Death to the Landlords

Fifteen

Cape Comorin: Saturday Evening

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They sat in one of the small, seaward lounges of the hotel that evening, after Priya had slept through most of the day, after the Manis had departed, stunned and incredulous, without Sushil Dastur, and the Bessancourts, grieved but unshaken, without Romesh Iyar, and after Larry had cruised his way in a local boat fruitlessly but gallantly up the coast and down again, only to hear that everything had happened without him, and that everything was over.

The hotel was very quiet, most of its guests out on the dunes or in the village, enjoying the cool of the evening after sundown. The police had completed their notes and interrogations, and departed, taking with them Romesh Iyar’s rifle, stolen during the night from the belongings of one of the room-boys on duty, but strongly suspect of being the same one originally stolen from the baggage of a well-to-do guest more than a year previously. At Malaikuppam, tomorrow, Inspector Raju would be waiting to close his file on the case. Even the sad, repulsive carcase of the krait had been removed from under the balcony. The traces were being softly sponged away out of half a dozen lives, but only to make way for something new, which in its turn had arisen out of the old.

So they sat in the hotel lounge, Priya, the Swami, Purushottam, Larry, Dominic and Sushil Dastur, and told one another whatever remained to be told.

‘After I had spoken with you,’ said the Swami, ‘I knew that I must come. The miscalculation that sent you here was mine. There at Malaikuppam it was already clear that no one was interested in us, and even more clear that Lakshman Ray is a very honest, estimable, though perhaps rather stiff-necked young man. He will accept any challenge if he thinks a reflection has been made upon him. And indeed I did, for a while, entertain the thought that he might be the person for whom we were looking, since it had to be someone, and apparently someone closely connected with your party. Lakshman is showing a marked interest in our programme for Malaikuppam, by the way. I hope you don’t mind, Purushottam, that I discussed it with him? He is an intelligent boy. I think we must see that he completes his university course, he may be very useful in the future. Now where was I? Oh, yes! I thought I should join you here at once. So I took my hired car – if you had approached from the lane instead of the garden you would have seen and recognised it – and drove down here at once. Lakshman is in charge in Malaikuppam, should there be anything needing attention. I arrived here somewhat after midnight – no, later, it must have been nearly one o’clock – parked my car, and walked a little way towards the road and the dunes, in case I might be able to find you somewhere. So it happened that I was the first person to encounter Sushil Dastur. But Sushil will tell you.’

Sushil Dastur, in some celebratory exuberance, had put on his achkan tonight, and sat cross-legged, Indian to the backbone, in the cushioned settee along the wall. There was a hectic flush still perceptible on his prominent cheekbones, and a spark of excitement in his dark, vulnerable, once-apprehensive eyes. Sushil Dastur had lived through a night which transformed his life, a night he would never forget.

‘You see, Mr Felse, Mr Narayanan, after I left you I was so upset, so ashamed, I could not possibly go to bed and sleep. I could not think how to make things right, and I was so restless, I went out to walk a little. I was among the trees at the edge of the garden, when I saw this man going out to the road, driving Miss Madhavan before him… It was terrible! He held her by a cord tied to her wrists, and he had a knife in his hand. You understand, I was afraid to call for help or make any sound, for fear he should kill her. So I followed them. It was the only thing I could think of to do…’

Sushil Dastur, who had been haunted and hounded all his life by his inadequacy and want of success in trivial things, had astonished himself, when this genuine enormity confronted him, by being moved to immense indignation instead of fear, and boldness instead of caution. He had still not recovered from the shock.

‘It was the right thing,’ said Purushottam warmly. He had Priya close by his side, constantly and anxiously cherished with glances and attentions. Apart from that they did not touch each other, or anticipate by a word what they both knew to be inevitable and right. There are ways of doing these things, and theirs were Indian ways.

‘If I followed, I thought, at least I should know where he had hidden her, and then I could bring help. Even in the darkness I had to take great care not to be seen or heard, but I saw him take her into the hut, and then I hurried back to get help.’

‘And I was the first man he met,’ said the Swami, ‘and he was so good as to trust me at once with this story. I urged extreme caution, for Miss Madhavan’s sake, for if we had raised a general alarm she would surely have been killed. But I had hopes that otherwise this criminal’s interest was not in Priya herself, but rather in her value as a lure for Purushottam, in which case she might be safe for a while, provided there was no open hue and cry. That was why we examined her room and yours, Purushottam, and found the message which was left for you. You will forgive me if I left you no further message as to what we were about, but I had hopes that perhaps you need not know until all was over, if our efforts were rewarded. We knew now how much time we had, some hours of it blessedly in darkness still, and therefore we set out at once to act by stealth, trusting to bring her back, somehow, perhaps before you ever returned to the hotel. But the note we left where it was. We had no right to take from you, in the worst event, the choice that was there offered you.’

He looked from Priya to Purushottam, and his eyes were clear and calm, Those two knew more about each other, now, than most couples know who contemplate marriage, and had more reason to be confident and glad.

