Ellis Peters - George Felse 11 - Death To The Landlords (20 page)

They sat in one of the small, seaward lounges of the hotel that evening, after Priya had slept through most of the day, after the Manis had departed, stunned and incredulous, without Sushil Dastur, and the Bessancourts, grieved but unshaken, without Romesh Iyar, and after Larry had cruised his way in a local boat fruitlessly but gallantly up the coast and down again, only to hear that everything had happened without him, and that everything was over.

The hotel was very quiet, most of its guests out on the dunes or in the village, enjoying the cool of the evening after sundown. The police had completed their notes and interrogations, and departed, taking with them Romesh Iyar’s rifle, stolen during the night from the belongings of one of the room-boys on duty, but strongly suspect of being the same one originally stolen from the baggage of a well-to-do guest more than a year previously. At Malaikuppam, tomorrow, Inspector Raju would be waiting to close his file on the case. Even the sad, repulsive carcase of the krait had been removed from under the balcony. The traces were being softly sponged away out of half a dozen lives, but only to make way for something new, which in its turn had arisen out of the old.

So they sat in the hotel lounge, Priya, the Swami, Purushottam, Larry, Dominic and Sushil Dastur, and told one another whatever remained to be told.

‘After I had spoken with you,’ said the Swami, ‘I knew that I must come. The miscalculation that sent you here was mine. There at Malaikuppam it was already clear that no one was interested in us, and even more clear that Lakshman Ray is a very honest, estimable, though perhaps rather stiff-necked young man. He will accept any challenge if he thinks a reflection has been made upon him. And indeed I did, for a while, entertain the thought that he might be the person for whom we were looking, since it had to be someone, and apparently someone closely connected with your party. Lakshman is showing a marked interest in our programme for Malaikuppam, by the way. I hope you don’t mind, Purushottam, that I discussed it with him? He is an intelligent boy. I think we must see that he completes his university course, he may be very useful in the future. Now where was I? Oh, yes! I thought I should join you here at once. So I took my hired car – if you had approached from the lane instead of the garden you would have seen and recognised it – and drove down here at once. Lakshman is in charge in Malaikuppam, should there be anything needing attention. I arrived here somewhat after midnight – no, later, it must have been nearly one o’clock – parked my car, and walked a little way towards the road and the dunes, in case I might be able to find you somewhere. So it happened that I was the first person to encounter Sushil Dastur. But Sushil will tell you.’

Sushil Dastur, in some celebratory exuberance, had put on his
achkan
tonight, and sat cross-legged, Indian to the backbone, in the cushioned settee along the wall. There was a hectic flush still perceptible on his prominent cheekbones, and a spark of excitement in his dark, vulnerable, once-apprehensive eyes. Sushil Dastur had lived through a night which transformed his life, a night he would never forget.

‘You see, Mr Felse, Mr Narayanan, after I left you I was so upset, so ashamed, I could not possibly go to bed and sleep. I could not think how to make things right, and I was so restless, I went out to walk a little. I was among the trees at the edge of the garden, when I saw this man going out to the road, driving Miss Madhavan before him… It was terrible! He held her by a cord tied to her wrists, and he had a knife in his hand. You understand, I was afraid to call for help or make any sound, for fear he should kill her. So I followed them. It was the only thing I could think of to do…’

Sushil Dastur, who had been haunted and hounded all his life by his inadequacy and want of success in trivial things, had astonished himself, when this genuine enormity confronted him, by being moved to immense indignation instead of fear, and boldness instead of caution. He had still not recovered from the shock.

‘It was the right thing,’ said Purushottam warmly. He had Priya close by his side, constantly and anxiously cherished with glances and attentions. Apart from that they did not touch each other, or anticipate by a word what they both knew to be inevitable and right. There are ways of doing these things, and theirs were Indian ways.

‘If I followed, I thought, at least I should know where he had hidden her, and then I could bring help. Even in the darkness I had to take great care not to be seen or heard, but I saw him take her into the hut, and then I hurried back to get help.’

‘And I was the first man he met,’ said the Swami, ‘and he was so good as to trust me at once with this story. I urged extreme caution, for Miss Madhavan’s sake, for if we had raised a general alarm she would surely have been killed. But I had hopes that otherwise this criminal’s interest was not in Priya herself, but rather in her value as a lure for Purushottam, in which case she might be safe for a while, provided there was no open hue and cry. That was why we examined her room and yours, Purushottam, and found the message which was left for you. You will forgive me if I left you no further message as to what we were about, but I had hopes that perhaps you need not know until all was over, if our efforts were rewarded. We knew now how much time we had, some hours of it blessedly in darkness still, and therefore we set out at once to act by stealth, trusting to bring her back, somehow, perhaps before you ever returned to the hotel. But the note we left where it was. We had no right to take from you, in the worst event, the choice that was there offered you.’

