Like every schoolboy in England, I’d been taught the story, but I’d never believed in its literal truth. Not until now.
The slaughter went on, and those, like Preston, who’d seen it before began to retreat inside. I stayed, rooted to the spot, my head a maelstrom of emotions. A door opened behind me and a pool of yellow light spilled onto the veranda. I caught the scent of a familiar perfume, and then Emily Carter was beside me, placing a silk-gloved hand softly on the balustrade.
For a moment I was speechless.
‘Enjoying the view, Captain?’
I said nothing.
‘They’re starlings,’ she said. ‘Suicide birds.’
I watched as in the valley below a group of tribesmen set about those birds still alive with clubs and sticks.
‘Why do they do it?’
‘Fear,’ she said. ‘The same reason men the world over attack anything they don’t understand.’
‘I meant the birds. Why do they come here to die?’
She smiled. ‘Everyone has to die somewhere, I suppose. And personally, I can’t think of a better place. Can you, Captain?’
We talked for some minutes, till behind us the door opened and out stepped a waiter who announced dinner.
Emily Carter took a sip from her glass.
‘Brace yourself, Captain,’ she said. ‘This is where the fun starts.’
I wanted to stop her, to warn her, to say something at least, but I didn’t. I just stood there as she handed the empty glass to the waiter and disappeared inside.
Preston appeared in the doorway.
‘My word, Wyndham, I thought you’d look happier. Come inside, man. Dinner’s on the way.’
I followed him blindly, still trying to come to terms with everything. My first thought was to confront Ronald Carter, to expose him as Jeremiah Caine. To arrest him and haul him back to Calcutta so that he could be … what exactly?
The truth was Caine hadn’t been charged with anything in India. Any chance of bringing him to justice had probably died the day Tom Drummond was fished out of the Thames, and I could no more arrest him now than I could flap my arms and fly. I could still expose him, as I had done seventeen years earlier, but things were different now. This was his town: the people in his pocket. Who would believe the word of a recovering opium fiend over that of the richest man in the region? And even if they did, why would they care?
Then I remembered Emily Carter’s bruises. She would care, even if I had to sit her down and force her to listen to every word of the ugly truth: that she wasn’t the first woman to be married to the man, and that I wasn’t about to let her share her predecessor’s fate.
Yet the hard fact remained. I felt the bile rising. There and then I reached a resolution: if I couldn’t get justice, I’d still get vengeance – for Bessie, and Vogel, for Helena Caine and even Tom Drummond. As for how I’d get it, well, I had absolutely no idea.
The saloon passed in a blur and suddenly we were in the dining room: a large space laid out as if for a wedding, with a rectangular top table on a stage overlooking a number of circular ones, each with places for six or eight, and all filling up fast. In a daze, I followed Preston as he made a beeline for one near the back where his administrative pals were already seated. On the stage, Ronald Carter, the man who’d once been Jeremiah Caine, was taking his place at the centre of the top table.
It suddenly struck me that, in one of those bizarre twists of fate, until our chance encounter at Lumding station two weeks ago, we’d both believed the other to be dead: he drowned at sea, and I at the hands of the Spiller brothers. When seen like that, it seemed almost predestined that we should both end up here tonight.
I took a seat at Preston’s table, angling my chair so that my back was to the stage. A roar of conversation emanated from the neighbouring tables and swept over me like a monsoon torrent. Ours by contrast seemed remarkably silent. Maybe ours was the table of waifs and strays: odd people who didn’t fit in, thrown together at the last moment. That was fine by me. In my present state of mind, I could as much partake in small-talk as I could speak Japanese. Finally though, I forced myself to concentrate. Across from me sat a priest, a big chap, with grey mutton-chop sideburns and a radish-hued face that suggested a constitution pickled in alcohol. He was dressed in a coal-black suit and matching shirt, from the neck of which poked the pure-white ticket stub of a dog collar. The man sat there like a storm cloud waiting to break, his eyes firmly trained on the top table. Beside him, and to Preston’s left, sat Dr Deakin, the man who’d carried out the post-mortem on Le Corbeau. The doctor, too, seemed in restrained spirits, his hand wrapped around a tumbler of whisky which he occasionally and shakily raised to his lips.
