Ellis Peters - George Felse 11 - Death To The Landlords (10 page)

They were up for breakfast at six, but Purushottam had been up for an hour and more by that time, first superintending the preparation of a supply of food for them to take with them, then re-typing the memorandum he had spoiled the previous day. He was a rapid but erratic typist, and by the time he was called to breakfast he had finished the job, and turned to arranging everything relevant in order, and tidying away everything irrelevant from sight. A quarter of an hour’s strenuous work after the Land-Rover had departed, and everything would be ready.

A dark-brown maidservant, too shy to speak, brought morning tea to Patti and Priya in their room. She drew the curtains, and there on the table beside Patti’s large bag were the two letters, ready stamped and labelled for air mail.

‘Purushottam will send them to the post for you,’ said Priya.

‘Oh, I’ll take them with me. We can drop them in a box in the first town we pass through. You got on to first-name terms with him over the maps, did you?’ she said carelessly.

‘No,’ said Priya composedly. ‘I just thought of him so. I have not called him so as yet.’

They dressed and packed briskly, forewarned by now of Larry’s strict time-keeping. In four hours or so they would be in Nagarcoil. Home, for Priya; and even for Patti, in a sense, home.

India had not quite grasped the vital nature of time to a western mind, and both the tea and coffee came rather late; but in spite of that, it was only just after seven o’clock when they all walked out to the terrace, and down the steps to where the Land-Rover waited. The servants had collected all the bags from their rooms, and waited to stow them wherever Lakshman indicated. Larry had the bonnet of the Land-Rover up, intent on the engine. Purushottam and Dominic found themselves standing together in the soft morning light, with nothing left to be done. They looked at each other and smiled.

‘Please give my reverences and regards to the Swami, if you should see him again before he finds time for me. Tell him I rely on him to smooth my passage with the state government. If they agree to let me do it this way, nobody in Delhi will raise any difficulties. I’ve thought about this ever since I got the news, in England…’

He had never felt alone or lonely in England until then; never until his widowed father died in his prime, and left to a virtual stranger – yes, however loving and bound, still a stranger – the estate he had tried to hold inviolate against the tide of events. Then in an instant he had known how Indian he was, and felt the tendons of his heart contracting and driving him back here, where he had been raised, where he knew every soul in the nearest three villages, every tenant for ten miles around, and felt for them as his father had felt, but had other means of expressing his membership.

‘No, before then, really. Ever since I began to grow up and think for myself, and not just as I was taught. We could be almost self-supporting here. They all keep two or three buffalo, the women take care of them, they want them for milk, and labour, and manure. Give us time, and we might have a dairy, too – not a huge affair like Anand, just a small district Anand. And we have smiths, good workmen, we could be the district tool-shop and repair station within a year. From that it isn’t so far to a small factory for specialist tools – why not?’

‘Why not?’ agreed Dominic. In India there is one factor which is never missing and never in short supply: manual skill of all kinds, prepared to copy anything, prepared to improvise anything, given the idea. Something not to be found in repetitive processes, production belts and modern organisation of labour.

The two girls stood a little apart, ready to get aboard when everything was loaded. They had done everything they had to do, and now there was nothing whatever to distract them from listening.

‘Do you really think they’ll buy the idea?’

‘I don’t see why not. They’ve been known to say that the co-operative is the hope of rural India, why should they back out on it in this case? And if the Swami and the Mission come in on it, that should clinch it.

‘There’ll be some tricky relationships to be settled, of course, what with hoping to bring in the small cultivators and the Harijan labourers on a fair footing, but that’s for the legal men to work out. It can be done all right, given the goodwill, and I do believe we shall have that. Just as long as they accept the idea in principle!’

‘They’d be crazy if they didn’t,’ Dominic said, ‘considering you’re offering to give them the central base, a good deal of equipment, all your land and pretty well all the capital you possess.’

