A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (86 page)

‘Tippoo woke me at six and then the phone rang and Tippoo said Khansamar wanted a word, which struck me as odd. Khansamar’s one of the best trained servants I’ve come
across, but that’s Dmitri’s influence. He said something had happened which he couldn’t deal with and would I come over right away. So I put on a dressing-gown and went across. When I got to the front of the house Khansamar was sitting on the front steps smoking. There was nothing to suggest anything wrong.

‘But then he took me indoors and said, “Sahib is dead. I’ve locked everything up.” He took me into Merrick’s bedroom. What I expected was just the sight of Merrick dead in bed but the whole place was an absolute shambles. The mosquito net was ripped to ribbons, the bedsheets were all over the place and stained with blood and Merrick was lying on the floor, dressed in his Pathan clothes, but hacked about with his own ornamental axe and strangled with his own sash. And all over the floor there were chalked cabalistic signs. And someone had scrawled the word Bibighar across Susan’s dressing-table mirror with the same brown make-up stick that had been used to daub his face.’

‘Did Sarah see this?’

‘No. And she doesn’t know the details. She turned up with Habbibullah and Ahmed, but we kept her out. Dmitri saw it, so did the Chief of Police in Mirat and the commander of the military police in the cantonment. The station commander was consulted too. The one thing that was agreed was that a murdered Englishman at this stage of affairs is the last thing anybody wants. Particularly when it looks as if the murder was intended to cause disorder and racial conflict.’

‘What about the law?’

‘Everything is properly recorded, right the way down from Habbibullah’s real post-mortem, through the private inquest and the sworn statements of witnesses like myself and Khansamar. And the police and
CID
haven’t been inactive. I doubt that the man or men who murdered Ronald will ever be tracked down though. The operation seems to have been carefully planned and patiently seen through to the end.’

‘By whom? Pandit Baba?’

‘It was Dmitri’s first thought. But the Pandit runs true to form. The
CID
say that for the past month he’s been on a pilgrimage to the Himalayas, and still is.’

‘And the Bibighar suspects?’

‘Two who’re still in Mayapore have been cleared by the police there. One is reported dead of tuberculosis in Benares a year ago, and two more are working as clerks in Calcutta. There’s nothing to connect any of them.’

‘They got a very rapid clearance.’

‘It was a rapid clearance because I gave Dmitri their names. I can still recite them from memory. All Dmitri had to do was get his police chief to liaise with the police in Mayapore.’

‘Did he ask how you knew the names?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you told him you’d examined Kumar?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what about Kumar. What about Hari?’

‘He’s still in Ranpur. And also in the clear. Dmitri told me this evening.’

‘Not such a rapid clearance.’

‘We didn’t go through the police in Hari’s case. Ahmed got his father’s secretary to ask Mrs Gopal to find out what she could through the young man who used to help him. We got the reply today. He’s still coaching students. He never leaves Ranpur. He was there the whole of last week. One of his pupils is the youngest son of a Congress minister and he’s been at the minister’s house every evening for the past month coaching the boy for his matriculation.’

‘Things have improved for him, then.’

‘A little, I suppose. But it must be a poor enough livelihood.’

‘Perhaps he supplements it.’

‘How?’

‘A bit of free-lance journalism? He used to be a reporter and sub-editor.’

‘Perhaps. Incidentally, we now have an address. If you want it.’

‘Yes, I’d like his address.’

‘I’ll get it for you. Then I’ll have to go to bed, Guy. I’ve got to see the States Department people off on the morning train.’ He got up, went into the adjoining room, came back and handed Perron a slip of paper with Kumar’s address scribbled on it. ‘Be careful what you say to Sarah, won’t you? She doesn’t know the worst details. We had Merrick’s bedroom
cleared up before she saw it. None of the other servants was allowed to see it either.’

‘Presumably they were questioned, though.’

‘Yes, but the Chief of Police did that himself, without saying exactly why. Khansamar was put through the hoop too.’

‘Where are the other servants?’

‘Back at the Dewani Bhavan, where they came from.’

‘There must be rumours, surely.’

‘Rumours, yes. Too many people had to be involved, and eventually it’ll become more or less common knowledge, but the thing has been to counteract the rumours, especially in the cantonment, and keep up the fiction that Merrick died as a result of the riding accident.’

