‘So what did you do?’
Pettigrew shrugged, sighed. ‘I suppose a decent cup of coffee is beyond the realms of possibility? I have this dream of a creamy cappuccino.’
Brock took out his phone and called Maggie. She said she’d see what she could do.
‘So,’ Pettigrew went on, ‘what I did was to call Shari on the number she’d given me, to try to get some impression of who I was dealing with. And, I have to say, I was quite impressed. She sounded like an intelligent, well-educated young woman. She explained that she was seeking a publisher for a manuscript that had been in her family for many years, of which she had given me a copy of the first page. I said, fine, come to my office and we can discuss it, but she wouldn’t do that. She insisted that she would meet only myself, and the project must remain confidential between us until we had signed an agreement. She said she would meet me somewhere neutral and show me other material she had, but if I refused to do this she would go elsewhere. So I agreed. She told me to meet her the next morning at the Pergola on West Heath. Do you know it?’
Brock shook his head.
‘It’s one of Hampstead Heath’s hidden treasures, a long pergola structure in the Hill Gardens, with a rotunda and belvedere. We met at ten, and we had the place to ourselves. Again, I was impressed. She seemed respectable, sensible, rather studious. She told me she had only arrived in the UK a few days ago from Kolkata, and I asked her if she was involved in publishing over there. She said no, but she was very interested in literature, and mentioned some authors she particularly admired—Naipaul, Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, McEwan and, of course, Orwell. Then she told me the story of how she came to have this manuscript, and why she was bringing it to me.
‘She said that she came from a family of merchants from West Bengal, and Amar Dasgupta was her great-grandfather. They dealt in precious stones, and in 1927 Amar was sent to Burma to buy rubies and sapphires. On his way to the fabled Valley of Rubies at Mogok in Upper Burma, he fell ill and stopped in the small town of Katha to recover. There, in a hospital on the bank of the Irrawaddy River, he met the local police superintendent, a young Englishman of his own age, who was recuperating from a bout of dengue fever. His name was Eric Blair.
‘According to Shari, the two men became friends, and to pass the time discussed a book that Blair was thinking about writing, based on his experiences in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, in which he’d been serving for the past five years. Blair was thoroughly disillusioned with the role of the British in India and Burma, and the whole idea of the British Empire, and he wanted to expose it in a novel. Dasgupta, on the other hand, had been brought up to believe the opposite, and together they worked out a story in which two of the main characters—Flory, an Englishman, and Dr Veraswami, an Indian—would debate this. According to Shari, the character of Dr Veraswami was based on an uncle of Dasgupta who was a doctor in Calcutta, and who strongly supported British rule as having brought peace and progress to the subcontinent. Seven years later that novel was finally published as Burmese Days, Blair using the pseudonym George Orwell to avoid libel suits from his former colleagues in Burma. There was no acknowledgement of Amar Dasgupta’s contribution then or later.’
He paused as the door opened and a prison officer came in with two cappuccinos. ‘Here we are, gents.’
‘Thank you, Kevin,’ Pettigrew said. ‘Much appreciated.’
When the officer had gone, Brock asked, ‘You’re getting on all right with the staff then?’
‘I try to be respectful. But of course they think I’m a murderous maniac, and they don’t turn their backs on me.’ He stared down at the coffee cup. ‘Is there any point in this? I’ve been over it so many times. The police think it’s all irrelevant nonsense, this story, and they’re probably right. I’ve become a character in a terrifying work of fiction, guilty of a horrendous crime I didn’t commit. Sometimes, for a minute or two, I might be distracted and forget, but then I blink and the feeling of nausea swells up inside me again. I can’t escape. The fact that everyone who’s ever known me seems as shocked as I am doesn’t really help. It just makes me feel more helpless.’
‘Let’s finish the story,’ Brock said quietly. He was thinking that Pettigrew was one of the most articulate suspects he’d ever interviewed, but that would probably count against him in court, magnifying the horror of his crime.