‘Well, not quite all, you know. I’ve got some industrial stock and a bit of money my mother left me, I’m keeping that for insurance. But what do I need with a plantation establishment like this? My generation doesn’t want to live this way. I don’t really need any more, basically, than any man down there in the village – less than those who’ve got families to feed. I rather look forward to working my own passage on the same terms as the rest. Not that it will work out that way,’ he added honestly. ‘The name counts for a lot, and there’s no way of altering that even if I wanted to. I shall be voted in there somewhere among the management, I know that. And I shall enjoy it, too, making this district work for every soul who lives in it, more efficiently than it’s ever worked before. But at least I shall have to be
voted
in! If there’d been anyone left in the family but myself and one decrepit old great-aunt,’ he admitted, ‘it wouldn’t have been so simple. But there’s no one now to object if I choose to give away everything I’ve got’

He would not have said that so simply if he had remembered that the girls were only a couple of yards away; but he had forgotten them utterly, he was speaking only to Dominic, who already knew his mind.

The luggage was all stowed. Lakshman opened the door for the girls to climb aboard, and Larry shut down the hood, and drew breath to make his farewells.

‘You’ve been immensely kind to let us all descend on you like this—’

Patti, who had opened her shoulder-bag and was rummaging frantically in its tangled interior, suddenly exclaimed: ‘Damn! I knew I should leave something behind. Is the office open, Purushottam? I went and left my diary in there last night, I remember now… I must run and fetch it!’

‘I’ll go!’ he offered immediately, but she was already in flight.

‘No, I know exactly where I left it. I won’t be a moment!’ Back over her shoulder floated a long-drawn: ‘Sorry, everybody!’ She ran, the bag bobbing under her arm, all down the gently sloping court, little purls of dust dancing at her heels.

‘Just like a woman,’ said Larry philosophically, and glanced at his watch. ‘Oh, not so bad! Only eight minutes late.’

‘After some months in my country that’s extraordinarily good time-keeping.’

‘Look, you’ve got my address – let me know if you get started on the work here, and if I’m still around I’d like to be in on it.’

‘I shall be glad if you can! In any case, come again before you leave India.’ They stood and waited. Patti had vanished into the deep doorway of the distant office. Still they waited, and she did not reappear.

‘So she knew exactly where she’d left it!’ said Larry resignedly.

‘I’ll go and help her look,’ Priya offered.

She had taken no more than two or three steps away from the Land-Rover when there was suddenly a curious quiver that shook the outlines of solid objects, and made the earth seem to heave with an imprisoned and contained life of its own. Then a muffled reverberation like a great, smothered gust of air caused the shape of the office to bulge and quiver, the thatch lifted and lurched drunkenly aside, borne on a wave of dust, the splintered door sagged outwards and fell from its upper hinge, and from the windows at the rear two clouds of dust and debris billowed, dissolving slowly into air. The sound of the explosion was strangely deadened and contained within the yard-thick mud walls, but the blast came undulating like a snake across the earth, smoking with dust-devils, whipped at the folds of Priya’s sari and slashed her ankles with gravel. Her eyes were blinded, and the wind pressed against her, holding her motionless. She felt someone’s arm take her about the waist, and someone’s body intervene between her and the tearing force that assaulted her; and she clung with closed eyes to this sheltering body until the ravaging wind had spent itself and left them still upright. She heard someone’s voice saying, even before the sound of running feet began:

‘Oh, my God, my God, not again!’

And another voice, her own voice, saying, not entreatingly, but with fierce professional authority, as she looked up into Purushottam’s face:

‘Let me go! Let me go to her! This is my job!’

The office, when they groped their way into it through the dense fog of dust and the particles of paper, wood-splinters and debris from the burst thatch, was a scarred shell, windows and window-frames blown out and scattered over the kitchen-garden at the rear, where three terrified but undamaged children crouched screaming hysterically, the door a tangle of sagging planks, the floor deep in wreckage. What was left of the typewriter, a skeleton of torn-out keys and twisted metal, lay under the shattered windows. The desk, every joint ripped asunder, lolled against the wall.

