Night Train to Jamalpur Read online

  ‘Same train?’ I said, because both of those were stops occurring early on the main westerly line of the East Indian Railway, the Grand Chord. Bally was the first station on the line, about seven miles after Howrah. There were some mills at Bally; otherwise it was the start of the paddy fields. As for Khana, that was more like seventy miles out: a railway colony. ‘Different trains,’ said Bennett, ‘both terminating at Khana Junction.’

  I asked, ‘What were the snakes?’

  ‘The first – the one at Bally – was a sawscale viper, a small snake. The victim died two hours ago. I’ve just had a wire from the Presidency Hospital. He was an American tourist, travelling alone, name of Walter Gill. He boarded at Howrah – hadn’t booked the compartment—’

  ‘Had anybody booked a seat in that compartment?’ I cut in.

  Bennett shook his head again. ‘There are ten trains a day to Bally. There’s no need to book. The second, the one at Khana, was another common krait. The victim was an old boy: a Colonel Kerry, late of one of the Burma garrisons. The whole thing was seen by his wife, who was sitting opposite. The colonel got up take something off the luggage rack, and according to her, the snake was just suddenly there on the floor between them. The old boy for some reason leant down towards it, and put his hand out . . .’

  ‘Bloody idiot,’ said Fisher.

  ‘Got a bite on the wrist. A photograph was sent up from the railway hospital at Khana.’

  Bennett took an envelope from his desk drawer; he took a photograph from the envelope. ‘That’s his arm.’

  It did not look like an arm.

  ‘We don’t have a photograph of Gill, but we do know he was paralysed by the bite before he died. His parents have been telephoning around the clock; they’re proposing to take legal action against the Company.’

  ‘Bloody Americans,’ said Fisher.

  ‘The common krait’, said Superintendent Bennett, taking up his pipe, ‘eats its own young.’

  ‘How are there any of them, then?’ I said.

  ‘Not all its own young, Jim,’ said Bennett, lighting the pipe.

  Superintendent Bennett smoked for a while. I watched him do it, but Fisher had his arms folded and his head down; I could have sworn he was thinking of something else entirely. Bennett’s tobacco was called St Julien. The lid of the tin carried an illustration of a man looking very like the superintendent: handsome, rather pink-faced, with swept-back fair hair. The slogan was ‘Keep a cool head.’

  ‘So that’s four deaths,’ I said. ‘Two by the common krait.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me, Jim.’

  ‘What does a common krait look like?’

  ‘Not as pretty as a banded krait,’ Bennett said, blowing smoke. ‘Or so I would imagine. In The Jungle Book, a banded krait is the enemy of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.’

  At this, Major Fisher looked up: ‘Who’s he, when he’s at home?’

  ‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a mongoose, Noel. He whispers, “Be careful, I am death.”’

  I said, ‘You’ll be getting in the snake experts, I suppose.’

  Bennett smoked at me in the approved St Julien manner.

  ‘Try the zoo,’ I said. ‘Reptile house.’

  ‘Now there’s a thought,’ said Bennett, smiling, I assumed because he’d had that thought already.

  Fisher said, ‘Is whatsisname back from leave?’

  By ‘whatsisname’, he meant our assigned clerk. An Indian clerk was a ‘babu’, and this label had somehow got tangled up with our man’s name, so that he was Babu Jogendra Nath Bhattacharji; but I had discovered that it would be equally polite to call him Jogendra Babu for short. Just then, the man himself walked past the open door.

  ‘Oi!’ called Fisher, and with the briefest of nods to Bennett, he was out of the door and after him.

  Christopher Bennett smiled. He was keeping a cool head. Well, he was an easy-going sort, but he was a man under pressure, and the news of the killing of John Young would add to it. Copies of the statements made by Fisher and myself and Canon Peter Selwyn concerning this event were on his desk. Bennett was the coming man of the East Indian Railway force, everyone knew that: detective superintendent at thirty-five or so and bound to be detective chief super before long, which would make him the top man. And he seemed to be progressing without making waves. He was supervising our enquiry team, but it seemed he’d carry that off without putting too many backs up in the Company, especially since not many knew about Schedule C. Bennett was popular with his men. They respected him as a gent, as captain of the police polo team, and as a product of Cambridge University. He was an intellect, and he didn’t go in for bull or undue formality. He said that his dealings with his senior men should be – what was the word? – ‘collegiate’. There were no boastful certificates of merit on the walls of his office, no print of The Midnight Steeplechase, no sporting photographs (even though he was captain of the polo team). Apart from the portrait of the King-Emperor, the only ‘picture’ that hung there was a framed scrap of Indian cotton that was of historical interest in some way. Most Oxford and Cambridge types went in for the Indian civil service, and only ended in the police if they failed the exam, but Bennett had got points for choosing the police, and the railway police at that.

