Nightrunners of Bengal (14 page)

De Forrest did not speak. Caroline held up her hand. “It’s no use going to Mr. Dellamain. Whatever it is, he’s in it. You remember about Sitapara promising to send me word if she heard anything? Sitapara the courtesan? A man came in after dark with a message from her—word of mouth. I was to watch the Commissioner’s bungalow tonight.”

“Oh. Is that all she knew?”

“That’s all she said. Please don’t interrupt; we haven’t got all night. We—Major de Forrest and I—hid in the bushes in the Commissioner’s garden. About three-quarters of an hour ago a man crept in round the side wall. He looked as though he might be a servant, only he waited under a tree until the watchman passed on his round, then he slipped forward and tapped on a window. Mr. Dellamain came out at once—I saw him in the moonlight—and the man handed a thing like a small bag over to him and went away quickly.”

“And the man was the Dewan?”

All this explained at least why de Forrest had been absent from his regiment’s guest night. Rodney wished the man would speak instead of standing there like a withered tree. He was the senior; this affair had obviously become official; he should take command.

The girl answered Rodney’s question. “Yes, it was the Dewan. We followed him carefully, but lost him lower down Auckland Road. I was going to give up, and then we met you.”

Rodney remembered his promise to Joanna. There were several courses he could follow; none of them would be “respectful” to Mr. Dellamain, and any of them would involve him again in Kishanpur and Caroline Langford’s obsession about a mystery. He wished he knew what Dellamain was frightened of—but he hadn’t time to think about that now.

He turned to de Forrest. “Obviously it’s no use going to
Dellamain, sir. If you agree, I’ll turn out a troop—or a squad—of your regiment, catch these people, and take them straight to Colonel Bulstrode as station commander. Then he can hold the evidence in military custody until the Lieutenant Governor sends someone down from Agra to investigate.”

De Forrest looked up. The sweat gleamed on his face, and on Caroline’s as she watched him. He spoke with a collected, flat, lack of emphasis. “No, Captain, I will not agree. I have not seen the Dewan of Kishanpur tonight, or Mr. Dellamain. I have not, therefore, seen anything handed over to Mr. Dellamain. I am returning to my bungalow now, and my advice to you is to do the same. Good night. Good night, Miss langford.”

He turned and walked silently up the road. Rodney watched until the shadows absorbed him. The girl was drawn and tense, and her voice suddenly harsh.

“Never mind, Captain Savage. I’ll explain later. Can’t we catch these people ourselves, if I get a horse and a pair of pistols?”

Rodney glanced at her in admiration; now she was almost beautiful in her determination. With a man’s eyes he looked at her as he replied, “It’s silly to do that, Miss Caroline. We must go to Colonel Bulstrode.” She frowned, and he added, “Really we must. The colonel’s a great deal shrewder than he looks, you know.”

She pulled the cape tighter across her chest, and the curve of her breasts showed clearer through the material. The silly girl didn’t know what she was doing. “All right. If we must. Hurry.”

She refused to ride the horse, and Rodney led it by the reins. They walked fast along the shoulder of the road, her slippers scuffing in the dust. She’d have to say something about de Forrest soon, but he didn’t see how he could help her.

Without warning she brimmed over, the anger bitter in her low voice. “You think I’m doing this for the pleasure
of destroying the Rani, don’t you? There is no pleasure in it at all for me. I believe that our duty to God’s principles—justice and truth—is more important than our duty to people, or any particular person, especially oneself. We aren’t in this world for our own pleasure, but to further God’s principles. The old Rajah was my friend, but I hope I’d have the strength to do what I’m doing even if he had been my enemy. I had to get help. I asked Major de Forrest because he showed interest. He wasn’t excitable like you, and that was right—I’m not crusading against people, or human enemies, but against falsehood, and there is no need to hate anyone. He just did what I asked him to.” She broke off and muttered, “How much farther?”

“A few minutes.”

She slowed her pace, and he slowed with her. She had to unburden herself of this, and a few minutes would make no difference in catching the carts.

