by Paul Scott
‘I should have refused.’
‘In court that refusal could have been fatal.’
‘I know.’
‘Have you truly and deeply considered the reasonableness of this attitude?’
‘I have truly and deeply considered the attitude. I have considered it daily, since the night of August the ninth, nineteen forty-two. For one year, nine months and twelve days.’
‘And you still find it reasonable?’
‘I have never said it was reasonable. It has never been a question of reason. It isn’t now.’
‘A question of loyalty, perhaps?’
‘It’s not a word I much care for.’
‘Care for it or not, it gets us a bit further? Can we go a bit further still and establish to what or to whom you felt you were being loyal by maintaining what looked to everyone else like an unreasonable silence?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t go further. At least, not in the same direction.’
Rowan leaned forward again, and referred to his file. Eventually he spoke. ‘Only two things of interest to the police seem to have been found in your room. A photograph of Miss Manners and the letter from Colin. The photograph was self-explanatory. She had given it to you. The letter from Colin is interesting though because – by your own evidence today – you had other letters from him. In fact I imagine that you heard quite often from him – at least until he came to India.’
‘Yes.’
‘I wondered why of all those letters you kept this particular one. It was an unfortunate choice because it was the one in which Colin told you two of your letters were opened by his father and not forwarded because his father thought them unsuitable reading for a young officer away on active service. The phrase “a lot of hot-headed political stuff” was the way he said his father described those letters. Why did you keep this particular letter from Colin?’
‘It was the only one I ever had from him that really struck an authentic note. He went through various phases after he left school. But that one was from the man I remembered.’
‘What sort of man was that?’
‘The sort that found the liberal atmosphere of Chillingborough the right kind of atmosphere.’
‘You would call Chillingborough a liberal institution?’
‘It wasn’t a flag-wagging place. It turned out more administrators than it did soldiers.’
She smiled and wondered if Rowan smiled too to be reminded so unexpectedly of his own words – ‘I wasn’t cast in the mould of a good regimental officer.’
‘But for a time after leaving school,’ Rowan said, ‘your friend Colin became what you call a flag-wagger?’
‘He was infected by the atmosphere of 1939, I think. He joined the Territorial Army, and wrote of nothing else.’
‘The letter which you kept was one he wrote after he’d been wounded at Dunkirk, I gather?’
‘Yes.’
‘His baptism of fire had an effect on him which you approved of?’
‘The effect of making him sound like the friend I knew.’
‘And what was the hot-headed political stuff his father objected to in your letters?’
‘It must have been mainly what I wrote about the pros and cons of Congress’s resistance to the declaration of war, and their resignations from the provincial ministries.’
‘And what were your views on that?’
‘I think it was to find out if I had any that I wrote to Colin about the pros and cons.’
‘You would write that kind of thing to Colin. Would you discuss it with Vidyasagar?’
‘No.’
‘In spite of the distance between you, Colin remained your closest friend, your confidant?’
‘In my mind he did.’
‘It was a way of maintaining contact with – what shall we call it – your inner sense of being English?’
‘Yes.’
Rowan sat for a while without speaking. Then abruptly he said: ‘Have we been discussing in any way the question you said we couldn’t explore further in the same direction?’
‘We’ve been discussing it.’
‘But not exploring it further?’
‘But not exploring it.’
‘So we are back to the moment when you were found by the police bathing your face?’
‘Yes.’
‘With this vital period between 6.15 and 9.30 p.m. unaccounted for?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you had been with Miss Manners that evening, where would you have been likely to meet?’
‘The most likely place would have been The Sanctuary.’
‘Why?’
‘Apart from caring for the sick and dying, Sister Ludmila ran a free evening clinic. Miss Manners helped fairly regularly in the clinic in her spare time from the Mayapore General Hospital.’
‘You both found The Sanctuary a suitable place to meet?’
‘We were both interested in the work Sister Ludmila did.’
‘Is that the frankest reply you can give me?’
‘No. Let’s say that The Sanctuary was one of the few places in the whole of Mayapore where we could meet and talk and not attract abusive attention.’
‘Abusive attention?’
‘The attention paid by Europeans to the sight of a white girl in an Indian’s company.’
‘Apart from these meetings at The Sanctuary you also visited one another’s houses?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘Where else did you spend time together?’
A pause.
‘Sometimes, on a Sunday for instance, we went to the Bibighar Gardens.’
‘I gather from the descriptions in the file that these Gardens consist of a comparatively small, wild, overgrown area – the site of the old garden surrounding a building once known as the Bibighar – a building no longer in existence but where an open-sided pavilion or shelter has been erected on part of the old foundations.’