They stumbled over the body of Patti Galloway as they fumbled their way blindly within, and at first they did not even realise what it was. Papers and dust covered her, she was a roll of matter powdered over with dissolution. Tatters of clothing draped her, once they brushed the dust aside, but she was ravaged and disrupted like a rag-doll torn up in a temper. Dominic retrieved one sandal from the far corner of the little room. The tight enclosure of this place had magnified the effect of the explosive far beyond what they had seen in the open at Thekady. And yet there seemed to be some things that were almost untouched, the soft, pliable things that blew in the wind and made no resistance, like the long, straight fair hair that slid fluidly over Priya’s arm as she raised the mangled head.

Patti was dead before they ever reached her.

None of them, until some time afterwards, really got the events of that day into focus, or could link them into any significant sequence. They reacted rationally, answered questions coherently, even remembered abstruse and advisable precautions, and took them as a matter of course; but all in a haze, like automatons responding to automatic stimuli. Too shocked to feel, they could still think and reason, and do what the circumstances demanded of them.

So they left Patti lying where they had found her, because even her position might mean something to the trained observer, something to indicate where the explosive had been placed, and how fired. There was nothing they could do for her, except, as soon as it was bearable and time had allowed them to thaw out enough to recognise the necessity, to let her parents know what had happened to her, and perhaps, also, inform whoever had been more or less responsible for her in this country, her head teacher, or the business acquaintance of her father who had got her the job. No one could help Patti herself any more. If there is such a thing as instantaneous death, that was what had happened to her, and nobody could undo it.

So they set a guard on the doorway of the wrecked office, and another of Purushottam’s servants in the garden at the rear; and Priya, still blindly following her own nature, retrieved the screaming children from among the vegetables, and made sure they had not a scratch upon them before she handed them over, now shaken only by hiccoughing sobs, to their distraught mothers. After that they went back to the house, all of them walking rapidly and mechanically like somnambulists, chilled of face and unnaturally wide and fixed of eye, and the telephoning began. First the local police; and they were not so far gone as not to realise that Purushottam’s family name would count for a great deal there. Then to Mr Das Gupta in Koilpatti, to tell him that no car would be coming for him today, that no meeting was possible today. Not the reason, however; not yet. Later they might well feel that they needed his legal advice, but first they must let the police have their head. Touch nothing, alter nothing, inflect nothing. The loaded Land-Rover still stood below the terrace; they had forgotten it, until Purashottam sent out a servant to bring in the bags and remove the food before the heat of the day began. They all knew there would be no departure now.

‘We ought,’ said Dominic, expressing what they were all feeling, ‘to let Inspector Raju know what has happened, too.’

For this could hardly be anything but a corollary of the affair at Thekady. Either one more in a series of outrages which had begun there, or else a move to eliminate witnesses of the first crime. They hovered between the two opinions, but the one thing they could not believe was that this was an unconnected incident. They had blundered into a labyrinth, perhaps merely by reason of being on the boat that discovered the murdered body of Mahendralal Bakhle; and now every move to find the way out might be the wrong move.

‘It is a delicate matter,’ said Purashottam. ‘We are in Tamil Nadu, and the lake is in Kerala, and the state police can be jealous of their rights. We must wait until they come. But as it does seem to be a continuation of your Inspector Raju’s case, they may even be glad to call him into consultation. We should be diplomatic.’

They could use such terms, and consider such niceties, while all the time within their shut minds the frantic thoughts kept running round and round in circles like shot animals trying to reach their own pain: ‘Patti’s dead. She left her diary in the office, and she remembered it and ran back for it, and the office blew up in her face and killed her. Ten minutes more, and the Land-Rover would have been on its way, and she would have been safe on board – but then Purushottam would have shut himself in there with his accounts – Patti delayed the departure, and it’s Patti who’s dead…
But which were they after
?’

‘But we could call the Swami,’ said Dominic.

‘In Delhi?’ It seemed almost as far away as America.

‘Why not?’ He wanted to hear the sanest, most reassuring and detached voice he knew. It had a way of settling things into a true perspective, even death. This was not the first time he had faced the Swami Premanathanand across a murdered body, and perceived in consequence that death is only a part of the picture, however inevitable and omnipresent. ‘He’ll need to know what’s happened, since he sent me here, and he’s quite certainly concerned about you.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Purushottam, faintly encouraged. ‘I suppose it might be a good idea at least to let him know what’s happened.’

