Ellis Peters - George Felse 11 - Death To The Landlords (17 page)

There was nothing he could say to her; she had herself made it impossible to offer her anything, nor did she need anything from him. She gave him a small, reassuring smile, well aware of everything that was happening within him. ‘We were in any case near retirement. We sold our business, and came out here after him. And a part of the proceeds we have spent in travelling round India, where he wished to live and work. Is it very surprising that we should plan the tour to end at Pondicherry?’

‘No,’ he said in a low voice, ‘not surprising at all. I can understand that very well.’ He looked her in the eyes, and said, as she had said: ‘I am very sorry.’ And then, in delicate withdrawal: ‘You will have a whole world of memories, when you get back to France.’

Madame Bessancourt tucked her knitting into her bag, and rose smilingly to meet her husband, who was crossing the hall.

‘We are not going back to France,’ she said. ‘We are not young, we have not much to offer – yet still, perhaps something more than merely what remains of the price we got for the shop. When the time comes, we shall die in Auroville.’

They took Priya to her door and said good night there very quietly, for by the hush that had settled over the house they knew that most of the guests were already in bed. Larry let himself into the room next door, and Dominic and Purushottam went on, soft-footed, into their narrow side-corridor.

A dim light had been left burning at the turn. By its subdued gleam they saw, the moment they turned the corner, that the louvred outer door of their room was not closed. One leaf of it jutted into the passage, and a squat figure was leaning inside it, a hand on the door-handle, and an ear inclined against the upper panels, listening for any sound within.

Dominic came out of the haze in which Madame Bessancourt’s confidences had left him, and leaped at the intruder. He made very little noise, but the rush of air alerted the listening man. He recoiled across the passage with a faint squeak of terror, turning to face the threat with shrinking shoulders and apprehensive eyes; but he did not run, for the corridor was a dead end, and there was nowhere to run to. The louvre swung back and forth, gently creaking; and they found themselves staring into the frightened and mortified face of Sushil Dastur.

Before they could utter a word he began to babble in a frantic whisper, excuse and apology tumbling over each other in their haste. ‘Please, please, I beg you, Mr Felse, please don’t rouse the house, please, I beg for silence. I can explain all… I was not trying to enter… I am not a thief, please believe me, I would not… It was a mistake, only a mistake. I thought this was Mr Preisinger’s room …I wished to speak with Mr Preisinger…’

‘At this time of night?’ demanded Dominic disbelievingly.

‘Hush!’ pleaded Sushil Dastur in a frenzy of muted terror. ‘Please, please keep your voice down! If Mr Mani should hear — Oh, I am so unlucky, so ashamed! What can you think of me? I wanted only to speak with Mr Preisinger privately… Mr Mani must not know about it, please, I beg you, don’t tell him I came here…’

‘What did you want with Mr Preisinger that Mr Mani mustn’t know about?’ Dominic asked in a milder tone, baffled by so sudden a manifestation of the devious in this hitherto predictable and inoffensive person. How could you tell, when it came to the point, who was capable of involved and circuitous evil, and who was not?

‘I wanted to ask him – Mr Preisinger is an American, he travels with an Indian guide, he must surely be a person of importance. I wished to ask him,’ whispered Sushil Dastur abjectly, ‘if he does not need a good secretary during his stay in India. I should be glad to work for him if he can employ me…’ No wonder he was trembling at his own daring and its ignominious ending. ‘Or I thought that perhaps Mr Preisinger is connected with some firm which has business interests here, and could get me a job with them if I asked him. Please, please, Mr Felse,’ he begged piteously, ‘don’t tell Mr Mani about this… You understand, it would be very unpleasant for me… very difficult…’

It would indeed, Dominic thought, it would be a minor hell, especially if he really is a poor relation. They’d never let him forget it, life-long. And jobs in India are very, very hard to get, that’s no lie.

‘I am so unhappy… I have made you think ill of me, and I so much wanted your good opinion. Please do not think badly of me, I am telling you the truth – I had no other reason for coming here, none. It was a mistake about the room, please believe me…’

He was nearly in tears of mortification. It all sounded plausible enough, even probable. Many a time he must have toyed desperately with the idea of putting an end to the endless hectoring and harassment to which the Manis subjected him, and looked in vain for a way of setting about it. Small blame to him if he at least attempted it when an apparently well-to-do American came his way; and small blame to him if he did his best to keep the move secret from Gopal Krishna. All quite plausible. But then a story for an occasion like this would have to be plausible. And might it not be even a little too apposite? Thought out in advance to be used in the event of discovery?

