Night Train to Jamalpur(28)

Bennett said, ‘Major Fisher has invited Jogendra Babu to make a formal complaint.’

‘About what?’

‘Himself, sahib,’ said Jogendra Babu. ‘And this I will most certainly be doing.’

He salaamed and continued along the corridor.

Bennett said, ‘Fisher was rather put out because everything to do with the shooting was sent to Jamalpur. He wanted to get his teeth into it, just like you.’

‘But that wasn’t Jogendra Babu’s decision.’

‘It was mine – not that there was any decision to be made. The jurisdiction is with Hughes at Jamalpur.’

‘But now the C.I.D.’s coming in.’

‘Not necessarily, Jim. They might just want to hear your side of the story. By the way, Major Fisher asked me something about you. Requested some data. Thought I’d better tell you.’

He smiled: he was enjoying this as well.

‘He wanted to know if you were going up to Darjeeling. I said I assumed Lydia would be – and your daughter. But I didn’t know about you. He said he wondered whether you would like some company, if you were travelling alone.’

‘With all due respect sir, I don’t believe you.’

‘He didn’t quite couch it like that, no.’

Bennett was looking at his pipe.

‘I think he proposes to accompany you, anyhow.’

‘Are you going up?’ I asked Bennett.

‘Mary will go. I had meant to go with her, but business might keep me here.’

He meant snake business.

I quit Bennett’s office, and returned to my own, where Jogendra Babu was hunting up a file.

I said, ‘Did you manage to get hold of the reservation chart from the Night Mail, Babu-ji?’

He gave a half nod, began fiddling with his wire glasses.

‘Is it available?’

He thought about this for a while. Then he nodded, and said: ‘Is indicated.’

‘What is indicated, Babu-ji? When will it be available?’

‘In the fullness of time, sahib.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it is a murder investigation.’

‘But one you are not undertaking, sahib?’

‘Not officially, no.’

I tried a grin on him; it didn’t really work.

Jogendra Babu said, ‘I am official, Stringer sahib.’

Perhaps by this, he meant that the chart had been sent to Hughes at Jamalpur Junction.

‘But you will see what you can do, Babu-ji?’

‘I am seeing, I am seeing.’

Evidently I had been laying it on a bit thick with the addition of the affectionate ‘ji’.


II

The main part of the Armenian Ghat took the form of wide steps going down into the river. Be-robed Hindus stood on the steps, immersed to varying degrees, watching the wide, brown river and sometimes pouring it over themselves. Fisher stood on the very top step, his boots well clear of the water. He stood with his hands on his hips, and a Trichinopoly cigar in his mouth. I was watching him from behind – from Strand Road – but I could tell about the cigar from the smoke flowing about his enormous and globe-like head. I imagined the smoke as coming from inside his head, for I supposed he was fuming as usual. But I did not believe he was really put out by being blocked from investigating the shooting. I remained watching for a while, and he remained staring fixedly ahead. Not once did he reach up and touch the cigar; he smoked it only by sucking and blowing with his mouth. A sacred cow – or at any rate a cow with ribbons on its horns – was descending the steps to take a drink, and for a while it stood right next to Fisher, looking at the water, and obviously thinking hard, just as Fisher was. But he never gave it a glance.

Presently he spat out the cigar stub, and turned so that I saw him side-on as he walked past the small quays, mooring posts, and riverside godowns. He came up on to the pavement where he passed by one of the thin sadhus or holy men, a fellow sitting on a green square of cloth, who seemed to have bathed in ash before daubing himself with some streaks of orange paint. The fellow was not begging – he occupied some other world altogether – but in passing him, Fisher trickled some coins into his lap.

Deo Rana came up beside me. He gave a small bow.

‘Good morning, Deo. Where exactly are we going?’

‘Backside of station, sahib.’

We decided to walk, but we had to wait to cross the Howrah bridge because the centre of it was being floated away to let a ship go through. In the blazing heat of the day, I wondered that the sailors could be bothered to sail the ship, and that the bridge men could be bothered to accommodate them. Once on the Howrah side, we skirted the front of the station and the stampede for tongas and taxis, and we went past the first clock tower, which said eleven fifteen, and the second clock tower of the station, which said not quite the same thing.