And that was before Dougie Poole had gone to Darjeeling. It was before almost anyone had gone to Darjeeling.
Bennett said, ‘We’ve put on more patrols around Howrah, and it’s not as if the carriages are standing there in the sidings with their doors gaping. You’d have half the beggary of the city sleeping in them if that were the case. The doors are all locked at all times except when the sweepers are in there.’
‘But they’re standard locks and standard keys aren’t they?’ I observed. ‘Any man on the railway can lay hands on them. For ten clear days those carriages were available to the snake man. He knew they’d be used to make up a train eventually, and he knew they wouldn’t be checked over again before that happened. From what I understand, most snakes will be happy to lie in a semi-dormant state for days on end without need of food or drink. The next thing they know, some great human has interrupted their slumbers and is threatening to bloody stand on them.’
Bennett had laid down his pipe. He was, at last, frankly angry.
‘Thank you for your speculations, Jim. I would hate you to think I had not come to exactly the same conclusions myself. I’d have to be very stupid indeed not to have done so.’ He sat back. ‘You are required by Jogendra Babu, I believe.’
It was perfectly clear that I could not disclose to Bennett my appointment with the snake men’s uncle. I stood to go, and as I did so, he relented somewhat. ‘I have been slow off the mark, Jim, I will admit. It was the nature of these murders. I was taken aback by the sheer . . .’
‘The brutality?’ I suggested. Because snake bite did seem to be the worst sort of death.
‘Not quite. More the sheer the ungentlemanliness of it.’
‘I see,’ I said, not seeing.
‘But we are about to make our move, Jim. We are about to make our move.’
II
In his small and perfectly ordered office, Jogendra Babu handed a paper to me. It was the reservation chart for the first class carriage of the Jamalpur Night Mail of Monday 23 April. At least, that’s what was written at the top, but this was not the document that might or might not have been posted on the carriage side, for this was handwritten in perfect, violet-coloured copperplate. I read:
Compartment 1: Mr R. P. N. Ganguly.
Compartment 2: Captain J. H. Stringer.
Compartment 3: Rev. Canon P. L. W. Selwyn.
Compartment 4: Major N. Fisher.
Compartment 5: Servants belonging to Mr Ganguly and Rev. Canon Selwyn.
My mind whirled. Was John Young really called Ganguly? Did he really have the same surname and initials as the doctor who shared a staircase with Miss Hatsuyo? Couldn’t be. I had seen his warrant card; I’d spoken to his family. Far more likely was that John Young had booked into his compartment late, the original booking having apparently been made in the name of the phthisis specialist, and having been cancelled.
. . . And yet he was not down as Dr Ganguly, and so a different thought came . . . It must be a different Ganguly, albeit with the same three initials as the doctor. But while it was easy to imagine that there must be many Gangulys in Calcutta, how many R. P. N. Gangulys could there reasonably be?
Jogendra was highly amused. He said, ‘I will explain, please?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
‘This,’ he said, indicating the paper, ‘not official.’
‘How do you mean? Are these the actual bookings as made?’
‘Yes, yes, actual bookings. But not original paper.’
‘No. Because the original would have been typed. Where is the original? Burnt?’
‘Not burnt. Taken from booking office files by one man. But I must not disclose name.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I am stealing from this gentleman.’
‘You stole?’ I was glad, but amazed.
‘From under nose!’ said Jogendra, and he was laughing, but also shaking his head.
All he had stolen, I discovered after further questioning, was the data. The Indian booking office clerk who had been required to give up the original document to the mysterious third party referred to by Jogendra had memorised the chart, it obviously being of the greatest importance for some reason or other. The clerk was a friend of Jogendra’s, and he had dictated the names to Jogendra, perhaps persuaded by the prospect of basksheesh.
I said, ‘This fellow who wanted the original . . .’
‘You are permitted to speculate.’
‘Fisher?’
‘Further speculations are permitted.’
‘Khan of the C.I.D.’
‘Further speculations not required. You are hitting the nail on the head!’
‘Do you suppose he wanted to know who was on the original list, or keep others from knowing?’