‘All right,’ Dominic said. ‘But better not disturb Mr Preisinger tonight. Mind you, I doubt very much if he wants or needs a secretary, or has any jobs to offer, but you can ask him tomorrow if you still want to.’

‘Oh, no, I could not ask him now, I am so ashamed… But thank you, thank you… And you will not say anything to Mr Mani?’

‘No, we won’t say a word to Mr Mani.’ What else could he do but accept it at face value and let the man go? There was no possible way of proving any ill intent on his part, and nothing to be done but go on keeping a close watch on Purushottam until morning. And then? The Swami had said no word of what was to happen afterwards.

‘You are most kind, Mr Felse, I am grateful… So unfortunate, I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Good night!…’

Sushil Dastur scuttled away thankfully but still miserably, his big head drawn deep into his shoulders with shame and distress. They watched him creep round the corner, and heard the soft slur of his feet on the stairs. Without a word Purushottam inserted the key into the lock of the inner door, and opened it. Nothing was said until he had locked it again carefully after them. Dominic switched on his bedside light, and they looked at each other doubtfully.

‘It could be true,’ said Dominic fairly. ‘You haven’t seen as much of them as we have.’

‘In any case, even if he was up to something, he seemed to be only just trying the door. It was double-locked, I doubt if he could have got in.’

Purushottam crossed to the window, which was open on the balcony. The filigree of the wrought-iron railings stood out blackly against the phosphorescence of the sea, and the lambent sky that seemed to reflect its glow.

‘Come in,’ said Dominic shortly. ‘Leave the window open but draw the curtains. We’ve got our orders for the night, and we don’t want to advertise the preparations. As far as the outside world’s concerned we’re now peaceably getting ready for bed.’

Purushottam turned back into the room obediently, though he did nothing about the curtains. ‘And aren’t we?’

‘Not here, anyway.’

‘Interesting! And when did we get our orders? And from whom?’

‘From the Swami. I telephoned him this afternoon, before we went out.’ He told him exactly what had been said. Purushottam stood attentive but frowning; his respect for the Swami Premanathanand was immense, but he still found it hard to credit that so much ingenuity was being spent either on hunting him or protecting him.

‘Couldn’t we have told the others? I don’t like even the appearance of deceiving Priya.’

‘As the Swami sees it, I think what you’ll be doing is sparing her anxiety rather than deceiving her. He said, the less the innocent know, the safer they’ll be.’

Dominic crossed to the window and attacked the curtains himself. They were opaque enough to hide all light, heavy, ancient velvet, perhaps from the days when this had been the district Residency. And they must have cost a great deal when they were new, for the room was exceedingly lofty, and the windows went right up to the ceiling. Dominic tugged at the dusty velvet, and found it weighty and obstinate, moving reluctantly on huge old wooden rings. The rail was a yard and more out of his reach. He was looking round for something to stand on, when he saw the long iron rod, with a blunted hook at one end, standing propped in the corner of the window. The answer had been provided along with the problem, many years ago. He reached up with the rod, inserting the hook among the rings, and drew them across until the curtains closed.

‘All right,’ said Purushottam, making up his mind. ‘I agreed to come, so now I must keep the rules, I suppose. We’ll need coats if we’re going to sleep out. It won’t be cold, exactly, but there’ll be a chilly hour or two before dawn. And the beds… that’s easy!’

Dominic turned back into the room with the rod still in his hand, swinging it experimentally like a player trying the weight of an unfamiliar golf club, just as Purushottam laid hands on the covers of his bed at the pillow, and stripped them down in one sweep of his arm, sending his discarded shirt of the morning billowing on to the floor.

Something else flashed from between the disturbed sheets, and flew in a writhing, spiralling arabesque through the air between the two beds. Dominic saw a lightning convulsion of black and white, slender and glistening from burnished scales; and in an inspired movement which was part nervous reflex and part conscious recognition, he lashed out with the long iron rod in his hand. It was thin, rigid and murderous, and he hit out with all his strength. The fluid thing and the unyielding thing met in mid-air with the lightest and most agonising of sounds, and the one coiled about the other with electrifying vehemence and rapidity, sound and motion all one indistinguishable reaction. Blackness and whiteness span so close to Dominic’s hand that he dropped the rod in a frantic hurry, and leaped back as it fell.

