by Paul Scott
‘Time enough for the five boys to get across the river to the hut and open a bottle.’
‘Of course.’
‘And get half drunk.’
Merrick paused. ‘I used the expression loosely.’
‘All the same it was the impression you had. That they were in liquor.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I suppose about ten minutes later you got to Kumar’s house?’
‘Yes.’
‘So he had had at least three-quarters of an hour to get away from the Bibighar?’
‘Yes.’
‘And yet he was still bathing his face?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps he hadn’t gone straight home.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘He could have gone to the hut with the others and had a drink. Then one of them might have noticed the tell-tale marks in the light of whatever lamp they lit, and he thought it wiser to go home and clean up.’
‘Very possibly.’
‘There was a lamp?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they say they’d seen Kumar that night?’
‘They said they hadn’t. Only two or three of them were friends of his so far as I knew. They insisted they’d spent the whole evening in the hut, alone.’
‘Where might Kumar have gone if he hadn’t gone straight home?’
‘Anywhere. He might have waited in his own garden until he thought it safe to go in and upstairs.’
‘Without being seen by his aunt, you mean?’
‘His aunt, or a servant.’
‘If he’d gone straight home how long would it have taken him?’
‘About fifteen minutes. Twenty at most.’
‘Walking?’
‘Yes – walking.’
‘Say ten or less if he’d had a bicycle?’
Again Merrick hesitated.
‘Naturally.’
‘I wonder about the business of bathing his face, you see. Working from the basis of the earliest moment he could have got home and into his room and started to clean himself up he would then have had a good half-hour before you arrived.’
‘If he did go straight home then half an hour wasn’t enough, was it? He was bathing his face. Do you really think I had insufficient reason for going to his home? The boys in the hut first, boys of Kumar’s kind, two or three of them Kumar’s friends, swilling hooch, laughing and joking. What more natural than that having started combing the area of the Bibighar and found them I should go straight to look for Kumar?’
‘Well forgive me. That wasn’t clear to me, the order and circumstances of arrest. All this is impertinent, I know, but perhaps not without interest to yourself, to talk about it again, with a stranger. And I am trying to get a picture. For instance, presumably you went immediately to the scene of the crime, the Bibighar, in case some of those fellows were still there and in any case to examine it. Now, if you stood in the Bibighar and said Yes, this is Kumar’s work, would the route you then took to Kumar’s house, presumably in a truck or jeep with some constables, would it have led you over the bridge and past the waste ground?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you saw the hut. I think earlier you used the word derelict. And perhaps we have established that there was a light showing from it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, is that the picture? That you saw the light, stopped the vehicle and rushed across the waste ground to the hut and found those boys?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, wasn’t there something strange about that? Didn’t it strike you as odd? There you had a group of young men supposedly guilty of the most heinous crime of all, the rape of a white girl, getting on for perhaps an hour after they’d left her, but barely a few minutes away from the scene of the crime, in what sounds like a rather conspicuous place, a derelict hut in the middle of some waste ground, showing a light, laughing and joking and getting sozzled.’
‘You find that inconsistent?’
‘I do rather. It sounds to me more like the behaviour of boys who’d done what they insisted they’d done, and no more. Spent the whole evening in the hut, drinking illicit liquor, lighting a lamp when it got dark, just intoxicated enough to be careless about who saw it. The distillation and drinking of illegal hooch is not a very serious misdemeanour.’
