by Paul Scott
‘No—’
‘Neither am I. Far better not. We’d drive our poor wives crazy, wouldn’t we? Besides which, of course, there is this other thing about us – I mean about our tidiness. They say it’s characteristic of someone who wishes to be the organizing centre of his own life and who has no gift for sharing.’
Bronowsky had stopped walking, but he retained his hold on Merrick’s shoulder. The two men were of equal height.
‘I am sorry,’ Bronowsky went on. ‘I am sorry about the incident this morning. You were not hit yourself?’ He removed his hand but stood his ground, keeping Merrick waiting.
‘No, apart from Captain Bingham’s scratch the only damage was to the car.’
The Chief Minister remained where he was and did not answer. Merrick also kept still. Presently he said, ‘Is there something you want, Count Bronowsky?’
‘Yes. The answer to a question. But the question is impertinent. I hesitate, naturally—’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Well. I have been wondering if you thought that perhaps the stone was thrown at you.’
‘Oh? Why should you wonder that?’
‘Mrs Grace tells me you were in the Indian Police.’
‘That’s quite true.’ Merrick took out his cigarette case, opened and offered it to Bronowsky.
‘No, thank you. I never smoke until evening.’
He watched while Merrick lit a cigarette then said, ‘We shan’t be missed for a bit, so let me tell you a little story. Years ago, when I was overhauling the administration in Mirat, I brought in a man who rather later in life than he felt he deserved had risen to be a judge of the High Court in Ranpur. I made him the State’s Chief Justice, a grandiloquent title but with a salary to match. He retired in far greater comfort than would have been the case if he’d stayed in the ICS. He died peacefully in bed, but was once the victim of what the newspapers of my youth would have described as a murderous attack by a couple of ruffians who set on him in the dark as he walked from my house to his. I often warned him of the danger for a man in his position of walking alone, at night, in a usually deserted road. In fact for a time I made sure he was followed by a couple of my own stout lads. But he caught on to it and told me he would never visit me again if I treated him like that. So I withdrew the guards and then this thing happened. Two men whom he never got a proper look at jumped out at him. He was badly beaten.’
Merrick blew out smoke, and nodded his head.
For a time,’ Bronowsky continued, ‘our police were completely at a loss because none of our known malcontents continued for long to be real suspects. The most likely ones had been arrested on suspicion of course, but protested their innocence vehemently – indeed with fortitude. In those days I had not yet succeeded in persuading the Mirat police to dispense with certain old-fashioned interrogatory methods. Anyway, for a time it looked as if the mystery of the attack on my highly prized Chief Justice would go unsolved, but then we had a stroke of luck. I was discussing the case with the poor fellow – who was still laid up and only just regaining his faculties – and he said, “You know, Bronowsky, I think I had a premonition about it.” I asked him when and how. He thought for a bit and said he believed the premonition dated from a day about a week before the attack, when he was presiding over his court. It was a hot afternoon and the case before him was extremely complex. The people who had been admitted to the public seats were restless – fanning themselves with papers, whispering, that sort of thing, very distracting. He kept thinking, “In a minute I shall call them to order. In a minute I shall clear the court.” But he somehow couldn’t summon the necessary determination. He said, “I had an extraordinary sensation that something else” – and he didn’t mean the case being heard – “– that something else had to be done first, done, or seen through, attended to. I felt I was being not watched exactly but waited for.” After a while he stopped examining the faces of the pleaders and witnesses and the face of the accused and looked across at the public benches.’
Bronowsky had been holding his panama hat in the same hand that held the ebony cane. Now he took the hat in his free hand, hesitated, then gestured with hat and cane, raising his arms slightly as though conjuring an image of the courtroom and the judge’s perplexity.
