III
I put it to Professor Hedley Fleming that he had trained the snake.
‘I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that,’ he said. ‘The king cobra knows that if he turns away from the raised glove, there’ll be a drink of water waiting for him.’
‘A drink of water is enough reward?’
Fleming nodded.
I said, ‘Do you think you’ll be able to build on that – take the training any further?’
‘Unlikely.’
I wanted to observe that snakes seemed to have blanket policy of doing nothing appealing. They ate the worst possible food (rats or other snakes), and in killing people they caused the worst possible sorts of death. But Hedley Fleming was glancing at his watch. It was the second time he’d done it since we’d come into his office. He’d been willing to see me, just as a doctor is willing to give an appointment, and as with the doctor’s appointment the time for chit-chat was limited. He had not offered me tea.
‘About the poisonous snakes on the trains,’ I said.
‘Venomous,’ he said. ‘Poison is ingested. There are a couple of snakes in South America that have poison glands on the backs of their heads. If you ate one of those, then, yes, you’d be poisoned. Where the snake bites you, it’s venomous.’
‘I see,’ I said. It was the second time I’d been corrected on this point.
Fleming’s desk was in the middle of the room. Beyond it was a sort of laboratory table, and on the wall beyond that was one of those university photographs that clever people have on their walls to remind everyone how clever they are. It showed the massed ranks of their particular year of a particular college at Oxford or Cambridge, but Fleming’s was too far away for me to make out the detail.
Hedley Fleming asked, ‘Are you the officer investigating these cases? That wasn’t clear from Mr Sermon’s chit.’
‘Not directly.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m assisting a colleague.’
‘Formally?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and so he had brought a lie out of me. ‘The head of the investigation’, I continued, ‘is Superintendent Christopher Bennett. Do you know him?’
‘Why should I know him?’
‘Socially. Evidently six hundred people went to his wedding.’
Hedley Fleming eyed me. I didn’t much care for him, and he didn’t much care for me.
‘You say “evidently”,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you there yourself?’
‘It was before I came to India. He gave another party later, and I went to that.’
‘Well I didn’t, Captain Stringer. Now how can I help about the railway cases?’
I said, ‘Is this the first you’ve heard of snakes being used as a weapon?’
‘I’ve heard of it in native vendettas. Snakes put in people’s houses.’
‘Never on trains before?’
‘Of course not.’
I said, ‘We don’t know exactly where in the compartments the snakes have been placed. I mean they must have been of sight, otherwise the victims wouldn’t have entered the compartments in the first place.’
Hedley Fleming said, ‘The logical place would be under the seats, wouldn’t it? There’s usually enough space there, from what I can recall.’
‘Why would that be logical?’
‘Snakes live in holes in the ground. They feel safer in a dark, restricted space.’
‘Would they prefer to be in a restricted space with hard edges, or in a cloth bag or a rolled-up coat or dhoti?’
‘In a restricted space with hard edges.’
‘Even a restricted space where one side is open, like the underneath of a railway seat?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when you say “happy”, what do you mean?’
‘I mean the snake would stay there for a while.’
‘Long enough to let a passenger come in and sit down?’
‘Yes.’
‘So a snake is quite happy in a snake charmer’s basket?’
‘Quite happy. Tell me, what was the latest death?’
‘There were two on Monday. A sawscale viper killed an American tourist at Bally, and a common krait killed a retired colonel at Khana Junction. Is there any real difference in the effects of those two snakes?’
‘The viper causes a very protracted and unpleasant death, which should appeal to the sadist.’
‘What happens?’
‘Extreme anaphylactic reaction.’
‘Go on.’
‘Within twenty minutes you’d be bleeding from every orifice. After a couple of days you’d have turned yellow and your organs would be shutting down.’
‘If you were bitten on the arm, say, and you applied a tourniquet immediately, could that save you?’
Hedley Fleming looked at his watch again. He evidently didn’t think much of the tourniquet idea, because he didn’t even mention it. ‘If you severed the arm immediately, you might have a chance.’
‘And if you didn’t?’
‘Look, you’re going to die anyway. If you mean what would happen to the arm, it would be three times its normal size after a few minutes.’
‘And as for the krait . . .’
‘The krait, like the cobra, is an elapid. It’s a faster death, but still more unpleasant.’
‘How?’
‘The central nervous system shuts down completely after about ten minutes so you’re fighting to breathe, but you’re paralysed.’
‘And on one occasion the king cobra was used.’
‘For theatrical effect, no doubt.’ Professor Fleming leant forward and for the first time there was a trace of animation about him. ‘The king cobra is a most remarkable beast, Captain Stringer.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s . . . enigmatic.’
‘All snakes are enigmatic aren’t they?’
‘The king is a cut above, capable almost of a degree of . . . magnanimity.’
‘He wasn’t very magnanimous to Miss Schofield of Leamington Spa.’
‘But she wasn’t bitten, was she?’ That was true, and it seemed Hedley had been following the cases in some detail, after all. ‘A king has been known to merely . . . strike a man with his head, to give a kind of punch.’