He looked from Priya to Purushottam, and his eyes were clear and calm, Those two knew more about each other, now, than most couples know who contemplate marriage, and had more reason to be confident and glad.

‘We looked in my car’s tool kit for whatever might be useful. I do not know why it should include so fine a knife, but we were very glad of it. We went mainly by the shore, climbing to the edge of the dunes when we had to, swimming when we were forced to. In the end the time we had was barely enough. In the first cove there we found a boat waiting. Obviously it was there to ensure his retreat after the shooting. So I went aboard, and poled it round the headland into the other bay, while Sushil Dastur climbed up to the rear of the hut with our knife, and began tapping his way along the walls to try to find out where Priya was, and make sure that she was alive and conscious, to be able to give us what help she could. And he found her, as she has told you, and she did help us, very substantially. When I had anchored the boat in the other bay, I climbed up from there to join him, and we began to cut our way through the wall to her. Though indeed Sushil Dastur was much more expert than I, and much more silent, and he did most of the work. And the rest you know.’

Yes, the rest they knew. Only the very simple part had been left for him to do at the end, when there was no other way of delaying Purushottam’s execution by the two or three minutes necessary to complete the delivery of Priya. Without a weapon – and without the slightest intention of using one even if he had had one – to step in between the hunter and the hunted. That was all. Anyone could do that.

‘How strange!’ said Priya wonderingly. ‘At Thekady we liked him, all of us. And yet he wore such a false face. Not just the crime itself, but all that manipulation of the other boat-boy – for it must have been Romesh who not only put those Maoist papers among Ajit Ghose’s possessions, but also put it into his mind that Bakhle would be a profitable client and tip him well, so that he would want to exchange duties for the day. Perhaps he even suggested it, though he got Ajit to do the asking. It was all his evidence that turned the charge against the other boy. And I think – it is a terrible thing to say about any man, but truly I believe it of him – that he designed events so that we, in his boat, should be the ones to find the bodies. Because he
wanted
to be there. Because it gave him satisfaction to have contrived everything so cleverly, and to see his plans succeed.’

‘It is a seductive delight,’ said the Swami, for him almost sententiously, ‘to excel at anything.’

‘But a poor person like Ajit Ghose – as poor as himself – how was he the enemy? And to take not only his life, but even his good name!’

‘Now at least he will get that back again,’ said Purushottam. ‘Everyone knows now that he was quite innocent, that it was Iyar who did everything.’

Dominic looked fixedly at the Swami, but the Swami sat silent, his face composed and tranquil.

‘And it seems that he himself was this sadhu we’ve heard so much about, and I’ve never seen,’ said Larry. ‘The one at Nagarcoil and at Thekady. In both places he claimed to have seen that sadhu himself, as soon as he was asked about him – and in the right spot, too. I suppose he threw in the sighting at Nagarcoil because he knew Priya had seen him casing the house.’

‘And as it turns out,’ said Dominic, ‘it was only in Nagarcoil he managed to get himself taken on by the Bessancourts. He gave the impression that that had happened earlier, in Trivandrum, but actually he never was in Trivandrum, he was following us. He only happened on the Bessancourts after he’d been checking up on us at Priya’s house. Being with them made it possible for him to get to close quarters with us here.’

‘But I confess I have not quite understood,’ said Sushil Dastur humbly, ‘the significance of this pose as a sadhu. I hope I am not being obtuse,’ he said sadly, with a remote echo of his old uncertainty. It was important that he should not be obtuse. Purushottam had invited him back to Malaikuppam, in the passion of his gratitude, and offered him employment there, and the fear of being inadequate is not so easy to shake off in a moment.

‘I have pondered on the same matter myself,’ said the Swami considerately. ‘I think he was there by the lingam at Thekady by arrangement, to receive from someone – someone possibly quite unimportant, and unaware of his role – the bomb which was planted in Mr Bakhle’s boat. You will remember that he was seen there for only a short time, and that everyone testified to the fact that it was most unusual for any such person to find it worthwhile patronising that spot. It would have been unwise to have the messenger come and ask for him at the lake. Yet this place was within easy reach, and simple to find. And it is not so hard to become a sadhu in two minutes. A length of cloth, a handful of dust or ash, a touch of red or yellow paint, an oily hand passed through the hair – these are all you need. Having this small equipment with him, he used it whenever he had need to be other than his apparent self. The kit costs very little, also an advantage. Holiness is not an essential – though many may indeed be holy.’