‘Who has his clothes? And his arm?’

‘The Chief of Police. I must turn in, Guy. If you see Dmitri tomorrow, he can probably answer any questions better than I.’

Perron said goodnight and made to go, then paused.

He said, ‘Who was Philoctetes?’

‘What?’

‘Philoctetes.’

Rowan rubbed his forehead. He looked so tired that Perron was about to leave the question until morning. But then Rowan said, ‘The great archer.’

‘A great
archer
?’

‘Friend of Hercules. One of the heroes of the Trojan war. Sophocles wrote a play about him, but it’s one I never read. They had to set him ashore, abandon him on the voyage out. Lemnos, I think.’

‘Why?’

‘He was hurt in some way. Wounded by one of his own poisoned arrows. Or perhaps he just developed boils and suppurating sores from a vitamin deficiency. Anyway, he stank, and the others couldn’t stand the smell. So they set him ashore, and went on.’

‘Yes,’ Perron said. That fitted. ‘Did he ever get to Troy?’

‘Eventually. If I remember rightly they decided they needed him after all. What interests you about Philoctetes?’

‘I came across the name recently and wondered, that’s all.’

When he got back to his room he found that Tippoo had brought in all the stuff he’d left on the verandah; the scissors, notebook, the newspapers, and his own bottle of brandy. He had a final drink and read the essay
Alma Mater
once again. That night, fearful of snakes, of ghosts, he cocooned himself in a sheet, within the security of his mosquito-net shrouded bed. He lulled himself to sleep by counting arrows, flying from the bow, at first slowly, well-aimed, and then quicker, until they were flying incredibly fast as the archer stood, holding his ground, intent on survival. Just before he slept he thought: The smell in the room is not after all just Merrick’s smell, but also the smell of the archer’s wound.

He woke while it was still dark, from a nightmare that had transformed him into a huge butterfly that beat and beat and fragmented its wings against the imprisoning mesh of the net.

Extract from Perron’s Diary, Wednesday August 6

11 p.m.

An ominous day, ending with the reflection of fires in the night sky above the city. This afternoon, news of the Nawab’s accession to India brought out a crowd of Congress supporters who assembled on the
maidan
for speeches and cheers. The police and military kept them away from the palace, and from a convoy of Muslim families making their way in trucks, carts, dhoolies and on foot to the collecting point in the cantonment. Tonight there were repercussions, angry Muslims attacking Hindus. Attack. Counter-attack. The sky glows. Police and military patrol the road outside this bungalow and presumably make forays into the city. They say there will again be no fishing on the Izzat Bagh lake tomorrow.

Beyond the lake you can just see the paler glow of the cantonment bazaar. The
raj
rests quietly in the darkness behind. In bungalows here and there there must be lights and laughter, parties. (The departing Peabodys are giving one.) Here, where I am, a strange feeling of being suspended between these two worlds. On other similar occasions when
the situation became difficult, Merrick would be found touring the city, by jeep, or sometimes during daylight on horseback. ‘Tonight I miss him,’ Dmitri said. He hadn’t mentioned Merrick until then. Dmitri and I had champagne. We smoked pink gold-tipped cigarettes. He told me something about St Petersburg (between interruptions, of which there were many). At ten-thirty our meeting ended. The Nawab had sent for him. ‘Poor old dear,’ Dmitri said. ‘He’s looked at the sky and wonders what he has done wrong, or what I have ever done right.’

This ominous day began early. She did not ring but arrived with horses shortly after Nigel had gone across to the palace to take the States Department people to the station. They were to travel in the Nawab’s salon coach so as (Dmitri said) to give them a taste for princely luxury as a ‘frail insurance against any future diminution of it’. Tomorrow we are to travel by ordinary first-class passenger coach. Dmitri has cancelled the arrangement to send us by another of the Nawab’s coaches in case after today’s troubles it becomes a target for attack by Muslims who feel that the Nawab has let them down. He has got the movement control officer to guarantee a compartment for us. We shall be 9. The old-fashioned first-class compartments seat 8 comfortably and one of the 9 is little Edward and another is the ayah who will probably sit on the luggage. Which leaves only 7 adults: Sarah, Susan, Mrs Grace, the two Peabodys, Ahmed and me. We should be comfortable enough and are due at Ranpur at 7 p.m. The Peabodys are reported upset, though, that they aren’t to travel in a palace coach. Dmitri said: ‘Don’t stand any nonsense with them if they start objecting to the ayah or to Ahmed. Times have changed.’ He seems very insistent on this. The number in the compartment won’t worry me. It sounds like being a good party. Mrs Grace is fun.