‘Yes. It was a quiet and pleasant place to talk.’
‘During the daytime—’
‘During daylight.’
‘You never went there together except in daylight?’
‘Never.’
‘Because of the old stories about it being haunted?’
‘Because it was hardly a suitable place to go to at night.’
‘How many people knew that you used to go to the Bibighar?’
‘No one, so far as I know.’
‘You were always alone there?’
‘We once frightened some children playing there. Indian children.’
‘How?’
‘They thought we were ghosts I expect.’
‘Daylight ghosts?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was usually quite deserted even in daylight?’
‘It was the place only Indians went to – but it was on the civil lines side of the river. I think Indians went there for picnics in the dry, cooler weather.’
‘How many people other than Sister Ludmila and her staff knew you and Miss Manners used to meet at The Sanctuary?’
‘Not many I think.’
‘She mentioned The Sanctuary and her interest in it to District Superintendent Merrick, though?’
‘She must have done.’
‘Why must have done?’
‘On the night she was missing he called there.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He told me so himself – during my interrogation. He said he called at The Sanctuary because he remembered Miss Manners saying something about the place. I expect he made particular note of it because it was the same place he’d found me the previous February.’
‘Did he tell you what he discovered when he called at The Sanctuary looking for Miss Manners?’
‘He said Sister Ludmila admitted Miss Manners had been there but had left just as it got dark. So then he called at my house and spoke to my aunt.’
‘Because Sister Ludmila told him that you and Miss Manners had often been at The Sanctuary togeth
er?’
‘Perhaps. He would have called at my house anyway.’
‘He was well acquainted with the fact that you and Miss Manners were friends?’
‘Of course.’
‘You have said that occasionally you visited Miss Manners at the MacGregor House. Did you ever meet Mr Merrick there?’
‘No. She kept us well apart.’
‘Kept you apart? Because of what had happened between you and Mr Merrick when he took you in for questioning that first time?’
‘She didn’t know until much later that Merrick had been personally involved in that. She kept us apart because she assumed in any case Mr Merrick wouldn’t approve of our friendship.’
‘I’m not sure why you use this expression – keeping apart.’
‘He became a personal friend of Miss Manners too.’
‘I see. You say became. You mean he became friendly with her after you and she had already established a friendly association.’
‘Yes. He was on the maidan during the War Week Exhibition and saw her leave her English friends and come up and speak to me. Until then, so far as I know, he’d never taken any notice of her. After that he started inviting her out.’
‘If his interview with you after your drinking bout left him under the strong impression that you were a man on whom the police should keep an eye – as seems to have been the case – it would follow, I think, that directly he saw you and Miss Manners were on friendly terms he would feel it his duty to try to protect her from what in his view was an undesirable association?’
‘Yes, that could follow. It’s a very reasonable explanation.’
‘Did he in fact ever say anything to her about her association with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘She told you this?’
‘Yes. It came up when I took her home after we’d visited the Tirupati temple.’
‘She told you Mr Merrick disapproved of her going out with you?’
‘She said Merrick’s view was that I was a bad bet.’
‘What was your reaction to that?’
‘I said that Merrick should know if I was a bad bet or not.’
‘Were you quarrelling?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Over something that happened at the temple?’
‘Why do people who have grown fond of each other quarrel? I was in an over-sensitive mood. We both were. I realized what a ridiculous figure I made and what a lot of time she was wasting on me. She accused me of acting in a way calculated to put her off, which was true. That’s when she told me Merrick said I was a bad bet. I told her he should know. I thought she always understood that Merrick was personally involved in that trouble I’d been in. It turned out she didn’t. It made her feel she’d been made a fool of – unwittingly going out with Merrick as well as me. We parted on not very good terms.’
‘But later you made it up?’
A pause.
‘You’re forgetting. We’d just come from the temple. I haven’t seen Miss Manners since the night we visited the temple.’
‘What night was that?’
‘A Saturday. Three weeks before the night I was arrested under suspicion of assaulting her with five other men.’
Rowan leaned back again and turned to Gopal. ‘I think we’re now back to the question of the order and time at which he alleged certain things were done and certain things said. You were anxious to clarify that. Perhaps you would like to ask the questions.’
‘Thank you.’
Gopal sipped water while reading a note on his file. Then he put the glass down, again dabbed his lips with the folded handkerchief. ‘You were taken from 12 Chillianwallah Bagh at approximately 21.45, by truck to police headquarters in the Civil lines. You were held for perhaps a minute or less in a room where you saw five men whose faces you recognized even if you couldn’t immediately recall all their names. You were then taken to a room downstairs. Up until this time, you allege, you were not told the reason for your removal from your home to police headquarters?’