Pettigrew sighed, then after a moment continued. ‘Shari’s story moved on twenty years. After Independence in 1947, things were very turbulent in Bengal as elsewhere in India. East Bengal separated to become East Pakistan, with many Muslims from Calcutta fleeing there, and many Hindus from the east pouring in to take their place. The Dasgupta family, as Hindus, were secure enough in Calcutta, but their business was very volatile. Many refugees needed to raise money and were trying to sell their jewels cheaply, but there were few buyers. Eventually, in 1949, in an attempt to find a new market, Amar sailed to London to try to drum up some business in Hatton Garden. While he was there, he made inquiries about his old friend Eric Blair, whose progress as a famous author Amar had been following. By this time Orwell had published most of his great works—Animal Farm, most recently—and had finished writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, his final published novel.
‘Amar learned that Blair was seriously ill with tuberculosis, staying in the Cranham sanatorium in the Cotswolds, and he decided to go and visit him.’
Pettigrew paused to sip his coffee. ‘Ah,’ he said wistfully, ‘that is very nice. I’m learning how to appreciate the small luxuries, like a few minutes of solitude, or a sleep without nightmares.’
‘Were you persuaded by Shari’s story?’
‘I think by this stage I was almost inclined to believe it, yes. I wasn’t an Orwell specialist by any means, but what she’d told me did fit with all the facts I knew. And I suppose I was rather touched by the thought of these two men, who had first met in a hospital on the other side of the world, meeting again now, twenty years later, in another clinic, one of them close to death.
‘Shari said that Amar was shocked by Blair’s appearance; he was very sickly, confined to bed. He felt the cold keenly, and his handkerchief was spotted with the blood that he was coughing up. But his brain was as sharp as ever, and he was desperate to tell one last great story that would “complete the arc”, as he put it, by returning to Burma with the themes that he’d begun all those years ago in Katha. He had started the project, calling it A Smoking Room Story, but it wasn’t right and he had abandoned it. But now, just when the doctors had insisted on total rest and taken away his typewriter to stop him working, the form of the novel had become clear in his mind.
‘So he and Amar devised a scheme. Each day Amar would visit the hospital and sit with Blair, who would quietly dictate to him the chapter that he had mentally composed during the previous night. Amar would then return to the Black Horse Inn, where he was staying in the town, and type up the chapter while Blair rested, working on the next. They did this for a month, and at the end of that time they had a completed work, The Promised Land.
‘Well, I was stunned at that—a complete Orwell novel that no one had ever heard of? Was that really possible? And did it still exist? That’s what I asked Shari, of course. She told me that in the final year of his life, 1990, Amar Dasgupta came to stay with Shari and her widowed mother, who looked after the old man. Shari was a little girl at the time but remembered him clearly, and the box of beautiful coloured precious stones that he brought with him. She knew nothing about the Orwell manuscript until earlier this year, however, when her mother finally told her Amar’s story. According to Amar, when the novel was finished Blair told him that he was going to repay the debt he owed Amar for making first Burmese Days and now The Promised Land possible, by giving him the novel, to have it published as he pleased and to own the copyright and royalties. Amar was overwhelmed, of course, but Blair insisted and signed the declaration on the first page of the manuscript.
‘Amar had already stayed too long in Englan
d, and his family were demanding that he return to India, which he did soon after, taking the novel with him. He told Shari’s mother that he had never done anything with it, other business being always more pressing, but now he wished to give it to her, to secure the future of herself and her daughter Shari. The old man died, Shari’s mother put the package away and forgot about it until early this year, when she was told that she had breast cancer. Thinking of all the loose ends she should tie up in her life, she remembered Amar’s legacy and told Shari about it. Shari was now a graduate of the University of Calcutta, where she had studied English literature, and was thrilled by these revelations. According to her mother, Blair had told Amar not to go to his regular Orwell publishers, Secker and Warburg, as it might create complications, but instead to approach another excellent London publisher, Mortimer Pettigrew of Golden Press, who was a personal friend. And so, finally, three generations later, here she was, talking to me.’
