‘But,’ said Deori, ‘the Gujarati who owns general store, he has a lorry.’
‘Of course he does,’ I said. It stood to reason that the owner of the finest emporium in Assam would need a vehicle to transport his merchandise up here.
‘Let’s go wake him.’
The windows above the Bhagwan general store were curtained and dark. Nevertheless I strode up the front steps, banged loudly and kept knocking until those inside must have thought the door would give way. Eventually the glimmer of candlelight flickered through the muslin screen behind a barred window, followed by a tentative voice.
‘Yes?’
‘Police,’ I said. ‘Open up … please.’
There came the scraping of bolts. The door opened a crack and half a face peered out. I placed my warrant card in front of it.
‘Police,’ I said. ‘I need your help.’
Twenty minutes later, and after furnishing him with a ten-rupee note and written reassurance that the Imperial Police Force would cover the cost of his fuel and any additional expenses to the tune of a further twenty rupees, I was seated next to Mr Shalin Bhagwan in the cab of his lorry, while Bogoram Deori sat in the back among a number of crates. We’d left his accomplice, Boja, behind, as there seemed little benefit in dragging him along too.
A smile on his round face, Bhagwan whistled a tune as he drove. His initial fear at seeing me had quickly transformed into something different, the moment he’d sensed an opportunity to make a profit. Not only had he negotiated a rather tidy sum for what was in effect a ten-mile round trip, he’d then decided to take advantage of the unforeseen opportunity and loaded his lorry with goods that he needed to take to Haflong in any case.
The journey along the rutted and winding hill pass took almost an hour and the sky was beginning to lighten with the first hint of dawn as we passed the sign welcoming us to Haflong.
Bhagwan dropped us outside the police thana and promised to be back within half an hour. ‘I will drop off some items with my brother-in-law, Vimal, and come straight back. His shop is close by, not five minutes distant.’
There was, I realised, no point in arguing with him. Even if I’d told him to wait there, he’d have insisted we stop off at his brother-in-law’s on the journey back. This way at least, I hoped we’d save some time.
The police station was quiet. A lone constable dozed behind a grilled counter, the dancing flame from a hurricane lamp throwing shadows over the blue walls. I rapped on the grille and he woke with a start and dabbed at the dribble on his chin.
I brought out my warrant card and placed it on the counter. ‘Good morning,’ I said, smiling. I pointed to Deori. ‘This gentleman was sent to kill me and now we’re here to lodge an FIR.’
The sun was visible between the hills by the time Mr Bhagwan returned from his brother-in-law’s. It had taken him considerably longer than thirty minutes, but that wasn’t a problem given that it took almost an hour for me to fill out the paperwork and convince the constable, whose name was Singh, that I was deadly serious about arresting Mr Ronald Carter and, if he valued his career, that he should be too.
I felt some sympathy for him. Carter was a rich and powerful sahib and he was just the nightshift at Haflong police station. In normal circumstances, he’d no more think of arresting Carter than he would consider getting into bed with a python. It took a call to provincial headquarters in Guwahati before he finally provided me with the correct forms.
‘Right,’ I said, filling out the last of them. ‘Let’s go and arrest him.’
‘Sir?’
‘We need to go and arrest Mr Carter,’ I said. ‘Now.’
The constable shook his head in that peculiar Indian fashion. ‘That is not possible, sir. Decision to arrest Carter sahib needs to be taken by District Superintendent Turner.’
‘And where do I find District Superintendent Turner?’
‘He is in Silchar, sir. Seventy miles from here.’
‘Call Silchar station,’ I said. ‘Tell them to get an urgent message to Turner. Tell them Captain Sam Wyndham of CID in Calcutta requests his assistance in Jatinga. How long will it take him to drive to Jatinga from Silchar, by the way?’
‘Three hours at least.’
‘And what time is it now?’
The man checked his watch. ‘Quarter to five.’
‘Tell them I’ll meet him at the Jatinga Club at half past nine.’
The constable nodded, then put through the call.
I headed out into the dawn with Deori in tow, lit a cigarette, tossed one to him and considered the irony of having a smoke with a man who’d been sent to murder me.
The constable stepped out of the station.
‘Call is made, Captain sahib. You want me to lock up the thana? The day constable will not arrive before eight o’clock.’
‘Do that,’ I said, ‘and be prepared to spend the next hour in the back of a lorry.’
FORTY-SIX
Bhagwan’s truck creaked to a halt near the path up to the Carter residence. It was 6 a.m. All the way back I’d wrangled with the question of what to do in the hours until District Superintendent Turner from Silchar turned up at the Jatinga Club so that I could officially arrest Jeremiah Caine. As the lorry had rumbled back up the road to Jatinga, my fears began to surface: Caine would have discovered his plot to kill me had failed and was even now making a run for it; worse, he was planning another attempt and he’d carry it out while I sat twiddling my thumbs waiting for Turner to show up.