Priya put out a hand with a sudden gesture of protest and pain, and Purushottam reached out rather shyly and took it in his, flushing and burning at the touch.

‘Then is that what happened to Patti? I think and think of her – and they will come, her parents, and what are we to tell them? It was Patti who gave alms to the sadhu by the lingam. Only she saw him closely, no one else looked him in the face as she did. Surely she knew, or felt she knew, that face again, even seen so differently? In the dusk there, when we found the boat – the same hour of dusk, the same light – she suspected then. And that’s why she died!’

There was a moment of silence, while the Swami gazed back at her with great gentleness and profound respect.

‘It was surely by reason of her recognition or non-recognition of that face that she died. For surely
he
thought that she knew him. She was a victim of forces she could not possibly understand.’

‘Patti is the thing I find hardest to forgive,’ said Priya.

‘I, too,’ said the Swami, ‘hardest of all.’ He cast down his eyes, regarding with calm abstraction the cupped palms of his hands. In the half-lit room, cross-legged with soles upturned in the cushions of the couch against the wall, he looked more than ever like an antique bronze. He said mysteriously, and apparently as much to himself as to them: ‘The Lord said: “He who at his last hour, when he casts off the body, goes hence remembering me, goes assuredly into my being.” ’

The police came and went at Malaikuppam, took statement after statement, congratulated the household and one another, even condescended to fill in a detail or two which had emerged later, such as Romesh Iyar’s mode of transport on that last chase. It seemed that a motor-cycle had been stolen, and later found abandoned at Nagarcoil, where he had rediscovered the Bessancourts through happening on their car, and had managed to get himself added to their party. And having completed all inquiries to their own satisfaction, Inspector Tilak and Inspector Raju closed the case, and departed. The terrorist was dead, the file completed, and this particular danger, at least, over for good.

The Galloways came and departed, also. During the three days that they stayed, every other person in the house walked delicately, tuned only to their needs and wishes. They were the essence of what Patti had once called suburban Cheltenham, unobtrusively well-bred, well-dressed and unadventurous. But they had also the advantages of their kind, reticence, consideration, honesty and fortitude, and the kind of durability which outlives empire. They would probably never do anything very big, very important, or very imaginative, but equally they were unlikely ever to do anything very mean, very cruel or crassly unimaginative. Their grief was contained but profound; they were not the kind to embarrass anyone with too intimate an insight into their troubles. Priya, who still had a week of leave, stayed and devoted herself to them until they left for the airport at Madurai, with Patti’s ashes, en route for Bombay and home. And when they were driven away, Larry, who had also felt impelled to stay and see the affair out to its close, gazed after the departing car with a thoughtful frown, and said:

‘The more I see of the New Left, the more I begin to value middle-class virtues.’ To add the next moment, in case anyone had got the wrong idea: ‘Virtues, I said. I know they’ve got their vices, too.’

He and Lakshman were the nexxt to leave, heading westward over the Ghats to Trivandrum and up-coast to Cochin; but when their tour ended, Lakshman was to return to his college with a grant guaranteed by the Mission, and Larry, too, had asked, noncommittally enough, to be informed if ever the work of restoring the old irrigation tanks should be seriously contemplated. They would both be back; at least to visit and remember, quite probably to stay.

Then Purushottam drove Priya home to Nagarcoil, to spend her last few days of leave with her family; not to broach the idea of marriage yet – that would be a job for someone else in the first instance – but surely to keep a sharp eye open for the quality of his own welcome, in the light of all that had happened. He came back cautiously elated; very thoughtful, but with a happy, hopeful thoughtfulness that looked forward, not back. And as for Sushil Dastur, turned loose on all the papers that had been salvaged from the office, dealing with abstract things like figures, which obeyed and never nagged him, he had never been so happy in his life.

And the next day Dominic drove the Swami to Madurai in the hired car, on their way back to Madras.

The whole household waved them away from the gates. As soon as they lost sight of the wall, and were threading the dusty centre of the village, the Swami sat back with a sigh in the front passenger seat, and turned his face to the future; but not yet his thoughts, not completely, for in a few moments he said, summing up: ‘Well, it is over. Not, perhaps, without loss, but I think as economically as possible.’

‘Except,’ said Dominic, accelerating as they drew clear of the last fringe of the village, ‘that justice has not been done. And you know it.’

The Swami gazed ahead, along the reddish-yellow, rutted ribbon of road, and pondered that without haste.

‘In what particular?’ he asked at length.