‘As a warning.’
‘Exactly.’
I was revolving the idea of telling him about my own encounter with a king cobra, when Fleming said, ‘I’m afraid I have a social engagement this evening, and I really must prepare for it.’
As we both rose, I said, ‘What is the appeal of snakes? Is it a sort of morbid fascination?’
‘No, Captain Stringer, it is not. About twenty-five thousand people a year die of snake bites in India, the majority in the central provinces of Bengal. There is at present no effective anti-venom of any kind. It is in the hope of assisting in the search for one that I came to this city.’
So that was me told.
Coming out of the Zoological Gardens, and signalling without success for a tonga, I headed north for a minute, before crossing the ornamental bridge that seemed embarrassed to traverse the sunken green water of the crumbling canal called Tolly’s Nullah; then I walked past the Telegraph Stores, and the Police Training School, coming to the junction with Lower Circular Road, where I contemplated the square mile of burnt grass that made up the race course and polo ground.
A motor car came up to the junction with all its widows down and I looked inside. The driver was Indian. In the rear seat sat Hedley Fleming in a white dinner jacket, and this set up a clash between his clever schoolboy aspect and the world of adult party-going, so that Fleming seemed caught halfway between scientist and socialite. I believed he saw me as the car paused, but either way, it drove on, turning left on to Lower Circular Road and making a spiral of dust in its wake.
An approaching tonga stopped for me, and this small success was accompanied by another. I had seen Hedley Fleming – in the guise he presented in the car rather than at the zoo – on a pre
vious occasion, and not in the flesh, but in the photograph albums displayed at the Debating Society dance.
IV
An hour later, I was in the stifling lobby of Willard’s Hotel, looking over the novels in its bookcase. I picked up Plain Tales from the Hills by Kipling. I thought I might take it downstairs to the basement music room, where I knew that Bernadette was practising dances with her friends, Ann Poole and Claudine Askwith. In a couple of hours’ time, Bernadette would be leaving for the hills, so I could suggest she take the Kipling with her. It might begin the bridge-building after the disastrous ending of the Debating Society dance. I might also ask if they wanted some lemonades sent down.
I began to descend the staircase leading to the basement, but halfway down, I froze. I had heard a loud wail. I darted forward; the door of the music room was closed. I opened it, and Ann Poole was screaming into Bernadette’s shoulder. They were in an embrace, and Bernadette was facing towards the door. Claudine Askwith was sitting at the piano, half turned towards Bernadette and Ann. As I entered the room, Ann continued to scream.
‘What the hell’s going on?’
From the piano, Claudine said, ‘Ann’s father was bitten by a snake. We’ve just had the news.’
‘Is he all right?’
Bernadette eyed me for a while. It was the first time I had addressed her since the end of the Debating Society dance.
‘He’s absolutely fine,’ she said at length, and Ann’s scream redoubled.
‘Was he on a train?’
Claudine nodded, and played a couple of notes. She said, ‘He was going up to that place – what’s it called again?’
‘Asansol,’ said Bernadette. ‘The coal place. For a meeting. The snake was in the compartment. The first class – it was under the seat.’
‘Where did it bite him?’
‘On the foot.’
I had meant where on the line.
‘On the boot, she means,’ said Claudine. ‘The top of his boot. The venom came out, but it just ran down the leather of his boot.’
Ann screamed again.
‘Obviously she’s very upset,’ said Bernadette.
‘Although we don’t really know why,’ added Claudine.
At this, Ann broke away from Bernadette to explain.
‘It’s just that Dad’s been in very low water recently, and this coming on top of everything else. It was all too much.’
It had been too much. Now, it appeared, everything was fine. She did not seem tearful; she had simply been making a great deal of noise. I had always had her down as a level-headed girl, and now she was reverting to type.
‘Ann,’ I said, ‘it is very important that your father makes a statement to the police. Has he done that?’
Ann nodded, and I got the following from her . . .
Her father, Dougie Poole, had been bitten on Sunday late afternoon as the Asansol train came into Ondal, which was two stops before Asansol itself. Poole assumed the snake had been in his compartment since Howrah, albeit sleeping or biding its time. This must be the case, he thought, because no other passenger had come into the compartment since departure from Howrah. Therefore nobody could have deposited a snake in the compartment. But then again, Poole himself had been asleep for much of the time – and no wonder, I thought, after the amount of drink he’d put away the night before. The snake had been identified as an Indian cobra, not a king. The deputy station master at Ondal had then killed it.
Poole had waited until this morning – Monday morning – before telephoning through to his wife with the news. Ann herself had only just heard of it.
‘You can go now, Dad,’ said Bernadette.
‘Well, if you’re sure she’s quite all right.’
Somewhat slower music recommenced as I walked back along the corridor. I reflected that, if the snake man had been going after employees of the East Indian Railway in particular, then here was his second direct hit, after Herbert Milner, the assistant auditor, killed at Asansol itself, and the very first person to die.
I realised I still held Plain Tales from the Hills.