“This evening he suggested we should get married—it was in Isobel’s garden. I couldn’t believe my ears; I’d never thought of it. I’ve never met
any
man I wanted to marry. I was too surprised to speak. Then I answered ‘No, thank you,’ and he said perhaps I was right. A little later the messenger came from Sitapara. I didn’t see what difference the proposal made, so I asked Major de Forrest to come with me—and he refused! I asked him whether he had only helped me in this as a necessary preliminary to a proposal, and he said yes. He said that he had thought we could live undisturbed lives together because I had outgrown the stupidity of emotion. He said that he saw from my reaction to this message that he was mistaken—he said that I merely got inflamed by ideas instead of people. He said that would outweigh the benefits of disposing of Victoria as a housekeeper. That’s what he said!”

Rodney cleared his throat “We’re getting near. I think there’s a light on.”

Why did she tell him all this? To make him believe her story of the mysterious incident at the Commissioner’s, by
showing that de Forrest had a motive for lying? That was unnecessary, and surely she knew it. Was she trying to explain her association with de Forrest, and so kill the gossip? She wasn’t a person who cared much about gossip; nor did he care whether the gossip was true or not, and she knew that too.

“I’ve nearly finished. When he said that, I was so angry that I lost my temper. He’d thought that
I
was like
him
—incapable of feeling. He was going to use me, so that he could get rid of Victoria and replace her by an efficient housekeeper. He does have one feeling—he hates Victoria. But the message was so important that I had to make him come with me, just this last time, and I did. But it was all a lie still, inside him. You heard what happened.”

They turned into Colonel Bulstrode’s drive. It was past one in the morning, and Rodney quailed at the thought of the reception they would get if the old man were sleeping off a mountain of curry and a gallon of beer. The girl walked unspeaking at his side round the curve of the drive, and the band-horse’s hoofs clicked evenly on the gravel.

“He was going to use me.” Did she realize that de Forrest would think she had tried to use
him
; that ordinary people—including Rodney himself—resented being treated as mere tools with which she could more efficiently uncover the beauty of a divine principle? And there was something else, even more interesting. The tone of her voice at one part of the story had quivered with plain female fury; she was not merely grieved because de Forrest was so numb to abstract principle; she was angry that he had thought of her as an unexciting woman. She didn’t know herself as well as she thought she did, and he liked her the more for it. Besides, the real she was much more interesting than either the one she pretended to be or the one she hoped to be.

The light they had seen was on Bulstrode’s verandah. The drive curled round the front of the bungalow, and they saw the colonel sprawled in a long wicker chair under his carriage porch. Half a dozen empty beer bottles littered the gravel
around him, and a servant squatted on his hunkers at the edge of a flowerbed nearby. Bulstrode was wearing sandals, filthy white trousers, and a dress shirt—the latter unbuttoned and not tucked into the trousers. He grunted when he saw them but did not attempt to get up, and showed no surprise.

“Ha! Good morning to you both.
Chokra,
tie the sahib’s horse to the tree, and bring beer. Miss Langford, you take beer? Good girl! Now, you haven’t sense enough to know this is the best time for paying friendly calls, so—what’s the matter?”

He shifted slightly in his chair, and the little eyes glinted towards Rodney. Hesitantly at first, then with increasing assurance, Rodney told his story; when he had finished, Caroline filled in the gaps.

The colonel listened intently and did not stir except to bury his face from time to time in his mug of beer. At the end of the tale he wiped the froth from his beard and moustache, hawked noisily, and spat the phlegm accurately at a red-and-black moth perched on a pillar of the verandah. He started scratching among the jungle of hair on his chest. “First things first. No one’s to go haring round in the middle of the night after these fellahs. They’re slow—got forty-seven miles to go—catch ’em tomorrow if we want to. The Dewan won’t be with ’em when we do. He’ll have a horse meet him somewhere in the jungles. Right. Now, Dellamain’s certainly taking bribes from someone. Known that for two years. Why? Because he wants to retire, go home, buy himself a seat in Parliament Wants to finish his book—
Fiscal
Policy and Land Tenure,”
some name like that; knows a hell of a lot about it—well, I suppose someone’s got to. Fellah dreams day and night of seeing his name in
The Times
—The Right Honourable Sir Charles Dellamain, P.C., etcetera, etcetera. Would, too, in politics at home—very capable fellah, straight as a corkscrew.” He transferred his scratching to the rolls of fat on his stomach. “I don’t like him—don’t care a damn about bribes of course, but he’s an oily, gutless four-letter man. Proved it at Kishan Falls, eh? Beats me
how he’s got into this. Take a few diamonds to wink at rajahs’ little vices—burning wife alive, running boy brothels—that’s one thing. Help fellahs run guns, that’s another, and damned dangerous. Should’ve thought it’d have given him the wind up. Anyway, he won’t have the carts chased if he can help it, fear of what might come out. If I ask him to, he’ll choke me off somehow, make his own inquiries later.” He broke off and stared intently into the flowerbed. “See that little snake, just moving down there—earth-snake, called
murari sanp.
Lots of superstitions about him; fellahs throw him up in the air to kill him, then bash him with a stone, call it
suraj dekhana
—‘show him the sun.’ The Gonds eat him, farther south; so do I; very tasty dish. Another thing: Dellamain may be busy on something official and secret. Government here’s an underhand business sometimes—has to be, to earn any respect. I’ve been out thirty-nine years, learned to leave civils and politicals wallowing in their own plots, if I can.”