He caught me staring and gave me a nondescript nod of recognition. I had a sudden urge to ask him about the Belgian: to see if he was certain there had been no water in the poor chap’s lungs, but judging by his demeanour, now hardly seemed the appropriate juncture. ‘What did you make of it?’ asked a voice to my right. I turned to the man seated there. He was young, flame-haired and soberly dressed in a dark suit, with a green silk cravat around his neck the only nod towards any sort of flamboyance. Beside him sat a little mouse of a woman, whom, from the wedding ring on her finger, I took to be his wife.
‘Excuse me?’
‘The birds,’ he said. ‘Dashed peculiar, no?’
It wasn’t exactly the term I’d have chosen. Peculiar was a word you used when the weather was unseasonal, or your manservant was late with your breakfast; not when ten thousand birds just fell from the sky.
‘Indeed,’ I said.
The man introduced himself. ‘Alan Dewar,’ he said, then introduced his wife, ‘Celia’, for good measure. ‘The locals believe it’s a curse.’
‘I’ve heard.’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me. There’s nothing good about this place.’
‘You’re not a local?’
Dewar shook his head. ‘No fear. We live up near Langting, best part of a day’s drive from here.’
I wondered why he and his wife would make such a journey, as neither seemed to be particularly enjoying themselves. I considered asking, but thought better of it, mainly because I’d no wish to divulge my own reasons for being here, which I might have to do, should they reciprocate the question.
Dewar picked up a spoon from the table and held it like a schoolteacher making a point with a stick of chalk. ‘Still, this is the twentieth century. We’re supposed to be past the days of superstition. There’s a rational, scientific explanation for even the strangest of occurrences.’
Normally I’d have been inclined to agree, but in my present state I didn’t know what to believe. Nevertheless, a scientific answer would be very welcome.
‘It has to do with ley lines and the earth’s natural energy,’ said Dewar. The priest sitting across from me became suddenly animated.
‘Nonsense!’ he roared. ‘Ley lines indeed. Do not debase the Lord’s work with such claptrap!’
‘Science isn’t claptrap, Reverend,’ retorted Dewar. ‘It’ll free the world from the sin and guilt and religious dogma you and your ilk pour down the throats of the savages you set out to convert. I –’
There came a clinking of metal on glass. From the top table. A man seated at the end had risen to his feet and, tapping his glass with a fork, was appealing for silence. A gradual hush fell over the audience below in the cheap seats.
‘It is my very great pleasure,’ he said, ‘to welcome you all to the New Moon dinner.’ His tone was that of a minor official calling a meeting of a parish council to order. There was a smattering of applause and a raucous cheer at a faraway table from a fat man already the worse for drink.
‘It has been quite a year …’ he continued, ‘despite the most trying of circumstances …’ I turned in my seat and focused on Emily Carter. She seemed to have stopped paying attention and was staring, glass-eyed, into the middle distance. I doubted she had any inkling as to the real identity o
f the man sitting next to her, though judging by her bruises, she already knew the type of man he was.
The master of ceremonies moved on to a eulogy of Ronald Carter, the sponsor of this and, it seemed, pretty much every other dinner hosted at the Jatinga Club, which bordered on hagiography. At the mention of her husband’s name, Emily Carter snapped out of her reverie. There was a round of applause, and onstage, Ronald Carter basked in the adulation. Emily clapped too, scanning the room. And then her gaze settled on me. There was something in her look. Something hard, almost unnatural. The better part of me hoped she might be sickened by the adoration directed at her husband.
Jeremiah Caine, the man who now went by the name Ronald Carter, rose to his feet and acknowledged the applause like the Sun King amid his courtiers.
With a gesture, he appealed for silence.
