They shot Gurung at 6 a.m. on 31 December. A firing squad at Fort William on the coldest day of the year, though as a man of the mountains, I doubt he’d have felt the chill. I wasn’t there of course. Neither was Surrender-not, but Dawson was, and it was he who told me. It wasn’t that we were now fast friends – far from it. He just saw it as a repayment for me returning for him after I’d got the prince out of harm’s way. You’d think saving a man’s life might incline him to reconsider his views about you, but I got the feeling that in Dawson’s case, saving his life only made him resent me more. Not that I cared. To me it didn’t matter if it was Dawson, Kaiser Wilhelm or even the Devil himself who’d been lying wounded in the room. I’d have gone back for anyone, because you don’t leave a man to the gas. Still, when he sent over a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenfarclas to my office by way of a thank-you, I wasn’t about to turn it down. The silver lining to having a secret policeman as your enemy is that he tends to know all about you, even your favourite whisky. I even invited him round to join me for a glass but he declined.
Instead we’d met early one morning on a bench beside the reflecting pool at the Victoria Memorial. The location was his choice. It was the sort of innocuous rendezvous point spymasters love, not that there was anything clandestine about our meeting, but I suppose old habits die hard.
He was already there when I arrived. In civvies, with a cane at his side and his pipe stuck in his mouth. On his lap was a small brown packet of peanuts. He took one, shelled it, and threw the two reddish nuts within onto the grass where a small flock of birds had gathered in expectation.
‘How’s the leg?’ I asked, taking a seat next to him.
He shelled another couple, dropping the detritus at his feet. ‘Bloody awful. Doctor says I might be left with a permanent limp.’
‘Look on the bright side,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know. It’s better than being dead.’
‘I was going to say that cane gives you a certain gravitas. Spymasters need that.’
He looked over and scowled.
‘You wanted to see me?’ I said.
He removed the pipe from his lips and placed it on the bench between us.
‘We interrogated Gurung. He was more than happy to tell us everything. On being posted to Calcutta, he went to see Anthea Dunlop to thank her for her earlier kindness towards his son. She told him how his boy really died and how her husband was being recalled to England to continue his work.
‘Odd lady, Mrs Dunlop. We questioned her too of course, but it was difficult to get much out of her other than the wrath of God. She believed her husband was doing the Devil’s work and needed to be stopped. She was the one who introduced Gurung to Colonel McGuire. It appears the doctor never recovered from the loss of his son to the gas at Passchendaele. Saw it as some sort of divine punishment for the experiments that were going on at his facility. When he found out that the government had recalled Dunlop to Porton Down to restart his work, the man snapped.’
Dawson shelled another nut and once more threw the contents to the birds.
‘According to Gurung,’ he continued, ‘he was happy just to kill Dunlop and those others he held directly responsible for his son’s death. It was McGuire’s idea to go after the Prince of Wales. The man seems to have been driven mad by grief. They staged his abduction at Barrackpore as it was the only way McGuire could get clear of my men. Then they infiltrated the crowd outside the town hall and Government House and set off their smoke bombs, surmising we’d mistake it for a gas attack and take the prince to Fort William.’
‘But what about McGuire’s assistant, Nurse Rouvel?’ I asked. ‘Why did Gurung try to kill her?’
Dawson shook his head. ‘Gurung hadn’t gone there to kill Rouvel. He’d gone to deliver a message to McGuire but by then the doctor was in the protective custody of my men. He’d hoped to persuade Rouvel to deliver it, but when he arrived at her door she just started screaming as though the sky was falling in.’
‘That would have been my fault,’ I said. ‘I’d spoken to her no more than ten minutes earlier. Told her that someone might try and kill her that night.’
Dawson shelled another nut. This time, though, he offered the contents to me.
‘No thanks,’ I said.
‘Suit yourself.’
He shrugged and popped the two nuts into his mouth.
‘I hear you’ve decided to take a leave of absence,’ he said.
‘It’s good to see nothing gets past you,’ I said, ‘even when you’re supposed to be recovering.’
‘Going anywhere nice?’
I was off to a Buddhist monastery near a place called Jatinga, in Assam, where, according to Dr Chatterjee, the monks helped you cleanse your body of opium. But I was sure he already knew that. And unless you considered withdrawal sweats, vomiting and close examination of one’s own stools to be pleasant experiences, nice it certainly wouldn’t be.
