Night Train to Jamalpur(108)

Bernadette put down her magazine, kicked off her shoes, and curled her legs up beneath her. She eyed me.

‘Spill,’ she said.

She meant that I was to tell her the full story of the killing of John Young, followed by the full story of the snakes on the trains, as I had promised to do. I gave her the two stories, with Lydia looking up and scowling at me whenever I became too graphic in describing the effects of snake bites. I would certainly not be disclosing the distressing details of Anne Kerry’s statement for example, which I had brought along with me, together with all the papers I could get hold of touching on the snakes. I rather fancied there was book in it all, something in the Edgar Wallace line. I had my future to consider, given that I would soon be resigning from the Commission of Enquiry, thereby letting down Bennett (not that he wouldn’t be keen to see the back of me), but also, and more importantly, my chief in York who had recommended me in the first place.

Perhaps the R.K. would come up trumps, and push a lot of money my way for turning up some small-gauge railway kit in Blighty. Or perhaps that had been nothing more than a fleeting notion in the mind of a young man with a generous nature and far too much money. My speculations on that front were, of course, kept from Bernadette, as were those concerning the perhaps-dubious behaviour of her friend Claudine’s father, William Askwith.

But as my mind ran along these lines, Bernadette was still considering the matter of Charles Sermon. Picking her magazine up again, she said, ‘Well, it shows the racial question should not come into matters of romance.’

‘Yes,’ said Lydia, breaking off from her work to look with approval at her daughter.

‘You feel sorry for Mr Sermon, then?’ I asked Bernadette.

‘No . . . No, I don’t. It’s the horse I feel sorry for. I think your Deo Rana jolly well should go to jail for shooting the horse in the head, at least for a while.’

But Deo Rana had been released from the Alipore Jail early the previous evening, the murder charge against him dropped. Then, towards midnight, a package had been left for me at the hotel reception: a single silver cigar tube with a Havana inside it, and a rolled-up note:

See how you go along with this. A better class of smoke than you’re used to.

Yours,

Fisher.

Squinting through the window slats, I said, ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s interested in seeing a superb assortment of East Indian Railway tank engines?’

The wife looked up at me, and smiled: ‘You’re right about that, Jim.’