‘Nothing extraordinary there, but after a while he noticed a young man who was not fanning himself, was not whispering to his neighbours, but leaning forward apparently absorbed. He found himself returning to meet this man’s gaze many times. I asked him if the face of the young man had been familiar. Could it have been a man he had once sent to prison? He said no, not familiar, not exactly familiar. He never forgot a face, especially the face of a man he had sentenced. I asked him to think back carefully during the next day or two, particularly about the more sensational cases he had tried since coming to Mirat, because the young man might have been a relative of someone he had sentenced to hang or to prison for life. When I next saw him he said, “I’ve been thinking, as you told me, but not about sensational cases, nor about cases I’ve dealt with in Mirat. I’ve been considering the two cases I’ve never been able to shelve satisfactorily as over and done with because of the element of doubt. They were cases which seemed clear cut enough, but left me vaguely troubled. Both took place a long time ago, one when I was a District and Sessions judge and the other when I first became a judge of the High Court in Ranpur. In the Ranpur case I had to send a man to the gallows. The young man who watched me in court two weeks ago could easily have been his son. When you sentence a man to death you never forget the expression on his face while he listens to you. This was the same expression.” I asked him to tell me the dead man’s name, and suggested we got the co-operation of the police in Ranpur to find out whether the son or some other close relative had been in Mirat two weeks ago.’
Bronowsky stopped, again made the gesture of half-raising his arms.
Merrick said, ‘And so you caught the chap.’
‘Oh, no. The Chief Justice wouldn’t hear of it. Because of the element of doubt that had stayed in his mind all those years. All the same I conducted private inquiries and established to my own satisfaction that the hanged man’s son was in Mirat at the time of the attack. You see I was after the accomplice. The result of my inquiries in that direction pointed to the guilt of a young gentleman of Mirat of hitherto unblemished character, but on whom the police were now able to keep an eye. Their vigilance was rewarded later. You of course will understand the necessity of such precautions. Professional criminals and openly organized political agitators are one thing. One can always cope with them. It is these others – the dark young men of random destiny and private passions who present the greater difficulty. For instance, the stone this morning – ostensibly thrown at the Nawab Sahib’s car. If it had happened in the city it could have sparked off a communal riot. The Muslims might have blamed the Hindus and set fire to a Hindu shop. The Hindus might then have retaliated by slaughtering a pig outside the Abu-Q’rim mosque. The police would then have had to break up the fracas with lathi charges and hooligan elements would then have attacked the police station. All this for a stone, thrown at you perhaps, by one of those young men because in the past you carried out some duty with a vigour he thought cruelly unjust.’
Merrick laughed. ‘I’ll shoulder the responsibility if that helps to explain the damage to the Nawab’s car to everyone’s satisfaction. When I was a police officer I had enough brickbats chucked at me during riots and demonstrations to learn you can’t dodge them all.’
‘My dear Captain Merrick. You totally misunderstand the reason for my waylaying you like this—’
‘Yes, well, I realize it isn’t a chance meeting.’
‘Quite so. I came to look for you. But not to ask you to shoulder responsibility. To seek your help in placing it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that directly Mrs Grace told me you had been in the Indian Police a number of apparently unrelated things fell into a patte
rn for me and even pointed to a likely source of inquiry. My interest isn’t in you or the stone or the damage to Nawab Sahib’s car. My interest is in Mirat.’
Merrick shrugged slightly and smiled. ‘Well, don’t worry. If I was the target you can rest assured that by this time next week the target will be in quite a different place, a long way from here.’
‘But can you say the same of the man or youth who threw the stone, or of the people who put him up to it, of the people he discussed it with, whose help he had in plotting the time and place and day? I hardly have to tell you that such an incident was almost certainly planned, and planned in concert.’
‘Perhaps, but it seems a lot of trouble to go to, I mean just to get a crack at an unimportant, comparatively junior police officer who’s no longer even in the force.’
Bronowsky said nothing for a while. He transferred the hat back to the hand that rested on the ebony stick, then looked up.
‘But you are not unimportant. Surely you are the Merrick who was district superintendent of police in Mayapore last year, at the time of the August riots and of the rape of the English girl, Daphne Manners, in the Bibighar Gardens?’