Chapter Eight
I
Whereas Howrah station sits directly on the west bank of the Hooghly River, Sealdah station is a mile inland of the east bank. In that station, the light of day was trapped and dying, but all the heat of day – the day that had been Wednesday 2 May – remained. I carried only a tiffin basket containing biscuits, potted meat, a bottle of Beck’s beer, and a kit bag I had containing my revolver.
On the Monday evening Lydia had taken up most of the luggage I would need for the hills, or what she thought I would need. This included my golf bag, my dinner suit, the new Duxolite oiled silk cape she’d bought me (because it might be raining up there), and the new cotton tweed suit she’d bought me (because it would also be cooler). These were stowed in the new cabin trunk she’d also bought from the North West Tannery Company of Calcutta at a cost of well over two hundred rupees (it was the one the elephant stood on in the newspaper advertisements). Lydia and Bernadette would be in Darjeeling by now – ought to be, at any rate, dropping and, it was to be hoped, receiving calling cards. Lydia had not telephoned or wired to say she had arrived safely but I wasn’t unduly worried because, whilst I had asked her to do that, she had not actually agreed to do it.
I had arranged to meet Fisher at 8 p.m. by the ticket gate, and I saw him through the colourful crowd before he saw me. He stood beneath a flickering electric lamp, beside a flower stall. That was all wrong: Fisher wasn’t the flower-giving type. He had his own kit bag, tiffin basket and a traveller’s portfolio. It seemed he meant to do some office work on the train. He had exchanged his cream linen suit for brown cotton twill, and he had a lightweight top-coat over his arm. He had polished his shiny black bulbous boots and, it seemed, his moustache. As I closed on Fisher, I was studying his suit coat, trying to make out the bulge of a pistol in a shoulder holster.
‘All right?’ I said.
‘Tolerably well,’ he said. ‘Yourself?’
Here, I thought, is a man with excitement in prospect, and there was more to it than simply a holiday in the hills.
I asked him if he’d heard about Poole. He had done; he didn’t express any interest, but said, ‘There’ll be no bloody snakes on this trip anyhow. They’ve all been on the East Indian.’
They’d all been on the main line of the East Indian Railway as well, but that might just have been the law of averages, since most trains departing from Howrah went that way. As Fisher and I walked through the ticket gate, I thought of the statement made by Poole, which had been forwarded to Fairlie Place. Most of it I already knew. Poole had been travelling to a meeting with a railway officer whose title was Traffic Supervisor (Coal) at Asansol, and he’d been asleep. He’d also been having a nightmare, which he did not describe in the statement. As a result of the nightmare, he’d woken to see the snake crawling on to his boot. He’d tried to kick it off, and it had struck, but only at the boot itself, and this had occurred just as the train pulled into the spot called Ondal, two stops before Asansol.
Fisher and I went through the gate with a crowd of people who seemed to be carrying every article they owned. Most boarded second or third class carriages, but we approached one of the two firsts. This time, the reservation chart was in place on the side of the carriage, but the typing was badly smudged, and in the dirty evening light of the station, I couldn’t make it out without my reading spectacles, and they were stowed away. As I peered at it, Fisher climbed up.
‘Excuse me.’
I turned around to see a European holding a portmanteau. He was a little bloke with a little triangular beard.
‘Are you boarding in first?’
I nodded.
‘Well, if I were you, I’d think twice about it. A sawscale viper was found in a first class compartment of this service yesterday.’
‘But . . . I would have heard of it.’
‘The Company’s seen all the trouble on the other line
. So they’ve hushed it up.’
I said, ‘How do you know about it?’
‘I’ve a friend who works for this lot.’
I immediately thought of the wife and Bernadette, and the lack of a telegram. ‘No snake was found on Monday, was it?’
‘Not as far as I know. My friend would have said.’
‘Anyone hurt?’
He shook his head. He was clearly rather disappointed that no one had been hurt.
‘I’m off along to second,’ he said, ‘and I recommend you do the same.’
I said, ‘I’ll have a word with my pal,’ which was a funny way of referring to Fisher.
Little-beard headed off along the platform, and I climbed up into the airless first class corridor, where the attendant was showing Fisher into a berth that was little more than a light blue tin box, with light blue bunks already made up. It had none of the battered grandeur of the Jamalpur Night Mail, but there was a good fan, spinning fast. The first thing I did was look under the seats for snakes, at which Fisher said, ‘What’s your game?’ But the attendant knew what I was about. He said, ‘This train very safe, sahib,’ which told me the bearded man had been telling the truth. Without a by-your-leave, Fisher climbed on to the top bunk, so I threw my bag on the bottom bunk, and lay down upon it with that day’s Statesman. I called up to Fisher, ‘A snake was found on this service yesterday. Sawscale viper. The Company’s keeping it under wraps.’
‘Leave off,’ said Fisher, or something very like. He’d apparently decided to just ignore the snakes. They wouldn’t dare get in the way of his programme, whatever that might be. But it seemed perfectly logical to me that a snake would finally turn up in first class on the East Bengal Railway. It was now the poojahs for the first class types of Calcutta, and they were off up to the hills by means of the East Bengal line.
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