The Strangler Vine (10 page)

‘Were they Thugs, Mr Blake?’

He shook his head, his hands pressing hard on to the wounded thief’s stomach. ‘These were roadside thieves taking their chances.’

‘They looked like savages.’

‘They’re hungry. There have been some bad years and the monsoon was thin up here, the harvest will be poor. Some are already feeling it and have taken to the roads. A bad bet on their part. Their
skill is stealth. They’d have planned to strike Nungoo unconscious and counted on you not waking.’

Another minute passed. ‘Those were two good shots,’ he said. ‘You’re handy with the pistol.’

‘I almost did not try the second. I thought the Collier might have my hand.’

‘They’re temperamental, Colliers,’ he said. ‘But you know your way round a gun.’

‘I’ve been shooting since I was a small boy.’ It was strange. I could not actually see Blake’s eyes, they were shadowed by his brows, but under the force of his imagined gaze I felt compelled to continue.

‘I grew up in Devon, between Dartmoor and the coast. A small village called Bainton. My father was – is – a fine marksman. It is the only thing I inherited from him. I’ve been going out after coneys and game since I can remember. I miss the woods and the fields. You were right, Mr Blake, I am not at home in the city.’

‘Sisters and brothers?’

‘Three brothers, two now dead, and my sister. My oldest brother Harry will have the estate, such as it is, and has a commission in the army. Fred was in the navy, he died at sea. James died when I was small, I hardly remember him. I am the youngest.’

‘And your sister?’

‘Louisa, she is closest to me in age. She takes care of my father.’ There was something in the way he listened that slightly unnerved me, as if he heard more than I said.

‘Your mother’s dead?’

‘Three years since.’ My eyes strayed back to Nungoo’s prostrate body.

‘You prize your books, Mr Avery,’ he said.

‘As you so eloquently observed a few days ago, Mr Blake, I have little else to prize. They are virtually my only possessions.’ I felt a touch light-headed and the pain in my arm began to float away. ‘May I ask you something? How did you know I was in debt – I mean, beyond the obvious?’

‘Your signet ring was missing; I remembered it from the first time I saw you,’ he said. ‘And the pocket watch. With young officers it’s
usually cards. The pocket watch goes before the ring. The ring is an heirloom, the pocket watch is a gift.’

I nodded.

‘I observe things. Small things, don’t forget them. Put them together.’ There was a pause. ‘There’s a lot of Mountstuart in that pile of books,’ he said.

‘I have read almost everything he has written. You knew him, did you not, Mr Blake?’

‘A little. A long time ago.’ Blake took a length of clean rag and began to tuck it deftly under the thief’s body. He wound it round him several times, covering each wound. The man was silent; he seemed all but insensible. Blake tied the ends of the bandages as tight as he could.

‘This one cannot feel much now. Let me see your hand.’ He began to probe the wound with his fingers. It was longer than I’d thought, but not too deep.

‘What’s
Pickwick Papers
?’ he said.

The question seemed so utterly peculiar and out of place that I stumbled over my answer.

‘It concerns, er, a retired London gentleman and his friends who, er, go on perambulations around the English countryside and have adventures. It is comic.’

Again Blake’s silence seemed to compel me to speak. ‘It was my friend Macpherson’s particular favourite.’

‘Short and pale, with the freckles and sandy hair.’

‘Really, Mr Blake,’ I said, suddenly annoyed. ‘If you have not been spying on me, you are doing an extremely bad job of persuading me otherwise.’

‘He was at the levee with you. I never forget a face.’

The thought of Frank brought me up short and I took a deep breath before I could recollect myself.

‘That hurts?’

‘No. My friend, Macpherson. He was killed two days before we left Calcutta.’

‘I’m sorry for it.’ He wiped away the blood. ‘What happened?’

‘He was killed in Blacktown.’

‘The officer murdered at the
Bangbazaar
? That was him?’

‘You heard of it?

‘It’s rare that a white man finds his end in Blacktown these days – though not as rare as you might think.’ He turned my arm over. ‘Your man used a
katar
, you can see by the wound,’ he said. ‘It’s carried on the knuckles and delivered like a punch. It could have been much worse. I’ll clean it and sew it. Mir Aziz would do a better job than I, but I can’t disturb him now. You understand?’ I nodded. The fire was down to a few embers. Quickly, he coaxed them to life.

‘How did your friend Macpherson die?’

‘He was stabbed and there was a cord around his neck.’

‘Some story about him, wasn’t there?’