Merrick, arrested in the act of carrying the cigarette to his lips, now completed the movement. He inhaled and expelled then held the cigarette in a position suggestive of stubbing. Bronowsky pushed forward the ashtray on the table they stood next to and waited while Merrick, accepting the cue, carefully extinguished the tip, tapping and then pressing, then letting go and rubbing thumb and finger-tips to clear them of clinging particles.
He said, ‘How do you arrive at that conclusion?’
‘I deduce it. My deduction is correct? You are that officer?’
‘I’ve no reason to deny it.’
‘Nor to advertise it? Mrs Grace says you were DSP in Sundernagar, which I take it is the district you were transferred to after the Mayapore affair, and which you mention when anyone asks where you were before getting your commission. I imagine you are ready to talk about Sundernagar and other places, but prefer for personal reasons to gloss over Mayapore. If so I’m afraid I inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. I was telling Mrs Grace how much we appreciated your thoughtful action in ringing through to Ahmed and she said you were an excellent man for detail, probably as a result of your experience as a police officer. Well directly she mentioned that, certain bells – which for reasons I’ll explain were very ready to ring – rang loud and clear, and I’m afraid I said almost at once, Merrick? Police? Surely that’s the fellow who was DSP in Mayapore at the time of the Bibighar Gardens affair? I was so positive that it took me aback when she looked surprised and said she only knew about a place called Sundernagar. I’m afraid I insisted I was right, and she was obviously so intrigued I thought it fair to try and have a word with you before you go in.’
‘Well, it’s a bit of a nuisance, but it can’t be helped. You’d better tell me about the little bells.’
‘To begin with there was just the name, Merrick. It was vaguely familiar when Mr Kasim first mentioned it to me on Wednesday evening. But a young army officer called Merrick meant nothing to me. In fact I doubt whether the same young officer described by Mrs Grace as late of the Indian Police a moment ago would have meant anything either but for two other things that I was thinking about on the way here, wondering whether there could possibly be a connection between them. The incident of the stone, and a report I had from Mr Kasim on Thursday morning. Tell me, Captain Merrick, does the name Pandit Baba mean anything to you?’
Merrick did not answer immediately, but his expression was that of a man sorting out a number of images conjured by the name rather than that of someone taking time to search the dim reaches of an uncertain memory.
‘As a matter of fact, it does.’
‘Please tell me what.’
‘He’s one of those so-called venerable Hindu scholars who manages never to get caught inciting his eager young disciples to commit acts of violence against the Muslims, against the British, against anything the Pandit currently disapproves of.’
‘But he does incite them?’
‘I’m sure of it. In Mayapore I could never lay a finger on him though. Anything he did in public, like making a speech to college students, was all sweet reason and high-mindedness. He was quite capable of criticizing the Congress Party, too. I think the line he took was that they were poisoning Hinduism with politics, but he shunned publicity and discouraged any attempt to turn him into a renowned local figure. He was the perfect dedicated scholar. As far as I was concerned he was too good to be true. I also think he was a snake. A lot of the educated young Indians who got into trouble in Mayapore were under his influence at one time or another. We once arrested a chap for handing out seditious leaflets among workers in the British-Indian Electric factory. He said his pamphlet only repeated things Pandit Baba had discussed with a group of young men about ten days before. I thought I’d got him at last. We picked up some of the other boys, and then hauled in Baba Sahib. Within ten minutes the Pandit had them all grovelling and weeping and begging his forgiveness for misinterpreting his teaching. The one we’d arrested actually said he deserved to go to prison for his stupidity and unworthiness and the Pandit made a great show of being willing to go to prison in his stead as a penance for being such a poor guru that his innocent words could lead boys into trouble. Of course he knew he was as safe as houses. All the same he was more cautious afterwards.’
