Night Train to Jamalpur(22)

I paused to light a cigarette, hearing:

‘The zoo animals are really all very friendly. They come up to be scratched.’

‘Not the tigers, though?’

‘Of course not! If the tigers came up to be scratched, I’d want my money back.’

I saw Lydia with a glass of lemonade at a corner table. As I approached her, I heard:

‘What do female Sikhs look like?’

‘Search me.’

‘Because I mean, it’s not as if they wear turbans, do they?’

Lydia had also heard this exchange, and she rolled her eyes at me as I approached.

She stood, and we kissed. She wore a rather slight white dress, which made her look very brown.

‘I hope you found a lot of criminality at Jamalpur, Jim,’ she said, pushing back her hair, which had come loose behind. I sat down. A bearer was approaching, but he was delayed by a European who was standing his way and lighting a cigar. The bearer bowed at the man as if to acknowledge that this one of the most ridiculously big cigars ever seen.

I said, ‘Tell you about it in a minute. Where’s Bernadette?’

‘Oh, where do you think? At a tea dance.’

‘A tea dance where?’

‘The Wednesday Club.’

‘But it’s not even Wednesday.’

‘It is, Jim,’ said the wife, leaning forward. ‘It’s been Wednesday all day. It’s just a little affair,’ she added, smiling. ‘Dancing to the gram.’

The Wednesday Club . . . that was in a pavilion near the cathedral, a five-minute tonga ride along Chowringhee. ‘She’s with the girls?’ I said.

‘Of course she is.’

Her two new best friends: Claudine Askwith, daughter of William Askwith, Traffic Superintendent of the East Indian Railways, and Ann Poole, daughter of Douglas Poole, Deputy Assistant Traffic Manager (Goods). The waiter came up and I ordered a lemonade.

‘Not having your beer, Jim?’

‘I’ll have it when Bernadette comes back – when we go through to dinner.’

‘Now,’ said the wife. ‘The trip to this Jamalpur place. Spill.’

‘Spill’ was one of Bernadette’s words. It meant ‘tell all’. The wife was expecting an account of the factory visit, but what she got was an account of a murder, albeit presented as the work of dacoits, which is what it almost certainly had been.

‘So you’re blaming the Indians?’ she said.

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘You look exhausted, Jim.’ The wife put her left hand on mine, and raised her right for the waiter. ‘A Beck’s beer for my husband, please,’ she said.

‘I’m quite happy with lemonade.’

‘You’re not,’ she said. And it was true that I hadn’t actually touched the stuff.

I said, ‘Don’t tell Bernadette about it,’ and the wife nodded.

When the beer came, Lydia said, ‘It’s known to be dangerous, isn’t it? That stretch of line?’

‘How do you know?’

‘William Askwith called earlier this evening. He said, “I hope’s Jim’s all right.” Well, not in so many words. He said, “I trust Captain Stringer had a safe and satisfactory journey on the down express.”’

‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘How did Askwith even know I was going there?’

‘I suppose Bernadette must have told Claudine, who told him.’

‘And why was he telephoning anyway?’

‘Oh, just to say that Eleanor would be collecting the girls from the dance and bringing them here.’

My mind swung back – as it always did at mention of William Askwith’s name – to the theft of the Schedule C dossier. Before its loss, I had gleaned that it referred to corruption or embezzlement in the traffic department, and William Askwith was the head of traffic. Did he seem crooked? No. But then those public school and Oxford types (or was it Cambridge in Askwith’s case?) never did. That was the whole purpose of their education: to stop them coming over as the rogues they frequently were. That said, Askwith was worth a mint, and there was something odd about him: he was too formal in his speech, talked like a copy book. He was like a sort of parody of a swell. And he seemed to have no face to speak of, just a white oval beneath his sola topee. His light blue eyes appeared to be too small, but not as much too small as his nose or mouth. He had no hair to speak of either, and looked as though he never had had any. His wife, Eleanor, seemed all right to me, although Lydia thought her a snob. She was a rather elongated, worthy woman, not quite beautiful, and that went for her daughter, Claudine, too. Their faces were medieval somehow, like the faces of women on paintings in churches. Whereas their daughters had formed an instant, if competitive, friendship, Lydia and Eleanor Askwith had got off on the wrong foot. To the best of my recollection, Lydia had been on the edge of a group taking tea in one of the hotels, and Eleanor Askwith had been at the centre of the group. She had been ignoring Lydia (according to Lydia) and had said, ‘If only we had one other person we could play bridge.’