‘That is beyond my comprehension, sahib.’
‘I’m obliged to you, Jogendra. Is there anything I can do for you in return?’
‘You are doing it already.’
He meant that I had signed the complaint form against Fisher – a complaint that was no longer necessary. I explained a little of the circumstances of Fisher’s departure to Jogendra.
‘Then he is out of my hair for ever,’ he said, touching his bald head. ‘It is red letter day in every way.’ It was apparently a red letter day for me as well, because Jogendra had something else to show me. He stooped from his chair, and with considerable effort he lifted a heavy green volume from the floor. He had marked a place with a clean, folded handkerchief. It was the East Indian Railway Police Occurrence Book (Calcutta District) for the year 1919. He indicated a certain entry, and sat back, mopping his brow with the handkerchief.
‘Earlier instance of same,’ he said.
The handwriting was tiny, and I did not have my glasses about me, so Jogendra leant forward, and helped me get the gist. 27 September 1919: a king cobra had been discovered in the first class carriage of a train about to depart from Howrah. No further details. Jogendra turned the page. 28 September 1919: a Russell’s viper discovered in the first class corridor of a train just arrived at Serampore, ten miles out of Howrah.
But it seemed this was the end of a heroic paper chase on Jogendra’s part, and not the start of it. He had not been able to discover supporting witness statements or first-instance reports in connection with these entries, possibly because the appearance of the snakes had not been taken at the time to be the result of criminality.
‘I know you’ve already done a great deal for me, Babu-ji,’ I said, ‘but might it be possible to know what was going on with the Company at that time?’
‘A terrific amount is going on, unfortunately.’
‘Nationalist attacks?’
‘A regular occurrence, sahib.’
It was the year of Amritsar: the massacre – that had been in April, I believed.
‘Strikes?’
‘Likewise equally. In year of 1919, everybody is at it. Even top sahibs.’
‘The top sahibs went on strike?’
‘Not really strike. You will see. I will assemble documents. But it will be hitting and missing.’
I rose to my feet, and bowed a salaam to Jogendra Babu, saying, ‘I think we have both probably seen the back of Fisher for good.’
‘He is liability.’
‘He was, Babu-ji; he was.’
I walked along the corridor to the door marked ‘Convert to English’. It was closed, and it turned out that it was also locked. A passing clerk said, ‘Poojahs, sahib.’ It seemed all the translators were on holiday. I thought about doubling back, and asking Jogendra Babu if he could translate the notes I had lifted from Khudayar Khan’s room in Darjeeling, but it was unlikely that he would know the dialect, and I decided that he had already taken enough risks on my behalf.
III
I still wore my heavy Darjeeling suit, and by the time I reached Chowringhee it was soaked in sweat. The town had become sluggish in the great humidity; even the trams seemed to move slower, and to stand for longer at the stops
. On the crowded pavements, many of the street vendors had adopted a horizontal posture, and all the dogs were sleeping, often in the middle of the road. Only the rickshaw men ran, as through determined to die, to escape this life and go on to the next one, which might prove better. Reported Missing had gone from the Elphinstone Picture Palace. Now showing was a ‘Special Holiday Programme’, which in practice meant a film called Intolerance.
I came up to the open doorway signified by the two brass plaques: Dr R. P. N. Ganguly and Miss Hatsuyo. I entered the hot gloom, and climbed the stairs; the place smelt of singed dust. Ganguly’s rooms were on the first floor (as were Miss Hatsuyo’s). I knocked, obtaining no reply. I knocked again with the same result. I tried the door: locked. I knocked one final time, and it was the door behind me that opened: Miss Hatsuyo’s door. I caught a glimpse of the lady as she let a man out. He was a European, and upon seeing me, he bounded down the stairs, red-faced. But I was not concerned with him; I was eyeing Miss Hatsuyo. She was real; she fulfilled all the promise of the photograph, and she had perhaps smiled at me through the chink in the door before closing it. I lingered at the top of the stairs. Lydia had had a tussle with Khudayar Khan (perhaps); why should I not have one with Miss Hatsuyo? Make an international effort of it, League of Nations sort of thing. However, I descended the staircase slowly, lingering again when I regained the street, staring at the photographic portrait of Miss Hatsuyo and wondering about her Japanese speciality. It had certainly brought colour to the cheeks of her late customer.
