Ellis Peters - George Felse 11 - Death To The Landlords (12 page)

‘Therefore,’ said the Swami, calmly and distinctly, ‘they will try again. So the question is, how are we going to ensure his protection?’

Purushottam, who had been all this time listening with only half his attention, and with the other half pondering some gnawing anxiety of his own, apparently in some way connected with Priya’s clear profile, jerked up his head with a startled and almost derisive smile. As though, Dominic thought, he still doesn’t altogether believe in the danger to himself, or, more perilously still, has no respect for it.

‘My protection? What can one do except take all sensible precautions, and then simply go ahead with living? I shan’t go looking for trouble, you can be sure. And we have a pretty large household, all of whom are to be trusted.’

‘Yet still Miss Galloway is dead,’ Inspector Raju reminded him austerely.

He flushed deeply. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. I’d overlooked the fact that by attracting danger to myself I may have cost one life already. But that situation can easily be altered if you, sir, are prepared to let my guests proceed with their journey. Then I shall no longer be putting them in jeopardy.’

‘How can we go?’ Priya protested. ‘We have sent a cable to Patti’s parents, and we must be here to make arrangements – to do whatever they may wish. They may even fly over here to take her home. How can we abandon them now?’

‘As far as the police are concerned,’ Inspector Raju said, after a brief, consulting glance at his colleague, ‘the party is at liberty to proceed on the old terms. Provided they will keep in touch, and be available at need, they may leave in the morning.’

‘And I advise that they should,’ said the Swami. ‘I will remain here to receive Mr and Mrs Galloway, or their instructions, and will do whatever little can be done to make this loss easier for them. But that would not in itself solve the problem of Purushottam. No, don’t refuse me yet, first listen to what I suggest.’ He leaned forward, his linked hands quiet and still upon the table, and his brown, shrewd eyes surveyed them all at leisure, one by one. He had put on his wire-rimmed glasses, which sagged drunkenly to the right of his nose because the right lens was thicker and heavier than the left; and through the weighty pebble of glass his right eye put on its cosmic aspect, magnified out of reason and unnervingly wise. It lingered upon Priya, and passed on tranquilly enough; to Larry, on whom it pondered but briefly thoughtfully; to Lakshman, on whom it rested longer.

‘We have here a party of guests expected to drive on to Nagarcoil and the Cape. It is only too well-known to our enemy by now, of course, that only one young lady will be going home to Nagarcoil. But three young men came, and three will leave. Now I admit that if a close watch has been kept on this household during the past few days, the probability is that Purushottam may now be known by sight to those who are seeking his death. But on the other hand, there is quite a good chance that he is not. He has been back in India only a very short time, and so deeply preoccupied during that time that he has hardly been out of the gates until Tuesday. Lakshman is about the same build and colouring.’ The large, bright eye remained steadily trained upon Lakshman’s face. ‘Lakshman will remain here with me, in Purushottam’s clothes. He will become Purushottam. And Purushottam will go with the party in Lakshman’s place, as courier. Thus we can get him away safely from this house, on which the terrorist will be concentrating. It will gain us the time to take further measures, and allow the police to proceed more freely. And naturally,’ he added, ‘a very careful watch will be kept, twenty-four hours a day, upon Lakshman’s safety.’

It was done with such gentle assurance that only Dominic, who knew him so well, realised what an astonishing suggestion it was to come from a man like the Swami, to whom the humblest of lives ranked in value equal to the loftiest, and indeed would probably take precedence in its claims on his protection and solicitude. Nor had it even the remotest hope of being accepted. He looked curiously at Purushottam, whose mouth had already opened with predictable hauteur, to veto the proposition. He was probably the last young man in the world to allow himself to be smuggled out of his own house because of a criminal threat to his life, especially if it meant leaving someone else to bait a police trap in his place. Dominic waited confidently for him to say so, and for some reason the words had halted on the very tip of his tongue. He cast one brief, piercing side-glance at Priya’s profile, and another, as it seemed, back deep into his own mind, where he hid that private preoccupation which had been distracting him earlier. And he stopped to think before speaking. And then it was too late, for Lakshman had spoken first.