On the dull brown carpet between the beds the snake lay threshing the quicksilver coils of its body and tail in feeble rage and helpless agony, tightening and relaxing about the rod, its head making only faint, jerky motions that did not move it from where it lay crippled. Its back was broken. Not quite three feet – but coiled and shrunken it looked even less than that – of black body banded with white rings, the scales on its back noticeably enlarged. Not a very big specimen, not a very spectacular species, nothing so impressive as the cobra with its spectacled hood.
Bungarus caerulius
, the common Indian krait, one of the most venomous snakes alive.

Purushottam had remained standing frozen in ludicrous astonishment, his hand still clutching the edge of the sheet, his face bright and blank, like a page not yet written on. But the page was rapidly, almost instantly, filled; with realisation and understanding, and a quality of horror that belonged to this death of all deaths. Everyone has his own private fears; snake-bite was Purushottam’s, a dread aggravated rather than otherwise by the very thought that the luckless creature that could kill in such a frightful way was without malice, not even aggressive except when hunting food, rather a shy and retiring being, anxious to avoid conflict rather than to go looking for it. He stood rigid, staring at the wriggling thing that both horrified him and stirred him to pity. It was the first time he had seriously contemplated the creature behind this creature, the force that must pay for the krait’s wretched end as well as for the attempt against him. He knew quite positively, at that moment, that the krait had been brought here to kill him. It could have been there by accident, having crept of its own will into a warm place to sleep; there was no way of proving the contrary. Nevertheless, he knew.

There are, of course, he thought with curious detachment, too many kraits in India, as there are too many cobras, and too many men. Their world is over-populated, like ours.

The krait still writhed feebly. A thread-like, forked tongue flickered in and out of its open mouth between the poison fangs. Its tight coils relaxed limply, quivering.

Purushottam reached out his hand almost stealthily, and slowly closed his fingers around the extreme end of the rod.

With gingerly movements he eased it out of the flaccid coils until he could draw it free. He stood back and waited for the head to be clear of the contorted body, and then struck accurately at the neck. The carpet, old and good, absorbed the sound of the blow. The krait shuddered and jerked, twitched its tail once or twice, and was still. Over the dulling body Purushottam and Dominic looked up rather dazedly at each other.

‘That’ll be twenty rupees, please,’ Dominic said inanely.

‘I’ll give you an I. O. U.,’ said Purushottam, and meant it. His knees gave under him weakly, and he sat down abruptly on the edge of his bed, and as hastily picked himself up again the next moment and stood away from it, shivering with distaste. ‘Another kind of explosive this time,’ he said grimly. ‘If I’d simply undressed and gone to bed I should almost certainly have been bitten. They’re not vicious, it takes quite a lot to make them bite, but having a great human oaf come plunging in on top of you when you’re half asleep is a bit too much to take. And if you hadn’t happened to have that thing in your hand, and lashed out with it like that, he’d have been away out of sight the instant he hit the floor, and he might have got one of us yet.’ He held out the rod to Dominic. ‘Here, use this to strip your sheets down, don’t risk your hands… He may have brought two!’

‘No need,’ said Dominic, equally tense and pale, and pointed to the shirt now crumpled on the carpet, and the initialled bag at the foot of the bed. ‘He knew which was yours. He knew who he wanted, all right.’

‘Maybe, but don’t take risks,’ Purushottam insisted.

‘But could it really have been planted deliberately? Would anyone use such a chancy method?’ Dominic circled round the carcase warily, hooked the end of the rod in the neat covers of his own bed, and drew them down. ‘In all the time I’ve been in India, this is the first time I’ve ever actually
seen
a krait, except in a zoo.’

‘Plenty of people die of snake-bite in India,’ said Purushottam soberly, ‘who’ve never seen a snake – not even the one that bit them. But they’re everywhere, all the same. Not as common down here as in Bengal, maybe, but there are plenty round Madurai if you look for them. Yes, it’s quite a credible method of getting rid of someone you dislike. It’s been used often enough before. There are people who make a study of handling these fellows. A stick with a noose, and the right sort of meal… Some people even used to keep them and breed them, in the days when there was a tally paid for killing them, just to be able to produce a constant supply of bodies. They make a profession of snakes. Looks as if your bed’s clear, though. Two kraits in one room could hardly have been passed off as accidental. Do we still get out of here?’