‘He was in debt to a moneylender.’ A pause. Again, I felt compelled to say more than I quite wished to. ‘Someone in the Political Department seemed to think he might have had papers he should not have. His reputation was ruined. I still cannot believe it. He was so – so good. He never drank, or gambled. He was a generous friend. But when I think back, the days before he died, he was melancholy, low-spirited. I thought it was my fault.’

Blake placed a small sealed pot among the now glowing embers.

‘This is ghee. When it melts, I’ll clean the wound with it. It should stop the bleeding. It may hurt.’

‘I can show it to the military doctor at Jubbulpore,’ I said.

‘Hah.’ It was an abrupt, non-committal sound. He poured the ghee along the wound. The opium did its work well.

‘You do not have much use for physicians?’ I said.

‘Kill more than they cure.’ He poured off the pool of butter, then started again. ‘Why were your friend’s low spirits your fault?’

‘It is he that you have to blame for my presence here. He put my name forward, I think. I was not as grateful as I should have been.’

Blake finished with the ghee, then brought forth a small leather folder from which he retrieved a needle and cotton. He threaded the needle, and pulled the sides of the wound together with one hand while pushing the needle through the skin. Although I could feel it pulling and the sensation was not pleasant, the pain was remarkably reduced.

‘Have you found signs of Mountstuart along the road?’ I said.

In and out went the needle. ‘He travelled among the natives and avoided European company.’

‘That was why there was no sign of him on the Grand Trunk Road.’

‘Not among the whites. He travelled with three servants and he won a monkey in a dice game.’ He looked up from his work. ‘You are disappointed that Mountstuart preferred to be among the natives.’

‘No.’ But I was. Blake was now near the last stitch and I thought I would get little from him once the stitching was done. I said, ‘Did you learn much from the headmen about Mountstuart?’

‘He was seen all down the Poona road in April. Made a spectacle of himself – no surprise, it’s what he’s known for. In one place he paid for a village feast – they were grateful, food has been scarce. The harvest was bad. In another he recited verses of the Mahabharata.’ I did not know what this was, but I did not say so. ‘In another, he apparently killed a boar with such fastidiousness the villagers felt able to eat it – though I doubt the truth of that. Nonsense has always accumulated round Mountstuart. There.’

He pulled the thread tight and bit off the end with his teeth.

‘I thank you, Mr Blake,’ I said. ‘And I wish to apologize for questioning your commitment to our endeavour.’

For a moment I thought he might laugh at me.

‘Accepted, Mr Avery.’

He tied my hand into a sling and said we should pack the wound with banana leaf or some herb called
brahmi
, which would speed the healing.

Nungoo’s body had by now been wrapped in a clean white sheet. Mir Aziz was entirely silent. I could think of nothing to say to him. Sameer, wet-eyed, carefully helped me into my best uniform. I had spent several days agonizing over how I should present myself at Jubbulpore: whether I should break into my second bar of Windsor soap, how I might take the creases and dust from my uniform. Now such preoccupations seemed absurd.

‘
Mujhe bahut afsos hai
,’ I said falteringly to Sameer. I am very
sorry. ‘Nungoo – good man. Fine man.’ I tried to take his hand in mine, but it was too painful so I brushed it instead.

‘Nungoo’s body must be buried within a day,’ Blake said. ‘We’re none of us up to digging a grave. It’s only a few hours to Jubbulpore, we will make arrangements to have him buried there.’

Blake brought from his packs a black broadcloth tail-coat – a little rumpled and dusty – and a white summer shirt and white trousers, and put them on. The sun had risen and the day was by now almost warm. At Blake’s bidding I went to look at the wounded thief. I saw that he was dead. He had made hardly a sound. I looked into his face; he was not much older than me.

‘We’ll take their bodies too. We should not leave them by the roadside,’ said Blake.

We rode for several hours. But though beyond the trees the countryside was verdant and well tended, with fields of papaya, pomegranate and jackfruit trees, and though the road was wider and flatter and gritted with small stones and more like a road than anything since Mirzapore, there was no rejoicing. Apart from his prayer, Mir Aziz had said no word since Nungoo’s death; Sameer wept openly. Blake lapsed into silence and looked as dour and weary as I had seen him. I had been the cause of two men’s deaths. It was not how I had imagined our arrival at Jubbulpore. The heat was oppressive and we passed thicket upon thicket in which the trees had been encircled by other sinisterly twisting grey trunks.