Now, as I sat outside his house, I convinced myself there was no point in waiting. I’d set the wheels in motion, and it was enough that I was a detective and that I had a uniformed constable with me. Besides, there was a good chance that in his present guise as Ronald Carter, Caine’s malign influence reached as far as Silchar. For all I knew, Superintendent Turner or his colleagues might be in his pay, just as I suspected several officers back in Whitechapel had been seventeen years earlier. I thought it best, therefore, to present Turner, when he arrived, with a fait accompli. And there was no time like the present.
We’d deposited Deori back at his village with instructions that neither he nor his comrade, Boja, were to show their faces up in the white town for the next twenty-four hours. What’s more, having given his statement and now my key witness, I impressed upon him that should he try to abscond, I would find him and the consequences would be as severe as the sky falling on his head.
After reassuring the shopkeeper, Bhagwan, that my letter authorising the payment of an additional twenty rupees to cover his fuel, wear and tear, and shoe-leather costs would be honoured by the authorities at Lal Bazar, I descended from the cab. In reality there was no guarantee that they would, but Bhagwan struck me as a persistent chap, the sort who’d probably relish the epistolary struggle with a minor functionary in the accounts department of police headquarters, even if it took a year or two to get his money.
With Constable Singh in tow and to the sound of early-morning birdsong, I began to climb the tree-lined path towards Highfield, past the open doors of the outbuilding where Emily Carter kept her wreck of a Bugatti. The house, whitewashed and pristine, stood upon a rise some yards further on, an air of somnolence hanging over it like a silken sheet. The cane chairs sat deserted on the veranda, the front door was locked tight, and above, the windows of the upper storey remained shuttered. That was fine with me. Indeed, I took an almost perverse pleasure in the thought that I’d be rousing Caine from his bed, just as he’d done to me hours earlier.
I climbed the front steps, then stopped and turned to Singh.
‘How old are you, son?’
The question seemed to throw him. ‘Eighteen, sir.’
Roughly the same age I’d been when I’d confronted Caine for the first time.
I ordered him to knock on the door. It was a petty act, but I assumed it would be even more galling for Caine if the young Indian constable made the physical arrest.
He rapped loudly. ‘Police! Open the
door!’ he shouted, then maintained a steady hammering until the first stirrings of life were heard from inside.
The door finally opened and a petite maidservant in a black-and-white uniform stood in front of us with a quizzical look on her face.
The constable uttered something to her in the local language, and though the words were foreign, there was no mistaking the edge of authority in his voice. The maid stood aside to let us enter.
‘Where is he?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Ronald Carter?’
‘Master sahib is still asleep.’
‘It’s time to wake him. Take us to his room.’
For a moment she seemed unsure. Waking the master of the house at the behest of two strangers wasn’t something that came naturally to her, even less so the act of escorting them up to his bedchamber. I nodded to the constable and he growled at her again. That seemed to provide the required encouragement and she ushered us across the polished mahogany floor and up the wide staircase in the centre of the hallway.
She stopped at a door near the top of the stairs and knocked gently.
‘Master sahib?’
We waited for a response that didn’t come.
She knocked again. ‘Master sahib?’
I lost patience.
‘I’ll do it myself.’
I rapped hard on the door, loud enough, I thought, to wake the dead. It certainly stirred others in the house. A door across the landing opened and a face peered out. It was Dr Deakin, the man who’d been seated at our table at dinner the previous night, and who’d written the report on Le Corbeau’s cause of death.
Ignoring him, I knocked again, then tried the door handle.
Locked.
‘Where’s the key?’ I asked the maid.
She shook her head. ‘With Master sahib.’
I knelt down and tried to look through the keyhole, but found my view obstructed. The key was in the lock on the other side of the door.
‘Ronald Carter,’ I shouted, ‘open up! You’re under arrest.’
A familiar voice rang out from the stairwell. ‘What the devil’s going on?’
I turned to see Emily Carter, a white silk dressing gown wrapped around her, descending from the floor above like an avenging angel. For a woman just roused from sleep, she cut a surprisingly resolute figure.
‘Captain Wyndham? What are you doing?’
‘I’m here to arrest Mr Ronald Carter,’ I said, ‘also known as Mr Jeremiah Caine, on a charge of attempted murder.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. She rubbed a hand across her temples. As she did, the sleeve of her gown slid back, revealing the blue-black bruise I’d seen before. The one on her face, though, was neatly powdered.
Along the corridor, another door opened. This time it was Charles Preston who stepped out. He was in his underwear and looked incredulous.
‘Wyndham?’
I tried to hide my surprise at seeing him and instead turned back to Emily Carter.
‘I need you to open this door.’
‘I can’t. Ronald’s got the key. Are you sure he’s inside?’
‘The maid thinks he is. I take it this is his bedroom?’
‘That’s right.’
‘The key’s in the lock on the other side. I’m afraid if he refuses to open up, I have to assume he’s attempting to escape. I’m going to have to force it open.’
Before she could respond, I gave Singh the order to break it down. The constable took a few paces back, then rushed at the door, hitting it with his shoulder. There was a thud, and the crack of wood. He took a step back, then attacked the door again. This time it gave way. Singh fell forward, carried over the threshold by his own momentum.