  ‘Will the C.I.D. take an interest, you reckon?’ I said, nodding towards the statements.

  ‘They’ve been sent copies, of course,’ he said.

  I took out my cigarettes.

  ‘Mind if I?’

  He could hardly object, given the fug he was blowing my way, ‘cool and fragrant’ though it may be.

  ‘I think they have their hands full with revolutionary plots,’ said Bennett.

  The nationalist agitation was taking an ever more violent turn. The trouble at Amritsar had brought it on. And then there was Mr Ghandi – the Mahatma. He himself was non-violent – a sort of black Jesus in glasses. The wife was always talking him up when she considered she was in progressive company, and sometimes when not. I’d had to warn her about that; she could queer the pitch for me as a copper. Of course, she’d taken not the slightest notice. A chap had recently been drummed out of the Tollygunge golf club for being too easy on the Mahatma. But secretly, I thought he was right. We had our patriotism, why shouldn’t the Indians have theirs?

  Bennett said, ‘It was good to see you at Firpo’s on Saturday, Jim.’

  I nodded.

  ‘A very good “do”, sir.’

  Firpo’s was a good Italian restaurant, as Harrington in London had told me, and Bennett had booked it for a supper dance to celebrate his marriage: a party for those who had not been at the wedding, which had been held some weeks before my own arrival in Calcutta. It was all at the instigation of his new wife, Mary, who was very pleased indeed to have married Detective Superintendent Bennett, and wanted the world to know it. I hadn’t much enjoyed the occasion. I’d spent the whole time fretting about the burglary of the Thursday.

  Firpo’s was the ‘in’ place for a celebration. Bernadette and her friends spent half their lives there, eating astronomically expensive ice-cream. Their famous Desert Sunrises were heavenly. Suddenly everything was ‘heavenly’ with Bernadette; that was when it wasn’t ‘septic’ . . . or some people were ‘lethal’ (boring, that meant).

  From along the corridor, I heard an Indian voice at the end of its tether: ‘But Major Fisher, that is impossibility!’

  ‘You’d better go and see what’s happening,’ said Bennett.

  V

  Fisher and Jogendra Babu were in a dusty room full of files. This was our office. Since the burglary, a sign had been put on the door: ‘Private’, but the door now stood open. Fisher was studying the shelves and muttering to himself, and the clerk sat at a table piled high with ledgers. Fisher’s outsized sola topee was also on the table. Seeing me in the doorway, the clerk made a half salaam and began his complaint.

  ‘He is wanting occurrence books for all similar incidents going back years.’

  ‘Jogendra Babu,’ I
said, and he gave a half nod, as if to say thanks for at least trying to get my name right, ‘similar to what?’

  Fisher answered from over at the bookshelf.

  ‘Gun attacks by dacoits on trains in the Jamalpur sub-district, what do you think?’

  It seemed he was more interested in the Jamalpur shooting than the snakes, but he was only dabbling in it. Our job was the Commission of Enquiry work, not finding killers. Jogendra Babu removed his wire glasses. He was a chubby, round-faced man with what I supposed had to be counted very beautiful skin. His elderly mother had recently died, and he gone ‘up country’ somewhere to attend to the funeral. ‘Stringer sahib and Fisher sahib,’ he said, in a tone of great exasperation, ‘there is no such category as “gun attacks”, any more than there is “putting snakes”.’

  ‘Forget the bloody snakes,’ Fisher cut in

  ‘There is murder, there is assault, there is robbery, there is unlicensed transportation of an animal; there are no gun attacks.’

