SUPERINTENDENT NAGEL’S DREAM
Fearing lengthy sessions over the whiskey decanter at night, I had turned down Marcus’s offer to put me up. I explained that the quiet privacy of my hotel room was essential in order to weigh up each day’s proceedings and plan my strategy for the next. In fact, the case was running itself and I had little to do. Being by nature a sociable chap, I therefore gladly accepted an invitation to dine at the Danville Club. This venerable institution on Danville Road was the Ceylonese response to the Hill Club, which admitted no non-European members. Unfortunately, the Danville had not existed five minutes before some wag whose application for membership had been blackballed dubbed it the Downhill Club—a sobriquet it never managed to shake. Nevertheless, between six and eight of an evening it was a jolly little place: billiards, bridge, pretty Burgher girls sipping long drinks on the verandah, the soothing hum of talk.
My host was a chap called John Shivanathan, a proctor with his own practice in Nuwara Eliya. Shiva and I had been friends at school, where we had shared a study for a term or two. He was a couple of years behind me, and when he became a day boy we drifted apart. In fact, if not for the artificial intimacy enforced by the small boardinghouse at Neddy’s, we would have found little to say to each other. We were very different types, you see. He was a duffer at games: the kind of boy who cowers behind the crease instead of stepping out to meet the ball. And like most Tamils he was rather a swot, nose always in a book. I suppose it had paid off, since he seemed to know his way about the law. But he was a nondescript fellow, Shiva: definitely less to him than met the eye. Still, we bagged ourselves a couple of chairs in a corner of the verandah and chatted away over whiskey and sodas, reminiscing about old times, bringing each other up to date on the doings of mutual acquaintances. He enquired after Claudia, and I remembered that our sisters had been friends at school. I could dimly recall Anne Shivanathan, a lumpish girl with a polio limp, who had dropped by at the house shortly before Claudia married. She herself was about to go abroad, she said. The two of them ended up at the piano where they thumped out “The Blue Danube” for old times’ sake: Claudia providing the melody, the Shivanathan girl supplying the da-dums.
As the hour for dinner drew near and the crowd at the Downhill started to thin, a tall, fair man came up the clubhouse steps. Pausing in the doorway, he glanced in our direction. Shiva raised his hand, and the stranger came over to greet us, walking with an easy, long-limbed stride.
I warmed at once to Conrad Nagel. I imagine most people did. He had one of those regular, chiseled faces that draws men, while his dark eyes held a hint of that recklessness guaranteed to enthrall women. You pictured him with his chin uplifted, leading men in a doomed cause. It didn’t surprise me to learn that he was the superintendent of police for the district, despite his double handicap of race and youth.
Nagel’s manners were impeccable: deferential, quietly sincere. As soon as we had been introduced, he told me what an honor it was to make my acquaintance. Turning to Shiva, he recounted my shrewd demolition of the defense in a murder case that had attracted attention the previous year.
“Come, come,” I said at last, modesty insisting I put an end to his eulogy. “DSP at your age? That’s no mean achievement either.”
Nagel laughed. “Oh, I’m just acting the part. And only thanks to a damnfool accident, at that.”
He explained that the district superintendent, an Englishman, was on home leave, the first he had taken in fourteen years. He would be gone for months. His assistant, another Englishman, was to have acted for him in his absence. On his fifth day on the job, the new man called for a bacon sandwich at lunch. Sitting at his desk under framed photographs of rugby-playing policemen, he bit into the bread, choked on a piece of gristle and died. After considerable dithering on the part of his superiors, Nagel was promoted from chief inspector to fill in until his DSP returned.
“Hell of a piece of luck for me,” said Nagel. “And it wouldn’t have happened six months ago. But London’s been applying a little heat: more senior posts to go to Ceylonese, whisk the rug out from under the Bolshie buggers who claim we’re always being passed over for promotion.”
“All the same, you wouldn’t have been promoted if the chaps upstairs weren’t sure of your abilities,” I said, for I could see that Nagel was the sort of unassuming fellow who would always underrate himself. “And now’s your chance to prove them right. Carpe diem, man! Who knows? You could end up captaining the ship for good.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t like that,” said Nagel.
