Night Train to Jamalpur(39)

He said, ‘When are you going up?’ and since he’d asked point blank it was hard not to give a straight answer.

‘I reckon next Wednesday,’ I said.

‘With the wife and the missus?’

‘They’re off up beforehand.’

I eyed him narrowly. Was he glad that I would be travelling alone?

‘Taken a house, have you?’

I nodded.

‘What’s it called?’

‘Can’t remember,’ I lied.

I asked Fisher, ‘Where are you putting up?’

‘Hotel,’ he said.

‘Got a name, has it?’

‘Hotel Mount Everest.’

‘Sounds cold.’

‘They should do me all right there. They have a French chef.’

There was a picture of the little Darjeeling train behind the booking clerks; it advertised Tickets Touristiques.

‘I wouldn’t bother with those,’ said Fisher, seeing where I was looking.

‘Why not?’

‘No roof on the bloody things.’ And I believe he very nearly smiled again. He said, ‘I was reckoning on next Wednesday as well.’

I didn’t believe him. He’d simply taken his cue from what I’d told him.

‘Glad we’re not in that bloody line,’ said Fisher, indicating the queue next along, which was hardly moving, and was for refunds. The rule on the East Indian Railway was: ‘For refund file an application at place of issue.’ It took an age to get a refund, but they were given in full up to twelve hours before the booked time of departure, so it was worth the effort. The fellow dealing with refunds was being assisted by another chap, and there was a notice in front of him: ‘Clerk under instruction. Your patience is appreciated.’ It was like the signs people put on their new motor cars: ‘Running In.’

We now arrived at the front of our own queue. I collected my bookings. When it was Fisher’s turn, the Indian clerk, having seen us talking, asked, ‘You gentlemen will be sharing?’

Fisher said, ‘Spot on, brother.’

So we were booked into the same first class compartment for the first leg of the journey: overnight to Siliguri, which lay at the base of the hills. On the second part – the little hill train – there could be no shared compartment, the carriages being saloons. So the trip to Siliguri was the worry. But at least there could be no anxiety about snakes. So far, they had all been on the trains of the East Indian Railway, operating from Howrah, and none had been on the East Bengal from Siliguri.


III

Fisher went off after we’d got hold of the bookings. I watched him as he headed towards Dalhousie, through the floating blue smoke made by the street vendors as they fried their multi-coloured foods. I then turned and looked towards Strand Road. There was a snake charmer near the Armenian Ghat. It was nobody I knew. He had an ordinary cobra. Alongside him was a sleepy-looking man selling cigarettes. If I were that man, I’d have moved a few feet to the left, but perhaps he knew the poison had been cut out of the snake. I returned to the office, where Jogendra came up to me with a form to fill out. Nothing unusual about that, but this was a form special to him personally: his written complaint against Major Fisher. It was so beautifully handwritten that I couldn’t bear to read it, but I caught sight of ‘ceaseless persecutings’. A complaint would be taken more seriously if another officer had witnessed the bad behaviour, and Jogendra was asking me to sign up as having observed the rudeness of Fisher. I decided to do so; Jogendra was certainly in the right. Fisher had regularly suggested he make a complaint, and it was now time to call his bluff.

After I had signed, Jogendra bowed. He then handed me two chits, as though by way of a reward.

The first was from Charles Sermon, the new acquaintance I had made at the Insty. He was sending me his best wishes, and the telephone number of a Professor Hedley Fleming herpetologist, of the Calcutta Zoological Gardens. Sermon had already had a word with Fleming, and he would be willing to speak to me, whether on a formal or informal basis, in connection with the train attacks. Sermon said he couldn’t think why Fleming hadn’t been called in up to now, since he was ‘the top snake man in Bengal’.

The second chit concerned the other investigation I wasn’t supposed to be pursuing. It was from the churchman who’d been on the Jamalpur train: Canon Peter Selwyn. He had something to tell me – something that might have been ‘nothing at all’, but there seemed to be a degree of urgency attached, because the chit ran on: ‘Perhaps come to evensong at the cathedral this evening – it’s a short service! – and we can go over the road after to my club, the Bengal.’