‘Thank you,’ he said, then turned to the audience. ‘Friends. Thank you all for coming out on this most special of nights in our calendar. I know many of you have travelled far and long to be here, and while most of you are veterans of past dinners, we also have some newcomers, here for the first time. To those I would issue a special welcome. As you will have seen a few minutes ago, Jatinga is a very special place, and while not all its wonders are as spectacular as the annual Night of the Birds, one can justly say that this place is unique, and that we who have chosen to make it our home and those who may just be visiting are indeed fortunate.’
‘Tell that to the dead Belgian,’ muttered Preston under his breath.
‘Whether or not you believe that the birds carry away the sins of this valley, there can be no doubt that we, the British community of Jatinga, have been blessed. Sheltered from both the elements and the winds of communal strife raging across this country, our land is fertile, our trade routes secure and our merchants and traders have grown rich … and fat.’ He gestured to a corpulent figure at one of the tables, eliciting a ripple of laughter. ‘So let us give thanks for the bounty of our land, and enjoy the fruits of our labour.’
He raised his glass and lifted it skyward as the assembled guests rose to their feet.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘To Jatinga.’
A ragged echo rippled across the room as the guests repeated the toast, then drank. I watched as Emily Carter took a long sip, almost emptying her champagne flute. She turned to her husband and whispered something, and for a moment I lost both from sight as a phalanx of white-jacketed waiters spread across the room, silver platters held aloft. Then the waiters cleared and I found Jeremiah Caine staring directly at me, and in that split second, I saw the mask drop.
FORTY-THREE
I kept my back to the stage and made innocent conversation with Preston, Pastor Philips and the others. Meanwhile the cogs kept spinning. Caine had recognised me. That much was certain.
Surrender-not would have called it kismet, told me it was my destiny to meet Caine tonight, after so long, in this place where the birds fell from the sky.
The question was, what to do. Caine was probably sitting at the top table wondering much the same thing. He’d tried to have me killed once before. Would he try again?
The sensible thing would be to stand up, walk out the door and not look back till I was a hundred miles away. But sensible had never really been my preferred modus operandi, not if it made me look weak. I wasn’t about to let Caine run me out of town, even if it was the sensible move.
There was another option of course, one that spoke to the blood raging through my veins.
Kill him before he killed me.
But slaying a man had never come easy. Even when done in the line of duty, sanctioned by king and country and absolved by its churchmen, I’d never taken satisfaction from it. This would be murder, and cold-blooded at that.
It should have felt worse, but it didn’t.
I could rationalise it as self-defence, but really, it was thirst for revenge. Killing Caine would lance the boil, cauterising the wound that had wept and festered within me for seventeen long years. The minutes bled by, and as I sat there and made small talk about rubber and teak, and tea and trade routes, my mind raced with plans of how I might murder him.
The conversation around the table died, till Preston resurrected it, ironically with more talk of death.
‘So,’ he said, turning to Dr Deakin, ‘that boy we fished out of the stream. Did you ever discover what happened to him?’
The doctor shot him a look I couldn’t quite read.
‘Nothing to discover,’ he said. ‘He slipped, fell, and died from the blow to the head.’
Pastor Philips stared at the doctor. ‘Who’s this?’
Deakin reached for his whisky, raised it to his mouth and emptied his glass. ‘Just someone from the ashram,’ said Preston. ‘A Belgian lad. Poor bugger got lost and fell into a stream. My men and I found him while out surveying.’
The priest gave a snort of derision. ‘Just happened to slip and fall, eh? How unfortunate.’
The doctor grimaced and looked like he was about to reply when the conversation was cut short with the arrival of dessert and with the tinkling of cutlery on glass once more. I looked over to see the master of ceremonies back on his feet.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.’
This time it took a second, more protracted striking of knife on champagne flute for the assembled guests to come to order.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘we have a very special treat for you tonight. All the way from his cave in the Himalayas, we have secured at great expense, for your delectation, the one and only, the celebrated Hindu mystic, Fakir Ramaswamy.’