It took Dominic some little time to get his call through and even when he reached the number that belonged to the haphazard little central office of the Mission, buried in the narrow complexities of the Sadar Bazaar, it took him longer still to get hold of the Swami. There was a minor policy conference in progress over the projected purchase of some new agricultural machines, and the Swami could leave the council only for a few hurried minutes. Dominic could picture the earnest heads bent over coloured brochures, and all the ardent faces, young and old, so lit up with partisan enthusiasm that the sharp western mind would never recognise their angelic shrewdness and practicality until they had beaten down his prices and extracted from him his most effective lines. They had a small factory in Andhra where they were making their own, working them out to specification according to regional needs, but they couldn’t yet do everything themselves. And angels need to be both practical and shrewd, in order to hold their own with fallible mankind.

The distant voice, gentle, courteous and abstracted, said in his ear: ‘I have only a few moments, I am sorry. You are at Malaikuppam?’

‘Yes, Swami, we’re here. Since the day before yesterday…’

‘And all is well with you and Purushottam?’

‘No, nothing is well. We need your advice.’

‘Tell me,’ said the Swami alertly, and composed himself to listen in silence. When the brief but shattering recital was completed, he continued silent for a moment, and then he made utterance twice, with a thoughtful pause between, and very gently hung up the receiver.

Dominic came back into the room where the others waited; all their eyes were on him, and Priya at least seemed to see in his face something heartening, as though he had been given a promise, and carried the sheer relief and reassurance of it in his eyes.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said,’ Dominic reported faithfully, ‘ “To the born sure is death, to the dead sure is birth; so for an issue that may not be escaped thou dost not well to sorrow.” ’

‘Helpful!’ said Larry sourly, his New England mentality outraged.

‘And then he said: “I will think what is best to be done.” And hung up.’

‘And is that all?’

‘You don’t know him,’ said Dominic.

Strangely, as if a strangled spring had been released to gush freely, Priya bent her shining black head and began to cry, freely and quietly, not like a heart breaking but like a broken heart beginning to mend. And Purushottam, far too Indian to put an arm round her, nevertheless leaned forward with a gesture of fastidious delicacy, almost of fear, as though he had astonished himself, and took her hand in his.

The Tamil inspector of police from the district H. Q. was a strong contrast to Inspector Raju, a highly-strung, insecure man who made a fair amount of noise over his activities; but lucidly his insecurity prompted him to accept a highly-convenient let-out when it was offered. After lengthy discussion by telephone with his District Superintendent he gave it as their joint opinion that the Keralese authorities should certainly be called into consultation, since this appeared to belong to Inspector Raju’s prior case. The probability must at least be examined. Meantime, all the witnesses were kept waiting in suspense inside the house, while Purushottam showed the police officers the scene of the tragedy. Then he, too, was dispatched to wait with the others.

It was no wonder that they had a long time to wait. They had seen the desolation of the office, every shard of which would have to be examined; for somewhere there were the fragments, such as remained, of the second bomb. And they had seen the violation of Patti, with which the police doctor was now engaged. What they had to tell was of secondary urgency. They waited now in a very slightly relaxed but still numbed quietness, chilled with shock for all the growing heat of the day. The servants brought food, but no one did more than play with it, if this helpless distaste could be described as play. Only late in the afternoon did Inspector Tilak get to them, and even then it was to inform them that Inspector Raju had been notified several hours previously, and was on his way. The satisfaction in his voice was carefully suppressed but none the less present. The death of an English girl in a terrorist outrage was a very hot potato, which he was by no means sorry to be allowed to drop in the lap of the police of the next state. What he wanted to hear from them first, therefore, was the whole story of the events at Thekady; and they told them separately, each of them remembering in isolation. Their statements regarding the new outrage were left to wait until Inspector Raju arrived, as in the early evening he did, driven by Sergeant Gokhale in a rather unexpected Mercedes.

Mindful of his duties as a host, Purushottam had made provision for them. A meal was waiting, and there were rooms prepared, since clearly they could not return to their own state this same night. The two inspectors had a lengthy session together before they interviewed their witnesses, and it was past nine o’clock by the time they had all made their second statements, and were assembled again in conference. It seemed that Inspector Raju, in view of what they knew already, saw no point in concealing from them those aspects of this case which linked up only too surely with the previous one.

