I took him into the living room, closing the door firmly on Lydia. He was not a man for chit-chat, and I was in no mood for it. Inviting him to take a seat, I said, ‘What progress has Hughes made at Jamalpur?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘No dacoits have been identified?’
‘They have not,’ Khan said, taking from his suit-coat pocket a little leather notebook. He made a heading in it.
‘Have you come up to Darjeeling just to see me?’ I enquired.
No reply.
‘You haven’t come for the views, I take it.’
‘The views are occluded today, as you will have seen for yourself.’
‘I suppose it would bother me somewhat if I thought you’d come three hundred miles just to see me.’
‘I have other business here as well. Half of Calcutta is here, as you know.’
‘Including Major Fisher. Will you be interviewing him again?’
No reply.
‘I don’t know the whereabouts of Canon Peter Selwyn,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen him up here. Will you be interviewing him?’
‘Detective Inspector Stringer,’ said Khan, ‘the fingerprint results have been returned from the bureau. Your prints were found all over John Young’s compartment, and all over his warrant badge.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I told you they would be.’
‘You were in there talking with him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Talking and drinking whisky.’
‘You see,’ I said. ‘You know it all.’
Khan did not like that, but he was the same rank as me, and I would not kowtow to him.
‘When we talked,’ I continued, ‘he passed his pocket book over to show me some pictures of his family. I took an interest in his warrant badge, which was set into the pocket book in the usual way – held by leather tabs.’
‘The money was taken from that pocket book.’
‘I did not rob the man.’
‘Of course not, and ten years ago the matter would have ended with your denial.’
‘Because I work for the imperial power.’
‘We both work for the imperial power, which is why we must not appear to be in collusion. Remind me why you were touching his warrant badge.’
‘I was curious about it.’
A pause while Ajit brought in the tea.
‘Let me assist you,’ said Khan, when Ajit had departed. ‘It is an aesthetic matter for you. You consider these tokens beautiful.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But you have one yourself. You can study your own.’
‘Mine is temporary. It’s made of pasteboard. You see, I am what some people call a “railwayac”.’
‘A what?’
‘A railway maniac – shortened to railwayac. I have an annual subscription to the Railway Magazine. I am a member of the Railway Club.’
‘That is in London.’
‘The headquarters of the Club, yes. But it’s famous all over the world.’
‘I have never heard of it.’ He eyed me for a while. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘have you ever stood on platforms with the intention not of catching a train, but of writing down the number on the side of the engine?’
‘As a boy, yes.’
‘When I was in London, I saw individuals doing that at King’s Cross station – grown men as well as boys. I never thought I would meet such a person.’
Silence in the room. He had not touched his tea.
‘I have not seen it done in India,’ he said, ‘this number-taking.’
‘Well, you never know what’s happening on Indian railway platforms. They’re generally teeming. There are people living on the platforms.’
‘Living and dying, Detective Inspector Stringer,’ Khan said.
He had used my police rank to remind me of its equivalence with his own; to remind me this was a war between the two of us. I had previously done the same with him. How much did he care about John Young? If I read the man right, Khan was a nationalist who saw the Anglo-Indians as the lackeys of the British. Therefore he did not care for John Young. But it would suit a man like Khan very nicely if I could be proved to have shot John Young. The Anglos were one of the mainstays of British rule, and certainly of the railways. The killing of a high-ranking Anglo-Indian by a British policeman would go some way to wrecking that alliance.
‘It’s too easy for non-travellers to get on to Indian railway platforms, and railway lands generally,’ I said. ‘It is very much the sort of thing I’d like to see reformed.’
‘Is it now?’
After a further interval of silence, I asked, ‘Has there been another snake attack?’
‘I don’t believe so. Possibly. That is not my investigation.’ He hesitated. ‘Tell me,’ he enquired at length, ‘would your railway interest extend to . . .’
‘To what?’
‘No matter.’
Kahn eyed me – then glanced down at the fireplace, which was unlit.
‘There is no coal,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘Does my railway interest extend to what?’ I said.
