Night Train to Jamalpur(13)
8. I had verified the loss from the pocket book in the presence of Fisher. He had picked it up using a handkerchief so as not to disturb fingerprints. I told him that my fingerprints were already on the thing, and I told him of my conversation with Young, of which he seemed to have been unaware. He had been asleep throughout, he said.
9. Hovering in the doorway as I spoke had been the elderly Englishman, the Reverend Canon Peter Selwyn. Major Fisher had broken off from talking to me and turned towards Selwyn. ‘Why the hell are you going to Jamalpur?’ Fisher had asked him. Selwyn had replied, ‘Now I am sure you can phrase that more politely if you try.’ ‘But I’m not going to try,’ Fisher had shot back, and Selwyn had answered, but directing his words to me. It seemed he’d booked to preach in the railway chapel at Jamalpur. Perhaps we didn’t realise that half the apprentices were Christian? Yes, they were mainly Catholic, and he was part of the Indian Anglican Church but Selwyn was a great friend of Father somebody or other, and his trip to Jamalpur was a very important part of the ecumenical mission of St Paul’s. ‘Is that so?’ Fisher had asked with folded arms. He had then unfolded his arms, and ordered everyone out of the murder compartment. It was to be sealed off until it could be examined by the fingerprint bureau of Calcutta C.I.D. (since the East Indian Railway force did not run to a fingerprint bureau of its own).
10. As for the two servants in the first class carriage . . . They were both Mohammedans, and both called Mohammed. They were both in the late fifties or early sixties, and they had been sleeping in the servants’ compartment when they heard the shot. Both seemed decent sorts, and John Young’s man appeared very cut-up about what had happened to his master. They could not be considered suspects to my mind.
11. Having sealed the murder compartment, Fisher had instructed the watch-and-ward men to walk the length of the train looking for any suspicious characters. They had reported back fifteen minutes later: ‘No anti-social elements, huzoor.’
12. As regards the investigation of the crime, it would obviously not fall to Fisher and me, as Fisher knew very well in spite of all his shouting. We were witnesses merely. When the shot was fired, we were within the railway police district of Jamalpur. An Indian sub-inspector had been despatched by light engine along the line from there, and had arrived at about four o’clock in the morning – nearly three hours after the shot had been fired. When he arrived, he went into the sealed compartment and searched it, with Fisher shouting at him to beware of disturbing any fingerprints, at which the sub-inspector had coolly replied that he knew his job, and would do it much better without someone yelling in his ear.
13. The sub-inspector had been unable to find a bullet in the murder compartment. It had, he said, gone clean through John Young’s head, and drilled into the wood of the carriage roof. It might never be recovered. The sub-inspector had then searched the other four first class compartments, and politely asked all the occupants to turn out their pockets and bags. In the process, he uncovered one gun: mine, with its three bullets in the barrel. I explained that it was my old service revolver, a Webley Mark 6, and that I carried it everywhere. I had assumed that Major Fisher did the same with his old service revolver. He certainly provoked enough people to justify carrying a gun. I could not swear to have seen Major Fisher’s pistol, but I was sure I had noticed the bulge of it under his top coat when we had boarded at Calcutta. However, no gun of any sort was found in Fisher’s compartment, and he was not asked about any gun.
14. As for Canon Peter Selwyn, he had apparently not much more than his overnight things and two books. One was the Bible; the other was called By the Light of Uranus, and it was not a book about astronomy. It contained some rather singular illustrations, and was stamped ‘Not to be taken into England’.
15. The sub-inspector did know his job. He also knew that the searches were really just for form’s sake. Everyone had been milling about outside the train for hours. Anybody could have got rid of anything just by pitching it into the dust, and I wondered why Selwyn had not tried this with By the Light of Uranus. Perhaps he felt the risk of being caught in the act to be too great.
16. One thing I myself noticed as missing when the sub-inspector came up was the reservation chart for the carriage. This was supposed to be posted up in a wood-and-glass frame on the exterior of the carriage, by either one of the two end doors. These charts listed the names of those who had reserved compartments. The compartment numbers were also written on the coupons given out with the tickets at the booking offices, and these numbers were supposed to correspond to those on the reservation charts. Therefore the reservation charts were to remind people of what they already knew, and prevent mix-ups in the crush of boarding. But there had been no crush on boarding the night train to Jamalpur, and I had not looked for the reservation chart at Howrah, so I did not know whether it had been there at that point or not. The glass of the cases was often smashed, and the charts were often lost en route, or never posted up in the first place, especially if there had been many late bookings or cancellations. Since the sleeping car attendant had got off at Howrah after seeing the passengers aboard, there was no one to ask about it during the stoppage except the train guard. He was Anglo-Indian, and more Indian that Anglo. He’d heard of the dead man, John Young: ‘A fine fellow – example to us all.’ The guard was sure dacoits had been responsible. They knew about the stop for the single-line working, and since it took place in a remote spot, the train was an easy target. ‘I am betting you,’ he kept saying. He could throw no light on the matter of the reservation chart.