‘Assam,’ I said.
‘Bit cold this time of year, no?’
‘I suppose so.’
I left him with his pipe and his starlings and began walking back through the grounds towards the taxi rank on Chowringhee. I had a few things to do before catching the train to Darjeeling at noon. Not that there was much chance of the thing leaving on time. A new round of strikes by signalmen had reduced the railway time-table to a work of fiction. Indeed, all across Bengal the natives had, with renewed vigour, embarked on making the lives of us British as miserable as possible. It was Basanti Das’s fault. Actually it was my fault for letting them arrest her that day on the Maidan. As Surrender-not had foreseen, sticking her in a jail cell had been a huge political error. It had shocked the locals in the way that someone throwing Queen Victoria in prison might have shocked the English, and though the military released her soon afterwards, the damage had been done.
As for the Prince of Wales, once the initial impact had worn off, he seemed to view the whole thing as some extraordinary adventure, and it took all the persuasive powers of the viceroy, the India Office and, according to Dawson, a telegram from his father, the king, to convince him to keep his mouth shut about the whole affair. He’d spent Boxing Day at the races, then boarded a ship for Southampton and the press reported the whole trip a great success, with the exuberant natives even letting off firecrackers and smoke bombs in their appreciation of the prince, as though it was some sort of bloody custom. Of the gas attack on Fort William, there was nothing save for an official dispatch, recording an accident that had occurred during the transportation of some toxic chemicals, which had resulted in the deaths of several men and officers, and injuries to some others. Everything else was swept away and forgotten about.
From the memorial I took a cab, not north towards home, but south, to Alipore. Ordering the taxi-wallah to stop outside the gates to Annie’s house, I alighted, paid him and, after a few words with the durwan, started on the not inconsiderable walk up the curved driveway.
At a distance, the house looked serene, and, set among the palm-fringed rolling lawns, it seemed a world away from the turmoil that gripped streets only a few miles distant. I turned the bend and was grateful to see no sign of the monstrous Hispano-Suiza that had been parked outside on my last visit.
As I approached the end of the driveway, the front door opened and out stepped Annie’s maid, Anju, dressed in a faded orange sari and carrying a jute bag. She turned to shut the door then slipped on a pair of sandals which sat nearby on the veranda.
‘Morning, Anju,’ I said.
The maid spun round in surprise. ‘Captain Wyndham, sahib,’ she said, quickly adjusting the aanchal of her sari so that it covered her head.
‘Off somewhere nice?’ I asked.
‘To the market, only,’ she said, proffering the jute bag as corroboration.
‘Is her ladyship at home?’
‘Memsahib is home, sir.’ She nodded. ‘But she is not expecting visitors.’
‘I was in the area,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d drop by.’
Anju left me in the drawing room, with its brocade sofas and Hindu sculptures, while she set off to inform her mistress. I was much too nervy to sit down, and ignoring the sofa, I walked over to the window and gazed out onto the lawns, yet again mentally rehearsing what I’d come to say.
In the distance, two mynah birds were playing under a coconut palm. They were clever birds, mynahs. Some saw them as a nuisance and there’d been a cull a few years earlier, but the mynahs had learned to spot the traps set out for them and began avoiding them. Rumour had it they’d taught their offspring how to avoid them too.
The door opened behind me and I turned to see Annie enter the room, wrapped in a pink silk dressing gown. She seemed surprised to see me, but, I thought, not altogether annoyed.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve caught them,’ she said incredulously.
‘Who?’
‘The vandals who smashed my window, of course. That is why you’re here at this hour, isn’t it?’
I confess I’d forgotten about her damn window. I considered spinning her a line – we’re almost there, following up every lead, et cetera – but then stopped myself. There was, I realised, no point in it.
‘We’re not going to catch them, Annie,’ I said. ‘With all that’s going on in the city, I’m afraid your broken window doesn’t really qualify as top priority.’
She smiled. ‘I didn’t think so. So what does bring you out here so early?’
Now was the time to tell her, but suddenly I’d lost the courage to do so. Instead I stalled.
‘I came to ask you if you’d reconsidered my advice about leaving the city for a while.’
‘Sam,’ she sighed, ‘we’ve been through this.’
‘You’ve seen what it’s like out there. The demonstrations are multiplying, things are getting worse. I’m not asking you to emigrate, just take a holiday. Go away for a few weeks till things calm down.’