‘Granted it was Romesh Iyar who planted the bomb in Bakhle’s boat at Thekady, and set up the other boat-boy to take the rap, granted it was Romesh who hunted us to the Cape when he found Purushottam and Lakshman had changed places, and did everything that was done there – planting the krait, kidnapping Priya as bait, and setting the trap to shoot Purushottam – all that, yes. But not the second bomb, the one in the office. He had nothing to do with that. He couldn’t have had. He was at Tenkasi, and the police were getting regular reports from him. He was there doing casual work around the junction until he was told on Thursday evening that he could go where he liked, and needn’t report any more. He was fifty miles from Malaikuppam when that bomb was planted. And you know it. And so does Inspector Raju!’

‘There is this matter of the stolen motor-cycle. Fifty miles is not a great distance,’ said the Swami experimentally.

‘Yes, I noticed that Inspector Raju mentioned that the motor-bike was found at Nagarcoil, abandoned after Romesh hit on the idea of attaching himself to the Bessancourts. But he never said where or when it was reported missing.’ Dominic smiled along his shoulder, with affection, and even a little rueful amusement. ‘Oh, no, I wasn’t stupid enough to ask Inspector Raju, he might not have told me this time. But I did ask Sergeant Gokhale. Everyone got the desired impression that it was stolen in Tenkasi, at some unspecified time, and that he used it to commute up here by night. But actually it vanished right here in Koilpatti during Thursday night. After the police had told Romesh he needn’t report any more. After Patti’s death was in the papers. He didn’t leave Tenkasi until then, and he left by train. He pinched the motor-bike to get up to Malaikuppam from the station, and he kept it to follow us south when he saw us set off next morning without Lakshman – and with Purushottam.’

‘The others,’ said the Swami reasonably, having absorbed all this without apparent discomfiture, ‘have not questioned the police conclusions.’

‘The others don’t happen to have that bit of information I got from Inspector Raju, as he was leaving on Thursday evening. I was asking about all the others, Romesh was only mentioned among the rest. But that’s how I know he was still waiting in Tenkasi when Patti was killed in Malaikuppam.’

The Swami denied nothing of all this. He contemplated the road ahead, and looked a little tired, but not at all discomposed. ‘And why have you said no word of this in front of everyone?’

‘I suppose,’ said Dominic gently, ‘my reasons must be much the same as yours. I said justice hadn’t been done – I didn’t say I necessarily wanted it done.’

‘And how long,’ asked the Swami, after another considering silence, ‘have you known?’

‘Not long. Not even after we went to identify Romesh Iyar’s body. I only began to understand,’ he said, ‘when you evaded Priya’s question about how and why Patti died. It was because of her recognition
or non-recognition
of the sadhu’s face, you said, that Patti died. So it was. It was because she
didn’t
recognise him again in Romesh, not because she did. If she’d known him when she met him again, she might have been alive today. Not,’ he added honestly, ‘that it would necessarily have been much better for her. But it was after you said that, that I began to put things together, and to remember everything that seemed insignificant at the time, and yet made absolute sense once I had the clue. Such as, for instance, that if only we’d taken the girls with us when we went to look over the estate and the old irrigation channels, again, Patti might have been alive today.’

They were out on the main road, turning left towards Koilpatti.

‘As Purushottam said, at a moment when his every word merited attention,’ the Swami remarked, ‘we should not and must not turn to saying: “If only…” We do what we must, what seems right to us at the time, and none of us can do more.’ He added with reserve, but with respect and resignation, too: ‘Tell me, then, since you know so much—’

‘Only because, in the first place, you told me! To see you confronted with the absolute necessity for telling a lie, and still managing not to tell one, is a revelation.’

‘I see that you begin to know me too well, and to be as irreverent as a real son, my son,’ lamented the Swami, with a sigh and a smile of detached affection. ‘Tell me, then, if Romesh Iyar did not put the bomb in Purushottam’s office – who did?’

‘Patti did,’ said Dominic. ‘Of course!’

‘Go on,’ said the Swami, his face neither consenting nor denying.

‘She came from England, already in rebellion against everything that represented her parents and the establishment. She came innocent, romantic, idealistic, silly if you like, a sucker for left-wing causes, and kidded into hoping to find the wonderful, easy, metaphysical way here in India. And India kicked her in the teeth, the way it does – in the belly, too, sometimes – showing her, as it shows to all silly idealists, its most deprived and venomous and ugly and venal side. She was absolutely ripe to be a fall guy. The obvious ills of India made her a sitting target for the Naxalite contacts I don’t doubt she made in Calcutta – through the most vocal and articulate section of her society. It isn’t any chore to sell the slogan of: “Death to the landlords!” to a girl like that, who’d never even seen anyone kick a kitten until she came here. To her violence was all abstract, until she had to see it with her own eyes, all the blood and mess that you can imagine away as long as it’s still only in the mind. I don’t know who got hold of her, there among the Bengali teachers and students, but someone did. And when she came on leave south, they got her to bring the two bombs from Calcutta. She had her orders about handing them over, and she knew the names of the parties for whom they were intended…’

‘You are sure of that?’ asked the Swami, pricking up his ears.