‘I wasn’t told.’
‘At 12 Chillianwallah Bagh the police entered the room and apprehended you without saying anything?’
‘Things were said, but not about the reason for the arrest.’
‘What sort of things were said? Can you recall, for instance, the police officer’s first words to you?’
‘He didn’t speak for a while.’
‘What then did he do?’
‘He stood and smiled at me.’
‘Smiled?’
‘I also noticed a nervous tic develop on his right cheek.’
‘A smile and a nervous tic.’
‘Then he pointed at the clothes lying on the floor and asked me if I’d just taken them off. I told him I had. He told me to put them on again. I asked him why. He said – Because you’re coming with me. We’re going to have another of our chats.’
‘Did you obey immediately?’
‘Not immediately. I asked him what we were going to have a chat about. He said I would find out. Then he asked if I would dress myself or prefer to be dressed forcibly. There were several constables with him, so I changed back into the clothes I’d taken off. Then I went downstairs with two constables holding my wrists behind my back. My aunt was being held in the living-room. I could hear her calling out to me. I wasn’t allowed to see or speak to her. I was put into the back of a truck and driven to police headquarters.’
‘Where you saw the five other men who had been arrested, one of whom said, “Hello, Hari” – a greeting which you did not return because unlike these other five you were not feeling like laughing and joking. When you saw these men, saw them behind bars – what conclusion did you reach?’
‘Conclusion?’
‘You saw they had been arrested, as you had been. What did you think they’d been arrested for?’
‘I assumed they’d been caught drinking their home-made liquor.’
‘Their demeanour was commensurate with that of boys who had broken a minor law and were still under the influence of liquor?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what was going through your mind about the possible causes of your own arrest?’
‘I felt it could only have something to do with Miss Manners.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Merrick had been at my house earlier asking for her. People were very edgy that night. A European woman had been attacked out in a place called Tanpur while trying to protect an Indian teacher from her mission. The man had been murdered and she had been knocked about. Some of the country police had been locked in their own stations by roving mobs. Telegraph wires were down and people were talking about a new Mutiny. As you know, there’d been a lot of arrests early that morning from Gandhi all down the line. For instance Mr Srinivasan had been arrested – as a leading member of the Local Congress Party sub-committee. I knew I couldn’t be arrested for any political reason, but it seemed likely I’d be the first to get arrested if the police thought something had happened to Miss Manners.’
‘So really your arrest was not such a puzzle to you, you are saying?’
‘I’m merely telling you what was passing through my mind. I’m answering the question. I’m telling you that and stating again that I was in custody for a long time before the District Superintendent actually accused me of criminal assault. Once he’d done that I realized from other things he’d said and asked me that the five men upstairs were supposed to have been my accomplices in that assault.’
‘Very well. Let us come to the moment when you were taken downstairs. What was the first thing that happened?’
‘I was ordered to strip.’
‘Who gave the order?’
‘The District Superintendent.’
‘In this room there were yourself, the District Superintendent and two constables?’
‘At this stage, yes.’
‘When you were stripped the DSP then inspected you as you have previously described?’
�
��When I was stripped the two constables held me with my arms behind my back, in front of Merrick’s desk. Merrick sat on the desk and poured himself a glass of whisky. Then he just sat and smiled at me until he’d drunk it. He took about five minutes to drink it. After that he stood up, carried out the inspection and said, “So you’ve been clever enough to wash, we nearly caught you at it, didn’t we?” I asked him why I’d been brought in. He said I’d find out. He said we had plenty of time. He told me to relax because we had a lot to talk about. He then ordered the constables to manacle my wrists behind me. When they’d done that he sent them out of the room.’ Kumar paused. ‘Then he began to talk to me.’
‘You mean, to question you?’
‘No. It was talking mostly. Every so often he put in a question.’
‘What you describe as talking mostly’ – Gopal said – ‘what kind of talking?’
‘He talked about the history of the British in India. And about his own history. About his ideas. About his views of India’s future and England’s future. And his future. And mine.’
Gopal appeared to be nonplussed. He hesitated before saying, ‘Why should he talk about such things? You are remembering accurately? The impression one has been getting is that District Superintendent exerted himself a great deal first to find Miss Manners and then to bring her attackers to book. Now you are saying he sat and talked to you about such irrelevancies.’
‘They weren’t irrelevancies to him.’
‘You are saying that to talk to you about the history of the British in India was just as important at that moment to District Superintendent as to question you about your movements that evening?’
‘Neither talking nor questioning was of paramount importance to him.’
‘Not of paramount importance? What are you suggesting was?’