‘Yes. Was it Laura who found it?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘And you who had to kill it?’
‘No. I should have hated that. It was Merrick who killed the snake.’
Yes, Perron thought. Merrick was bound to come into the picture. ‘What kind of snake?’ he asked.
‘A young cobra. It was asleep in the bath-tub.’
‘The bath-tub? My bath-tub?’
‘No. Ours. Through there.’ He indicated his bedroom.
‘Sarah said it was found under the verandah at the back.’
‘I expect she said that to reassure you. No. It was in the bath. Laura happened to go in. She didn’t panic. She just came out and shut the door and told Ronald. I was over at the palace, but fortunately Ronald had dropped in. I don’t think Tippoo would have been much use. He really is terrified of them.’
‘How did Ronald kill it?’
The question seemed to put Rowan slightly off his stroke.
‘What makes you ask?’
‘I imagine he got the last ounce of drama out of it. Unless he’d changed considerably. Which I find difficult to believe. In spite of the funeral oration. And the Last Post. Whose idea was that?’
‘Susan’s. She said the only time she’d ever seen Ronald moved was at a beating of the retreat in Rajputana. It was a bit embarrassing for us. But the oration was no more than he actually deserved. And he gave Susan a sense of security.’
‘Well tell me,’ Perron said, ‘how he killed the snake.’
*
Does Nigel have a revolver? Merrick had asked. The answer had been, no. Then I’ll have to go next door for a moment, he said. While he did this Laura went into the compound at the back. She knew the snake had to be killed, but was as much against killing snakes as Nigel was, unless it couldn’t be avoided. She walked up and down waiting for the sound of the shot. She visualized, perhaps, the shaft of sunlight in the bathroom slowly and dangerously shifting, leaving the snake in shadow, cooling it, waking it; and wondered whether snakes had thoughts and if so what they thought about. What manner of sleep they slept. What dreams they had. (What dreams do falcons have, under those scarlet hoods? And how different those dreams must be – on the one hand of limitless sky, on the other of endless, endless earth.)
Well here it is, Merrick said. She hadn’t heard him approach. She swung round and there he was, a kukri in his good hand, the cobra suspended from the artificial one. At first she thought the cobra was whole but then the head end slipped out of the black glove and fell on the grass, leaving the tail end behind; and Laura cried out and was at once sick, all over her elegant shoes.
*
‘He was very contrite,’ Rowan said. ‘He kept on apologizing. To me, I mean. He said he’d decided he couldn’t shoot it because he wasn’t sure what the ricochet would do if he missed the snake and hit the tub. In any case he didn’t want to puncture the bath.’
If Merrick’s story was to be believed he had used his artificial arm as a lure and, when the cobra struck and sank its fangs into the gloved hand, had swung the kukri and cut it neatly into two. A gash in the porcelain was evidence.
‘He was taking a risk,’ Rowan ended.
‘He always did. Had Laura quite liked him up until then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I was wondering, you see, as I used to put it, whether you ever felt that he had chosen her.’
‘I remembered the phrase.’
‘When, exactly?’
‘I expect it would be more accurate to say I’d never forgotten it, but I certainly remembered it when Laura and I first got here and found him living alone next door. Susan and the boy were up in the hills.’
‘Didn’t you know he was in Mirat?’
‘Yes, I knew. Sarah and I have always written to one another. I hadn’t expected – such close proximity. I didn’t tell Laura much about him, just that we’d met. It amused her when he started turning up at odd moments when I happened to be out. It reminded her of the rubber estate, when Tony went down to KL or Singapore and left her alone, and all the local bachelors and grass-widowers homed in on her bungalow, making feeble excuses, or no excuses at all. When you remember what Laura looked like in those days, it’s no wonder. But it used to annoy her. She said it made her feel like an object, because if they didn’t come to make a pass they just came to stare. Anyway, she made a joke of it at first, of Ronald turning up whenever I was out. She has this idea that she’s now physically repulsive. She said Merrick probably thought he was physically repulsive too.’
Rowan stopped. Perron waited. After a while Rowan said, ‘But I came home one night and found her in a very odd mood. She started talking to me about her life in prison-camp, and that was something she’d never done. I’d tried to get her to talk about it, but she always shied off. Did you happen to see the scar under her left eye?’
‘Yes.’