‘It is a good story,’ Brock said. ‘And then I suppose she asked for money.’
Pettigrew gave a tight smile, drained the last of the coffee and nodded. ‘You’re a cynic, Brock. Yes, she asked for money. She said she was almost broke and she wanted to bring her mother to London for treatment. She thought that the manuscript would be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds on the open market, and an initial advance of ten thousand would be reasonable to secure sole access to test the authenticity of the work. I replied that so far all I had seen was one sheet of paper, and I’d need to see more before I agreed to pay anything. And what was this “other material” she had mentioned on the phone?
‘She reached into the bag she was carrying and produced another envelope like the one she had put through my door. From it she took a photograph—black-and-white, old, creased, a bit fuzzy, but still quite legible, of two men sitting side by side. I recognised Orwell straight away, that funny little moustache. I always wondered about that moustache—he hated the Empire, and yet he insisted on wearing that trademark of a 1920s colonial officer until the end of his life, even when he was down and out in Paris and washing dishes and the management wanted him to shave it off. Anyway, it certainly looked like him, sitting in an armchair with a blanket wrapped around him, and next to him a middle-aged Indian man beaming at the camera.
‘Okay, I said. Anything else? And she produced an old envelope bearing a George VI penny red postage stamp postmarked Cranham, 30 August 1949, and addressed with the same shaky handwriting to A. Dasgupta Esq. at the Savoy Hotel, The Strand, London. From inside she pulled out the single page of a letter from Blair to Amar, thanking him for his visit, telling him they were increasing his streptomycin injections and reassuring him that he would be alive and well to attend “your publication party for The Promised Land”.
‘And what about the manuscript itself? I asked. Did you bring that? But she shook her head. She said she would put that in my hands when I had ten thousand pounds, in cash, ready for her. I told her I would think about it and let her know, and we parted.’
Pettigrew raised an eyebrow at Brock. ‘What would you have done if you’d been in my position?’
‘Some research?’
‘Yes, exactly. I went home and reread Orwell’s biography, checking the details of her story, and everything seemed to fit—the dates, the places, the circumstances. Then I got on the internet and found that the Orwell archive is held by University College London and much of the material can be viewed on the web. I found they had the notebook in which Orwell had started to write that abortive last novel Shari mentioned, A Smoking Room Story, just a couple of handwritten pages. You can call up photos of the pages on the computer and I compared the writing to the note at the top of that first page of The Promised Land, and to my eye it looked identical. I just couldn’t fault anything she’d told me. I would have liked to speak to the scholars at UCL to see what they thought, but I was afraid that if I involved anyone else word would get out and there would be a bidding war for the manuscript.
‘So I waited, and thought about it, and finally phoned her on the following Monday, the nineteenth. I said I agreed to her terms, and we arranged to meet at the Pergola on Wednesday morning, when we would exchange the manuscript for the ten thousand and a preliminary contract that I would draw up and we would both sign.
‘She never showed up. I waited an hour, tried her phone but it went to messages. I had a horrible feeling that she’d approached someone else and got a better deal, but I tried to convince myself it was for the best. Then, that evening, she phoned me and said that she’d read about the murder on Hampstead Heath the previous day on her way to the meeting and it had frightened her and she’d turned back. Also, she’d phoned her mother in Calcutta, who was angry because she’d only asked for ten thousand up front and should have demanded twenty. She explained to her mother that, if all went well, this would be only a preliminary payment and there would be much more later, but her mother said she didn’t have time to spare.
‘I decided to put my foot down at that point. I said no, we’d made a deal, take it or leave it. She got upset and rang off, and I didn’t hear from her again until the following Monday morning. She said she’d stick with our original agreement and would come to my house that evening with the manuscript. She asked that I tell no one about our arrangement, and I agreed.’