‘Quite sure. In the boat she got the shock of her life when Romesh mentioned the name of Mahendralal Bakhle. Seeing him hadn’t meant a thing to her, she hadn’t known what he looked like; but she knew the name, all right. She passed it off by saying she’d read about his labour riots in the papers, but from then on she was dead quiet that day. Until then, I think, she’d sort of felt that she’d washed her hands of the first bomb, and nothing would really happen, nothing she would ever have to know about – and suddenly there was the man who was condemned to death, on the same lake with her, and she knew it was real. And again later, when we had to tell Inspector Raju where we could be contacted, and we said we were going to Purushottam Narayanan’s house at Malaikuppam, she at once changed her plans and asked if she and Priya could travel with us. Oh, yes, Patti knew who the victims were. But the rest – her contact here – everything to do with the Naxalite organisation itself – no, they took good care she should know as little as possible about all that.’

‘So the deliveries of those two bombs she carried, you think, were clearly laid down for her, in such a way as to prevent her from identifying the receiver?’

‘It looks that way. The first – of course you know it – was dropped into the sadhu’s begging bowl by the lingam shrine, along with her few
naye paise
…’

‘Yes… the face only she saw, and by twilight, behind its ash and paint, and failed to know again in Romesh Iyar.’

‘And the second, I think, was to have been delivered in exactly the same way to the sadhu at Tenkasi Junction, when she and Priya de-trained there for Kuttalam. Why else should he set off for there the next day, and wait there three days? He thought she knew him, and had understood everything – or perhaps he merely thought that she would obey instructions, and use no initiative herself. Let’s say, at least, that it never entered his head that she would accept the set-up at its face value, and believe absolutely that Ajit Ghose was her contact, and that he’d sacrificed his own life to fulfil his mission.’

‘And therefore,’ said the Swami sadly, ‘that she was now orphaned – bereft of her partner, and challenged to be as selfless and as ruthless as he. That she was on her own – with a bomb, and a known victim.’

‘When we found that boat it hit her like a thunderbolt,’ said Dominic, sweating as he remembered the leaking hull swaying sluggishly with its wash of water and blood among the tall reeds. ‘She’d never seen violence before – damn it, I don’t suppose she’d ever seen death before. You contemplate it with heroic calm, yes – as long as it stays a thousand miles away from you. When you see it, smell it, touch it, that’s another matter. Priya has never thought of violent injury but with compassion and the urge to jump right in and help. She’s never willed it, and it doesn’t frighten her. Patti
had
willed it, and then she saw it, and it was sickening. She collapsed, she was out of the reckoning all that night. And in the morning, Priya said, she was very calm, and talked of having to see Inspector Raju. Priya thought that was only because she hadn’t been fit the night before, and felt a statement would be required from her. I think it was more. I think she had slept on it, then, and made up her mind to confess, and hand over the second bomb. Not because of Bakhle, so much as because she thought that her heroes, the activists, the Naxalites, had turned out to be nothing but callous murderers, to whom an innocent, incidental boat-boy was of no account, and could be wiped out like swatting a fly. In a country, my God, where the Jains won’t even risk
inhaling
a fly! And she was right then. But afterwards, when she did see Inspector Raju, it was only to have it confirmed that so far from being an innocent victim, Ajit Ghose was the assassin, and a martyr for his cause, willing to die to carry out his assignment. And it was then she changed course again. She didn’t confess, she didn’t hand over the second bomb. On the contrary, when she heard we were to be Purushottam’s guests she hitched a ride along with us. Poor Priya was shocked. One doesn’t do such things, in a land where hospitality is in any case so instant, and so lavish. But Patti had risen to the occasion then, she was exalted. Ghose was dead, no longer able to take care of his second assignment. And she was confronted with his monstrous example. She was English, insubordinate, used to being allowed initiative. Romesh Iyar, who was sure she would just go ahead as planned, made off to Tenkasi to wait for her, never doubting she would come. Patti, believing she was left to hold up the world alone, and delivered from the ghastly thought that her heroes wrote off the humble as expendable – no, more than that, convinced that they regarded
themselves
as expendable – came with us to Malaikuppam dedicated to killing Purushottam.’