The Strangler Vine (12 page)

‘But how do they know?’

‘I imagine from the
akhbarat
.’

‘And what is that?’

‘It’s a news sheet.’

‘But why would an
akhbarat
write of it?’

‘Why wouldn’t it? The book is all about the wickedness of the Calcutta Company sahibs, their greed and their immodesty.’

‘But the Hindoo and Musselman princes are hardly patterns of virtue!’ I said. ‘Good God, after the stories one hears about the princely courts.’

He shrugged again. ‘Do you want to take a walk?’

‘Forgive us for inconveniencing you, Major Sleeman,’ said Blake.

Accompanied by our inevitable sepoy escort, we had walked through Jubbulpore to the Thugee bureau. It was late afternoon and the palm-shaded streets thronged with natives in white and
yellow and pink, carrying pots and baskets and bundles of vegetables. Blake wore a black tail-coat; I was saddled with my sling. Major Sleeman stood on the verandah of the Thuggee bureau with Mr Hogwood, the deputy magistrate.

‘I am afraid we do not allow visitors in the Thug bureau,’ the Major said. ‘Our work is confidential. I am pleased to see Mr Avery’s colour is a little better. And you, Mr Blake, I hope you are comfortable? Is there anything we might do for you?’

‘I wanted to let you know that once Mr Avery is strong enough we’ll be going north, probably to Doora,’ said Blake. ‘In the meantime we would be glad of some distraction – your sepoys are so very diligent it is hard to stray far from home and, of course, we are locked in at night.’

‘The city has a gaol full of murderous men, Mr Blake, and the days before a hanging are always a trying time. Even in Jubbulpore we must be vigilant. Mr Hogwood’s bungalow was broken into just the other night. One of his servants was seriously wounded by the assailants. We must ensure that everyone is safe.’

‘I am sorry for that, and I don’t wish to contravene your rules, but I know that in the past, in daylight hours at least, you have shown visitors something of your work.’

Major Sleeman frowned. For the first time Mr Hogwood spoke.

‘I cannot pretend I have an abundance of unoccupied time,’ he said, ‘but I would be happy to accommodate the gentlemen. They could visit the School of Industry, perhaps? And Mauwle and I are going out to investigate an old Thug grave in a day or so. Mr Blake might accompany us?’

He waited, almost anxiously, for the Major’s response. Sleeman nodded. ‘It is not a very edifying sight, an exhumation, and it will be a long day – taxing for the Lieutenant, I should think, but it will give you a vivid idea of the horror of Thuggee.’

‘Something to talk about in the drawing-rooms of Calcutta,’ said Hogwood, with a half-smile.

‘And you should see the School of Industry too. It is our new prison, constructed especially for our Approvers – our Thug informers – and their families, a more constructive demonstration of what
we do. You will be among its first visitors. You will understand us better.’

‘And of course, Major, there is always Feringhea,’ said Hogwood.

Feringhea. The most notorious of all Thugs. It seemed very peculiar to think he should be living somewhere in Jubbulpore.

‘You have heard of him, Lieutenant?’ said Hogwood.

‘Everyone has,’ I said. ‘I must confess it would be extraordinary to see him.’

‘Then I shall take you up on all your invitations,’ said Blake.

I was determined I would not be left behind.

In the middle of the night I woke to find my sheets drenched, my bladder full, the mosquito nets encrusted in flying creatures, their din in my head. Dizzy and half asleep I staggered outside to relieve myself. As I stood in the dark a native wrapped in a blanket emerged from the back of the compound. I would have raised the alarm, but before my eyes he transformed into Blake.

‘Where have you been?’ I whispered.

‘Nowhere, Avery, nowhere.’

I stumbled back to bed. When I woke I thought I must have been dreaming.

‘It is a charming spot, is it not?’ said Mr Hogwood. It was seven and we had ridden for three hours. Blake was not pleased I had come; he thought I should have stayed in the bungalow playing the invalid, but I could not bear to. We were in a mango grove with a grassy clearing in its midst. There were signs of several recent fires.