He paused again and eyed the snake.

“Fellahs swear he comes into houses at night, takes milk from women’s breasts. Don’t believe it, miss. Where was I? Oh, yes, let ’em wallow. But this time I can’t. Too serious. Right! I’ll order de Forrest have a squad of the Sixtieth at your disposal, six a.m., at your bungalow. I’ll tell him to keep his mouth shut—you too, please, miss. Savage, you take the squad out, tell ’em you’re after dacoits. The troopers are Mohammedans, don’t celebrate Holi, but they get a day or two’s holiday for it, so try and bring ’em back quickly. You ever seen the Holi, miss? Don’t. Disgusting business; I like it. And Savage, you must
not
take the squad into Kishanpur, or there’ll be hell to pay. Got it? Report direct to me when you return. I’ll fix your commanding officer. Now go to your bed—I mean beds, ha!”

He nodded, chuckling wetly, and called for beer—one bottle.

Out in the road again, Caroline Langford said, “I can get home by myself now, thank you. I insist. One thing; I meant
to tell you why Major de Forrest and I went riding. It was to find out where the chupattis came from. I heard the story, and it seemed eerie, like the Silver Guru’s words to the crows, but worse.”

“I fear you were wasting your time, then. The thing starts somewhere far beyond riding distance. I had a case yesterday which proved the chupattis are coming into Kalpi from the east—and that’s a hundred and fifty miles north-east of here.”

“I didn’t know that But did
you
know that recently the watchmen have been carrying handfuls of raw meat instead of chupattis? Three pieces of goat’s flesh, with the skin still on them and the hair and outer layers scraped off, so that they’re shining white on one side and raw red flesh on the other. One piece is always large, one a little smaller, and the other very small. It’s unearthly—to meet a man after sunset, running with red hands, not knowing what he does or why, driven on by a threat from nowhere. Major de Forrest said he’d tell the Commissioner, but I suppose now I’ll have to make sure he has. Thank you and—good night.”

She turned brusquely away. Rodney said good night to her back, swung into the saddle, and trotted home. He wanted to talk to her about Julio—perhaps he didn’t. Anyway, she’d gone.

A white glimmer on his lawn showed where a mosquito net covered the double bed. He hoped Joanna was asleep and wouldn’t wake up. He’d have to waken her early enough and tell her he was off after dacoits. That might be difficult; she’d probably think he was being punished for something by being sent out to work over the Holi holidays which began today. In truth, the odd thing would be that he, an infantry officer, was taking out a cavalry patrol. She wouldn’t notice that, but others would. Well, it was Bulstrode’s affair now.

He gave the horse to his night watchman, with orders to arouse a groom and have it taken back to the 60th’s lines. Sher Dil, who slept the light sleep of old men, doddered into
the house a few seconds later. He shook his head grumpily as Rodney told him what must be made ready for the morrow, and at the end muttered, “Dacoits, thugs, five o’clock in the morning—just like Savage-sahib. Why don’t you go on the staff and settle down, Rodney-sahib?”

He shook the old butler’s elbow gently and whispered, “All right, all right. I know you want a scarlet cummerbund. Where’s Lachman hidden my nightshirt?”

The tick of the clock in the drawing-room sounded through the house, and somewhere out in the fields a pack of jackals set up their insane yelping chorus. He pulled on his boots as protection against snakes and scorpions, and tiptoed out to see if the disturbance of his arrival had awakened Robin. The cot was on the north verandah, with Ayah’s string bed at the foot; Ayah was asleep, completely rolled in a sheet, and Robin was asleep. Rodney tiptoed down the hall and across the grass of the lawn. Joanna was asleep.