trait in his family. His father, Raghunath Majumdar, had been a terrorist in his youth. I mean, he was supposed to have made bombs and attacked British officers when he was only a teenager. But, later, he became a heart specialist. By the time he began to practise as a consultant, he had lost all his earlier hatred against the British. It was he who sent Rajani to England. He wanted to see his son work in England and his grandson receive his education there. Seldom does one find such a complete change of heart. But when Rajani began working here, he kept thinking the British still looked down upon Indians. I tried explaining to him that a few isolated cases of racism did not mean every English person was a racist, but he wasn’t convinced. In the end, he left England because of something a patient of his said to him—something trivial and insignificant, which he ought to have ignored.’
‘By then I assume his son had had that accident?’
‘Yes. What is his son doing now? He must be around fifty.’
‘Yes. He is a chartered accountant.’
‘That means the year he spent in college here was a total waste. He must have had to start afresh when he went back.’
‘Yes. By the way, did you know any of Ranjan’s friends?’
‘No. I never met any of them, nor was anyone’s name in particular ever mentioned to me.’
‘I see.’
Mrs Sen came in with the coffee. Feluda asked nothing more about Ranjan Majumdar. We left soon afterwards. Dr Sen insisted on driving us back to the station.
Seven
We took the tube to Epping the next day and reached Warrendel School at half past three in the afternoon. The main building was behind a huge sports ground. It was probably two hundred years old. Feluda wanted to find out if Ranjan Majumdar had really been a student there and whether there had been a Peter Dexter in his class.
A hall porter met us at the front door.
‘I would like some information about one of your ex-students. He studied here many years ago, in the late forties,’ Feluda told him. The porter took us to what looked like a library. ‘Mr Manning here may be able to help you,’ he said.
Mr Manning was seated behind a desk, writing busily in a notebook. Feluda cleared his throat softly. He looked up.
‘Yes?’
Feluda explained what he wanted.
‘Right. Which year did you say?’
‘1948.’
Mr Manning rose and fetched a fat ledger from a shelf. Then he put it on his desk and sat down again.
‘What name did you say?’ he asked, quickly leafing through the pages.
‘I didn’t. The name’s Majumdar. Ranjan Majumdar.’
‘I see. Majumdar . . . Majumdar . . .’ he began running his finger through a list and stopped abruptly. ‘Yes, here it is. R. Majumdar.’
‘Thank you. Could you check another name for us, please? Dexter. Peter Dexter. Was he in the same batch?’
‘Dexter . . . no, I see no Dexter here.’
‘Oh. Would you be so kind as to look up the 1949 list as well? Maybe Dexter came a year later?’
Mr Manning was most obliging. Sadly, though, there was no mention of Peter Dexter in the 1949 list, either. There was no point in wasting more time.
‘Thank you very much indeed,’ Feluda said to Mr Manning. ‘You have been most helpful.’
On our way back to Piccadilly, Feluda said, ‘If we went to Cambridge and made enquiries, I am pretty sure we could learn something about Dexter. Still, I think it might not be a bad idea to put a small notice in the personal column of the Times.’
‘What will you say in your notice?’
‘If anyone knows anything about a Peter Dexter of Norfolk, he should contact me at my hotel.’
‘What do you think you are going to achieve by this?’
‘I don’t know. Look, if we simply went to Cambridge, we might find his name in an old list of students. But that wouldn’t tell us anything about the man, would it? An ad in a paper might bring better results, who knows?’
‘But that will take three or four days, surely?’ Lalmohan Babu asked.
‘No, the ad should come out in two days. If we get a free day, we’ll explore London. There’s so much to see. Have you heard of Madame Tussaud’s?’
‘Where there are the waxworks of famous people?’
‘Yes, then there are the art galleries, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, St Paul’s Cathedral . . . you might get blisters on your feet walking, but you couldn’t finish seeing everything in a day.’
‘When will you go to the office of the Times?’
‘Today. Hopefully, the notice will come out the day after tomorrow.’
‘OK then, we can spend all day tomorrow just sightseeing, can’t we?’
‘Certainly.’
Madam Tussaud’s was a remarkable place. Even the porters who stood in front of certain rooms were made of wax and amazingly lifelike. The chamber of horrors gave me the creeps.