‘I am quite willing,’ he said, ‘if you think it will be helpful.’ His face was inscrutable, aloof and unsmiling, most markedly maintaining that ambivalence of his between servant and equal. There was even something of the proud forbearance of the servant assenting to something which should only be asked of an equal. And as though he had sensed it, Purushottam found his voice the next moment; a more subdued voice than anyone would have expected, and a more reasonable.

‘You can hardly ask me to duck out now, if it means leaving one of my friends standing in for me here, where the danger is.’

His choice of phrase was not calculated; he was not, in fact, a person who ever did much calculating. Lakshman’s face lost its chill of correctness. He repeated firmly: ‘I am quite willing. I shall be well protected.’

‘But whatever could be done to protect you could also be done to protect me. Why should not I be the bait to catch this agent? For I take it that’s what you’re hoping for? Since I’m the one he’s after, I could serve the same purpose, surely, and serve it better.’

But it would not serve the same purpose at all, Dominic realised in a sudden rush of enlightenment. Not the purpose the Swami had in mind, not the purpose Inspector Raju had instantly perceived and approved, though he kept his mouth shut. The Swami had looked round the entire party with a detached eye, excluded Dominic because he knew him, and Priya – yes, quite positively he had acquitted Priya – for reasons of his own. That left Larry and Lakshman, who had travelled down here from the north together. On balance he had considered Lakshman, as an Indian, more likely to be involved in political mysteries than Larry, and there was also the point that the suggestion he had made could apply reasonably only to Lakshman. How seriously he rated this possibility there was no knowing; but it could not be excluded. The suggestion had been made primarily to see how Lakshman responded to it; and he had settled that without delay by his proud assent. Did that let him out altogether? Not necessarily. There might be Naxalites here, too, who could be contacted and used, and need not, in the last resort, be confided in. So the Swami would persist in his proposition. His design was to get Purushottam away from this house without his departure being known, and to hold Lakshman here in his place; and then to mount constant guard on him night and day. If he was innocent, and exactly what he seemed, he should be protected from harm. If he was guilty, he should be so lovingly watched and guarded that he should have no chance to smuggle out a word or a sign to any outside contact, to send other agents in pursuit of Purushottom. If he was innocent he would certainly be acting as bait for a police trap, and the few days’ grace they would be buying by the exchange might produce a satisfactory capture. If he was guilty, and clever enough, they would have purchased nothing but stalemate. He would sit tight and take no action, and they would make no discoveries. But it was worth a try.

‘And besides,’ Purushottam went on reasonably, ‘if they have decided on my execution, it’s because I’m a landowner. So my best defence is surely to go ahead as fast as I can with my plans to turn the estate into a co-operative farm, and stop
being
a land-owner.’

‘You are making the mistake,’ said Inspector Raju with a sour smile, ‘of expecting logic and principle to have some part in your enemies’ motivation. Fanatics recognise neither. They can decree hatreds; I doubt if they even know how to revoke one.’

‘Moreover,’ the Swami pointed out gently, ‘even if your faith was justified and they called off the hunt in your case, this same killer of men and girls would be free to turn his attention elsewhere. We are asking you rather to help us to capture him, and save the next life, not merely to conserve your own.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry, you’re quite right. But if I stay, and Lakshman goes on, how will the position be different?’ But he asked it as in duty bound, not vehemently; there was even a faint suggestion in his tone of reluctance to argue further.

It was Lakshman who provided the reasonable answer, and saved the Swami the trouble of finding plausible arguments to back his suggestion. Lakshman did it in the pure warmth of his response to being categorised ingenuously as a friend. Some answering gesture seemed called for, even if it had to be rather more self-conscious.

‘I think,’ he said, smiling, ‘that the Swami feels he would have a more tractable subject in me, one more likely to obey orders and be cautious about his own life. Perhaps we should all breathe more freely in feeling that you are safely away from here.’

‘In any case,’ added the Swami smoothly, ‘in a few days Lakshman also could be quietly dispatched to join you. It is simply a matter of covering your immediate retreat. The right number of people must be seen to leave, and someone must be seen to remain, to represent the master of the house. If no one is watching, well, we shall have taken pains to no purpose, but does that matter?’