‘It is as if one tree would squeeze the life out of another, and then another, and then another,’ I said aloud. ‘What are they?’

‘They are called strangler vines,’ said Blake.

And so we came to Jubbulpore with three corpses.

At the edge of Jubbulpore two sentries carrying muskets and wearing jackets the colour of dust eyed us suspiciously as Blake asked for directions to the Thuggee bureau. I had rarely felt such relief in arriving anywhere, so I ignored their stony glances and looked about as we rode into the cantonment. It was immediately evident that the place was exceptionally neat and well ordered, from the freshly gravelled road lined with coconut and toddy palms, to the small barracks and parade ground, to the humming bazaar where shopkeepers were beginning to lay out their wares and the natives about their daily chores stopped to gaze at our grisly cargo.

Our gloomy escorts led us to a sprawling collection of whitewashed cottages joined haphazardly together. A long verandah was crowded with servants and sepoys, who craned to look but did not approach. After a few minutes a short, dark-haired man, dressed in the same grey-brown material as the sepoys, hurried out of the doorway and down the steps. When he saw us he started.

‘The sepoy says you were asking for the Thuggee bureau,’ he said, surveying us. ‘What is it that you want?’

‘We were attacked on the Mirzapore road, about two hours’ ride back,’ Blake said. ‘There were four of them. My assistant despatched two, but was wounded and is in need of care and rest.’ I turned to stare at Blake and tried to hide my surprise. It would be no exaggeration to say that he was a different man. The edges had been brushed off his voice; it was filled with authority. He even sat on his horse differently. ‘Another of our party was killed and requires burial. We have brought the bodies of our assailants since we assumed the Thuggee Department would wish to inspect them.’

‘Well, I am afraid you cannot come into the Thuggee bureau,’ the man said, looking us over with an expression of distaste. It must
be admitted that we were not impressive: we were dusty, somewhat creased around the edges and possibly a little malodorous.

‘What is your name, sir?’ said Blake sharply.

‘Captain James Pursloe, Assistant Superintendant of the Thuggee bureau,’ the man said. There was something slightly petulant about his manner, though he looked to me a good ten years older than I.

‘A captain, eh?’ said Blake. The man squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze. ‘Captain Pursloe, I have come 700 miles, all the way from Calcutta, in three weeks, to see Major Sleeman. I have letters of introduction from Government House. I have three bodies and a wounded man. I want accommodation, medical attention for my assistant, and to bury our Mahommedan companion, according to his traditional rights, within the day. I hope that is not too much for you.’

Captain Pursloe pulled himself up and squared his shoulders.

‘Yes, sir.’

Now another Company officer appeared: an enormous, burly officer dressed in the same grey-brown material as the others, with a sunburnt face and a jutting jaw that gave him a belligerent air. The big officer gave Pursloe a careless nod.

‘Lieutenent Mauwle,’ the latter said, a little nervously I thought, ‘these gentlemen have come all the way from Calcutta. They were attacked on the road to Mirzapore, not two hours since.’

‘How many?’ said Mauwle curtly.

‘Four,’ said Blake. ‘Oiled and shaven. Two dead, two escaped. Here are the bodies.’

‘They’ll be Bhils,’ said Mauwle. He had a thick Scottish brogue. He barked an order in the local lingo and the crowd about us slowly began to disperse. Then he advanced on them, and they scattered. He came alongside our horses and lifted back the head of one of our attackers, grunted and dropped it again.

‘I’ll take some men out, they’ll not get far.’

‘An attack is, I assure you, a very rare occurrence here,’ Pursloe said. ‘The roads around Jubbulpore are very safe these days. You are a very small party, Mr er—’

‘My name is Jeremiah Blake, and I am the Company’s Special Inquiry Agent.’

The sulky, persecuted look was replaced by one of alarm.

‘I cannot say I have ever heard of a Special Inquiry Agent,’ he said. ‘May I … may I ask what your visit concerns?’

Lieutenant Mauwle, mounting the steps of the Thuggee Department, turned round.

‘We are here in search of Xavier Mountstuart.’

Pursloe blenched. Lieutenant Mauwle laughed, a throaty, scornful sound.

‘You’ve come a long way for nothing then,’ he said. ‘You won’t find him here. And all mention of him is forbidden in Jubbulpore.’