‘Faster than ever,’ said Dominic, draping his bedclothes convincingly. ‘Because whoever planted this chap will be standing by, expecting one of us – me! – to rouse the house any moment. Just to make sure everything’s gone according to plan, and his job’s done. He may even be watching our window…’ The thought jolted him. Nothing would be gained if he withdrew Purushottam from this dangerous place only to draw the danger after him. But Purushottam reassured him instantly and confidently.

‘He won’t! That’s the last thing he’ll do if he’s not just a thug from outside, but somebody known around the place, staff, guide, guests, whoever you like. He’ll be with somebody else now, setting up all the alibis he can, preferably with three or four others – a card party, something like that.’ He was thinking, perhaps, of the voluble and intent card party they had seen going on by lantern-light in the car-park, round a head-cloth spread out on the sand, with two of the room boys, an off-duty porter, and the Manis’ sleepy, cynical hired driver, slapping down the cards like gauntlets. The Manis’ driver – yes. A bored professional from Madurai, where kraits are common enough. They had never really looked at that driver
;
usually he seemed to be asleep. Dominic remembered him as an inanimate body curled up in the back seat at Thekady, while the whole place boiled with excitement round him.

‘He’ll be listening for the alarm,’ Purushottam said with conviction, ‘but round at the front, somewhere innocent, and in company, primed to be more surprised and shocked than anyone else. But if we delay, he may get anxious and come round to see if anything’s happening.’

‘Switch on the light in the shower-room,’ said Dominic. ‘As long as that’s on, and a bedside light here, he won’t wonder what’s gone wrong, he’ll just think we take the devil of a time to get to bed. That’s it! We’ll leave the curtains parted just a crack, to let the light show through.’

They took the wind-jackets they had luckily brought in with them, when they might just as easily have left them in the Land-Rover, and a torch which Dominic happened to have in his night kit, and cautiously parted the curtains to slip out on to the balcony and prospect the dark garden below. Everything was still. They stood tensed, listening, and there was no sound at all except from the distant sea, a muted, plangent, regular sound that had nothing of the spasmodic motivations of man in it, only the rhythmic cadences of eternity, reassuring and terrifying, like the Swami’s smile.

‘Wait a minute, we’d better get rid of the krait.’ Purushottam went back to hoist it carefully in the hook of the curtain rod, and carry it out to the balcony. ‘Not even a big one,’ he said in a whisper. ‘They grow to four feet and more, this kind.’ He slid the carcase through the railings, well aside from the iron pillar that held up the balcony, and let it slide dully into the thin grass below. ‘All right, I’ve got the key. You go first.’

Dominic climbed over the railing, and let himself down to grip the pillar, and edge his way silently down to the ground. Purushottam propped the rod back in its place, and readjusted the curtain behind him so that a chink of subdued light showed through, and then followed him over. The balcony continued on round the corner, providing access to all the first-floor rooms, and at the far end on the eastern side, close to Priya’s room, there was an iron stairway down into the garden; but the last thing they wanted was to run the risk of disturbing Priya. Purushottam lowered himself to the last decorative curlicues of wrought iron sprouting from the capital of the pillar, and then hung by his hands and dropped lightly into the sand below. They stood for a moment braced and listening, but the night was silent and still. The quickest way to cover was across the narrowest zone of the garden and out on to the road. They took it, moving carefully and quietly, the sand swallowing their footsteps; and once on the road, they turned towards the village.

The night was calm, mild and only moderately dark; after a brief period abroad in it they could distinguish each other’s features clearly, and make out the shapes of land and sea as lucidly as by day, though through a pure veil of darkness. There was less cloud in the sky now than at the sunset, and the stars were huge and many, encrusted like jewelled inlays on a vault of ebony.

They spent the first part of the night in the village, fascinated by a life which had not ceased with darkness, but only slowed its tempo a little, and rested half its cast. There was something very comforting in moving among people who accepted them casually as a part of normality, and had no special interest in them, and certainly no design on them, except perhaps to extort the occasional coin. They even toyed with the idea of sleeping in the dormitory provided for the pilgrims, but discarded it finally in favour of a solitude. They were not the only ones sleeping outdoors that night, but in this dormitory there was room for all. They found themselves a hollow in a sheltered, sandy cove, not far from the village, high and dry above the tide-line, though the tide was well down now and still receding, and made themselves a comfortable nest there. The sand, at this higher level, felt warm to the touch, unlike the coolness of the alluvial deposits on the foreshore.

‘I’ve slept in worse beds,’ said Dominic.

Purushottam laughed rather hollowly, remembering the bed and the bed-fellow he had just escaped. Until now they had said not a word about that since leaving the hotel, but now he peered into the recent past and frowned, wondering.