When we came out of Madam Tussaud’s, Feluda began walking without telling us where we were going. Puzzled, Lalmohan Babu and I followed him silently. Suddenly, my eyes fell on a sign fixed high up on the wall of a building, that told me which street we were in. ‘Baker Street’, it said. Sherlock Holmes used to live in 221-B Baker Street. Now I knew what Feluda was looking for. As it turned out, there was no house with that number, but we found number 220. That was good enough. Feluda stood before that building and murmured softly, ‘Guru, you showed us the way. If I am an investigator today, it is only because of you. Now I can say coming to London was truly worthwhile.’
I knew how deeply Feluda admired Holmes and his methods. He had told me how the creator of Holmes, Conan Doyle, had once killed the famous detective. But his readers had made such an enormous fuss that he was obliged to bring him back.
I realized that seeing the sights of London would have remained incomplete if we hadn’t seen Baker Street.
Eight
Two days later, Feluda’s ad came out in the Times. Surprisingly enough, someone rang Feluda the very next day at 8 a.m.
‘A man called Archibald Cripps,’ Feluda told me, replacing the receiver. ‘He sounded rather aggressive. But he said he could tell me something about Peter Dexter. He’ll be here in half an hour. Go and tell Lalmohan Babu. This may prove to be quite interesting.’
Lalmohan Babu was dressed and ready. He came over to our room and said he had never dreamt a little notice like that would fetch such a quick result.
At a quarter past nine, someone knocked at our door. The man who entered looked as rough as were his manners. He glared at Lalmohan Babu and said, ‘Well? Who’re you? Mitter?’
‘No, no. He is,’ Lalmohan Babu pointed quickly at Feluda.
‘I am Cripps,’ our visitor scowled. ‘What do you want to know about Dexter?’
‘To start with, where is he now?’
‘He is in heaven.’
‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that. When did he die?’
‘Many years ago, when he was in Cambridge.’
‘Was he a student there?’
‘Yeah. Like an idiot, he tried to row on the river Cam.’
‘Why should that make him an idiot?’
‘Because he couldn’t swim, that’s why. The boat capsized. He drowned.’
‘He had many siblings, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah. Five brothers and two sisters. I only know what happened to two of them—George, who was the eldest and Reginald, the youngest. George was in the Indian Army. He came back after your independence. He used to say only the Sikhs and Gurkhas were any good in India. The rest were either crooks or just bloody idle. None of the Dexters liked Indian niggers.’
‘Niggers? There are no niggers in India, Mr Cripps. In fact, even in America, blacks are no longer called niggers.’
Feluda’s face was set. ‘You appear to be in agreement with the Dexters
, Mr Cripps,’ he added.
‘You bet I am! They were right, absolutely right.’
‘In that case, I don’t want this conversation to go any further. Thank you for your time.’ The coldness in Feluda’s voice seemed to soften Mr Cripps.
‘Look here,’ he said a shade more politely. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘No?’
‘No. I said all that because Reginald’s name came up. He was the youngest of the lot. He’s still in India, in a tea estate. But he won’t be there for long.’
There was a pause. Feluda simply stared at Mr Cripps, saying nothing.
‘—Because he has cancer,’ Cripps went on. ‘He went to India just to make money. He has no affection for the country.’
Feluda stood up. ‘Thank you, Mr Cripps. I don’t need to learn anything more.’
Cripps got to his feet, looking rather uncertain. Then he said, ‘Good day!’ and strode out of the room.
‘What an awful man! But you set him straight, Felu Babu. I am very glad about that. I mean, putting an Englishman in his place here in London is no joke, is it?’
‘Never mind, he’s gone now. At least we learnt something useful. Peter Dexter was in Cambridge and died in a boating accident.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘We haven’t much time. Don’t forget we must return the day after tomorrow. Let’s go to Cambridge today, straight after lunch.’
We left at one-thirty, catching a train from Liverpool Street station. It took us an hour to reach Cambridge. The trains in Britain ran faster and, like the buses, were clean and well maintained.
Cambridge was a beautiful place. The university, with all its ancient glory, stood in its centre. There were several colleges, but Dr Sen had told us Ranjan Majumdar had gone to Trinity. So we made our way there. We were directed to a Mr Tailor, who had access to old records.
‘Yes,’ he said, checking through some papers. ‘In 1951 a boy called Ranjan Majumdar was admitted to this college, and there was a Peter Dexter in his class.’
‘I believe Dexter drowned in the river. Is that right?’
‘Sorry, I am afraid I wouldn’t know. I’ve been working here only for the last seven years. What you can do is speak to old Hookins. He’s our gardener, been working here for forty years. You’ll probably find him in the garden.’