Death to the Landlords

Twelve

Cape Comorin: Friday Night to Saturday Dawn

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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.

They knocked on Larry’s door, and elicited a sleepy grunt from within, and then a clearer utterance promising compliance. In a few minutes they heard him moving about, and the splash of the shower. They tapped on Priya’s door and got no answer.

‘Still asleep,’ said Purushottam. ‘Ought we to disturb her?’

They waited a little while, listening for any sound of activity from within. Then they knocked again, but still there was no answer. Larry opened his door to them, towelling his crew-cut vigorously, and still there was no reply from Priya.

‘Perhaps she’s dressed and gone out already, before we came,’ said Purushottam, arguing with himself. His face had grown pale, and his eyes large. ‘May I go through by the balcony, and see?’

They followed at his heels, across the room and out to the balcony beside the iron stairway. Priya’s window stood open, the curtains half-drawn across it, just as when they had passed it quietly on coming in. The quietness began to seem ominous, the pre-dawn light inauspicious, though it had not seemed so then.

Purushottam tapped at the glass. ‘Priya? Are you awake? Priya!…’

He knew she was not there; there was no sense of her presence, no lingering hint of her movements in the air, nothing. He opened the window wider, and went into the room.

The nearer of the two beds still bore the light imprint of her body, and was disarranged only as it would have been if she had recently risen from it in a perfectly normal way; but it was cold. The door was locked, and the key in the lock. Nothing seemed to be disturbed. But in the shower-room the film of water and the splashed drops from her overnight shower had already dried completely; the hand-basin, too, was dry, the towels were dry. The sari she had worn yesterday was draped neatly over the back of a chair in the bedroom, ready to put on again. Priya had neither washed nor dressed this morning. Of all her belongings, nothing was missing but her white night sari and her dark silk dressing-gown, and the sandals of light fawn leather she habitually wore.

‘Look,’ Larry said, hushed and uneasy, ‘she was writing a letter last night.’

The letter, to her Punjabi room-mate in the Nurses’ Home at Madras, was necessarily in English. It had reached one and a half pages, and then been tidily abandoned for the night, folded into her writing-case with the address and salutation protruding. And on top of the case was another sheet torn from her writing-pad and folded in two. ‘There’s a note here, addressed to someone – that’s Tamil, isn’t it?’

Purushottam came flashing anxiously across the room, and took it up with a soft cry of hope and relief. ‘It’s to me!’ But even in the act of unfolding it he was shaken afresh by awful doubts, and looked again at his own name. He had never seen Priya’s writing until now, in the neat, precise English of her letter; but these fiercely formed characters in Tamil gave him no sense of handling something which had come to him from her.

His hands were shaking as he began to read; they were like stone when he ended, and all the light was gone from his face, which for one moment was stunned and dead, until the dreadful certainty came.

‘He’s taken her – taken Priya.’ He raised his eyes to their faces. ‘Because the krait was a failure… because I was out of reach when he came to see what had gone wrong. This time he meant to make sure. You want to know what he has to say to me?’

He read, translating slowly, freely and coldly, like a voice out of a computer:

‘ “It is you we want, not her. Now you shall come to us, and of your own will, if you want the girl to go free. You will come to the fisherman’s hut on the dunes to take her place, and come alone. If I do not see you coming – alone – by seven o’clock, I cut her throat.” ’

The sheet of notepaper with its words carved deep like stabs dropped from his hand, done with. He was back on the balcony before they had wrenched themselves out of their appalled daze and realised what he was about. They started after him, Larry catching at his arm.

‘The police – we must get them! They’ll have to —’

‘No police,’ said Purushottam, biting off the word and shutting upon it lips drawn pale and thin. ‘No police, no tricks, no anything. There isn’t time.’

‘But we’ve got to do something! They’ll turn out all the forces they’ve got – they’ll get her back —’

‘Dead!’ said Purushottam. ‘You know what time it is? Well past six.’

‘But the police have resources —’

‘No! I say no police. Not a word to anyone, no hunt, nothing. If you try to be clever, Priya will simply be murdered at once. Do you doubt it?’

They did not doubt it. ‘But the police are as capable as we are of moving discreetly, they have resources, they’ll arrange it so that —’

‘Fool!’ said Purushottam without heat, his feet clattering on the iron staircase down which Priya had been dragged in the night. ‘Have you forgotten how the hut lies? You could cover the whole sweep of the dunes from it. No one could approach without being seen long before. And Priya would die.’

Dominic said – it was the first thing he had found it needful to say, and it was no comfort at all, but it was the truth: ‘At best she may – you know that. If she can identify him now.’

‘Yes, I do know. But even such people as he may keep their word – I daren’t stop hoping. If we start a hunt, then she will certainly die. To give him a better chance to get away. And to kill me by another way.’

‘But a boat…’ said Dominic.

Halfway across the garden, Purushottam spared him one quick glance, from very far away, and the brief ghost of a smile. ‘Yes. If there was time, by water one might reach them. Even that would be a risk. But there’s no time. It would be past seven before you got hold of a boat.’

It was true, and they knew it; the chances of beating that deadline were practically nil, without a motor-boat, and a motor-boat, even if one were to be had, might by its sound alert the kidnapper and precipitate what they most wished to prevent. Nevertheless, Larry suddenly swerved away from the hapless procession heading for the dunes, and turned and ran like a hare, not for the hotel, but for the village. At least to try – to make some sort of attempt to defeat what outraged him. Purushottam checked, and looked after him in exasperated distress.

‘He’s crazy! He’ll only kill her!’

‘No,’ said Dominic with awful certainty. ‘He won’t have time.’

‘No – that’s true. He won’t have time.’ Purushottam sank his face between his palms for a moment, and shook his head from side to side helplessly. ‘I did this to her. She never should have known me!’

‘I don’t believe she’d say so,’ said Dominic, ‘even now.’

They were motionless there in the garden for only a moment. But even so Dominic heard, shrill and indignant on the air, wafting from one of the first-floor balconies: ‘Sushil Dastur! Sushil Dastur!’ And Gopal Krishna’s booming response, equally indignant but even more incredulous: ‘He is not there! No one has seen him! Where can he have got to? What is he thinking off?’ Mutually complaining, voices out of another world, they faded into the interior of the hotel.

But perhaps not another world, after all! Sushil Dastur, stooping at the doorway of a room where a krait had been introduced to do the dirty work for men…

Purushottam seemed not to have heard. He lifted a pale, set face out of his hands, and turned with determination towards the road, and the rising folds of sand.

‘Don’t go away! Come with me. As far as you can… You see I can’t do anything else. There isn’t any time left. I have to go. I have to do what he says, and hope he has a sort of honour. There’s nothing else I can do. One step wrong — one foot out of place – and she will be the first to die.’

‘I know,’ said Dominic. ‘I won’t leave you. Not until you give the word.’