‘Good. Thank you, Captain Merrick. Then you’ll be interested to know that Pandit Baba is in Mirat at the moment. Mr Kasim was asked to meet him the other evening, ostensibly to enable Pandit Baba to be introduced to a son of M. A. Kasim, whom he professed to admire, which I doubt. But according to Mr Kasim, the Pandit spent most of the time talking about the Bibighar Gardens affair, with particular reference to the activities of the District Superintendent of Police, whom he can’t have named, otherwise Ahmed would have hit on the connection at once. No doubt the omission was intentional. He knew Ahmed had already met you. I find Ahmed a useful extra pair of eyes and ears because of his objectivity. He tells me what happens more or less exactly as it happens and I then consider the implications. In this case I wasn’t very sure what the implications were. To involve Ahmed in something? To pump him about something? Something to do with Ahmed’s father? Perhaps, perhaps. But it made little sense. Neither did the stone-throwing. However, it all makes very good sense when the police officer whose reputation Pandit Baba was carefully tearing to shreds the other evening turns out to be one of the officers riding in the car that has a stone thrown at it. The venerable gentleman used to live in Mirat, incidentally. We felt very much the same about him as you did when you were in Mayapore. By we I mean the then chief of police and myself. He never actually became persona non grata, but things were going that way. I was glad when he made the decision for us, and went off to Mayapore.’
‘And you believe he was behind the incident this morning.’
‘Oh, I think so, don’t you?’
Merrick turned, placed his hands on the balustrade and looked out across the dazzling garden. Bronowsky came to the balustrade as well but continued to support himself on the cane.
‘Not that we should be able to prove it,’ Bronowsky continued. ‘I don’t intend to try. The Pandit is playing a little game with me, I think. The opening move was his invitation to Ahmed. He knew every word would be reported back to me. He also knew that directly I realized he was back in Mirat I would set my spies on him. My spies tell me he didn’t come to Mirat alone but with a woman, who keeps in seclusion in the private rooms of Mrs Nair, who is the wife of the principal of the Hindu College, in whose bungalow Pandit Baba is staying. My spies also tell me that this morning between nine-forty-five and ten-forty-five, Pandit Sahib was scheduled to speak to the students of the college on the subject of his new study of the Bhagavad Gita. No doubt he did so, in full view of several hundred youths, standing on a dais, splendidly detached from anything so violent and
vulgar as stone-throwing. Where my spies have been less successful is in getting the names of any of the young men with whom he has had private conversations. Perhaps he has had none. Perhaps it was all done before he actually reached Mirat. He is almost certainly in touch with very many people, throughout India.’
‘Aren’t you exaggerating a bit?’
‘Oh, am I? Was the stone this morning then the first evidence you’ve had that you’ve been carefully tracked since leaving Mayapore?’
Bronowsky waited. Presently, as if reluctantly, Merrick said, ‘Go on.’
‘There was an incident in Sundernagar, perhaps? An anonymous letter referring to the fate of what, if I remember correctly, were called the innocent victims of the Bibighar Gardens? And in your first military establishment – another letter, or something even more direct to suggest there was some ill-wisher close at hand. For instance an inauspicious design drawn in chalk on the threshold of your quarters? Wherever you have been? Didn’t it begin in Mayapore itself, and hasn’t it continued, at intervals nicely calculated to make you believe that your last posting shook off whoever was intent on your discomfiture?’
Merrick allowed several seconds to elapse before replying.
‘It’s been much as you say. But it hasn’t bothered me, and Mirat is their last opportunity. They can hardly go on persecuting me where I’m going unless some sepoy has been bribed to put a bullet through my head when nobody’s looking.’
Bronowsky smiled. ‘I don’t think killing you is the idea, although I’m surprised they haven’t thought of a more dramatic way of embarrassing you than throwing a stone. As you say, Mirat is their last opportunity for some time to come. The wedding would have been an excellent background for something colourful. I understand, incidentally, that you’re not a close friend of the groom. Did it pass through your mind that taking part in the wedding might bring your persecutors out into the open?’