Night Train to Jamalpur(33)

I was aiming for the sign reading ‘Bar’. Before it was a sign reading ‘Function Room’. In there, I saw half a roast chicken, the remains of a trifle, cheese and biscuits on a long, decorated table. Anglo-Indians avoided curry, I believed. It was the end of an afternoon party, half a dozen guests lingering. I heard, ‘You’d come off the regulator by the banyan tree’ – a driver speaking to a fireman perhaps.

I walked on to the bar, where a smartly dressed Indian sold me a cold Beck’s beer, whereas the Anglos drank wine and water for preference, called it ‘grog’. I took a belt on my beer. Yes, I did fear the worm of the earth, and I knew that nightmares awaited me as a result of my encounter with the king cobra. I looked at the notices beside the bar: ‘Steamship tickets to Europe’, ‘Oxygen gas of high purity’. I read, ‘Have you considered white spirit’s advantage over vegetable oil and turpentine as a solvent and thinner of paints and varnishes?’ I had not. And there was a poster showing a steel wheel on a short length of rail. ‘Macpherson Trading’, I read. ‘Wheels, Tyres, Axles, Fish Plates and Permanent Way Rails. We at Macpherson’s specialise in making these products, at our large steel works, which possesses advantages conducive to rapid and economical production.’ As I had learnt at Jamalpur, this outfit was the principal supplier of wheels to the E.I.R.

The overhead fans in the bar rocked as they revolved. There were more fans than drinkers. Besides myself, there were two other men; they sat in the corner. One was pure British and big, the other Anglo-Indian and small. The British fellow was at least twenty years older than the Anglo – probably in the late fifties. He had a gravelly voice of the kind you heard in the burra clubs, so what was he doing in the Insty? He talked the talk of the burra clubs as well.

‘. . . heads the list each year for the numbers of tigers killed,’ he was saying. ‘I know of no place where you are more certain of getting tiger. During a single fortnight, Colonel Marsh got . . .’

I had two hours until my appointment with Detective Inspector Khan of the C.I.D. What did he have in store? No doubt another snake would come slithering out of another basket. The big sahib in the corner had moved on from Colonel Marsh to himself. It was impossible not to hear him.

‘I tell you, Freddie, I thought it was a cloud shadow that moved across the short grass to my left, but I realised, as he stepped into the dusty path, that the big cat had arrived. His flanks were swinging gently, his tongue lolling, his tail was carried high with a dinky little upward curve at the top. The big paws came down without a sound. The powerful brute within thirty yards of me might have been walking on air. He froze into a perfect statue.’

‘Gosh,’ said Freddie, or something like that, and more out of politeness than astonishment.

A boy had come into the bar. I had seen this boy somewhere before. He came up to me directly – too directly, the kid was drunk – saying, ‘Who are you, and what are you doing round here?’ He was John Young’s son, Anthony, and I had seen his photograph. I told him who I was, and I offered to buy him a drink.

‘You were the one talking to my dad?’ he said. (He would have been given a rough outline of the murder of his father by one of Superintendent Bennett’s men.) ‘So you were the fellow with the gun. Listen, did you shoot my dad?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘But hold on, you’re a cop yourself. Are you looking for the bloody darkie who shot him?’

‘You’ve just said I shot him. The investigation is being conducted from Jamalpur.’

‘Being conducted, is it? Who by?’

‘A man called Hughes.’

‘You know, I’m rostered up to Jamalpur from time to time. Maybe I’ll go along and see him.’

‘You’re a travelling ticket inspector.’

‘That’s me – railway boy! How do you know, anyway?’

He kept moving his hair back from his forehead; there was a great deal of it.

‘Your dad told me. I had quite a long talk with him.’

Anthony Young shouted, ‘Boy! Another beer for the sahib. I can see you like beer,’ he said, indicating my empty glass. ‘Where’s that one gone? It’s evaporated, man!’ When the drink was poured, he said to the barman, ‘Put it on the funeral bill.’

I said, ‘You drink it.’

‘No man, I’ve been drinking all day. You know what’s been going on through there?’ He indicated the function room, the place where I’d seen the afternoon party. ‘What’s it called when you have a bloody good drink up after a funeral?’