Night Train to Jamalpur(76)

‘To what?’

‘No matter.’

Kahn eyed me – then glanced down at the fireplace, which was unlit.

‘There is no coal,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Does my railway interest extend to what?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

This sort of reversal wasn’t like him at all; therefore it must be significant. In moving towards the door, he saw the book by Annie Besant, which Lydia had been reading, and which she had left on the sofa.

‘You’re interested in Besant and the Congress?’ enquired Khan.

‘My wife,’ I said. ‘She’s something of an Indian nationalist. There aren’t many of those around here,’ I added.

‘More than you might think,’ he said.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘In a guest house by the police station. My expenses don’t run to the good hotels.’

And on that gloomy note, our conversation ended.


III

In mid-morning of the next day, Wednesday 9 May, I arranged for a railway bearer to collect my kit bag, golf clubs and a portmanteau full of other items that Lydia wanted taking back to Calcutta. He took them to the left luggage office at the station. I myself was not due there until five past four, departure time of the Siliguri ‘down’ train. Some people I didn’t know came round for what we at Cedar Lodge were apparently calling luncheon. Lydia and Bernadette had met them on the train up. The man was a doctor with a practice in Calcutta, the woman was a do-gooder. They were both very interested in feeding the poor, but were not connected to the St Dunstan’s Fund of Eleanor Askwith. In fact, they disapproved of that for some reason, which was probably why Lydia had dropped a card on them in the first place. The woman was a good deal younger than the man, and – against all odds – rather a peach. I began thinking again of Miss Hatsuyo of Chowringhee and her Japanese speciality, and then of the adjacent plaque of Dr Ganguly and his own peculiar speciality. As Ajit and Sahira took the main-course plates away, I asked the doctor sitting opposite me, ‘Do you know what phthisis is?’

‘I should hope so,’ he said. ‘It’s pulmonary tuberculosis.’ He proceeded to describe this, until his until his wife told him to stop, since he was ruining everyone’s enjoyment of the pudding.

After luncheon, Lydia and Bernadette went off to their horse riding. I kissed them goodbye and said I would see them in three weeks’ time. If anything came up, they were to go to the telegraph office, from where they could telephone to me at either Willard’s Hotel or Fairlie Place. When they’d gone, I drank a cup of tea and smoked a Gold Leaf before the living room fire in which the scented logs burned. Ajit told me they were deodar wood. He also said that a delivery of coal would be made around the town that afternoon.

At two o’clock, I quit the house. I had a free hand – literally since I had no bags to carry. I used that free hand to smoke further cigarettes while walking along the Mall. I was making for the Hotel Mount Everest, where Fisher was staying. My own suspicions of Fisher had fallen away after the golf game, but I intended to ask him whether Khan had interviewed him for a second time. I also wondered whether Khan had found anything on the two Mohammedan servants. He was a Mohammedan himself, so perhaps he would go easy on them, even if he did suspect. And then there was the Reverend Canon Peter Selwyn, churchman and Uranian. Was he a practising Uranian, or merely a student of the literature? Perhaps I had not thought enough about Peter Selwyn.

It was a steep uphill walk to the Hotel Mount Everest, which was only right, given the name. It stood on Woodlands Road, and was raised up again from that on an elevated walkway with railings to stop you falling over the edge. The exterior was white with black wood beams; the lobby was decorated with photographs of the actual Mount Everest . . . and Major Fisher was not in. He had left his keys at the reception, and gone out some hours before. A bearer was called over, and he verified that he had carried Fisher’s golf clubs to a waiting taxi. Fisher had a nerve, I thought, going back to the Tiger Hill golf course, scene of the assault he had committed. But then he was a man for the bold stroke, and it was beginning to seem to me that he was quite often rewarded for it.

I wandered from the Hotel Mount Everest to the telegraph office, from where I sent a wire to Jongendra Babu at Fairlie Place, giving the time I was due in at Howrah, and asking that Deo Rana be sent to meet me. I drifted back west to some precipitous gardens built on terraces. A weak sunlight was now filtering through the clouds. Some Chinese-looking children were sitting on a bench, kicking their legs and singing ‘Clementine’, apparently with no adult anywhere near. The gardens – oriental children apart – reminded me of the gardens on the cliff top at Scarborough, and I thought of Charles Sermon, the traffic man who frequented the Railway Institute in Calcutta. He was due for retirement, and had fixed up to live in Scarborough, but he hadn’t seemed very pleased about it. You shouldn’t try to live in a pleasure ground. It would not deliver the goods – perhaps Sermon knew that in advance. Lydia had found it out about Darjeeling.