  ‘Tell that to Mr John bloody Young,’ said Fisher, who now collected up his sola topee, and made ready to quit the room. Judging by his face, Jogendra Babu could hardly believe his luck at this development. He had told me that he found Fisher ‘extremely overbearing’, and he used to repeatedly ask whether I was in charge of Fisher (‘Who is sahib?’ he would say, or ‘Who is running show?’) in hopes I might bring him to heel. But I had to explain that Fisher and I ranked equally in our enquiry team.

  ‘What are you up to tomorrow?’ I asked Fisher as he marched out.

  ‘I don’t bloody know, do I?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Probably be back here playing hunt the bloody thimble.’

  When he’d gone, Jogendra Babu removed his handkerchief from his top pocket, and wiped his spectacles. He lived in a world of spectacles, ink, ledgers, dust. The golden sunlight that continually flowed into the rooms in which he worked – and that was coming through the window now, with a soft evening tone – seemed entirely wasted on him. In the corner of the room stood his black umbrella, neatly furled. He carried it against the sun. Shortly after meeting him, I had asked whether he would also use it against the rain, come the monsoon. ‘Yes, yes,’ he had said, ‘it is very versatile.’ He folded his handkerchief, and replaced in his top pocket. Jogendra always wore a tight black suit coat above loose white trousers, but then there was a reversion to formality at ground level with the black patent shoes he wore. ‘I am having enough on my plate with Commission of Enquiry,’ he said.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’re not meant to be investigating the shooting. That’s for Hughes at Jamalpur.’

  Jogendra Babu nodded; he knew that. ‘Or the C.I.D. might come in . . . do you think they will?’ Jogendra shrugged; he might know more about this than he was letting on. ‘If Fisher starts his own enquiry,’ I continued, ‘he’ll be stood down from it in short order.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jogendra. ‘It is to be hoped.’

  ‘All that being said, though . . . Could I get hold of a copy of the reservation chart for the carriage?’

  ‘Why do you require it, sahib? The reservations are known. Yours, Fisher’s, cathedral man, shot man . . .’

  ‘But I just want to see if any late change was made.’

  ‘Booking office is incinerating those lists.’

  ‘Sounds a bit drastic. When?’

  ‘Quickly. They are not long retained.’

  ‘But I would like to see it.’

  ‘Yes. I will see.’

  Looking about the room, there seemed to be more files than ever relating to Schedules A and B. I said as much to Jogendra. ‘Sahib,’ he said with a sigh, ‘it is endingless.’

  I said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother, Jogendra Babu.’ I had thought about saying ‘Babu-ji’, because ‘ji’ was something you could add – a sort of endearment.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Yes. She was very aged lady.’ He resumed his tidying. ‘So sorry, I was dreaming miles away just then.’

  ‘Away with the fairies, as they say.’

  Jogendra Babu looked up at me and smiled: ‘Away with Fisher sahib and incorrect stipulations!’

  I walked over to the desk from which the file had been stolen and quickly pulled open the drawer in question, half expecting the file to have been put back. Jogendra knew exactly what I was about, and again he smiled at me. The drawer, of course, was quite empty.

  VI

  Calcutta had stopped being the capital of India in 1911, the honour having gone to Delhi, but it did not seem in the least discouraged by the fact. Motors, tongas, electric trams, horse-drawn trams, rickshaws – you were just about safe from them if you kept to the pavement, or at least to the inside edge of it. But even there you had the traders to contend with: ‘I have emporium, sahib, only little walk this direction’, and they would try and take you down some alley. ‘Not buy, sahib, but only look – only look!’ And that last word often said with a real anger that made you think the government couldn’t keep the lid on this for much longer. Half the buildings were grand but falling down, the white-painted fronts crumbling and stained brown as white-painted buildings on a seafront sometimes are, only here it was the sun, not the sea that had rotted them away.

  The doorways of the buildings usually stood open, and they showed dark hallways, and battered brown staircases, leading up to offices. Many Indians conducted their business on these staircases, Indian doctors especially. One plaque I always read:

  PHTHISIS SPECIALIST. Surgn R. P. N. Ganguly, B.Sc., M.D. D.P.H., European and American trained renowned specialist. Cures hopeless cases, Consumption, Asthma, Diabetes, Heart, Nerve and Private Diseases.