I looked along Chowringhee, searching for the retreating form of the customer; instead, I saw the approaching form of another man altogether, Canon Peter Selwyn, walking fast, with a sheen of sweat on his pink face, silver crucifix bouncing about his neck, and some unknown violet-coloured flower in his buttonhole.
‘Captain Stringer!’ he said, and he took me by the elbow. ‘Kindly follow me.’ He was glancing in all directions as he took me through a broken gate, into a passageway running between a gun shop and a motor-car showroom. There was a pile of tyres in the alleyway, and somebody had lately ignited a heap of newspapers in it, or perhaps the newspapers had ignited themselves in the great heat.
‘I assure you that I am not in the habit of asking men to accompany me down dark alleyways,’ said Selwyn, ‘but I believe we were overseen when we talked at the Bengal Club.’
‘Who by?’
Cinders from the newspaper fire floated between us.
‘The rather forbidding Detective Inspector Khan, or an agent thereof. Such a mysterious man as him must have agents, don’t you think? At any rate, he summoned me on Wednesday last. Wanted to get from me everything I knew about the killing of Mr Young on the Jamalpur line.’
‘That’s fair enough. The wonder is he hadn’t called you in before then.’
‘But that’s the whole point. I don’t think he would have called me in at all – he would have been perfectly happy with the statement I made to Hughes at Jamalpur – but for the fact he’d seen me speaking to you.’
‘But we spoke on the Friday. So he let five days go by before he called you in. Did he say he saw you speaking to me?’
‘No, but he asked if I’d had further discussions about the case with anyone who’d been involved in it. I said no.’
‘And he didn’t contradict you?’
‘Not verbally, but by the look he gave me.’
I offered Selwyn a Gold Flake. He refused it.
‘What would you have done if he’d pulled you up?’ I asked. ‘I mean, if he said he knew you’d talked to me at the Bengal Club?’
‘I would have said I didn’t regard you as being involved in the case. But basically what I said to Khan was a direct contradiction of the ninth commandment.’
I frowned.
‘“Thou shalt not lie”, Captain Stringer.’
‘Did he ask you about the metal tube you’d seen Fisher throw away?’
‘Again not specifically. He asked if I’d seen any suspicious behaviour.’
‘And you didn’t mention the tube?’
‘I mentioned that to you. I didn’t want to say anything to Khan that I hadn’t mentioned in my statement.’
‘Did he ask about the . . .’
‘What? Spit it out, man.’
‘Well, the book you had with you on the train.’
‘I assume you mean the Bible.’
I smoked with eyes averted. ‘No,’ I said.
I meant the other book, which had not been astronomy. I could not imagine that Khan would take very kindly to the activities of Uranians.
‘Well now, Captain Stringer, I don’t see how that could be a factor in the case.’
‘No.’
‘. . . Any more than the young Japanese lady whose advertisement you were studying with such interest just now.’
I gave that the go-by. Certainly Miss Hatsuyo could not be a factor in the case of John Young’s murder, whereas her neighbour, Dr R. P. N. Ganguly, might very well be.
‘But what about that metal tube?’ he said. ‘Did you find out anything more about it?’
‘I believe it might have been a cigar holder.’
‘Oh.’
‘I can tell you that Major Fisher has now left the police service.’
‘That must be a great relief for you.’
‘He has gone to work for a maharajah’s son in one of the native states. He is to build a railway.’
‘What? Single-handedly? I must say, I’m clearing out myself. I sail for Blighty next month.’
‘You’ve brought the date forward, then,’ I said (because his original plan had been to sail in the New Year).
‘It is the effect of Khan. He is an excellent advertisement for Suffolk.’
And off he went.
