Night Train to Jamalpur(81)

The monkey commenced to urinate with great force.

‘Honestly,’ said Poole. ‘This bloody madhouse.’

And unfortunately there was no more whisky left to make it go away.





Chapter Eleven



I

‘King Sol’, said a giant advertisement on the platform we pulled into at Sealdah station. It was for a brand of beer, but it might have been advertising the sun itself, and I was glad to step out of that shadowy, thronging station and into the full glare. It was eight o’clock in the morning on Thursday 10 May. King Sol didn’t do much for my hangover, but he was a plain dealer. I had grown tired of the damp, blue mists of Darjeeling, which seemed to symbolise the fogs in which my mysteries were mired.

I ought to visit the telegraph office at the front of the station to wire my safe arrival to the wife, but she could bloody well whistle for it. Smartly uniformed, Deo Rana waited for me with a police tonga – I should have married him.

I would have offered Dougie Poole a ride into town but I had separated from him at the foot of the mountains, in Siliguri. He hadn’t had a ticket for the Calcutta Night Mail, and he’d had to queue for it in the booking office. I’d had a compartment to myself, and I’d slept all the way back.

As the tonga drew into the Howrah bridge traffic block, Deo Rana put a copy of that morning’s Statesman into my hand. I looked at the place indicated. Yet more ‘illegal associations’ – no, that wasn’t it. He was pointing to an item headed ‘New Snake Death’. R. P. Biswas, Indian barrister-at-law, travelling on East Indian Railway business, had been found dead the previous midday at Rannegunge, one stop before Asansol. And so we were back – snake-wise – to the East Indian, and the Grand Chord. The corpse of Mr Biswas had been discovered sharing a first class compartment with a snake called a Russell’s viper. On the face of it, that crime could not have been committed by anybody who had been in Darjeeling at the time; but only on the face of it.

‘We must go and see the snake men’s uncle,’ I said to Deo Rana.

He shook his head vigorously, meaning he agreed absolutely: ‘We are overdue for him. I have found place.’

‘His address?’

‘Not address. Place.’

He handed me a fragment of a Calcutta street map. A fairly central location was circled. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t in the Black Town. Would more baksheesh be required? Evidently not: the snake men we had encountered on the Howrah railway lands were now acting out of revenge. For some reason or other, they had it in for their uncle, and so they had told Deo Rana that he would be discovered holding court, and no doubt selling snakes, in this particular spot on the afternoon of Monday 14 May. He would be there at what Deo Rana called ‘three-four o’clock’ on that day.

At Fairlie Place, Deo Rana went off to other duties, while I dispatched a coolie with my luggage to Willard’s Hotel; then I stood alone for a moment on the steps of the booking office – alone, under the strongly raying sun, in the shifting crowd, wreathed in smoke from street cooking, incense and cigarettes. I turned and went through the courtyard arch. I climbed the hot iron steps to the police office.

I found Superintendent Bennett in his office. He looked like what he was: a man who had missed a holiday . . . and his office was changed. On the wall, besides the framed scrap of artistic cloth and the picture of the King-Emperor, there was a photographic portrait of his wife, Mary. There were now papers on his desk, and cigarettes had joined the tin of St Julien tobacco. I knew what the man was about: he was trying to own his office; trying to stay in it.

‘How were the hills, Jim?’

‘Mostly occluded. I had a visit from Khan of the C.I.D.; can you think why?’ Bennett commenced to light his pipe. I said, ‘I believe he thinks I did it.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Bennett, shaking out a match. ‘I don’t want to traduce a fellow officer, but by seeking you out for an urgent second interview, he could claim an expenses-paid trip to Darjeeling. The fellow does have a social life, I believe, against all the odds.’

‘Yes,’ I said bitterly. ‘I think he does. Have you heard from Fisher?’

‘Had a wire yesterday,’ said Bennett. ‘Fellow’s quit. Had a better offer elsewhere.’

I had started in on an explanation about Fisher and the R.K., when a voice came from the doorway: ‘Major Fisher is leaving us in the lurch?’

It was Jogendra Babu, and he was beaming behind his spectacles. He bowed to me: ‘Please come through to my office when opportunity arises, Stringer sahib,’ and he walked on.