‘We looked in my car’s tool kit for whatever might be useful. I do not know why it should include so fine a knife, but we were very glad of it. We went mainly by the shore, climbing to the edge of the dunes when we had to, swimming when we were forced to. In the end the time we had was barely enough. In the first cove there we found a boat waiting. Obviously it was there to ensure his retreat after the shooting. So I went aboard, and poled it round the headland into the other bay, while Sushil Dastur climbed up to the rear of the hut with our knife, and began tapping his way along the walls to try to find out where Priya was, and make sure that she was alive and conscious, to be able to give us what help she could. And he found her, as she has told you, and she did help us, very substantially. When I had anchored the boat in the other bay, I climbed up from there to join him, and we began to cut our way through the wall to her. Though indeed Sushil Dastur was much more expert than I, and much more silent, and he did most of the work. And the rest you know.’

Yes, the rest they knew. Only the very simple part had been left for him to do at the end, when there was no other way of delaying Purushottam’s execution by the two or three minutes necessary to complete the delivery of Priya. Without a weapon – and without the slightest intention of using one even if he had had one – to step in between the hunter and the hunted. That was all. Anyone could do that.

‘How strange!’ said Priya wonderingly. ‘At Thekady we liked him, all of us. And yet he wore such a false face. Not just the crime itself, but all that manipulation of the other boat-boy – for it must have been Romesh who not only put those Maoist papers among Ajit Ghose’s possessions, but also put it into his mind that Bakhle would be a profitable client and tip him well, so that he would want to exchange duties for the day. Perhaps he even suggested it, though he got Ajit to do the asking. It was all his evidence that turned the charge against the other boy. And I think – it is a terrible thing to say about any man, but truly I believe it of him – that he designed events so that we, in his boat, should be the ones to find the bodies. Because he wanted to be there. Because it gave him satisfaction to have contrived everything so cleverly, and to see his plans succeed.’

‘It is a seductive delight,’ said the Swami, for him almost sententiously, ‘to excel at anything.’

‘But a poor person like Ajit Ghose – as poor as himself – how was he the enemy? And to take not only his life, but even his good name!’

‘Now at least he will get that back again,’ said Purushottam. ‘Everyone knows now that he was quite innocent, that it was Iyar who did everything.’

Dominic looked fixedly at the Swami, but the Swami sat silent, his face composed and tranquil.

‘And it seems that he himself was this sadhu we’ve heard so much about, and I’ve never seen,’ said Larry. ‘The one at Nagarcoil and at Thekady. In both places he claimed to have seen that sadhu himself, as soon as he was asked about him – and in the right spot, too. I suppose he threw in the sighting at Nagarcoil because he knew Priya had seen him casing the house.’

‘And as it turns out,’ said Dominic, ‘it was only in Nagarcoil he managed to get himself taken on by the Bessancourts. He gave the impression that that had happened earlier, in Trivandrum, but actually he never was in Trivandrum, he was following us. He only happened on the Bessancourts after he’d been checking up on us at Priya’s house. Being with them made it possible for him to get to close quarters with us here.’

‘But I confess I have not quite understood,’ said Sushil Dastur humbly, ‘the significance of this pose as a sadhu. I hope I am not being obtuse,’ he said sadly, with a remote echo of his old uncertainty. It was important that he should not be obtuse. Purushottam had invited him back to Malaikuppam, in the passion of his gratitude, and offered him employment there, and the fear of being inadequate is not so easy to shake off in a moment.

‘I have pondered on the same matter myself,’ said the Swami considerately. ‘I think he was there by the lingam at Thekady by arrangement, to receive from someone – someone possibly quite unimportant, and unaware of his role – the bomb which was planted in Mr Bakhle’s boat. You will remember that he was seen there for only a short time, and that everyone testified to the fact that it was most unusual for any such person to find it worthwhile patronising that spot. It would have been unwise to have the messenger come and ask for him at the lake. Yet this place was within easy reach, and simple to find. And it is not so hard to become a sadhu in two minutes. A length of cloth, a handful of dust or ash, a touch of red or yellow paint, an oily hand passed through the hair – these are all you need. Having this small equipment with him, he used it whenever he had need to be other than his apparent self. The kit costs very little, also an advantage. Holiness is not an essential – though many may indeed be holy.’

Priya put out a hand with a sudden gesture of protest and pain, and Purushottam reached out rather shyly and took it in his, flushing and burning at the touch.

‘Then is that what happened to Patti? I think and think of her – and they will come, her parents, and what are we to tell them? It was Patti who gave alms to the sadhu by the lingam. Only she saw him closely, no one else looked him in the face as she did. Surely she knew, or felt she knew, that face again, even seen so differently? In the dusk there, when we found the boat – the same hour of dusk, the same light – she suspected then. And that’s why she died!’

There was a moment of silence, while the Swami gazed back at her with great gentleness and profound respect.

‘It was surely by reason of her recognition or non-recognition of that face that she died. For surely he thought that she knew him. She was a victim of forces she could not possibly understand.’

‘Patti is the thing I find hardest to forgive,’ said Priya.

‘I, too,’ said the Swami, ‘hardest of all.’ He cast down his eyes, regarding with calm abstraction the cupped palms of his hands. In the half-lit room, cross-legged with soles upturned in the cushions of the couch against the wall, he looked more than ever like an antique bronze. He said mysteriously, and apparently as much to himself as to them: ‘The Lord said: “He who at his last hour, when he casts off the body, goes hence remembering me, goes assuredly into my being.” ’