Merrick smiled. ‘You’ve drawn your picture out of context. You’re forgetting what day it was and what had happened during the day. It was the ninth of August. On the eighth the Congress passed their Quit India resolution. On the morning of the ninth we arrested not only leading Congressmen but Congress members of sub-committees throughout India. Everything had come to the boil. In the afternoon in a place called Tanpur some police were abducted and an English mission teacher called Miss Crane was attacked by hoodlums. The fellow with her, an Indian, was murdered. We got Miss Crane back into the Mayapore hospital at above five o’clock. Nobody knew what would happen next. Shopkeepers put up their shutters and people stayed in their homes. I know the Congress has denied that there was any underground plan for rebellion. But I’d say later developments provided sufficient evidence of organized rebellion to make their denial look silly. Boys like the ones we arrested for the rape may not have been directly involved in that kind of organization, but that’s what they wanted, that’s what they had their hearts in, that’s the kind of activity that appealed to them. They laugh at Gandhi, you know, all that crowd. All that passive resistance and non-violence nonsense is just a joke to them, just as it’s a joke to the militant Hindu wing of the Congress and organizations like the Mahasabha and the RSSS. When you get down to the level of the educated fellow who thinks the world owes him a living in exchange for his matric or BA failed, the kind of chap who loathes the English who gave him the chance to rise above the gutters of the bazaar but is very happy to ape English manners and dress English style, then you’re down at a level where nothing but anarchy reigns. When trouble comes decent people in the towns put up their shutters and close their doors. In the villages they harbour their cattle and guard their property and their lives. And out come the badmashes in the countryside, and the hooligans in the cities. But in the cities a lot of the hooligans can quote Shakespeare at you. When I went across the river that night I wasn’t looking for people hiding in their homes, but foot-loose fellows like those in the hut. You see my interpretation of your picture of the fellows in the hut is quite different. What made them careless, showing a light, lounging around only a few minutes away from the Bibighar was an intoxication that only had a bit to do with the liquor. The rest was cockiness. They’d had a white woman. They thought the country was rising. Their day was dawning. They could see it quite clearly. The raj was on the run. The long knives were out. In a day or two the white man would be crawling, licking their shoes, and there’d be as many white women to rape or murder as they wanted.’
‘And Kumar?’
‘Kumar? Oh, Kumar! He was the worst of the lot. Have you heard of Chillingborough?’
‘Chillingborough . . . yes. One of your big public schools at home?’
‘Exactly. Well that’s where Kumar was educated. To hear him speak, I mean if you looked away while he spoke, he sounded just like an English boy of that type. His mother died very early and his father took him to England when he was about two with the express intention of bringing him up not only to act and sound like the English, but to be English. The father was rich, but got involved in some sort of financial trouble, lost all his money and died leaving Kumar penniless. The aunt of his in Mayapore, a decent enough woman she was too, paid his passage back to India and tried to look after him. But nothing was good enough for him. He couldn’t take what it involved, to be just another Westernized Indian boy in a place like Mayapore.’
‘Poor Mr Kumar. It can’t have been a happy experience.’
‘Good Lord, you’d think a boy who’d had those advantages would have been man enough to face up to a set-back like that. I can’t share your sympathy for him. But then I met him face to
face. Kumar wasn’t just a theory to me. I knew his type too well, and he was the type multiplied. To me it was quite clear what he was up to. He was out for revenge. Out to get his own back on us because in India he couldn’t pretend to be English any longer. One of the executives in the British-Indian Electric factory told me he could have had a decent job there as sort of apprentice or trainee. But Mr Kumar refused to call the managing director sir, and was insolent to the man he’d have been working under. His aunt’s brother-in-law was a merchant and contractor and for a time Kumar did some clerical work in the warehouse. That didn’t suit him, but that’s where he would have been first in contact with this chap I was telling you about who escaped from prison. Moti Lal. Moti Lal was a clerk in the same business.’ Merrick suddenly slapped the balustrade. ‘It’s so damned obvious. Moti Lal. Pandit Baba. Going around with those boys who were drinking in the hut. Working as a journalist. And we found a letter in his room when we searched it. A letter from an English boy warning Kumar not to write bolshie things, because the boy’s father had opened some of Kumar’s letters and objected to his son getting such letters while he was still recovering from wounds got at Dunkirk. And he had a photograph in his room too. A photo of Miss Manners. Having a white woman running after him was the final perfect touch, from his point of view.’
