‘All around Calcutta, you will see the manasa tree, sacred to the little goddess of that name. She’s the sister of Vasuki, king of all the serpents.’
‘Really?’
‘It gives protection to the planter from snake bites. It’s a horrible-looking thing really, a sort of springwort. The branches appear dead at the lower levels, where you’ll see a crudely carved figure of the goddess.’
That was a turn up. Surely I’d just seen such a half-dead bush at the Insty? Two of them, in fact. But there had been no carved figure beneath.
‘Snakes are important for the home team as well, of course,’ said Selwyn.
‘The home team?’
‘The religions of the Book,’ he said, indicating the crucifix around his neck. ‘In the Garden of Eden, the snake is death – death or the devil. Something bad anyway. One way or another, you have to come to terms with the snake.’
Silence for a space.
‘That said, there aren’t many snakes where I will be going next year,’ Selwyn said.
‘Back to Blighty?’
It appeared that Peter Selwyn, like Charles Sermon and the driver of the Jamalpur night train, would soon be sailing for Liverpool.
‘I did think of staying on, but you can’t dwindle here. You’re either running the hundred-yard dash or you’re dead, but in the little town of Southwold in Suffolk, dwindling is the number one activity. Everybody’s at it.’
Southwold was on the coast, and so once again the need for bracing sea air.
‘When are you going?’
‘January. I was jolly lucky to be left a little cottage near the harbour.’
‘There’s a small gauge railway in Southwold,’ I said. ‘Goes to a spot called Halesworth. Main traffic is fish.’
‘Tell me more about that Gurkha chappie of yours. I like the sound of him.’
I conveyed to Peter Selwyn my high opinion of Deo Rana.
‘I wish I had a Gurkha to help with my work in the cathedral,’ he said.
‘They’re mainly known for their skill at hand-to-hand fighting.’
‘That’s exactly what I need! Shall I tell you a joke about the Gurkhas?’
‘Go on then,’ I said, rather warily.
. . . Ten minutes later, after we had said our goodbyes amid the bowing servants of the club lobby, and I was standing on Chowringhee looking for a tonga, I decided it would be worth re-telling that joke, but that I had better be very careful where and when I did it.
Mainly, though, I was thinking about Fisher.
Chapter Six
I
What the men of the East Indian Railway ever found to debate, I did not know – argue over, yes, but as to formal debating, I had never seen any sign of it. As far as I could tell, the Debating Society committee existed mainly to organise the Debating Society supper dance, which was the number one jamboree of the season for railway officers, and quite famous in Calcutta. It was the occasion when the Company repaid favours, or tried to make new friends – so the guest list extended beyond the Railway.
On the morning of the dance – Saturday 28 April – I took a turn on the maidan with Lydia. She would actually be spending half her day on the maidan, since she would be going riding with Bernadette later on. We walked over the light brown grass in our light brown sola topees, the burning sun seeming to make an additional weight pressing down upon our heads. As we left the town behind, the sound of the Saturday traffic was replaced by the sound of music. We approached a military band playing in a bandstand that surely didn’t belong here, but must have been whirled by some international tornado from Hyde Park . . . In which case it had crash-landed, because it was slightly broken down. Wooden chairs with peeling paint were scattered around the bandstand, where an audience of sorts had gathered, consisting mainly of red-faced men of the Charles Sermon type, who came to hear the marching music. Then there were some middle-class Indians, who seemed more detached.
Somebody had left a newspaper behind on one of the seats; it was not The Statesman. I picked it up, dividing the pages and giving half to Lydia. The first heading I read was ‘Another Snake Attack’. The battle of the men of Blakeborough & Sons with the latest krait was detailed, even though it had occurred three hundred miles out of town. The piece concluded:
Since the attacks have occurred at numerous locations, and since all the trains concerned in the attacks originated from Howrah, responsibility for the investigation rests with the Calcutta Division of the East Indian Railway Police. The investigating officer is Superintendent Christopher Bennett. At the time of going to press, no statement was available from the Superintendent.