‘Mr Bakhle was killed by a bomb, deliberately planted on board his boat. I can tell you now that the bomb that killed Miss Galloway, of which we have found fragments – more fragmentary, unfortunately, than in the last case – seems to have been manufactured in a similar way, with the same materials, probably by the same hand and at the same time. The connection is clear. We cannot reconstruct the dial of the firing device this time, and we don’t know for what hour it was set, for there is a possibility that it may have gone off through some unexpected shock or vibration. So we can’t deduce from the time of the explosion anything precise about the person for whom it was meant. But I’m sure you will not have missed the implications. In five or ten minutes more the party would have left, and it seems obvious from your statements that after your departure Mr Narayanan would have gone back to his work in the office, in preparation for his lawyer’s intended visit.’

He looked round them all, and his lined face was a little grey and tired after his journey, but there was nothing wrong with the sharpness of his eyes.

‘Yes, it is true, not everyone could have known that fact, though all this household could, as well as yourselves. But that is less significant than you may think, for the fact seems to be that ever since his father’s funeral rites Mr Narayanan has spent much of his waking time in there, and that may be well known by now to most of the district. It could also very easily have been learned by anyone making a private study of Mr Narayanan’s habits. I have seen for myself that though there may be a watchman during the night, this house is virtually open twenty-four hours a day. The gate is almost never closed, but even if it were, the wall would be very easy to scale. In short, the bomb could easily have been planted during the night by someone who had watched Mr Narayanan’s routine for some days, but perhaps had not even realised that he now had guests. The necessary observations may well have been made before your arrival. But in any case another death, the death of an innocent bystander, quite uninvolved in any ideological struggles in India, would not worry the people who plant bombs to do their work. To them Miss Galloway, I’m afraid, merely represents the loss of a little explosive. They have more.’

Quietly and carefully Dominic said: ‘You’re saying, Inspector, that the attack was meant for Purushottam. Not for Patti.’

‘I am saying that quite clearly that is the inference you have all drawn from the occurrence. It is, indeed, the inference anyone would draw. So much so, that now I am only wondering, and perhaps asking you to consider the possibility, too, whether that is not what we are all meant to think. Here is another landlord, a vulnerable target, obviously the bomb was meant for him.’

Purushottam’s sombre face did not change; the idea was not new to him. Nor did it seem to impress him very much, after the day they had spent here together, and the sights they still carried burned within their eyes, and could not stop seeing.

‘But,’ said Inspector Raju, “There are many landlords, some more obvious targets than our friend here. Here is a new bomb outrage, at the home of the land-owner who
happens
to be entertaining the witnesses closest to the Bakhle killing at Thekady, and that bomb outrage just
happens
to wipe out one of those witnesses, instead of the host. I am not very fond of coincidences. I always tend to look round behind them – almost to believe that they are not coincidences at all. Therefore I would like you to consider the possibility that an agent of the Naxalites may very well have moved here from Thekady to Malaikuppam, not because his next victim had already been marked down here, but
because he was following you, the witnesses
.’

‘But in that case,’ said Larry, galvanised into speculation almost against his will, ‘if he wanted to get rid of
us
, why not plant his bomb in the Land-Rover, and time it for when we were well away from here? It would be the safest method I can think of.’

‘Because, Mr Preisinger, for the past two nights Mr Narayanan’s watchman has been making your Land-Rover his base. He is a romantic, and to him a Land-Rover is an exotic wonder. You may be sure no one has had the opportunity of violating that sacred vehicle. Moreover, supposing there was a choice among witnesses – some, say, who knew virtually nothing, one who had some special knowledge – they would have preferred to aim, at least, at getting the vital one, and letting the others go. Many deaths are acceptable in a pinch, but need not be wastefully incurred where they are not necessary. And Miss Galloway had made use of the office yesterday evening. She may have been under observation then – even so closely that someone knew she had left her diary there. I do not say it is so. I say only that it is something to be considered, and I ask you to consider it.’