“Why not?”
He hesitated. Like many Burghers, the DSP had kept the fair complexion of his Dutch East India Company ancestors. Shiva and I watched the blood rise in his cheeks, spread to the roots of his tight brown curls.
“Horses,” he managed to say at last. “One day I’m going to breed horses. The Cape. Or Australia. Wonderful animals. Never let you down.”
Pink-cheeked, he looked off into the distance. For the blink of an eye that snug verandah with its framed watercolors and coils of tobacco smoke was as insubstantial as a mirage. A stallion thundered over a scorched plain. On a bald hilltop a knock-kneed colt lifted its head and whickered at the moon.
A DUSTY PROVINCIAL MIND
Isuggested to Nagel that he join us for dinner. Shiva was obliged to second the invitation, but I had the impression he did so without any great enthusiasm. He had grown quieter since the superintendent joined us, and his subdued mood continued over the meal. It occurred to me that Nagel’s frank admiration of my legal prowess might have put Shiva’s nose out of joint. Envy is the soul’s rust; and the corrosion is nowhere more evident than in small towns, where men clamp on their petty ambitions like armor.
Bearing this in mind, I tactfully steered the conversation away from professional matters. We spoke of tennis—Nagel was a keen player— and I entertained my companions with the latest scandals doing the rounds in Colombo. Over the beef olives I ventured a risqué story or two. The superintendent laughed until his broad shoulders shook. Shiva managed a watery smile.
Nagel told us that he had surprised his twelve-year-old brother poring over a copy of The Well of Loneliness in a brown-paper cover. Banned books were circulated among schoolboys at a cost of five cents for two days, the page numbers of juicy passages noted on an accompanying sheet of paper.
“I gave the little bugger two tight slaps and confiscated it on the spot,” said Nagel. The book was currently doing the rounds at his station; ten cents per night and constables bicycling in from all over the district to put their names down on the list.
Shiva laughed this time, but still looked uncomfortable. One of those chaps who’s incapable of letting himself go. I know that reek of virtue and pro bono cases. Perhaps after all it wasn’t the difference in our professional status that Shiva found galling, but the contrast between his own arid manner and Nagel’s easy style.
We took coffee in a cozy little den that we had to ourselves. As soon as the boy had banked up the fire and retreated, Shiva turned to the DSP. “Any progress on the Hamilton case?”
Nagel shrugged. “Your coolies still swear they found the watch near the path where Hamilton was murdered. But they would, of course.” He tugged at his silky mustache, frowning a little. “I must say I was damn wild, that pawnbroker bugger going straight to you.”
Shiva helped himself to three lumps of sugar, stirred, tapped his spoon against the rim of his cup. “Well, you know how it is,” he said, gazing at his coffee. “He’s a Tamil, the suspects are Tamils, I’m a Tamil...”
“None of that counts for anything with me,” broke in Nagel. “If those men are innocent they have nothing to fear. It’s not as if —” He braked abruptly. But we all knew what he had been going to say: It’s not as if I’m a Sinhalese. Burghers are always trumpeting their immunity from Sinhalese–Tamil tensions; I suppose it’s true, in the sense that they consider their European blood renders them superior to both races.
Shiva sipped, then placed his cup on the arm of his chair. Behind his spectacles, his eyes looked slept in. “No one doubts your impartiality, superintendent. But you saw Rajendran. He’s a creature of the alleys. And people like that are afraid of the police. It was brave of him to go to you. Afterward he needed a little reassurance, from one of his own people, that he had done the right thing.”
He paused, and I was about to ask a question, when he rolled on. “You see, I have a notion that the ordinary man tries to make sense of our legal system by filtering it through his understanding of religion. He knows that deities at the upper end of the scale dispense justice and punish humans only with good cause. They correspond to magistrates and judges. Perhaps also to DSPs.” This last with one of his thin smiles. “But demons and minor gods and the lower denizens of the spirit world have no such scruples. They must be influenced through sorcery and ritual if they are to do good rather than evil in the world of men. Hence the bribes paid to witnesses and officials to manipulate evidence in such a way as to produce a favorable result, and the widespread perjury in our courts. The common man recognizes that telling the truth is desirable, but when it comes into conflict with a more important value — justice, say — he is quite prepared to lie.”