The horses Sarah brought were a pleasant surprise. She was dressed for riding. There was no Ahmed. No Mumtaz. We trotted out to the
maidan
and across to the other side. She showed me (at a distance behind shade trees) the barracks of the Mirat Artillery, the police barracks, and the hospital and told me about the first time she got Shiraz to go with her, how nervous the girl was, how over-awed the staff and the patients
were at this manifestation from the Palace: the Nawab’s daughter, rumoured to be cross and difficult and haughty. Sarah had broken the ice, in the maternity ward, by picking up a baby she’d become used to handling (whose mother wasn’t recovering as quickly as she should) and then placing it in Shiraz’s arms. The first contact Shiraz had ever had with a commoner outside the palace. It worked. And of course the mother would never forget it: that the Nawab’s daughter had held her son. ‘What made you give so much time to this girl?’ I asked. ‘Her unhappiness,’ was all Sarah said. Then she cantered away, towards the open ground beyond the military tents and horse-lines.

Suddenly she cries out and thrashes her reins, left, right, and gallops off, making for the distant city wall, or what is left of it. The gateway alone is intact. I try to catch up but she is by far the better and more confident horseman, and she knows the lie of the nullahs, which I don’t. But, behind her as I am, we seem to career together towards that implacable pink stone. Then she suddenly veers and shouts again, loudly, savagely, and races her horse back at a pace I really can’t match: thrashing the reins in that way, left, right, as if charging cannon in some desperate enterprise. And there is nothing there except the pale blue sky, the green of the shade trees, the tawny stain of the scrubby earth. I let her go, ease my own horse’s pace, watch her; small white-shirted figure, going like a little demon into the distance, leaping the nullahs. I think it was her way of saying goodbye to a place where she has been free and happy. She rides in a wide circle, coming round now and galloping towards me. At first I assume she will ride right up, but just ahead of me she moves in a tight turn and then brings her mount to a canter, a trot, a walk; to a stand. As I reach her she puts it at a sedate walk. We say nothing. It isn’t necessary. But as we near the road again, outside my bungalow, she says, ‘Come to the guest house and meet Aunt Fenny. We’ll have breakfast there.’

Neither of us has mentioned Merrick.

Mrs Grace is a plump rather florid woman (much as one thought). A bit breathless, but very talkative. Susan not up for breakfast. We have ours on the terrace. This is where the Laytons stayed when Susan came to Mirat to marry Teddie
Bingham. I asked about Colonel Layton. Since early in 1946 he has been Colonel Commandant at the Pankot Rifles training depot. A disappointment. He had hoped for the area command. He is handing over now to a man called Chaudhuri, who was only a major a few months ago. The new 1st battalion goes to a Sikh who has been in Pankot for some years, Chatab Singh. For a while there was a problem about the regiment’s future. Officially, the Pankot people are predominantly Muslims, as a result of conversion in the days of the Moghuls. The regiment, mixed, but reflecting this predominance, has such a good reputation that Jinnah wanted it and offered it a home near Peshawar. How he thought he could keep it recruited from men who lived in the Pankot hills, one does not know. Some English people in Pankot have raised the question of the silver in the mess and suggest that the new Indian Government should buy all the knives, forks, spoons and trophies, everything of value, and that the proceeds should be shared out among the families of the men who had contributed to their cost. ‘So you see we all end up like carpet-sellers in Cairo,’ Mrs Grace said. ‘John gets hot under the collar when he hears people talking like that.’

Edward comes out. He takes me to see the white peacock. Not the one I saw myself. This one is carved out of marble and is secluded in a secret place among the trees. Fear snakes. When we get back Nigel has arrived from the station, seeing the States Department people off. The Peabodys were seeing off the Rossiters and told Nigel that this evening it would be open house at their bungalow. Mrs Grace said, ‘Those awful people. Do we have to travel with them? Can’t we rustle up an extra body or two and crowd them out?’