The music had stopped; I looked up. The conductor of the band was holding a conflab with a trumpet player. I wondered whether Superintendent Bennett had read that article. It would take the edge off his enjoyment of the Debating Society dance if so. I looked over to Lydia, who appeared to be reading about the motion pictures being shown in town. Reported Missing was still playing at the Elphinstone, but I fancied The Adventures of Tarzan at the Tiger Picture House.
The programme of music had ended, but the band weren’t quite done yet. They struck up with ‘God Save the King’, a rather rusty version, and it did strike me that they had a cheek playing it, the King being so far away. I looked across at Lydia, and she was still reading, not standing for the King. But then again we were on the outermost chairs, not really included in the concert. Of those in the seats close to the bandstand, about half were standing, whether European or Indian. The others were walking away. But one man, I saw, was walking towards the bandstand from the direction of Chowringhee: Detective Inspector Khan. He was beautifully be-suited, and of all the many hats available to him he wore a Panama at an angle that was the opposite of rakish. The man’s life, I thought, must be like a hall of mirrors. As a C.I.D. detective, he was a prop of the empire, yet it was not his empire, either as an Indian or, still less, a Moslem. Perhaps he was not a practising Moslem, and certainly he wore Westernised clothes, but the few middle-class Moslems in Calcutta generally did dress that way, as far as I knew. In a way, he beat the British at their own game. For example, he was a sight more elegant than most of them, and better spoken. He almost had what was called an ‘Oxford voice’, but perhaps his real allegiances were apparent from the man who tailed alongside him: a Moslem servant in white skull cap. This servant carried a canvas kit bag over his shoulder.
‘God Save the King’ was in its dying strains as Khan came up to the bandstand. He paused, and for a moment I thought he was actually standing to attention for the King-Emperor. But in fact he was lighting a cigarette. Having accomplished this, he walked on, and it seemed to me that whether God saved the King or not was a matter of very little account to him. I pointed him out to Lydia.
‘That’s the C.I.D. fellow who quizzed me yesterday.’
‘Really?’ said Lydia, and she put down the newspaper and watched him for a while.
Something about her attitude made me ask, ‘What do you make of him?’
She said, ‘He’s heading for the stables,’ by which she meant the gymkhana on the maidan, the very place to which she and Bernadette would shortly be going. ‘He’s riding out,’ she said.
‘Riding out to where?’
‘Oh, come on, Jim, she said. ‘Riding out means riding.’
‘And the servant is carrying his tackle.’
‘His tack, Jim, his riding gear.’ She snorted once with laughter. ‘Tackle indeed . . . He’s not going fishing, is he?’
By now, Khan and his man were small in the distance, and the members of the band were picking up their music sheets prior to quitting the bandstand.
II
I had a kind of preview of the Debating Society dance before it occurred. At 1 p.m., I was sent by the wife to call Bernadette to tiffin. Walking through the lobby of the hotel, I heard the strains of what I suspected was ‘syncopated’ piano, which I followed downstairs to the music room of the hotel, where Bernadette and her g
ood friends, Claudine Askwith and Ann Poole, were whiling away the hot afternoon. The door was half open, and as I approached it, the music stopped.
‘Claudine, you warphead!’ Bernadette was saying. She was holding on to Ann Poole, and had been dancing with her to the piano as played by Claudine Askwith, and evidently not played properly. Claudine struck up again, and Bernadette and Ann started dancing again, Bernadette counting all the while: ‘Two-ho step, two-ho step.’ Still dancing, Bernadette said, ‘Raju believes that all life is a dance of Shiva.’
They were talking about the R.K.
‘Or so he says,’ Claudine shouted, over the sound of her own piano-playing.
‘I doubt he really believes it,’ said Ann. ‘I mean, nobody would, would they?’
‘He has forty temples to the God Shiva in his kingdom,’ said Bernadette.
‘His kingdom! You make him sound like a man in a fairy tale,’ Claudine shouted. ‘I thought it was thirty temples anyway.’