A smile played across her lips.
‘As it happens, Stephen Schmidt has asked me to accompany him to London. He’s leaving next week. He has some business there apparently.’
‘I was thinking somewhere in the opposite direction might be better. Somewhere south. It’d be warmer.’
Abruptly the memory of our last conversation entered my mind. It had been on the steps of the town hall, just as Gurung and McGuire had set off their smoke bombs. At the time, I’d assumed they were mustard gas. I recalled the terror and the helplessness I’d felt at the thought that I’d been unable to protect her. I realised then that I could never forgive myself if she remained and something happened to her.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘That was petty of me. Schmidt isn’t such a bad egg. Lord knows he can’t be any worse than half the chinless wonders you seem to surround yourself with these days. You should take him up on his offer.’
She stared at me.
‘Was that an apology, Sam? Are you feeling all right? What’s more: a positive word for another man. I never thought I’d see the day.’
‘What can I say?’ I shrugged. ‘He must have won me over with that smile of his.’
She laughed, despite herself. ‘You really are trying to get rid of me, aren’t you, Sam?’
‘I’m thinking of your best interests,’ I said. And it was true. For too long I’d told myself that her best interests were whatever mine happened to be. The truth was nothing of the sort.
‘Well, Captain Wyndham,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you what I told Mr Schmidt. Calcutta’s my home and I don’t plan on leaving it any time soon.’
Despite my fine words, I couldn’t help but feel my stomach leap.
‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘who in their right mind would want to go to London in January?’
It was a good question.
‘So you see, Captain, you better had catch whoever broke my windows because I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. ‘About the investigation, though – there may be a slight hiatus. I’m going away for a few weeks.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘You’re taking a holiday? Now I know there’s something wrong with you.’
I took a breath and steeled myself.
‘It’s not a holiday,’ I said. ‘I’m going to an ashram up in Assam somewhere. I’m going to get cleaned up …’
She seemed perplexed for a moment, but then the penny dropped. I waited for her reaction. Her reply, when it came, was a surprise. She smiled, then shook her head, and it felt as though a weight had been lifted from both our shoulders.
‘You know it won’t be easy, Sam,’ she said, walking over and taking my hand. ‘They say afeem is one of the hardest addictions to overcome.’
I could have told her I’d already figured that out for myself, but sometimes it pays to keep my mouth shut.
‘But rest assured,’ she continued, ‘I’ll still be here when you get back.’
We said our farewells and I left her there, framed by the twin statues of Lord Shiva.
Two hours later I was walking across the concourse of Sealdah station. My suitcase, containing a generous three-day supply of kerdū pulp, was on the head of a red-shirted porter whom Surrender-not had sent off ahead to scout out my platform.
The days since Das’s arrest had been difficult for the young sergeant. He was now, more than ever, an outcaste among his own kind, and as anger at the treatment of Basanti Das grew, so had Surrender-not’s doubts about continuing as an officer in His Majesty’s Imperial Police Force. I’d given him the same advice I’d given Annie: go away. Take a holiday from Calcutta. The difference was, he’d accepted it.
In two days he was off to Dacca, in East Bengal, to stay with an aunt. Dacca was far enough from the hothouse of Calcutta for him to have a chance of putting some perspective on things. And if a rapprochement with his family was to be engineered, the intercession of his father’s sister would be a good start.
‘You’re sure you have everything?’ he asked, sounding like a mother packing her child off to school.
‘Yes,’ I said, taking my case from the porter.
‘Well … good luck, Sam,’ he said and stretched out a hand.
‘And to you, too,’ I said, shaking it. ‘And Suren—’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘I shall consider my options most carefully.’
‘I was going to tell you not to talk to any of the working girls in the flat downstairs,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want them taking advantage of you tonight. Without me there to protect you, goodness knows what they’ll have you doing.’
‘Yes, Sam.’
‘Well, get going, young man,’ I said. ‘You know I can’t stand long goodbyes. Get back and make sure Sandesh isn’t loafing about.’
With that I left him and boarded in search of my compartment.
The train pulled out of the station only forty minutes late, which, I felt, constituted another triumph for the British Empire, and as we headed north through the Bengal countryside and I began to doze, my thoughts returned to Annie, standing there between the twin statues of Lord Shiva dancing his celestial dance. The destroyer and the creator. Destruction and rebirth.
Maybe there was something to Hindu mysticism after all.