‘Nothing,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
This sort of reversal wasn’t like him at all; therefore it must be significant. In moving towards the door, he saw the book by Annie Besant, which Lydia had been reading, and which she had left on the sofa.
‘You’re interested in Besant and the Congress?’ enquired Khan.
‘My wife,’ I said. ‘She’s something of an Indian nationalist. There aren’t many of those around here,’ I added.
‘More than you might think,’ he said.
‘Where are you staying?’
‘In a guest house by the police station. My expenses don’t run to the good hotels.’
And on that gloomy note, our conversation ended.
III
In mid-morning of the next day, Wednesday 9 May, I arranged for a railway bearer to collect my kit bag, golf clubs and a portmanteau full of other items that Lydia wanted taking back to Calcutta. He took them to the left luggage office at the station. I myself was not due there until five past four, departure time of the Siliguri ‘down’ train. Some people I didn’t know came round for what we at Cedar Lodge were apparently calling luncheon. Lydia and Bernadette had met them on the train up. The man was a doctor with a practice in Calcutta, the woman was a do-gooder. They were both very interested in feeding the poor, but were not connected to the St Dunstan’s Fund of Eleanor Askwith. In fact, they disapproved of that for some reason, which was probably why Lydia had dropped a card on them in the first place. The woman was a good deal younger than the man, and – against all odds – rather a peach. I began thinking again of Miss Hatsuyo of Chowringhee and her Japanese speciality, and then of the adjacent plaque of Dr Ganguly and his own peculiar speciality. As Ajit and Sahira took the main-course plates away, I asked the doctor sitting opposite me, ‘Do you know what phthisis is?’
‘I should hope so,’ he said. ‘It’s pulmonary tuberculosis.’ He proceeded to describe this, until his until his wife told him to stop, since he was ruining everyone’s enjoyment of the pudding.
After luncheon, Lydia and Bernadette went off to their horse riding. I kissed them goodbye and said I would see them in three weeks’ time. If anything came up, they were to go to the telegraph office, from where they could telephone to me at either Willard’s Hotel or Fairlie Place. When they’d gone, I drank a cup of tea and smoked a Gold Leaf before the living room fire in which the scented logs burned. Ajit told me they were deodar wood. He also said that a delivery of coal would be made around the town that afternoon.
At two o’clock, I quit the house. I had a free hand – literally since I had no bags to carry. I used that free hand to smoke further cigarettes while walking along the Mall. I was making for the Hotel Mount Everest, where Fisher was staying. My own suspicions of Fisher had fallen away after the golf game, but I intended to ask him whether Khan had
interviewed him for a second time. I also wondered whether Khan had found anything on the two Mohammedan servants. He was a Mohammedan himself, so perhaps he would go easy on them, even if he did suspect. And then there was the Reverend Canon Peter Selwyn, churchman and Uranian. Was he a practising Uranian, or merely a student of the literature? Perhaps I had not thought enough about Peter Selwyn.
It was a steep uphill walk to the Hotel Mount Everest, which was only right, given the name. It stood on Woodlands Road, and was raised up again from that on an elevated walkway with railings to stop you falling over the edge. The exterior was white with black wood beams; the lobby was decorated with photographs of the actual Mount Everest . . . and Major Fisher was not in. He had left his keys at the reception, and gone out some hours before. A bearer was called over, and he verified that he had carried Fisher’s golf clubs to a waiting taxi. Fisher had a nerve, I thought, going back to the Tiger Hill golf course, scene of the assault he had committed. But then he was a man for the bold stroke, and it was beginning to seem to me that he was quite often rewarded for it.
I wandered from the Hotel Mount Everest to the telegraph office, from where I sent a wire to Jongendra Babu at Fairlie Place, giving the time I was due in at Howrah, and asking that Deo Rana be sent to meet me. I drifted back west to some precipitous gardens built on terraces. A weak sunlight was now filtering through the clouds. Some Chinese-looking children were sitting on a bench, kicking their legs and singing ‘Clementine’, apparently with no adult anywhere near. The gardens – oriental children apart – reminded me of the gardens on the cliff top at Scarborough, and I thought of Charles Sermon, the traffic man who frequented the Railway Institute in Calcutta. He was due for retirement, and had fixed up to live in Scarborough, but he hadn’t seemed very pleased about it. You shouldn’t try to live in a pleasure ground. It would not deliver the goods – perhaps Sermon knew that in advance. Lydia had found it out about Darjeeling.