‘So this was the evening before her body was discovered.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it your suggestion she come to your house?’
‘No, it was she who insisted on it.’
Brock noticed a change in Pettigrew’s manner, the man becoming more hesitant, a slightly puzzled expression on his face as he described what happened.
‘She arrived at eight pm as arranged.’
‘Had you had anything to eat or drink at that stage?’
‘I had a biscuit and cheese while I waited for her, and a whisky. Well, a couple of whiskies, actually. She seemed nervous, and cold—it was a chilly night and she had only a light jacket. I took her into the living room, in front of the fire. She was carrying a plastic carrier bag—Sainsbury’s, I think. I asked if I could get her anything and she said a glass of wine would be nice, so I fetched a bottle and glasses. She apologised for the delay and said her mother had been difficult, understandably in view of her illness. She said it would help matters if I could give her some idea of how much she might expect as an advance against royalties if I was satisfied with the manuscript, and we talked about that.’
Brock said, ‘What was the atmosphere like? Was she excited? Flirtatious?’
‘No, nothing like that. It was a bit strained, in fact. I tried to put her at ease by telling her how Orwell had been there in that room and so on, but the conversation was awkward. She drank her wine quickly, and I poured her another glass, and then she said that she had the manuscript in her bag and if I fetched her money she would let me look at it. So I went to my study and got the envelope of cash I’d collected from the bank earlier in the day and we made the exchange.
‘The manuscript was maybe an inch thick, about two hundred pages, and I immediately began checking to make sure there were no blank pages. It looked very convincing. As I thumbed through I saw places where Orwell had made alterations with a pencil and I became quite excited to feel it there in my hands, an amazing piece of literary history.’ He looked at Brock with a rueful smile. ‘A once-in-a-lifetime publishing scoop, that’s what I was thinking.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well … she counted the cash, and I became engrossed in the manuscript, and she left and eventually I went to bed.’
‘You remember her leaving?’
‘Um … not really, no. I was so engrossed in the book, you see. I don’t remember much else about the evening, to be honest. I know that sounds a bit weak—the police quizzed me about it over and over—but I was just so taken up with the book.’
‘Can you remember it now, what you read?’
‘Well, sort of … I couldn’t write it down.’
> ‘The gist, the story?’
‘It’s a bit vague. Possibly I’d had a bit too much to drink, and I was tired … I know it doesn’t sound convincing, but it’s like … trying to remember a beautiful dream that’s elusive and always just out of reach. There was a very strong scene with a beheading, I remember, and an evil man, powerful and corrupt, hovering in the background of the story like a dark shadow. It haunts me.’ He rubbed his eyes in frustration.
‘And the next morning?’
‘My alarm went off as usual. I got up and went to work.’
‘What about the manuscript? Did you look at it again?’
‘No … I thought I must have locked it up in the safe in the study, and I decided to leave it till I returned that evening. I know, the police say they couldn’t find any manuscript, and I can’t explain that. Or, rather, there’s only one explanation—someone broke into my house and murdered Shari and stole the manuscript.’
Pettigrew let out another long sigh, shook his head. ‘I know, I know. Maggie tells me that the police are saying the forensic evidence doesn’t support that theory, but if they’d just get their noses out of their microscopes they’d realise it must be true. No one who has known me can believe I could have murdered those women. And that manuscript was authentic, I’d swear to it. Some people would commit murder for a thing like that, a unique treasure.’
‘Maggie tells me you don’t have an alibi for the times of the first two Heath murders.’
‘Yes, that’s true. I was feeling unwell on the Tuesday morning of the first one and was late getting into work, and I was alone at home on the Saturday afternoon of the second one, probably asleep at the time it happened. But isn’t that supportive, in a way? If I was the Heath killer, surely I would have made up some kind of alibi for myself. The fact that I didn’t shows my innocence!’
The Promised Land Page 7