‘Dominic – was he really just trying the door, or just re-locking it? – Sushil Dastur? They’re old, big locks, maybe child’s play to a professional, after all…’

‘Do I know?’ Dominic had wondered the same thing. ‘But then there must have been a box, a bag, something – you don’t walk in with a snake dangling from your hand. A rush basket – some sort of container…’

‘That’s true. And he didn’t have anything.’

‘All the same,’ said Dominic very seriously, ‘no one can logically be ruled out. There are six people here who were also at Thekady. Not counting our own party. Not forgetting myself,’ he said firmly. ‘From where you’re standing…’

‘Lying,’ corrected Purushottam drowsily, working his shoulders comfortably into the sand.

‘— you can’t afford to rule out any possibility.’

Purushottam’s tranquil face gazed up into the stars, and smiled, quite unshaken. ‘I’ll overlook that. Just so long as you don’t ask me to suspect Priya.’ He lay quiet for a moment, relaxed and still. ‘Dominic! Are you… is there a girl somewhere belonging to you?’

‘I’m engaged,’ said Dominic. ‘Tossa’s still at Oxford, finishing her arts degree. After that we shall get married. We haven’t made any further plans yet, but I think – I really think we may come back here together.’

‘You make it sound so easy,’ sighed Purushottam.

‘Don’t kid yourself, it’s never easy. You have to work at it, like everything else. What are you worrying about?’ he said reasonably to the silent, doubtful figure beside him.‘You’ve got virtually no family to make difficulties, and she’s got a family that could absorb half a dozen sons- and daughters-in-law, and never turn a hair.’

‘She has, hasn’t she?’ agreed Purushottam warmly, remembering and taking heart. ‘Not that I’m the best bargain there ever was in the marriage market. Did you know that even an ordinary close friendship with a fellow-student in England – a girl, that is – could send a bridegroom’s prospects crashing to the very bottom of the scale? And having crazy ideas about getting rid of your money, instead of making more and more, wouldn’t do a man’s chances any good, either. But
her
family – there ought to be enough Christian charity there, don’t you think? Even for someone as odd as I am?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Dominic encouragingly, ‘if they’re eccentric enough themselves positively to
like
oddities.’

‘Good, you hearten me.’ He lay still for a few minutes, his eyelids low over the dark, thoughtful eyes, his fingertips playing gently in the sand. ‘So now all we have to do is get clear of this tangle. Alive.’

‘That’s all.’

Purushottam sighed, stretched, turned on his side and scooped a hollow for his shoulder. In a few minutes he was asleep. Dominic braced his back into the slope of the ground, worked his heels comfortably into the sand and settled down to stay awake through the night.

They worked their way back to the road opposite the hotel at the first hint of daylight, some time before the sun began to colour the eastern sky. From the garden they could see the staff already stirring, and a light in one or two of the guest-rooms, where visitors were rousing themselves in good time to go out and see the sunrise. The timing appeared to be good; even if they were seen strolling in from the road and mounting the stairs to the balcony at this hour, they would merely be written off as eccentric enough, or over-anxious enough, to have got up an hour too early for the prescribed spectacle. They looked under the balcony for the carcase of the krait, and found it where Purushottam had let it fall, its bright black and white dulled now to a dim greyness. It was a reminder of a situation which was still with them, and still unchanged, but in the first light of day it was difficult to believe in it. The bedroom was as they had left it; no sign of any further intrusion, though they tended to handle things and move about the room with wincing care, and to watch every step they took.

‘Better wake the others, if they’re not up already,’ Dominic judged.

‘I think we’re leading the field this morning.’ But they were not. When they walked along the corridor it was to see the Bessancourts just descending the stairs, almost certainly going out to watch the sunrise before breakfast, prior to making their planned tour of the temple and the village afterwards. Dominic watched the two straight, square backs marching steadily away towards the outer doorway, and suddenly saw for the first time the immensity of what they had done. Even for a middle-aged English couple, taking up their roots and committing themselves and all their capital to a new and unknown life at this stage would have been a daunting step; for these twin pillars of the solidity of France it was at once lunatic and heroic. Ideal undertakings like Auroville so often foundered for want of both faith and works, and they had made no preliminary inspection on the spot – though no doubt there had been correspondence – but simply realised everything they had, and set out. Auroville was to be the end of their journey; they were committed. He thought, the chances of one dream being realised will at any rate go up several notches when those two arrive.