I looked at my watch. Forty-five minutes to train time.
I climbed higher, and the gardens gave way to a recreation ground, where some other Chinese-looking children were playing football. The goalkeeper, aged about ten, bowed a salaam to me as I walked past. I returned the bow from the touchline, but so awkwardly that the lad dashed off his goal line to greet me in the manner to which he thought I would be more accustomed. But as we shook hands, a shot was fired into the vacated goal, and there was an uproar from his teammates.
On the other side of the football pitch, I glimpsed a small European man. I thought it was Dougie Poole, but he did not return my wave, and quickly disappeared behind a wall with roses growing over it.
Twenty minutes later, I was walking along Auckland Road, which consisted mainly of big villas and sleepy-looking gardens. The police station was here, with its own front garden, just as sleepy as the rest. There was not only a monkey puzzle tree in the police garden, there was also a monkey. It walked like a man I had once arrested.
Alongside the police station was a villa advertised by a sign on the front lawn as Rockville Guest House. Khan had said he was putting up near the police station: this must be the place.
I walked along the crazy paving that led to the front door, which stood open. It gave on to an empty hallway. No bearer or chowkidar of any kind stepped out to greet me. I read the breakfast menu, posted in a display case on the wall. ‘Sausages and curried eggs,’ I read. The tea was ‘finest Darjeeling’. Well, it would be. There was a high desk to one side – the kind you stood up to work at, a green ledger sitting upon it. The handwriting in the ledger was of perfect clarity: Mr Khan had booked into room 4. Half a dozen keys, with wooden tokens attached, dangled from the underside of the desk. Six keys, but eight hooks. The guests who were in residence retained their keys; the ones who were out hung them here. Branded into the wooden tokens were numbers, and key number 4 was present. I pocketed it; I bounded up the wide stairs.
I knocked on the door of the first-storey room marked number 4. If Khan answered, what would I say? I would say that there was no servant in the house; that I had discovered his room, and that I wanted an urgent word. I knocked for a second time. An urgent word about what? About the Jamalpur Night Mail, naturally. I would confide my suspicions of . . . my suspicions of Canon Peter Selwyn. He was of the Uranian tendency – in short, queer – and such fellows were sometimes in desperate straits and driven to desperate actions. I left off knocking. The house was unbelievably silent. It could not remain so for long.
I took out the key; I opened the door.
The few contents of the room were beautifully ordered: a folded copy of The Statesman on the neatly downturned counterpane; a book on the bedside table written in . . . what? Bengali? Hindustani? To my eye, all Indian lettering looked like the picture of the little dancing men in the Sherlock Holmes story. An oilskin hung from a peg on the door; a pair of highly polished patent shoes waited in shoe trees. There was a wastepaper basket, and inside it a folded brochure for a certain Walter Bushnell, optician of Calcutta. His spectacles would cure your headaches. I was glad to see that Khan needed glasses, this signifying a weakness in his armoury. I stood still. The window overlooked silent Auckland Road. But in the room, a clock was ticking very quickly . . . a small alarm clock propped in its own red leather case. On its face, the word ‘Ego’ was written in gold plate, and I somehow knew that this item would be Khan’s all right, not the property of the house. It was a quarter to four. I had twenty minutes to train time. I was currently about ten minutes from the station, but I had to allow time to collect my baggage from the left luggage office. On the mantelpiece stood an unopened tin of cigarettes, Advantage brand. There were golden cuff links in a clean ashtray, a new and unused box of matches, Cutter brand.