‘According to our Approvers it was a very popular
bele
– a burial ground for Thug victims – for decades. Major Sleeman once found thirty-six corpses in one grove. The Thugs bury their victims with great care and artfully disguise the earth so they cannot be found by man or dug up by beast. Without our Approvers, they would never be found.’

Further along the road about thirty
ryots
, men, women and children, had gathered from the nearest village.

‘They are summoned to witness the excavations,’ said Mr Hogwood. ‘They may recognize pieces of clothing or stray possessions.’ The headman, an old man with white in his beard, in a dirty white blanket, approached Mr Hogwood’s stirrup and touched his forehead to the latter’s hand.

We had travelled with two Approvers, who wore long white pyjamas. Underneath these their ankles were shackled. They were small men with dark skins and faces much lined, though strangely empty of expression. You would not have picked them out as hardened murderers. They had sat on one horse, one behind the other, their chains draped across the saddle and rattling all the while. Now they slid awkwardly off their mount, and a
nujeeb
guided them with the flat of his sword.

Lieutenant Mauwle loomed even larger in person than he had in my memory. In the early light he looked as if he were made of some hard, dull material, impervious to everything, and he had
about him an air of menace. His bite, one felt, would be as bad as his bark. My one attempt to politely engage him had dismally failed.

‘What is this cloth you wear?’ I had asked, pointing at his odd grey jacket, for though it failed on every criteria of elegance and fashion, it did appear in its way sensible, as it was the very same colour as dust. The Lieutenant looked at me as if it was quite the most stupid question that had ever been conceived of.

‘It’s called
karkee
,’ he said shortly.

Now Mauwle said something in their lingo, and the Approvers picked up their chains and began to shuffle about through the trees. From their saddlepacks, the nujeebs unpacked shovels and pickaxes. A bullock cart laden with boxes and cloth hove into view, and two wallahs dismounted and began to form the cloth into a large open tent, embroidered with blue thread. Carpets were laid on the ground, and a table erected on them, and from a cluster of sticks, several chairs emerged. We sat in the shade of the tent and were served breakfast. The villagers sat by the wayside and murmured quietly to each other, occasionally sharing small packets of food.

‘How long have you been in Jubbulpore, Mr Hogwood?’ Blake asked.

‘Oh, five years now. But I was promised to India from an early age and I went to East India College. I had a few years in Calcutta then I came to Jubbulpore just after the last of the big Thug trials in ’32. I am deputy magistrate and much of my work concerns the running of the cantonment, but rooting out Thuggee has become so thoroughly entwined with the Major’s other work that inevitably I am more of a general aid.’ He rubbed his forehead.

‘You are tired, Mr Hogwood,’ said Blake.

‘It has cost me the last vestiges of my good looks,’ Hogwood said wryly, passing his hand through his thinning hair.

The Approvers shambled about to little effect. Occasionally they alighted on a particular spot and a nujeeb dug a few shovelfuls, only to change their minds. Increasingly impatient, Lieutenant Mauwle watched them. At last he strode up to them and, bending over them, began to speak slowly and deliberately. There was no mistaking his meaning. The Approvers’ faces grew more empty and distant.
Hogwood, seeing this, went over and laid a restraining hand on Mauwle, who looked mutinous but stepped back. The Approvers moved more quickly after that, but they still found nothing.

‘I imagine an exhumation is a rare thing,’ Blake said. ‘Now that Thuggee is all but crushed in this district, and you have been acting on Thug testimonies for ten years.’

Mr Hogwood said, ‘That is true. We are more likely to be beset by mountains of paperwork than Thugs. The gangs in this region have been largely caught – one still eludes us, but it is barely active now and it dares not kill near Jubbulpore.’

‘It seems strange to pursue murders that took place so long ago with no notion of who the victims are,’ said Blake.

‘It may seem so,’ said Hogwood. ‘But no rumour of a murder is too petty or too distant for us. In the past the natives were unwilling to report a crime – you know how corrupt the native police are. It is only through Thug confessions that we hear about them, and then they may be years old. We are the only ones who give justice to the dead.’

‘And how many natives do you think the Thugs have killed?’

It was Mauwle who answered. ‘The Major believes that at their height they murdered 40,000 people a year across India. He says they may have claimed a million in all.’