I lingered on Chowringhee, trying to get inside the head of Detective Inspector Khan. He had interviewed Selwyn on the Wednesday; he had come up to see me in Darjeeling the following Tuesday . . . Was there any connection? It seemed more likely to me that he had come up to Darjeeling having heard that Jogendra had been sniffing around about the reservation chart. From where I stood, I could see the sides of the trams as they clanged past: Lifebuoy Soap . . . Lifebuoy Soap . . . Lipton’s Tea . . . Lifebuoy Soap. I drifted towards the junction with Dalhousie Square, and from here I could see the destination blinds on the fronts of the trams: Tollygunge . . . Lower Circular Road . . . Zoological Gardens. It was about to pull away. I walked – then ran – towards it.
I liked being on the tram. I sat with my hat on my knee. The lower deck was dark, and it gave shade; the bell was mellow like a church bell. As the tram moved south along Chowringhee, it would occasionally muster a burst of speed, so that the air moving through the window slats chilled the sweat on my shirt front.
But in the Zoological Gardens, all was slow again. The electric train was out of commission, as signs hanging from the little picket fence guarding the track repeatedly announced. The few visitors moved exhaustedly between the enclosures, or sat on the benches in the pagodas, sleeping, or fanning themselves with their hats. An ambling elephant crossed my path. In a moment, I thought, all movement will completely cease, as when the reel gets caught in the projector at the picture houses, then a sudden flame will eat us all away.
IV
In his office adjacent to the reptile house, Professor Hedley Fleming stood by the laboratory table, where he was pouring a slow-moving yellow liquid from a test tube into a glass jar. He had been at it for an age, as I sat by his desk smoking a Gold Flake. I had been admitted to his office by his Indian assistant, but only, it appeared, for the purposes of watching the professor at work. The yellow liquid moved like honey. I believed it to be snake venom, but Professor Fleming was not letting on. I had twice enquired, and he had merely said, ‘I’ll be with you in a moment, Captain Stringer.’ He might be showing off. He was like the boy at school who will not let you copy his work but makes it plain that he is getting all the answers right. He really did look like an over
grown schoolboy – It was the curly hair and the golden glasses that did it. They had made him seem an alien presence in the photograph of him attending the Debating Society dance that I had seen at the Debating Society dance. I wondered who had been his partner on that occasion, because no adult went to that dance unaccompanied . . . except for Major Fisher, of course.
Finally, the pouring was over.
‘I have five minutes, Captain Stringer,’ Fleming said, sitting down opposite to me at the desk.
‘Well, first of all, thank you for—’
‘Literally five minutes, Captain Stringer.’
‘Has Superintendent Christopher Bennett of the East Indian Railway Police been to see you?’
‘About what?’
‘About all the snakes that have been killing people along the line. You are the top snake man in Calcutta, are you not?’
‘Captain Stringer, I am still somewhat baffled as to whether you come here in an official or an unofficial capacity. I think you admitted to me last time that you were not directly assigned to this investigation.’
‘I am officially concerned with security, and that is being breached in spectacular fashion.’
Professor Hedley Fleming was contemplating my sweat-soaked form. Over his right shoulder I could see on the wall the university photograph, but I still could not make out the inscription. For all his appearance of being an overgrown schoolboy, Fleming must be about of an age with Superintendent Bennett. Bennett was a Cambridge man; Fleming either Oxford or Cambridge. Either way, there was an excellent chance that they had coincided in Britain or Calcutta. They must have done so, and yet both appeared to be denying any connection.
‘Perhaps you think I am responsible for leaving these snakes on the trains,’ he said.
I said, ‘I would simply like your opinion. If I could just remind you of the facts . . .’
I took a scrap of paper from my pocket book.
‘Five minutes, Captain Stringer.’
‘Early in April,’ I said, reading from the paper, ‘there were a couple of incidents that did not result in fatalities. Then, on 10 April, a fellow called Milner, an employee of the Railway, was killed by a common krait at Asansol, about a hundred and forty miles out from Howrah. At about the same time, a Miss Schofield died of fright at Howrah station itself after an encounter with a hyderabad.’
Night Train to Jamalpur Page 23