I looked down at the grate. I crouched down. There was kindling in the grate, and crumpled paper, ready to burn, but there was no coal in the room – no coal in the town. Some of the paper had handwriting on it. As I reached out towards the paper, I heard a great roaring coming up from the street. I sprang over to the window to see a soot-blackened steam wagon rolling along Auckland Road. It was burning coal for its own engine, and it was bringing coal to Darjeeling town. A squad of tough-looking mountain men were hauling sacks of coal from the back of the wagon, and carrying them into the front gardens of the villas. All the houses were taking delivery; Rockville would be no exception, and then the coal would be put on to the fires that were made up and ready to receive it. I looked again at the handwritten papers in the grate. They had not been put in the wastepaper basket. Khan had meant them to be utterly destroyed. I plucked up the handwritten papers – it turned out there were two pages – and I quit the room.
There was nobody on the stairs, nobody in the lobby. I replaced the key on its hook below the high desk, and dashed into the garden. A European woman in gumboots stood near the gate; she was dead-heading flowers while waiting to accept a delivery of coal. I turned sharply right, and doubled back around the house, where I climbed a high embankment, which lead up to a hedge I could not get through. I tracked along the hedge until it was fashioned into an arch over a gate. I went through the gate, and I was now in a lane bounded by the hedges of numerous back gardens. If I missed the train, I would pay no greater penalty than having to stay on in Darjeeling, but I had mysteries to solve, and the answers lay in Calcutta. I began to run.
IV
The ‘down’ train was two trains, just as the ‘up’ had been.
I boarded the last carriage of the foremost one with a minute to spare. A little out of breath, I sat down on a cane chair in the final carriage. It was still the time of year to be arriving at Darjeeling rather than leaving it, and my only companions in the saloon were an elderly couple, both with books on the go. They must have been old hands on the mountain train, because they never looked up as the whistle was blown and we began to creak away. I lit a cigarette, at which the woman did look up, and pretty sharply, so I walked through the glass door at the carriage end, and on to the veranda.
We were slowly embarking on the first loop – the one that ran around the flat-topped hill at Ghum.
We began to coincide with the Cart Road, and I saw coming up a big villa with stables attached. Before the gates of the property stood a collection of riders and horses. The light was already fading, and the riders were dismounting, or milling about with horses in tow. Most were women in jodhpurs, and among them would be Bernadette and Lydia. At a slight distance from the main crowd, an impeccable Indian was descending from his horse while a woman in a long coat – not riding clothes – held the head of his horse. We were now running practically alongside the pair, and I saw that the woman was Lydia, the man was Khan. Well, I had known he was a horseman. I watched them talking – he looking much livelier than he ever did when trying to pin the John Young murder on me – until they were out of sight.
I then transferred my stare to the engine of the train that was following our train.
I walked back to my cane seat, and resumed staring, this time at the descending dusk beyond the window. Trees passed by, gradually becoming darker. After a while, I saw nothing but my own haggard face. I looked malarial and old. No wonder Lydia had not troubled very much about the connection between Bernadette and the R.K.: she had an eye for the bloody Indians herself. It was perfectly clear to me now that Lydia was what they called ‘sexually frustrated’. The condition went with being a progressive woman. If they were not frustrated, there would be no point in being progressive, they would just settle for what they had.
Why had Lydia not been riding, but just standing about and spooning with Khan? She’d told me she was going riding with Bernadette. I assumed that Bernadette had been riding, but it occurred to me that I now had no reason to believe anything Lydia might say to me. I reached into my pocket, and the silver flask the R.K. had given me was still there, still full of good whisky. Sod the quinine pills. I unscrewed the top and took a long pull, then a second one. The elderly parties in the saloon were deciding they had a ‘wrong ’un’ in the carriage with them, but I was trying to banish the image of the scene I had observed. It took me a further three pulls on the flask to arrive at the thought that, just as there had been nothing in it between Bernadette and the R.K., so there would probably be nothing in this. And if there was, then she could bloody well have him. She could be the star of her own scandal. It wouldn’t prove so very much of a social advance, since Khan was only a detective inspector like me, and, being Indian, unlikely to rise much higher in the Calcutta C.I.D.
Night Train to Jamalpur Page 21