‘A million lives?’

Unable to restrain himself, Mauwle began to make his own passes up and down the grove, touching the trunks and shifting the leaves with the toe of his boot, while Hogwood watched. After a while he got up and followed. Mauwle had stopped under an old tree. Hogwood cleared away a circle of dead leaves.

He beckoned to us. There were the remains of a fire.

Mauwle said, ‘All the signs are there. Tamped-down earth, a fire on top.’ Close to, his blunt features were studded with pockmarks. He nodded at the Approvers. ‘Waste of time bringing them. They’ve not earned their keep today. If they do not deliver, they’ll hang.’

‘They could not possibly have known of this,’ said Hogwood placatingly, ‘if it is as recent as you think.’ He turned to us. ‘Lieutenant Mauwle has an extraordinary nose for Thug activity.’

The nujeebs were summoned to dig. The earth was crumbly and gave easily, and before long a hard clod protruded from the shallow sod. A digger brought a wide soft-haired brush and swept away the damp earth. Five toes and a foot emerged. More soil was cleared. The grove grew quiet. Working in silence, the nujeebs uncovered the edges of a circle, perhaps six or seven feet wide. With every shovelful of earth the lineaments of a horrible scene were more clearly displayed, and we were assailed by a terrible odour which forced us to cover our faces with scarves and handkerchiefs.

Within the round pit was a muddy, bloody mass of stumps and branches that gradually resolved itself into a number of horribly contorted corpses. When I forced myself to look at them, I saw that they were naked, their skins marbled black and livid green, their tongues protruding from their mouths, and where their stomachs had been there was a ghastly red and white mess. I tasted bile and stepped back; Hogwood – as green as I – followed me back to the shelter of the tent.

‘I thought they strangled their victims,’ I said, my chest heaving.

‘They do,’ Hogwood said, drawing great breaths and leaning his hands on his knees, ‘but afterwards they break the bones and cut the sinews, so they can fit all the bodies into a single hole. Then they slice open the stomach so the noxious gases may escape, so they will not explode as they decompose. Come, sit down, Lieutenant Avery, you look very ill. I shall say no more.’ He mopped his face.

I began to breathe more easily. The villagers had withdrawn to the roadside as far from the grave as they could. Only Lieutenant Mauwle and Blake were left watching the diggers; Blake, sombre and still, the Lieutenant rallying and haranguing as if supervising some military exercise.

‘I confess,’ Hogwood said, ‘I have never seen so fresh a burial and I hope I never do again. It can barely be a month old. But there is no question it is a Thug grave. A perfect circle, dug with the short pickaxe they dedicate to Kali. The trouble is, we should certainly not be finding anything so recent.’ He rubbed his fingers along the bridge of his nose as trying to iron away a headache.

‘Well, Mauwle,’ he called, ‘this is a rare cut-up.’

Mauwle looked up. ‘Kitree band,’ he grunted. ‘Who else?’

‘Who are the Kitree band?’ said Blake.

Hogwood and Mauwle exchanged looks.

‘I imagine it is something the Major would rather I did not speak of,’ said Hogwood. Mauwle gave a dismissive grunt. Blake came to the tent.

Hogwood sighed. ‘They are the Thug band of whom I spoke earlier. They keep to themselves. They winter together rather than returning to a village when the season ends, as most do. As we have pulled our net tighter, so they have retreated into the jangal and mountains – and over the border into Doora. Other Thugs are caught because we have gathered details about each one from the testimony of arrested Thugs. It is one of the cleverest parts of the Major’s system – another thing of which I probably should not speak.’ He smiled deprecatingly. ‘We have a list of every Thug we have heard of. Each is given a number, and gradually we draw a portrait of him. His aliases, his associates, his crimes, his caste, his role, which gangs he has belonged to, and distinguishing marks – moles, or one eye and so on – and at last his family and his home. From this list of upward of 4,000 names, we have drawn up family trees, genealogies, maps, and built cases against each. There is nothing like it, nothing so scientific and systematic, anywhere in the world.

