Night Train to Jamalpur(27)

Five minutes later, I had gained the office I shared with Fisher and Jogendra. Fisher’s enormous and sweat-stained sola topee was on the top of a filing cabinet, and Jogendra’s umbrella was propped in the corner, but there was no sign of either man. After checking the drawer to see whether the stolen file had been returned (it had not), I began looking over the Schedule B files concerning graft among junior employees. I was after one particular letter that touched on a certain interesting store room at Sheoraphuli station, which was one of the early stops on the Grand Chord, only about fifteen miles out from Howrah. I fished out the letter and folded it into my pocket book. A visit to Sheoraphuli was on the cards, but I doubted I would get round to it today, for I would be spending most of my time on the railway lands in company with my Gurkha colleague, Deo Rana.

I spent a further hour on the files, until the rising sun discovered the one window in the office, and began raying in ferociously. I called a passing bearer, and he brought me a cup of sweet and milky tea.

I resumed my reading of The Statesman. A ‘communal riot’ had occurred in the district of Faridpur, wherever that was. These were a regular occurrence in Bengal. The phrase meant fighting over religion, generally – in fact always – between Moslems and Hindus, and here was the British Imperialist argument on a plate: if we left, civil war would break out. But I did not think it such a good argument. If we’d gone into India to stop a civil war in the first place, then it might have been. I had moved across the page to an arsenic poisoning case, when Superintendent Christopher Bennett walked in.

‘Would you come through to my office, Jim?’

I followed in the wake of his pipe smoke. He sat down at his desk, and I sat down opposite. There was still nothing on his desk save the tin of St Julien tobacco, and I was beginning to think there should be something on it. For example, a dossier about the dangerous snakes of Bengal. I admit there was some devilment in my question: ‘Have you seen the paper, sir?’

‘Yes,’ Bennett said. ‘Middlesex beat Surrey by three wickets.’

He removed his pipe from his mouth and he smiled, but it was a rather crooked smile. I said, ‘Have you been on to the zoo?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I think they’ve got their hands full giving elephant rides and chimpanzee tea parties.’

Not in the reptile house they didn’t.

The snake trouble was testing his amiability to the limit, but he wouldn’t let on. He was the type who would mop his brow with a folded handkerchief however fast the sweat rolled down. I told him I was about to go off to the railway lands with Deo Rana. ‘He tells me there are snake men there, stealing from the Company.’

‘Snake charmers, you mean?’

‘Not exactly sure.’

‘From what I can see,’ said Bennett, ‘these incidents have done the charmers no end of good . . . the snakes seem more exciting.’ He spoke in a drawling way that I thought rather forced. He sat back, clasping his hands behind his head.

‘Haven’t you and Fisher got rather a lot on without troubling about the snakes? I really do think you can leave those to the regular chaps.’

By which he meant himself. I had know from the ‘off’ that the investigation of the Night Mail shooting would not fall to me, and I was now being warned off the snakes as well. But the snakes interested me, and it seemed to me they did fall within Schedule A of my brief as officially defined.

I heard a rumble of heavy boots on floorboards, and a raised voice from the end of the corridor; it sounded like Fisher.

Superintendent Bennett said, ‘Jim, I’m afraid a certain Detective Inspector Khudayar Khan of the C.I.D. would like to see you about the Jamalpur business.’

He was glad to be able to give me some bad news, I thought, in the light of my forward remarks about snakes.

‘When?’

Bennett removed a chit from his desk drawer. He read it over, replaced it.

‘Seven o’clock today if that’s all right.’

It had clearly better be.

‘Is he seeing Fisher as well?’

Bennett nodded. ‘At six o’clock. Khan’s in the Writers’ Building, you know.’

The Writers’ Building was a long palace that took up the north side of Dalhousie Square, a mixture of government offices and swanky private apartments. The main tram stops were all in front of it.

‘Where’s Fisher now?’

A trace of a smile returned to Bennett’s face. I turned to see Jogendra Babu standing in the doorway. He said, ‘Fisher Sahib away outside. He is having a jolly good cooling off.’

Judging by the yellow blaze of sun at the window of Bennett’s office, I doubted that.