  This was on a doorway at Old Court House Corner, just north of Chowringhee, in the very centre of town, and it piqued my interest every time I walked past. As to ‘private diseases’, I could make a hazard, but what was phthisis? Was this man Ganguly a quack? Couldn’t be, with all those letters after his name. The main problem was what, if any, connection Dr Ganguly had with the plaque below, which read, ‘Massage. Genuine Japanese Speciality. Miss Hatsuyo.’ Next to this brass plate was lodged a small framed photograph of the woman I took to be Miss Hatsuyo, and a real peach she looked: her gaze was half averted, in a way that made me think the Japanese speciality might be very much to my liking. The fact was that I had only noticed Doctor Ganguly because I had noticed Miss Hatsuyo beforehand.

  I walked on. I turned from the din and chaos of Dalhousie Square into the din and chaos of Chowringhee Street. The sun was going down rapidly, but I was sweating freely. Every electric tram advertised Lifebuoy Soap, and you could see why. The whole city was in need of the stuff. I turned off Chowringhee, and the chowkidar bowed at me as I walked through the gates of our hotel. I intended to have a cold bath and one bottle of Beck’s beer. Then what? There was nothing ‘on’ for the evening, no party or dance in prospect as far as I knew.

  Willard’s Hotel was better than the Bristol, also on Chowringhee, but not quite up to the standard of the Great Eastern or the Grand. It was famous for its forecourt, which I now traversed: the little botanical gardens, with fountain, fishpond, potted palms, dangling birdcages and coloured electric lights woven into a canopy of bamboo, in which many tiny lizards chirruped. Under the canopy were tables and chairs for drinks on the terrace.

  I paused to light a cigarette, hearing:

  ‘The zoo animals are really all very friendly. They come up to be scratched.’

  ‘Not the tigers, though?’

  ‘Of course not! If the tigers came up to be scratched, I’d want my money back.’

  I saw Lydia with a glass of lemonade at a corner table. As I approached her, I heard:

  ‘What do female Sikhs look like?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘Because I mean, it’s not as if they wear turbans, do they?’

  Lydia had also heard this exchange, and she rolled her eyes at me as I approached.

  She stood, and we kissed. She wore a rather s
light white dress, which made her look very brown.

  ‘I hope you found a lot of criminality at Jamalpur, Jim,’ she said, pushing back her hair, which had come loose behind. I sat down. A bearer was approaching, but he was delayed by a European who was standing his way and lighting a cigar. The bearer bowed at the man as if to acknowledge that this one of the most ridiculously big cigars ever seen.

  I said, ‘Tell you about it in a minute. Where’s Bernadette?’

  ‘Oh, where do you think? At a tea dance.’

  ‘A tea dance where?’

  ‘The Wednesday Club.’

  ‘But it’s not even Wednesday.’

  ‘It is, Jim,’ said the wife, leaning forward. ‘It’s been Wednesday all day. It’s just a little affair,’ she added, smiling. ‘Dancing to the gram.’

  The Wednesday Club . . . that was in a pavilion near the cathedral, a five-minute tonga ride along Chowringhee. ‘She’s with the girls?’ I said.

  ‘Of course she is.’

  Her two new best friends: Claudine Askwith, daughter of William Askwith, Traffic Superintendent of the East Indian Railways, and Ann Poole, daughter of Douglas Poole, Deputy Assistant Traffic Manager (Goods). The waiter came up and I ordered a lemonade.

  ‘Not having your beer, Jim?’

  ‘I’ll have it when Bernadette comes back – when we go through to dinner.’

  ‘Now,’ said the wife. ‘The trip to this Jamalpur place. Spill.’

  ‘Spill’ was one of Bernadette’s words. It meant ‘tell all’. The wife was expecting an account of the factory visit, but what she got was an account of a murder, albeit presented as the work of dacoits, which is what it almost certainly had been.

  ‘So you’re blaming the Indians?’ she said.

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘You look exhausted, Jim.’ The wife put her left hand on mine, and raised her right for the waiter. ‘A Beck’s beer for my husband, please,’ she said.

  ‘I’m quite happy with lemonade.’

  ‘You’re not,’ she said. And it was true that I hadn’t actually touched the stuff.