‘What’s ten temples give or take?’ Ann put in.
‘He’s very philosophical anyhow,’ said Bernadette. ‘He has a different attitude towards time.’
‘That’s because he’s got so much flipping money,’ said Ann.
‘He believes that time is circular,’ said Bernadette.
‘Like a clock, you mean?’ said Claudine, still playing.
‘Claudine,’ said Bernadette, ‘you are being simply impossible today.’
As she danced, Ann Poole caught sight of me over Bernadette’s shoulder. ‘Hello, Captain Stringer! Bernadette-ji, it’s your pater.’ They now revolved in the course of their dance, so that it was Bernadette who was looking at me over Ann’s shoulder: ‘Clear off, Dad,’ she said happily.
‘It’s tiffin.’
‘All right – at the end of this number.’
But then Claudine, at the piano, made another mistake and the dancing stopped.
‘For crying out loud!’ said Bernadette.
‘Ever so sorry, loves,’ said Claudine. ‘I’m just so excited, what with the dance coming up, and our new house.’
Over tiffin, I asked Bernadette whether this new house of the Askwiths was the one waiting for them up in Darjeeling, or some other.
‘She found out just today,’ said Bernadette. ‘It’s a new house here in Cal. They only had a flat before.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Park Road South.’
Then it would be an enormous villa, requiring a squad of servants.
Bernadette left the table early. When she’d gone, I asked Lydia: ‘Will the R.K. be at the dance tonight?’
She replied, ‘I’m not his social secretary, Jim’, which of course was not a denial.
III
The Debating Society dance was held at Wright’s Hotel, adjacent to the beautiful St John’s Church, and near enough to the river to make the hot night air brackish. Lydia, Bernadette and I went there in a two-horse tonga with the Pooles. Dougie Poole was already ‘a bit squiffed’ as Margaret cheerfully informed us. She was a pleasant woman, but it was possible that she didn’t have any imagination, and so couldn’t see what her husband was doing to himself.
Uniformed Indians made a guard of honour as we stepped down from our tonga on to the gravelled forecourt of Wright’s. They formed two ranks, and in between them stood William Askwith. As a physical specimen he looked so featureless that he displayed his fine dinner suit almost to advantage.
‘Our host awaits,’ said Margaret Poole, peering through the tonga window.
‘Why’s he the host?’ I whispered to Lydia. ‘He hasn’t bought Wright’s Hotel as well, has he?’
‘He’s president of the Debating Society. You twit.’
Askwith greeted the three of us very graciously, and in the absence of any other tongas rolling up just then, we embarked on a little chit-chat.
‘What does the Debating Society actually debate?’ I enquired.
‘Well, let me see now,’ said Askwith. ‘We had one only last week: “The motor car is the future of passenger transport, and railways must act accordingly.’
‘I hope the motion was defeated.’
‘I’m delighted to say that it was defeated resoundingly, Captain Stringer.’
‘And all those who voted against will be sacked,’ put in Dougie Poole, which Askwith did not like, and tried to ignore. ‘But our gatherings do not always take the form of debates,’ he continued. ‘We have lectures as well. Last month, Mr Joseph Miller from signalling gave us “The Lighter Side of Block Telegraph Working”.’
‘Went down a storm, he did,’ said Dougie Poole.
Askwith inclined his blank white head towards me. ‘Perhaps, Captain Stringer, you would care to entertain us on the subject of . . . Well, how about “Railway Police Work at Home and Abroad”?’
I eyed him. There was no expression on his face; then again, there never could be any expression on his face. The Pooles had already gone into the hotel, and taken Bernadette with them. Askwith was turning to Lydia. ‘You look are looking absolutely lovely, Mrs Stringer.’
Lydia had wrestled the cashmere wrap back off Bernadette; and she wore a short, silvery dress she had been rather uncertain about. She’d been turning over the problem for days: could she carry it off? I thought so, and evidently so did Askwith, but now another tonga was rolling up, with a motor taxi chugging impatiently behind it, so we stepped into the hotel.