I rushed in, expecting to see Caine making a bolt for it through a window. Instead the room was in darkness, windows shuttered. The air was unnaturally warm, and thin shafts of light fell through the slats of the shutters. In the centre of the room, covered in the fine gauze of a mosquito net, stood a large brass bed, its headboard an intricate sculpture of metalwork. Cautiously, I walked up to it, keenly aware of the eyes of Mrs Carter and several others at my back. Through the netting, the outline of a figure was visible.
I lifted the gauze and saw Caine lying there, face down, his head turned to one side.
‘Carter,’ I called out.
There was no reply.
I fumbled with the mosquito net, pulling out a section from beneath the mattress and reached inside. Caine’s pyjamas were damp to the touch, as were the thin sheets. I grabbed his hand. It was cold, and lifeless. Frantically I felt for a pulse, but found nothing. His hand dropped heavily back onto the bed as I let it go. I turned to find Emily Carter and Charlie Preston a few steps away.
I shook my head.
‘Get Dr Deakin.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Jeremiah Caine was dead.
I didn’t need a doctor to tell me so, but it was always nice to have professional confirmation. It turned out that after the previous night’s dinner, Caine, now calling himself Ronald Carter, had invited some of the guests back to his house for more drinks and to spend the night. Among those who’d availed of his hospitality was the good doctor Deakin, who now entered Carter’s bedchamber in borrowed nightshirt and slippers and pronounced what everyone in the room already knew: that at some point during the night, the Grim Reaper had called for their host.
As the maid opened the shuttered windows and let in a cooling breeze, a flood of conflicting emotions welled up within me. There was no satisfaction at the thought that Caine was dead. Indeed I felt cheated. Caine had escaped justice, lived out a comfortable life, albeit in deepest, darkest Assam, and just as he was about to be brought down, he’d escaped once again, some might say to face a higher justice, but I couldn’t be sure. Hell was fine, if it existed, but I’d still have preferred for Caine to first face a more material reckoning: one that involved a prison cell with iron bars.
A sense of shock pervaded the room, as other guests, woken by the commotion, came out of their rooms. Charlie Preston crossed himself.
‘That fakir was right,’ he said. ‘He foresaw Carter’s death. It was the curse.’
The last thing I needed was a bunch of hysterical house guests going on about curses and evil spirits. I gestured to Constable Singh.
‘Get these people back to their own rooms. Let them get changed, but no one’s to leave the house. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, then began to herd the guests out of Caine’s bedchamber.
That left Dr Deakin, Mrs Carter and me.
‘Any thoughts as to time of death?’
The doctor puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s hard to say precisely. I should think several hours ago at least. Possibly sometime around two or three in the morning.’
A shiver ran up my spine. Could it be that Caine had died at the precise moment that his henchmen had come to kill me? I didn’t believe in karma, but the events of the last ten hours, starting with the arrival of Caine just as the starlings started killing themselves, had severely shaken my lack of faith.
‘What about cause of death?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. I’d need to take a better look. Help me take the netting down.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ said Mrs Carter. ‘I’ll have the maid do it.’
The girl lowered the mosquito net and the doctor set to work, first examining Caine’s corpse from all sides, then turning him over onto his back. As he did so, the coils of the mattress creaked. A coil-sprung mattress was unusual in India. In this part of the world most mattresses were just large sacks filled with wadded cotton. Only the very rich had such mattresses, even in Calcutta.
As for the net, it consisted of four triangular sheets of muslin, stitched together with a stiff cord to form a pyramid, the top of which was tied to a hook on the ceiling and the base of the sides tucked in between mattress and bed frame.
As the doctor worked, I turned to Emily Carter. She seemed in a daze, her hair loose ov
er one shoulder, and her eyes moist.
‘What time did he retire for the night?’
‘I … I couldn’t say for sure. Around 1 a.m. maybe? I think that’s when the party broke up.’
‘How did he seem?’
She stared back at me as though she hadn’t heard the question, or as though she was caught in a nightmare and none of this was actually happening. I didn’t blame her. Last night I’d told her that her husband wasn’t whom he claimed to be, that he was a killer, and now he himself was dead in his own bed.
‘Mrs Carter.’
Her eyes focused. She snapped back from wherever it was she’d been.
‘How did your husband seem when he retired for the night?’
She pondered. ‘Agitated, not quite himself. Probably worried by what the fakir had said.’
Or maybe, I thought, he was just nervous about his plan to have me murdered.
‘But how?’ she continued. ‘How could he have known?’
‘What?’
She looked up, her face drained of colour save for the area beneath one eye that had been heavily made up to conceal other offences.
‘The fakir. How could he know that Ronald was going to die?’
‘That’s odd.’ Deakin had unbuttoned Caine’s nightshirt and was staring down.
I walked over and stood beside him. Caine’s chest was a mass of silver hair on greying flesh.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing at a patch of discoloured flesh. ‘And here – another one.’
With two fingers he touched one of the patches below where Caine’s heart had once beaten. The skin was raw, the flesh different from the area around it.
Death in the East Page 27