Night Train to Jamalpur(19)

I asked, ‘What were the snakes?’

‘The first – the one at Bally – was a sawscale viper, a small snake. The victim died two hours ago. I’ve just had a wire from the Presidency Hospital. He was an American tourist, travelling alone, name of Walter Gill. He boarded at Howrah – hadn’t booked the compartment—’

‘Had anybody booked a seat in that compartment?’ I cut in.

Bennett shook his head again. ‘There are ten trains a day to Bally. There’s no need to book. The second, the one at Khana, was another common krait. The victim was an old boy: a Colonel Kerry, late of one of the Burma garrisons. The whole thing was seen by his wife, who was sitting opposite. The colonel got up take something off the luggage rack, and according to her, the snake was just suddenly there on the floor between them. The old boy for some reason leant down towards it, and put his hand out . . .’

‘Bloody idiot,’ said Fisher.

‘Got a bite on the wrist. A photograph was sent up from the railway hospital at Khana.’

Bennett took an envelope from his desk drawer; he took a photograph from the envelope. ‘That’s his arm.’

It did not look like an arm.

‘We don’t have a photograph of Gill, but we do know he was paralysed by the bite before he died. His parents have been telephoning around the clock; they’re proposing to take legal action against the Company.’

‘Bloody Americans,’ said Fisher.

‘The common krait’, said Superintendent Bennett, taking up his pipe, ‘eats its own young.’

‘How are there any of them, then?’ I said.

‘Not all its own young, Jim,’ said Bennett, lighting the pipe.

Superintendent Bennett smoked for a while. I watched him do it, but Fisher had his arms folded and his head down; I could have sworn he was thinking of something else entirely. Bennett’s tobacco was called St Julien. The lid of the tin carried an illustration of a man looking very like the superintendent: handsome, rather pink-faced, with swept-back fair hair. The slogan was ‘Keep a cool head.’

‘So that’s four deaths,’ I said. ‘Two by the common krait.’

‘Thanks for reminding me, Jim.’

‘What does a common krait look like?’

‘Not as pretty as a banded krait,’ Bennett said, blowing smoke. ‘Or so I would imagine. In The Jungle Book, a banded krait is the enemy of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.’

At this, Major Fisher looked up: ‘Who’s he, when he’s at home?’

‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a mongoose, Noel. He whispers, “Be careful, I am death.”’

I said, ‘You’ll be getting in the snake experts, I suppose.’

Bennett smoked at me in the approved St Julien manner.

‘Try the zoo,’ I said. ‘Reptile house.’

‘Now there’s a thought,’ said Bennett, smiling, I assumed because he’d had that thought already.

Fisher said, ‘Is whatsisname back from leave?’

By ‘whatsisname’, he meant our assigned clerk. An Indian clerk was a ‘babu’, and this label had somehow got tangled up with our man’s name, so that he was Babu Jogendra Nath Bhattacharji; but I had discovered that it would be equally polite to call him Jogendra Babu for short. Just then, the man himself walked past the open door.

‘Oi!’ called Fisher, and with the briefest of nods to Bennett, he was out of the door and after him.

Christopher Bennett smiled. He was keeping a cool head. Well, he was an easy-going sort, but he was a man under pressure, and the news of the killing of John Young would add to it. Copies of the statements made by Fisher and myself and Canon Peter Selwyn concerning this event were on his desk. Bennett was the coming man of the East Indian Railway force, everyone knew that: detective superintendent at thirty-five or so and bound to be detective chief super before long, which would make him the top man. And he seemed to be progressing without making waves. He was supervising our enquiry team, but it seemed he’d carry that off without putting too many backs up in the Company, especially since not many knew about Schedule C. Bennett was popular with his men. They respected him as a gent, as captain of the police polo team, and as a product of Cambridge University. He was an intellect, and he didn’t go in for bull or undue formality. He said that his dealings with his senior men should be – what was the word? – ‘collegiate’. There were no boastful certificates of merit on the walls of his office, no print of The Midnight Steeplechase, no sporting photographs (even though he was captain of the polo team). Apart from the portrait of the King-Emperor, the only ‘picture’ that hung there was a framed scrap of Indian cotton that was of historical interest in some way. Most Oxford and Cambridge types went in for the Indian civil service, and only ended in the police if they failed the exam, but Bennett had got points for choosing the police, and the railway police at that.