‘Well, it would be a shame if he was proved corrupt,’ said Lydia as we walked through the lobby, ‘given that he was so nice about my dress.’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Who’s trying to prove him corrupt?’
‘I should say that was the theme of your incessant questions about him.’
‘You realise it’s essential he doesn’t get wind of my suspicions?’
‘You think he already has done.’
‘You seem very confident about reading my mind.’
‘One doesn’t exactly have to be the Martian Girl.’
‘Who’s the Martian Girl?’
‘A very famous mind-reader on the halls.’
‘I’ve never heard of her.’
We had already waved away two bearers offering champagne, and I wished we could explain that Lydia was teetotal, and I was on quinine, because they all looked so disappointed.
Lydia said, ‘You think he staged that attack on the train and the wrong man was killed by mistake. And you think your Major Fisher might have been involved.’
‘That’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it?’
‘But it’s what you think.’
This particular dance floor was chequered black and white like a chessboard, and the spirit lights on the white tablecloths were all glimmering pinks. The French windows were open on to the dark lawn, where pink and white Chinese lanterns hung from the trees, before the blackness of St John’s churchyard took over.
I had a waltz with Lydia. Afterwards, we separated, and I saw Askwith entering, having presumably greeted all the important guests. He was deep in conversation with Superintendent Christopher Bennett. Naturally the two would know each other. They were talking in low voices, and Bennett looked glum, in contrast to his wife Mary, who was following behind and talking excitedly to a woman I didn’t know: ‘We did think of the Great Eastern for the reception, but in the end it had to be the Grand. I mean, you only get married once, don’t you? One hopes so anyway!’ She appeared to have found the one woman in Calcutta who hadn’t heard all about her wedding.
I turned towards the dancing. Claudine, Ann and Bernadette all had partners, none of whom was the R.K. I became aware that Dougie Poole was swaying by my side, whisky in hand.
I said, ‘I’m told the Hindus believe all life is the dance of Shiva.’
‘Yes, but Shiva dances to destroy the world,’ said Poole, ‘so it’s not quite as light-hearted as it sounds.’ He took another sip of his peg. ‘There’s Shiva the destroyer, Vishnu the . . . preserver, Brahma the creator. You can remember it because . . . no, it
’s gone.’
‘How’s life in traffic?’ I said.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘the goods traffic is increasing constantly, but the more goods traffic you have, the more goods wagons you have to keep tabs on.’ A photographer and his assistant were photographing the dancers, perhaps for the East Indian Railway Magazine. ‘You know the trouble with goods wagons?’ said Poole. ‘They’ve got wheels on ’em, so they’re liable to go just anywhere. But how’s everything going on in the police department, Jim? Any ideas about this snake blighter?’
‘Well, that’s not my investigation.’
‘Lucky you.’
I looked about until I located Superintendent Christopher Bennett. He was trying to light his pipe in the garden, just beyond the French windows.
‘It’s his,’ I said.
From his appearance it was odds-on that Bennett had read the snake report in the newspaper. He attempted a smile when he looked towards me though. I turned again towards the dancers. Lydia was in amongst them. I did not know her partner, but he was old and grey enough not to be counted a rival. It was accepted between the two of us that dancing was not my strong point. Dougie Poole had drifted away. He was hunting up another peg, and every so often he appeared to be buffeted by a strong wind that didn’t exist. Why did he drink? He would be on a good wage, perhaps fifteen hundred rupees per mensem; he had a flat full of servants; regular trips to the hills, and his daughter, Ann, had been to good schools in England and Calcutta . . .
Lydia and Bernadette came up, and they were excited after the dance, as if they’d come off a fairground ride. I raised the question of Dougie Poole.
Lydia said, ‘Did you notice his dinner suit?’
‘What about it? It’s too big.’
‘Yes, and he’s wearing a white dinner jacket.’
‘We all are.’
‘And a wing collar with it. That’s wrong.’
‘I don’t see anything wrong with it.’
‘I know. That’s why I had to return the wing collars you bought in Port Said.’
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