‘I will stay,’ said Lakshman decisively.

Everyone looked at Purushottam, and Purushottam looked no less intently at the Swami, with a slightly baffled and curiously gratified expression, as if he had been conned into something he now realised he wanted to do.

‘Very well, if that’s what you wish, I will go.’

Inspector Tilak withdrew, no doubt gratefully, as soon as the conference broke up, and Inspector Raju departed with him, leaving two men under Sergeant Gokhale to spend the night on the premises. Dominic went down with them to their car.

‘Manpower with us is as much a problem as with the police elsewhere,’ said the inspector ruefully. ‘We can’t do more. It would not be wise, in any case, to draw attention to your party by attaching a police guard to it, even if we had a man to spare.’

‘We’re warned,’ said Dominic. ‘We shall be keeping a sharp look-out, But it seems we shall be leaving the centre of action here with you.’

‘If there is to be action. Too often the leopard withdraws into the jungle and is no more seen.’

‘Do you know where the French couple are – the Bessancourts?’

‘Last night, at Trivandrum. The night before they were at Quilon. Everyone appears to have done exactly what he proposed to do, and everyone has kept me informed.’

‘And the boat-boy? The one who wouldn’t stay at Thekady after the explosion? I think he expected to be the next!’

‘Romesh Iyar? He has been reporting regularly to the police at Tenkasi. In any case, of all of you who left after that murder, he has been under the most constant observation, for he has been working at the junction there, porter-ing on a casual basis. This evening he will be told – by now he
has
been told – that he can move on if he wishes, and need not report any longer. Why check on him further? He was working fifty miles away when the bomb that killed Miss Galloway was planted.’

‘And the Manis are at Tirunelveli. Only we,’ said Dominic sombrely, ‘were here.’ He thought of the Swami’s practical and necessary realism, and wondered if they had really travelled in company with the murderer’s accomplice who had now himself become a murderer. Useless pretending it was impossible, however hard it might be to believe. Useless to take it for granted that Lakshman’s convincing display of innocence and co-operation could necessarily be accepted at its face value. He hoped fervently that there would be some move soon which would enable the police to produce the veritable culprit, alive, identifiable beyond question as guilty, and a total stranger.

Purushottam came in the dusk to where the Swami sat on his stone bench on the terrace quiet, rapt and alone. The young man brought a low stool and sat down at his feet. For a few minutes neither of them spoke. The very brevity of the twilight made it precious, a luminous moment held suspended in air, delicately coloured in gold and crimson and transparent green, soon to dissolve into the clear darkness of the night.

‘And are you seriously interested in that young woman?’ the Swami asked at length, in the same matter-of-fact tones and with the same aplomb as if he had been asking the time.

‘How did you know that I wanted to go?’ Purushottam demanded.

‘I did not, until you showed me. I thought we might have considerable difficulty, my son, in persuading you to comply. You saved me a great deal of trouble.’

‘I like her,’ said Purushottam cautiously, and looked down frowningly at his linked hands, aware both of the inadequacy and the ambiguity of words. ‘Swami, I am the classical Indian problem, and you must know it. I am the foreign-educated Indian youth coming home. I have two cultures, and none, two backgrounds and none, two countries, and none. You know the saying: He is homeless who has two homes.
I
am real, I am more real than ever I was, but nothing now has a real relationship with me. I am without parents now, without close family, and therefore, in a sense, freer than most young men coming home, but in many ways it is an illusory freedom, because it has to deal with the possible lack of freedom of others. And even in me there is still a great deal of respect for tradition, whether I like it or not. People in my situation come back agonisingly aware – almost morbidly aware – of the complexities and rigidities of Indian marriage. And I can see that any orthodox family might well hesitate at attempting to assimilate anything so bizarre as I have now become. And even worse, in this situation – in this shadow and uncertainty…’

‘You need have no doubts concerning Miss Madhavan,’ the Swami assured him tranquilly. ‘I have known students, secretaries, clerks, cooks, housewives, artists, all manner of women who have at some juncture turned to terrorism. But never yet, in any country, have I known a case of a nurse who became a terrorist.’