With admirable self-control, I refrained from letting him know what I thought of this little lecture. That is another consequence of out-station life: the mind, starved of real stimulation, nourishes itself on absurdities. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that Shivanathan belonged to one of those earnest groups that meet once a month in a mildewed public hall to discuss theosophy or ectoplasm.
It was plain that Nagel shared my opinion. “Are you suggesting,” he asked, with a touch of acid, “that your pawnbroker made a false statement?”
“Not at all.” Shiva inclined his head. “Merely pointing out that our legal system is literally foreign to our people. And so they strive to make sense of it as best they can. Sorcery provides an effective precedent. Rajendran came to me because as a Tamil proctor I represent a friendly exorcist or a kindly spirit. Whereas the police are minor gods, who might or might not be well disposed to him.”
He looked set to take flight again, so I intervened hastily. “The Hamilton case—I say, Nagel, are you in charge of that show?”
The DSP set down his empty cup and turned to me with a troubled look in his eyes. “I am,” he said, “and I don’t mind saying it’s a hell of a business. Dashed grateful for your views and all.”
“I’d be delighted,” I said at once, moved by the man’s gruff appeal. “Tell me about it.”
We rang for more coffee, and a bottle of brandy. Then, with the fire-light chasing shadows around the walls, they told me about it.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
These manuscript pages were found among Sam Obeysekere’s papers after his death.
II
Reality can only be partially attacked by logic.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Hamilton had gone out as a downy-cheeked boy of seventeen, first to Assam, later to Ooty. He worked hard and wasted no time on suppositions, thereby commending himself to the company’s management in London. Nor was he devoid of ability. He understood tea: which is to say weather, soil, pruning. He drank only coffee himself.
Seven years previously they had transferred him to Ceylon and White Falls Estate, in the Nuwara Eliya district. White Falls was performing poorly when Hamilton took over, but he turned all that around. Success is a matter of applying oneself with diligence to one problem after another and he had the knack of that. The result was a respectable yield of high-grade teas, well-maintained roads, an orderly and efficient workforce. The other planters in the district agreed he was a thoroughly good chap. He drank in moderation and played a decent game of billiards. Something of a loner—if they hadn’t married by a certain age, they usually were—but he turned up to the socials at the club now and then, and you could count on a welcome if you dropped in on him without warning. His assistants found him fair-minded and capable. No one sought the opinion of the pluckers or the factory workers. In any case, their relations with the dorai were purely ritual: they flung themselves into the nearest ditch as soon as they heard the clip of his horse’s hooves on the gravel.
About a year before he died, Hamilton had announced that he was expecting the arrival of an old friend who had fallen on hard times. Gordon Taylor turned out to be one of those fellows you found as reliably as mileposts across the breadth of the Empire: amiable, aimless, never sticking at anything. Empires exist to provide such men with occupation and background coloring.
Hamilton had run across Taylor in India when they were both young creepers, apprentice planters in the same company. Inevitably Taylor lost interest in tea; he moved to Burma, where he managed a ruby mine for a few years. Later he drifted to Malaya and got into rubber. Somewhere in the Straits he married a girl whose eyebrows were so fair as to be invisible. Opinion at the club had her down as a nice little thing. As for Taylor, he was pleasant enough; but you felt he would never amount to much. Hamilton was sentimental about him, in the way practical men choose one thing to be foolish about and sink their teeth in. Perhaps Taylor reminded him of something he could not articulate, a sentiment—only nothing as definite as that, a suggestion, a hint—dating from India that life could encompass the unexpected. At any rate he now took the Taylors in, borrowing a motor to go down to Colombo and fetch them himself. Their luggage—a tin trunk, two large carpet-bags and a springer spaniel—came up later by cart.