Suddenly Merrick looked round at Bronowsky. He said, ‘I didn’t have to stand in the Bibighar and tell myself, yes, this is Kumar’s work. I knew it was Kumar’s work the moment I got to the MacGregor House and Lady Chatterjee told me Miss Manners had come back, in that state. I’d been at the house before. It wasn’t the kind of night you allowed a white girl to be missing, and that’s what it looked as if she was, missing. Sometimes I used to give her a lift home from the hospital. I was at the hospital that evening because of Miss Crane and when I left I looked for Miss Manners. They told me she’d gone to the club. Later I was at the club myself and inquired after her. I was told she’d not been in the club. I thought, so that’s it, she’s gone back to meeting Kumar. There was nothing I felt I could do about it, and with everything that was gong on I had my hands full. But later I went round to the MacGregor House, which was a pretty isolated place. I thought I’d make sure they were all right. I found Lady Chatterjee alone, Miss Manners hadn’t been back, and she was worried. At least, she was worried when I told her Miss Manners hadn’t been at the club. I had to go back to my headquarters. It must have been getting on for nine o’clock. On my way back to headquarters I remembered Miss Manners sometimes went over the river to that place called The Sanctuary. She helped Sister Ludmila with the clinic. So I wentd to The Sanctuary and found she had been there, but had left before dusk. It’s not far from The Sanctuary to the house Kumar lived in. I thought the situation was serious enough to go and see if she’d arrived at Kumar’s. She hadn’t. And Kumar’s aunt said Kumar wasn’t at home either. Well that made it obvious to me. They were off somewhere together. I thought, well, God, she’s welcome to him if that’s what she wants, and drove back to the kotwali at the Mandir Gate. If I’d gone the other way, over the Bibighar bridge, I’d have come across her, running home along those dark streets. I’d probably have come across Kumar as well, and those others. But I went to the kotwali. It was chance that made me decide to detour to the MacGregor House when I finally set off back for my headquarters. I got there ten or fifteen minutes after she’d returned, exhausted, in that awful condition. Lady Chatterjee had sent for the doctor, but not the police because Miss Manners hadn’t explained her condition. But Lady Chatterjee suspected and I made her go up and get confirmation. The message I got back wasn’t clear, but it was enough. Attack, criminal assault, five or six men, in the Bibighar Gardens. I had to drive back to get a police patrol, and order a comb. A good thirty minutes or more must have passed between her leaving the Bibighar and my arriving there. We were probably ten minutes beating through the gardens, and another five at the level-crossing hut, interrogating the keeper and searching the area. And all the time I knew I was wasting time. I knew where I ought to be looking. When I finally set off for Kumar’s house I very nearly ignored that hut, in spite of the light showing that someone was there. I think what made me stop was partly a sort of automatic professional response, a realization that nothing could be overlooked, and partly a twinge of conscience, a recognition of the unfairness of leaping to a conclusion. But the sight of those boys, the revelation of what they were, who they were – well I had them out of there and into a truck and on the way back to my headquarters before they knew what had hit them. And I went on in my own truck, with three or four constables, to get Kumar. The aunt tried to stop us going upstairs. She was scared stiff. I knew I was right, then.’ Merrick laughed. ‘And do you know what he said, when we went into his room? Well, there he was, stripped to the waist, bending over a bowl, holding a flannel to his face. He looked up and said – “Who gave you permission to burst into my room, Merrick?”’
Bronowsky laughed, and presently Merrick replied with a sour grin, looked at his watch and moved from the balustrade.
‘I shall have to go in I’m afraid.’
‘We both must,’ Bronowsky said. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you so long, but sorrier that all we had to discuss needed to be compressed into what amounts to no more than a brief encounter. Perhaps in the not wholly unforeseeable future we may have the opportunity to resume. Anyway, if you are ever in Mirat again, or disposed to contemplate coming back, I hope you will let me know.’
They began to walk down the terrace. The sound of talk and laughter from the inner room had become louder in the last ten minutes or so. ‘You could do with a drink, I expect,’ Merrick said. ‘I know I could.’
‘I could but I must not. You’ll find Nawab Sahib holding a glass of orange or lemon for politeness’s sake, so I follow suit to keep him company. He takes Ramadan very seriously and as a matter of fact I think he enjoys the discipline of holding a glass and not so much as moistening his lips. Tonight he begins a special period of fast and prayer and cuts his intake almost to nothing, even after sundown. The îd is in ten days’ time. I’m sorry you won’t be here for it and that the charming Layton ladies will be gone too. Nawab Sahib would have liked to have you as guests to a meal in the palace.’
