Night Train to Jamalpur(15)

Fisher and I then got round to the job that had taken us to Jamalpur in the first place: touring the site. Neither Hughes nor the sub-inspectors came on this; instead we were assigned two constables, which was Hughes’s way of saying he considered the whole Commission of Enquiry business a pantomime, and an impertinent one at that.

Anything metal at Jamalpur was too hot to touch, and all day long, the air was overcharged with black smoke from the foundry chimney. We were shown the railway barracks, the railway hostels, the railway college, railway cinema, railway sports grounds, and the railway golf course. We saw the railway workshops: iron foundry pattern shop, brass fitting shop, turning shop, erecting shop, carpentry shop, paint shop. Hughes said they made almost any part of a train on site except wheels, which seemed perverse of them. Wheels were supplied externally, principally by a company called Macpherson Trading of Calcutta, and we were shown a siding full of flatbed wagons, loaded with Macpherson wheels. Our inspection completed, Major Fisher had informed Hughes that there were two entrances to most of the sheds. Hughes had said, ‘I know that.’ ‘There should only be one, shouldn’t there?’ Fisher had said. ‘So you want to rebuild the whole complex?’ Hughes had enquired, and Fisher had said that it would be cheaper than continuing to sustain the present astronomical losses to pilfering. Single entrances, manned by trusted guards, would help stop the leakage. Fisher said he would be recommending there be half as many guards at present, but that they should be paid twice as much. They would then be less liable to accept backhanders. Well, that put the kybosh on the evening. Fisher should have put forward his suggestions later on – preferably in writing from Calcutta, and with a few ‘may-I-suggests’ to sugar the pill.

At four o’clock we all went to tea at the mansion of the Chief Locomotive Superintendent, a fellow called Ryan, late of the Midland Railway. Hughes barely said a word, and Fisher was his usual gracious self. Consequently the grandfather clock in the Ryans’ hot, dark drawing room seemed to have a very loud tick indeed, as I stood about eating Dundee cake and feeling spare. Mrs Ryan had tried her best to make things ‘go’. Summoning a bearer, she’d said, ‘There’s Darjeeling or Assam tea, Major Fisher. Or will you take a glass of sherry? Do say yes.’

‘No,’ was all I heard.

After the tea party, Fisher performed his vanishing act again, retreating to his room in the hostel. Hughes suggested I might look in at the railway cinema, where a cowboy film was showing; he then cleared off. In the end, I watched some of the apprentices playing cricket. Evidently, these lads were so keen, they played right through the hot weather. Halfway through the game, it broke in on me that the clattering from the workshops had stopped, so that I heard only the spacious sounds of bat and ball, and the occasional shout of encouragement from the field.

I was given a decent room, but I hardly slept. I was thinking about the night train.


III

Fifty miles short of Calcutta, Fisher, having set Colonel Philpott’s Hindustani guide aside, was reading . . . something else, while drawing on a Trichinopoly cigar. The Trichies were little, evil-smelling things, and he got through about forty a day. He appeared to be reading one of the engineering supplements of the Railway Magazine, but he held the thing folded in such a way that I couldn’t properly see, and I knew I’d be in for a dusty answer if I asked. So I put a different question.

‘Do you think the lifting of the Schedule C file had any bearing on the shooting?’

Fisher lowered his magazine slightly.

‘You think they were coming after you?’

‘Given the state of the door, maybe. It’s not impossible, is it?’

‘It’s as good as. It was dacoits. You saw the buggers.’

‘But they might have been acting on behalf of someone else.’

‘Like who?’

‘Whoever was named in the file.’

‘And we don’t know who that was, do we? Since you didn’t get round to reading it.’

And he went back to his magazine.

The time scheme was about right, it seemed to me. The named man, or men, had got wind of the incriminating file. They’d stolen it on Thursday. Once it was in their hands, they’d concluded I must have read through the thing. It then became imperative to do away with me before I could put about what was in it. For all they knew, I might have already had a copy of the file typed up, in which case they would be wasting their time by killing me, but that was a chance they were willing to take. They’d had Friday and a week-end in which to prepare, and they’d come for me on the Monday.