An alcohol-fuelled roar of applause erupted from the guests and a bearded, stick-thin Hindu holy man, dressed in little more than a loincloth and a scowl took to the stage. He was received by the audience with a mixture of false applause and mockery, like some fairground freak-show exhibit. His hair, coarse, jet black, reached down past his shoulders and together with his beard and deep, kohl-encrusted eyes gave him the look of an Indian Rasputin. I’d seen fellows like him before, and guessed he was as much a mystic as I was. Nevertheless, men like him were incredibly popular at a certain type of social soiree, and who was I to judge how a man made his living?
The fakir waited for the shouts to die down.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘And velcome.’
Squalls of muffled laughter emanated from the crowd.
‘And a jally good welcome to you, too!’ shouted some wag at the back.
More laughter.
The Indian ignored it.
‘I vill need two chairs … and one table,’ he said, a bony finger held up in confirmation, and soon two men from the audience were hauling a couple of chairs and a folding bridge table onto the stage. The fakir thanked them with a shake of his head and the clasping of his hands in pranam. One of the men reciprocated the gesture. Once more came laughter from the crowd. Once more the Indian ignored it.
‘And now one volunteer?’
The guests broke out in nervous murmur. It was one thing to mock an Indian; quite another to be part of his act. Slowly, nervously, a few hands went up. Then someone in the crowd shouted, ‘Carter!’
That galvanised the flock. The man calling himself Ronald Carter was the chieftain here. It stood to rights that he should be the one to be volunteered. The air was rent with cries of Carter, Carter, Carter.
Carter.
The man I knew as Jeremiah Caine acknowledged his tribe with a gracious wave of his hand. Rising, he strode to the centre of the stage and towered over the fakir. The Indian directed him to a chair, then took his place opposite, the bridge table between them.
Silencing the crowd with a look, he turned back to Caine. ‘Your name is Mr Carter?’
‘Correct.’
‘Mr Carter, you seem most popular with the gentlemen and ladies present here tonight.’
Caine gave a nod. Noblesse bloody oblige.
‘Tonight, Mr Carter,’ the fakir c
ontinued, ‘I shall tell you what the future has in store, but first, I am needing some informations.’
Caine nodded once more.
‘You are living here in Jatinga?’
Another nod.
‘How long now you are living here?’
A rub of the chin. ‘A long time. More than a decade.’
‘That is good. It is long enough time.’
Caine’s smile faded. ‘Long enough for what?’
‘Long enough to become a part of this place. Your soul is tied to it, sahib.’
At the tables, nervous laughter. Caine scratched his ear.
‘And now, sahib, will you tell me your date, time and place of birth?’
Caine scowled, patience worn thin. ‘Let’s just get on with it, shall we?’
The fakir stared at him. ‘Very well, sahib, but without such details, there is no guarantee of accurate prediction.’
‘I’ll take my chances.’
‘Please I may see your right hand?’
Caine placed it on the green baize and the fakir took it with both hands, turned it, and made a show of examining it.
‘I see you have led interesting life, sahib. There has been much success, much money I think?’ He flashed a smile at Caine, and then at the audience. ‘He is a very rich man, no?’
‘You certainly know your stuff, Gunga Din!’ came the wisdom of an inebriate.
The fakir returned to examining Caine’s palm.
‘I see no children.’
Caine gave an austere nod.
‘And two wives?’
Caine’s face darkened like nightfall.
‘Afraid not, old boy. Just the one.’
The fakir stared back at him.
‘Maybe I’ve one more to come?’
A laugh went up – a collective release of tension – from the fakir, from the audience, from Caine himself. Only I didn’t laugh, and neither did Emily Carter. I caught sight of her, sitting with a rictus smile painted on her pretty face.
‘Let us turn to the future,’ said the fakir. ‘I …’ The man paused. A look of grim fascination spread across his thin features.
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