The rest of the day was somewhat befogged in my memory. We were shown to an empty bungalow that smelled of dust. It was surrounded by high compound walls closed by a pair of substantial gates. Our hosts seemed keen to rectify our first impressions, for within a few hours the place had servants, food and bedding and the station’s grumpy old medic arrived. He approved my stitches but tut-tuttingly removed the paste of leaves that Blake had packed around them. I took a bath. In the late afternoon a troop of sepoys escorted us to a small overgrown Mahommedan graveyard where Nungoo was to be buried. I reflected that in Calcutta one would very rarely have attended such a ceremony; and that I was glad that I had come. Blake and I stood slightly apart as Mir Aziz and Sameer and a local Mahommedan holy man said verses and cast earth over the body, which was laid in a shallow grave, wrapped in white shrouds. I found I was too tired to think, too tired to speak. At the bungalow we dined off boiled chicken and rice, and then I crawled under layers of mosquito nets to my bed. The night air was thick with swarming insects, and I was glad of the nets.

The last thing I recall noticing was that the bed legs were sitting in cups of water.

At some point the squeaking of rusty hinges and metal clanging against itself penetrated my dreams. After that I slept for nearly two days.

I dreamt of Devon again. The window of my bedroom open. The view of rough fields and hedgerows stretching on. The wood beyond. In the wood the leaf mould, a hound padding at my heels. A soft, wet, overcast day.

When I woke, my clothes had been laundered and folded on a small chest, my books unpacked and propped up in a glass cabinet, and an unfamiliar servant with a pot of fragrant, steaming coffee stood at the end of the bed. My head throbbed, but I was gladder than I could say to find myself among the fruits of civilization. After I had bathed I ventured on to the verandah. The gates to the compound, rusted but tall and imposing, were locked. Blake was sitting very still, whether thinking or praying I could not have said. I would have returned quietly to my room, but he called my name.

‘The gates,’ I said.

‘Yes, they say they need to lock us in each night for our own safety. Mir Aziz and Sameer are taking a few more days of mourning. I’m calling on Major Sleeman this afternoon.’

‘I should like to accompany you,’ I said, rather cool.

To my surprise he said, ‘All right.’ Truth to tell I did not feel entirely well, but I was determined not to be left behind.

I struggled with my clothes, the bandage making everything difficult, and when I presented myself on the verandah at the appointed time, I had only been able to get on one arm of my best uniform jacket.

Blake was clean-shaven, with a high-collared white muslin shirt, a white necktie, a well-cut blue dress-coat, and pressed white nankeen trousers. I had never seen him so finely dressed, and I did not forebear to stare. He guided my arm into my sleeve and fastened my buttons one by one, then brushed me down.

‘And I had thought myself the beau,’ I said. ‘May I comment on your transformation, Mr Blake? Even your voice is different.’

I thought he might take offence, but he said, ‘Got to look the part.’

We were escorted from our lodgings by a large unit of sepoys. Major Sleeman’s residence was the grandest dwelling in Jubbulpore: a two-storey stone mansion in the classical style, with Greek columns
holding up an elegant portico and long windows behind them. It was surrounded by a flourishing walled garden, watered by innumerable little irrigation channels. The Major, however, was not yet at home.

We were shown into a large cool study. Finding myself less robust than I had hoped, I let myself into a chair. We sat in silence. The windows were stretched with fine muslin, and the walls lined with glass cases filled to bursting with books and stuffed animals. There was a large three-quarter-length portrait of a man in a blue regimental jacket, and in the middle of the room a long desk, polished wood with inlaid ivory, on which small rocks and minerals were displayed.

After about five minutes there came the unmistakeable sound of English voices, signalling, I assumed, the arrival of our host. We waited and I felt the beginnings of nausea. Then into the room strode a grey-haired man whose features I recognized from the portrait, though he now had considerably less hair.

‘Aha! Our visitors!’ he said heartily. ‘Might I introduce myself? I am Major William Sleeman.’ He was sturdily built, not tall, with a ruddy farmer’s face, small flinty blue eyes and that yellow, worn-out look that told of decades in India. But all of this was trumped by the general amiability of his countenance and his tremendous air of energy and activity. Behind him came Captain Pursloe and a slight, pale, freckled man with a beaky nose.

Major Sleeman thrust out his hand to Blake, and would have grasped mine in its sling had I not removed it swiftly from his range, waving it slightly instead.

‘Ah, yes, yes. Of course!’ the Major said. ‘The attack!’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘May I present my condolences on the loss of your man. We regard the safety of the roads about Jubbulpore as our responsibility. I am deeply sensible that we have failed you.’ He seemed genuinely upset.