Even before the Taylors’ ship had docked, Hamilton was going around trying to stir things up on his friend’s behalf. He wrote letters; looked up acquaintances on the flimsiest pretext. Later he would go up to chaps at the club and harangue them with recommendations, while Taylor hung about, grinning and sheepish, nursing a long one. Somehow nothing came of it. After a while, Hamilton gave up. The newcomers fitted into life at White Falls, became part of the pattern. Adaptability was their great skill; in that respect they exemplified the species. Taylor lent a hand with the accounts. The two men went shooting pigeon together. Visitors discerned Yvette Taylor’s influence in cretonne cushion-covers and two kinds of cake at tea. The spaniel lay wherever you were certain to trip over it, and snored.
One night Hamilton didn’t come home.
He had left early for the township, where he had gone to the bank and drawn out the wages for the entire estate as he always did on the first Wednesday of the month. He had called in at the post office and Cargills. He had taken lunch at the Hill Club. There, his dentist’s wife, an optimist saddled with a pudding-faced daughter, extracted him from the bar and allowed him to win at bridge. Later, as the evening mists came up, two nuns spotted him on an estate road, approaching the turnoff to a track that ran through a patch of jungle. Hamilton always traveled that way; the jungle path, cutting diagonally across two estates, trimmed an hour off his journey.
Taylor said he saw no reason to be alarmed when the planter failed to return that evening. If Hamilton was held up in town, as occasionally happened, he would put up overnight at the club. But some hours later, after the Taylors had retired for the night, they were roused by the apu; the dorai’s horse had returned, riderless. Taylor sent for the tea maker and Hamilton’s two assistants. Taking lanterns, the four men set out to search for the planter. A thin drizzle was falling. They found Hamilton near a bend in the jungle track. He had been shot in the chest and lay where he had fallen.
Murder, a moonless night, the jungle crowding close. The men who stood around Hamilton’s body were not given to introspection. Yet in the conjunction of those elements each recognized a certain kind of recurring nightmare and was visited by the conviction, momentary but forceful, of something cold and mad at the core of their endeavor.
Suspicion fell on the coolies. That would have happened anyway. And Taylor, stammering in his haste to make his statement to the police, pointed out that Hamilton’s watch and chain were missing. Nor was there any tra
ce of the two canvas bags containing the estate wages. That clinched it: Hamilton had been murdered for the money. Taylor, his hands dangling between his knees, choked on his own conclusion. For a dreadful moment it looked as if he might break down. “The best of fellows,” he stuttered. “The best . . .”
Nagel had expected it to be over quickly. He was of the opinion, he said to Sam and Shivanathan, that murderers were dull-witted. That was why they were obliged to fall back on murder to achieve their ends. The laborers at White Falls were questioned, then questioned again. The coolie lines were searched. Nothing was found. No one was missing. The police investigation was extended to the neighboring estates, then to the whole district. The usual suspects were hauled in for questioning. Informers were leaned on. Everyone could account for his whereabouts on the evening Hamilton died. No one had seen anything. No one had heard anything. Finally—and this was the most baffling aspect of the case—there was no sign of the money. The bank had recorded the numbers of the notes, and the list was circulated throughout the island. From one minute to the next Nagel expected a telegram, a trunk call. Days clotted into weeks. He swore at his sergeants. Behind his desk, at midnight, he stared at photographs of victorious Englishmen. Those trophies. The way their socks bulged over their calves.
Sam studied the superintendent, as Nagel refilled their glasses. He saw: a father in the railways, a brace of siblings, a fourth-rate school. A bright boy, athletic. Immense pride when he first paraded the uniform: aunties, cousins, tumbling babies, everyone jammed into a cramped room; tots of cheap whiskey and backslapping uncles. Examinations: the household on tiptoe, his mother lighting candles in a side chapel, children slapped for speaking above a whisper. Inspector. Chief Inspector. And then, astonishingly, the last unreachable bauble falling into his hand.
The Hamilton Case Page 9