Night Train to Jamalpur(103)

Earlier that day, I had questioned the head of traffic, William Askwith, on the point. He was still in Darjeeling (although just about to return) so I had spoken to him by telephone. I had told him the story of Sermon, and he had found it ‘both horrible and deeply sad’, but it also seemed to me that he was relieved I was not calling on another matter.

Regarding Sermon, he said, ‘We British started crooked on the Anglo-Indian question, and crooked we have remained.’ For him, the Anglos were an important prop of British rule, and they were the crucial prop when it came to running the railways. He himself had always made efforts to bring them on. Yes, he had seen Sermon together with the girl at a couple of social events at about the time of the end of the war. He did not believe they had been ostracised. ‘It was more a case of people being bemused, or even, I’m afraid, amused. Sermon was a lifelong bachelor you know . . . I suppose the pair of them might have thought they were being cold-shouldered.’

Lydia said, ‘I don’t quite see how the death of the girl could have triggered it all. I mean, she would presumably have died of the cancer even if she’d married him and stayed here? So how can he blame the Railway for that?’

There could be no answer, except to say that the death of the girl had put Sermon into a rage.

We continued our walk.

Lydia said, ‘And tell me again . . . why were the police constables at the zoo?’

‘They were accompanying Superintendent Bennett. He’d gone there either to question or arrest Hedley Fleming. He suspected there might be trouble, but at the last minute he’d asked them to hang back, and he’d gone into Fleming’s office alone.’

‘But Fleming was quite innocent?’

‘Quite. In fact, he’d begun his own investigation of the matter, which is why he’d been going off to the railway lands . . . as observed by Dougie Poole. There’s more to him than meets the eye, you know.’

‘Which is probably just as well.’

‘I approve of Dougie Poole. He says he hasn’t much “character” but in spite of everything, he’s dogged. He’s what I call a “stickler”.’

‘That’s the wrong use of the word.’

‘But you know what I mean. The way he—’

‘“Tenacious” is what you mean.’

‘The way he agreed to come out to India because his wife wanted it . . . he tried his best for her, but then when he saw he wasn’t cut out for the life, he made the decision to take his family back home. As for his difficulties at work . . . he found the system used in the office too complicated, and he put up with it for a while; then he came up with a better one. Finally, he tried to find out who the snake man was, and he’d identified his suspect and begun shadowing him. It was the wrong suspect, but I bet he’d have got on the track of the right one before long.’

‘I don’t see him beating his drink addiction,’ said Lydia.

‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to.’

‘What about the snake he had when he was a boy? What kind was it after all?’

‘I still don’t know. He’d written in about adders, but when I think of it now, he was only asking for advice on them. That’s no proof he actually kept one. Perhaps he knew that letter had survived in the collected volumes. Perhaps he also knew it might be a hostage to fortune given what was happening on the trains, so he tried to muddy the waters about what his true interest had been. But he didn’t cut out the page of the Insty’s edition of The Captain. Sermon did that to throw suspicion on Poole.’

‘But from what you say, he went inside the building to get the book, and came out a moment later with the page cut. So that was quick work.’

‘I believed he used the gardener’s scissors.’

‘To go back to the constables at the zoo . . .’ said Lydia. ‘They saw Deo Rana shoot Sermon.’

‘Apparently they said they had a clear sight of it, through the open door of the tonga; and they make out that it wasn’t necessary for Deo to shoot Sermon.’

‘But Sermon held a gun.’

‘They say he was giving the gun up.’

‘Why would they say that?’

‘Perhaps they really think it. I don’t know what they really think.’

‘But Deo Rana was only protecting you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And he could end up hanged?’

‘Or in jail for a long time.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘Something.’

We had come to a stand.

‘How do you know all that about Sermon anyway?’

‘From the confession of the mali, from diary entries and other material found in his flat.’