‘I ask because with strangers she normally keeps those sunglasses on, even indoors. And you may find this difficult to believe, but I’ve never found out how she came by it.’
‘But she told Ronald.’
Rowan looked away. ‘Apparently, yes. I got home and found her in this odd mood. Over dinner she started talking about prison-camp. Then she asked me whether I didn’t want to know about the scar. We had a bit of a scene. She asked me why she could talk to Ronald about it but not to me, why Ronald was the only person she’d ever met who could get her to talk as she wanted to talk. Spill out the whole awful bloody business. The only thing I could think of to say – and it came out quite unrehearsed – was that she couldn’t talk to me about it because she knew I loved her but had to talk to Ronald because he’d chosen her. As a victim.’
‘What did Laura say?’
‘Nothing. And we didn’t mention Ronald again until a few days later when I got back and found her packing, the day he’d killed the snake. She said she was going back to Gopalakand. That would have been best but I talked her out of it and we decided she should go to the club. As soon as she’d gone the whole situation seemed absurd. There was nothing I could accuse him of. But whenever I saw him he started explaining and apologizing. He wouldn’t let it alone. He turned up at the club once or twice, trying to see her, but she says she kept out of his way.’
‘But went to the funeral. What was that? A mark of respect or of celebration?’
‘She went to the funeral because I asked her to.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘The thing was –’
‘Yes?’
‘To remove anything that didn’t fit into the picture.’
‘What picture?’
‘Of an Englishman who’d earned respect and admiration from most sections of the community.’
‘Why did Laura have to fit into that?’
‘You know what people are like in places like this. The kind of people who wondered why she’d left the bungalow. It didn’t go unnoticed that she wouldn’t see him when he called at the club. I had to ask him to stop calling.’
‘Did he stop?’
‘At once. But he seemed quite hurt. He said he hated misunderstandings. He’d only been anxious to find out why he’d upset her. He implied as well that he hated feeling responsible for any misunderstanding between Laura and me. At the same time –’
‘What?’
‘I had an idea it didn’t worry him and might even please him that people were beginning to link their names.’
‘It flattered him to be thought of as the Other Man?’
Rowan glanced at him. ‘I see what you mean. I hadn’t thought of it in quite such a general way. I just wondered whether he was trying to get his own back on me by making people wonder about Laura and him. I’m positive he knew that Kumar had been privately examined and that I was the one who’d done the examining. Why not? He still had friends in the Inspector-General’s department. Someone probably told him.’
‘Very probably.’
‘Sometimes he
actually seemed to be daring me to come out with it. We had a very odd relationship. On the one hand mutual goodwill and respect between a visiting political agent and a police officer who’d done a good job, and on the other this subtle sort of antagonism.’
‘How long was he in Singapore?’
‘Singapore? He was in Singapore. Why?’
‘I wondered whether he was ever involved in the case against the Japanese officer who was hanged as a war criminal. The one who murdered Laura’s first husband, no doubt among several scores of others.’
‘Wouldn’t he have said?’
‘Not necessarily. But knowing something about the Japanese officer could have been the way he got Laura to talk.’
‘It sounds pretty far-fetched.’
‘Nigel – for me, nothing was far-fetched with Merrick. I believe he had a photographic memory. He’d only have to look through a file to have a whole situation at his fingertips. And he was quite clever at getting his hands on files. He got his hands on Susan’s confidential psychiatric file. Did you know that?’
‘No, you’ve remembered incorrectly. He had an interview with the psychiatrist, that’s all. So Sarah said.’
‘He did more than that. He saw her confidential file. So when Susan talks about Ronald being the only man she’d ever met who understood her and seemed to know things about her she’d never told anyone inside the family, that’s the explanation. He could have tried something like the same technique with Laura, but I imagine she’s tougher. What happened to the Red Shadow?’
‘The what?’
‘That disgusting bazaar Pathan he had trailing round with him in Pankot. The one I kicked up the backside. The one who had his hands on my wallet.’
‘I don’t know. But Merrick must have got rid of him. He gave up having personal servants when he got married.’
‘Why?’
‘He was always on the move. They never had a permanent home.’
‘He hired and fired as it suited him?’
‘No, I think he just accepted what was available. Like Khansamar next door.’
‘Who of course is Dmitri’s man?’
‘Everything here is Dmitri’s. All three bungalows. The Dewani Bhavan, this one, and Merrick’s. Dmitri lived in this bungalow when he first came to Mirat. He built the Dewani Bhavan round about nineteen twenty-five.’