‘Uncle – Major Sleeman,’ said Pursloe, ‘may I present Mr Jeremiah Blake and er …’

‘Lieutenant William Avery,’ I said.

‘Of course, attacks close to Jubbulpore are usually very rare,’ said Pursloe.

‘I imagine they were hungry and took their chances,’ said Blake, more mildly than I expected. ‘We were a small party. I’ve been speaking to the headmen on the road – I hear there have been some bad harvests.’

Major Sleeman shook his head. ‘But an ill deed is a choice, Mr Blake. And this is a reminder that I cannot relax my exertions for a moment. Your assailants were Bhils, a troublesome, nomadic race whom we had hoped we had pacified. You are most fortunate, young man. They are known to poison the tips of their knives.’

‘I’d not heard that,’ said Blake.

‘You know the Bhils?’

‘I have encountered them once or twice.’

‘That is, if I may say, most unusual in a Calcutta civilian,’ said Major Sleeman. ‘Lieutenant Avery, I hear you managed to kill two of them. Well done, sir!’

‘It is a great honour to meet the discoverer of the Thugs and the author of
Ramaseeana
, sir,’ I said, slightly breathlessly. ‘Everyone speaks of your work in Calcutta.’

The small blue eyes fixed upon me. ‘Avery is a West Country name. Do I detect a trace of Devon?’

I nodded. He grinned. ‘Cornishman myself, born and bred. Hope to see it again, one day. Now, we do not stand on ceremony here, the Company population is too small. You have met our captain, James Pursloe, I think? May I also present Mr Edward Hogwood, my deputy magistrate, who shoulders so much of the burden of running Jubbulpore. I would not know what to do without him.’

Hogwood, who had remained so quiet I had almost forgotten him, smiled, nodded and seemed to stand a little taller in the glow of the Major’s approval. He was a worn, amiable-looking man, about the same height as Sleeman and Pursloe, with dark half-circles under his eyes. I felt perspiration begin to trickle down my forehead.

‘Our little triumvirate does most of the work both of running Jubbulpore and the Thugee bureau, along with Lieutenant Mauwle. Of course, now that I have been appointed Commissioner of Thuggee for all India, I do far less of the day-to-day work. But we are
still a small, tight-knit community – Pursloe here is my nephew; the doctor is my cousin. My wife has supervised the growing of new strains of sugar cane in the region. Some might accuse me of nepotism, I suppose’ – he grinned broadly again – ‘but we feel our results speak for themselves.’

He gestured for us to sit, though he remained standing. ‘Let us furnish you with some refreshment. Tea or iced sherbert?’ He clapped his hands. ‘Now, welcome, or as the Moghuls have it …’ and he came out with a stream of something of which I could make no sense at all.

To Sleeman’s evident surprise, Blake answered in the same lingo. I cannot even begin to reproduce the sounds he made.

‘So you know Persian, Mr Blake. I own I am surprised. It is not always done to admit a taste for it in Calcutta these days and certainly not such high-flown prose. For myself, I never got on very well with Calcutta. So much time wasted, so much energy dissipated, so many temptations to peculation.’

‘I would not disgree with you,’ said Blake.

Sleeman produced another wave of Persian, and again Blake answered. Pursloe suppressed a yawn.

‘Most impressive!’ said Sleeman. ‘And do you have any other languages?’

‘A few.’ A silence.

‘And they are?’

‘Hindoostanee, Urdu, Bengalee, Marathee, Pashtun, a little Sanskrit – but that was a long time ago.’

‘May I ask where you acquired such fluency?’

‘I had good teachers.’

Sleeman smiled. There was no disguising Blake’s reluctance to speak about himself.

‘James tells me you made Calcutta to Jubbulpore in three weeks. That is a very considerable feat. How did you manage it?’

‘Small party, little baggage, changed our horses every few days,’ said Blake. ‘I have covered considerable distances the same way up in the north. The worst of the monsoon is done, and the heat was quite bearable.’

I thought ruefully of the nights of soaking tents and cold wet ground.

‘How practical!’ said Major Sleeman. ‘More Company men should travel as efficiently. Too wedded to their comforts. So, Mr Blake, may I ask in what capacity you come to see us?’

Evidently Pursloe had not mentioned Mountstuart.

‘I am the Company’s Special Inquiry Agent.’

‘I was not aware the Company had a “Special Inquiry Agent”,’ said Major Sleeman. ‘It has a rather severe and ominous ring about it. May I be candid? Calcutta is a long way away from here and we have become a little wary of its interventions.’