‘But’ – and he sighed – ‘the Kitree band do not follow the pattern, and they remain elusive. We know they are led by a man with many aliases whom we know as Rada Kishin, and they hide in Doora where the Rao puts up a hullabaloo if Company soldiers set foot in his lands. They are the last true Thug gang in these parts.’ He sat back, looking more weary than ever.

The grave contained seven bodies. The native clerks, with handkerchiefs across their faces, drew their positions in the pit. Then Lieutenant Mauwle and the chief jemadar climbed into it and disentangled the bodies, placing them one by one on a white sheet.

‘Nothing seems to daunt or disconcert Lieutenant Mauwle,’ Mr Hogwood murmured, ‘he prides himself on it. Your Mr Blake is also made of stern stuff. I am afraid I am not.’

Laid out, the little party was both ghastly and dreadfully pathetic. There were four men, one woman and two children, a boy and a girl. An odd matter-of-factness overtook the men clustered about the bodies. Mauwle and his nujeebs examined them inch by inch for any small identifying detail. The clerks drew and wrote. The nujeebs searched the empty grave. The villagers, muted and unwilling, were rounded up to look at the bodies and give testimony. It seemed impossible that they could remember anything, so unrecognizable were the faces, but one man claimed he recalled a strip of cloth, and a nujeeb found two tiny gold earrings. The afternoon shadows lengthened. Hogwood spoke quietly to the headman and gave him some money so the villagers would bury the bodies, for they could not be transported in such a state.

My mind was numb – or not quite numb, for I could not help imagining the events that had led to the scene before us.

Hogwood returned from his exertions. ‘I am sorry you have seen this; an old exhumation somehow puts the horror at a distance. I do not know what we shall say to the Major. That something like this should happen now … But there cannot be a more vivid illustration of what our work is and why it is important. Every small detail brings us closer to the murderers, and now we may at least be able to discover who these poor creatures were and then the correct prayers and burial rites may be arranged. But you may imagine how months, years even, of exhumations work themselves upon our minds.’

He called for more water and offered me a glass, which I drank noisily. I bestirred myself. Something useful must, I told myself, come out of the day’s proceedings.

‘Mr Hogwood,’ I said in a low voice, ‘forgive me for asking, but you are not a member of the Thuggee bureau, and clearly you are not entirely wedded to the Major’s habit of hiding his achievements under a bushel. Would you consider telling me—’

‘I know what you would ask, and I cannot speak of the man. I am sorry, but you must understand, we all admire the Major beyond measure, we all owe him our careers. If he demands that we do not speak of … of that man, we are bound to listen to him.’

‘It is such a small thing,’ I said dejectedly. ‘And we have been sent here by Calcutta. And come such a long way, and at no small cost.’

He looked apologetic. ‘Perhaps Mr Blake might try writing to the Major, setting out your argument on paper? That may make him reconsider. He may seem stubborn – it is easy to become wary of outsiders when you spend years in the Mofussil – but he is not deaf to sensible argument, believe me.’

‘I will suggest it, but I am sure Blake will not. He is not precisely free of stubbornness either.’

Hogwood gave me a quizzical look. ‘I am sorry I cannot be of more help. To be honest, I do not think you will find anyone in Jubbulpore with a good word for Mountstuart.’

‘Will you at least consider?’

He shook his head. ‘I cannot.’

The ride back was interminable. For mile after mile the strangler vines choked the sal trees, one grey trunk encircling another, until the whole jangal appeared like some terrible tangled knot in which it was impossible to tell murderer from victim. I felt hot and dizzy, though whether it was from the fever or the sight of the Thug grave I could not exactly say. Ahead of me, Blake and Lieutenant Mauwle rode side by side in silence. It was dark when we arrived at the Jubbulpore sentries.

‘I suppose you’ve taken many Thugs, Mr Mauwle,’ said Blake suddenly.

‘Hundreds.’

‘Tell me, do you release many?’

Mauwle laughed. ‘None.’

‘Not one?’

‘Maybe eight or nine in the time I’ve been here,’ he said dismissively. ‘We know our men. Some are caught red-handed on Thugging expeditions, in the act as you might say. The others are arrested on good evidence. The system does not make mistakes.’