‘Did Merrick ever live here?’
‘Yes, I think for a month or two when he first arrived. Before Susan joined him.’
‘I imagine he slept in my room.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘It has a resonance.’ Perron hesitated, and then came out with it. ‘What did he do, Nigel? Commit suicide? Cut his wrist and die in the bath?’
‘He didn’t die in the bath.’
‘Nor as a result of a riding accident?’
Rowan said nothing for a while. Then: ‘The fall wasn’t serious. But he said someone deliberately scared the horse. He was out on the maidan. According to Ahmed and Sarah there was no one within half-a-mile, except them.’
‘They were all together? What were they doing, hawking?’
‘No. Merrick was always trying to scrounge an invitation to watch Ahmed out with Mumtaz. Ahmed’s very particular about who gets to watch and who doesn’t. He was running out of excuses. They were supposed to go hawking that morning and Merrick was pretty upset when they turned up with horses and no falcon. When they got to the maidan he galloped off on his own. They saw him jumping the main nullah. It’s pretty wide where he attempted it and he came a cropper. When they got to him the first thing he said was “Did you see the blighter?” He made out that someone who’d been in the nullah had suddenly stood up. Later on he said someone must have thrown a stone. Sarah says there was nothing like that. But Dmitri got rather worried.’
‘Why?’
‘The last thing he wanted, the last thing any of us wants just at the moment is an attack on an Englishman. It really could have the most tragic consequences. One dead English official, one English official attacked, and that could be it. You’d get some hard-bitten British sergeant in the cantonment belting an Indian and calling all Indians murdering bastards and then who knows what would happen?’
‘Perhaps what Merrick wanted to happen.’
‘That was rather the conclusion we came to, that he would have liked some of the stops pulled out, some sort of showdown. So it seems would other people.’
‘What other people?’
‘Whoever it was who arranged his death.’
Perron’s heart sank. He had known it, instinctively. Rowan watched him. He said, ‘Dmitri and I feel you ought to know. Sarah agrees. And in view of the way you handled an awkward question of Susan’s yesterday, she thinks you’re to be relied on not to say anything. She’s the only member of her family who knows that Ronald was murdered.’
Absurd, really, Perron thought, that he should now feel shocked, outraged on Merrick’s behalf. Perhaps he had hated the man too much not to feel guilty now for a violent death. It was as though he had contributed to it.
‘Well tell me,’ Perron said.
Rowan poured more brandy. This time he topped his own glass up with soda, as well as Perron’s. He said, ‘After the riding accident he refused to go into hospital but Habbibullah insisted on him going to bed and keeping to his room. He suspected concussion. Ronald was a very bad patient. And of course there was all this business about the imaginary man in the nullah and the imaginary stone. He went on about it whenever I or Sarah or Dmitri visited him. We did that as often as we could. I was the last one of us to see him alive. Sarah asked me to go and talk to him because he’d been on the phone to her saying he was better and asking to be taken out next morning in the jeep and watch Ahmed hawk. He couldn’t ride but wanted some fresh air and something interesting to do. So I went across and had a drink with him. He was sitting up in his dressing gown – smoking in that way he had – do you remember? Sticking the cigarette in his artificial hand. He seemed perfectly all right to me. And for once he didn’t mention Laura. He talked about getting a job in Calcutta or Bombay, or of offering his services to Pakistan. He was quite frank about not wanting to go home to England. And he thought he stood a better chance of a job among Muslims. He said he’d like to live somewhere like Peshawar, near the old North-West Frontier, where administration was much more a question of off-the-cuff decisions and not of just going by the book. We really got on quite well, rather like the first time we met, on the train to Pankot. He asked me to ring Sarah then and there and fix the morning programme. So I did. I asked her to come round with the jeep at seven. She said she’d have a word with Habbibullah but I didn’t tell Merrick that. And I didn’t tell him she thought Ahmed wouldn’t play. I pretended it was all fixed. He told Khansamar to wake him at six next day. When I got back here I rang Sarah again. She said Habbibullah wouldn’t allow it, which was a blessing because Ahmed felt he couldn’t refuse any longer. We agreed that she and Ahmed would turn up at seven, but with Habbibullah, and that they’d take it from there. So that’s how we left it.
‘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.’