‘He’s been more than generous as it is—’
They turned in at the french windows. Several guests stood in the room they entered, presumably having come in there to avoid the crush in the room beyond, through whose open door the wedding party could now be seen.
Bronowsky paused and made Merrick do so too by holding his arm in a way which a stranger, had he been watching, might have interpreted as proof of intimacy and of knowledge and interests shared.
‘Tell me,’ the count said in a low voice so that Merrick automatically bent his head closer. ‘Who is the outstandingly handsome young officer with the dark hair, talking to the girl in blue?’
Merrick glanced quickly round the room.
Oh that, he seemed about to say, that is—
But as if suddenly unsure of something – the name of a man, the colour of a dress, his questioner’s intention, he looked back at Bronowsky and for a moment the question itself seemed to hang in the balance; and Bronowsky, observing the way the colour came and went on the ex-District Superintendent’s cheeks, released his hold on his companion’s arm and murmured:
‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Come, let’s go in,’ and led the way.
*
‘He was in love with her,’ Aunt Fenny said, beginning the job of unbuttoning Susan out of her wedding-gown while Mrs Layton folded the veil and Sarah laid out the going-away clothes on the bed in the little room in the annexe. ‘A woman I met who’d been in Mayapore told me. She said it was well known at the time. The DSP definitely set his cap at Miss Manners, and everyone was surprised because they’d thought of him as a confirmed bachelor and all the unmarried girls who’d been trying to hook him wondered what he saw in her. I expect her background had a bit to do with
it, but when a man like that decides to take the plunge he takes it terribly seriously. It must have been awful for him when she became infatuated with one of those dreadful Indian boys. I remember this woman saying he looked positively ill after Miss Manners had been assaulted and they were trying to make the charges stick. He must have been nearly out of his mind at the thought of those men getting away with it. No wonder he wangled his way out of the police and into the army and never mentions anything about having been in Mayapore. Count Bronowsky must have an extraordinary memory for names. Captain Merrick was obviously upset having it all come out like that. Did you see his face when he got back from fetching the hat-box?’
‘Stop it, Aunt Fenny!’ Susan shouted. ‘Stop it! I’m trying, trying, trying to pretend that it’s a nice day. I’m trying, trying to remember that I’m being married to Teddie—’ She jerked at the dress – not yet completely unbuttoned down the back – and pulled it away from her body, wrenched he arms out of the sleeves and pushed the unwieldy billowing damask down over her hips, breaking the thread of one of the buttons. Clothed now in only her brassiere, pants and suspender belt, she twisted round and kicked the discarded dress away from her feet. ‘My dear child,’ Aunt Fenny began – but Susan, flushed of face and white of body, snatched a sponge bag from the bed, said ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes, Mummy,’ and grabbing the neat little pile of fresh underclothes made for the bathroom.
‘What have I done?’ Aunt Fenny asked her sister.
‘Nothing, Fenny. It’s what you were saying, not what you were doing. The subject was hardly a suitable one in the circumstances, was it?’
‘Oh dear. Yes, I do see. I am sorry. Poor pet. What are you looking for, Sarah?’
‘One of the buttons came off.’
‘I’ll find it. Millie, you pack the dress away, and let Sarah get on with her own changing.’ Fenny went down on her knees. ‘I told him about our being moored close to Lady Manners’s boat in Srinagar, but he never knew her. It was a bit of a relief because it slipped out, I mean about the houseboat business, and if he’d been a friend of old Lady M’s it would have been rather embarrassing having to admit we’d not actually met her, he mightn’t have understood how difficult it was for everybody. I was dying to hear something straight from the horse’s mouth, but he was positively evasive when I suggested he come over to the guest house tomorrow or Monday and spend an evening with us. He said he might have to go to Calcutta. I mean go for good before Teddie and the rest of them leave next week. What a shame. He’s been quite attentive to you, hasn’t he, Sarah, pet?’