Deputy Superintendent Samant looked at Inspector Ghote with a starkly obvious effort to keep under control the terrier sharpness of his usual manner.
‘I think I have only to say to you,’ he uttered, almost pushing the words back down his own throat, ‘to say one name, that of Dr P. R. Kumaramangalam.’
Total blankness abruptly occupied the whole of Ghote’s mind. Above him in the Deputy Superintendent’s office in Bombay CID Headquarters the big ceiling fan whirred with an insistent drone that seemed to blot out every coherent thought.
At last he forced himself to reply, licking his parched lips.
‘Dr P. R. Kumaramangalam, DSP sahib?’
With audible relief the DSP allowed a quick spurt of rage to escape him.
‘Yes, yes, man, Dr P. R. Kumaramangalam. Are you going to tell me you have never heard of him? The newly-appointed head of the All-India College of Surgeons? Inspector, do you never read books? Do you never browse even through the pages of Times of India Who’s Who?’
‘Yes—. No, sir. Not the Who’s Who, sir.’
With joy, DSP Samant let loose a single cutting blast of sarcasm.
‘Then you can take it from me, Inspector, the day will never come when you feature in those pages. Never. Never in one hundred years.’
‘No, sir.’
It was a comfort to be able to agree without reservation. Even the DSP seemed to lose some of his bottled impatience. He leant back in his heavy wooden armchair and surveyed Ghote across his desk with something like calm.
‘Dr Kumaramangalam, Inspector,’ he said, ‘besides being the head of the All-India College is also a close personal friend of the Commissioner.’
His voice rose to an incisive peak on those last two words and Ghote irradiated his face with a look of proper awe.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
‘And the Commissioner, Inspector, has asked me, me personally, to undertake a certain assignment on behalf of Dr Kumaramangalam. An assignment not strictly official, Inspector, and one requiring the utmost discretion.’
The pouncing sharpness was building up again under the effort to speak of the matter with a calm equal to the discretion it required. The DSP’s hands were holding hard on to the arms of his chair.
‘The utmost bloody discretion, man,’ he repeated.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Ghote.
Deep down a little flicker of delight began to play inside him. A matter requiring utmost discretion, and he had been summoned by the DSP to be told about it. No doubt to take part in whatever inquiries were necessary.
‘It seems, Inspector,’ the DSP said, once more making an effort to regain a fitting calm, ‘that some weeks ago our friends the Customswallahs were chasing some gold smugglers in a boat up the mouth of a certain river not a hundred miles from Bombay, and in the course of the chase they came upon an aged Englishman living, all on his own and in conditions of considerable destitution, on a tiny island in the river mouth.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote put in with caution.
‘Yes, Inspector. Now, in the course of inquiries the Customswallahs heard mention in connection with this individual – generally known to the fisherfolk in the vicinity only as the River Man – of another name.’
The DSP paused.
Another name, thought Ghote. And he had already betrayed a lamentable ignorance over Dr Kumaramangalam. Please, oh please, let him get this one right.
‘The name Valsingham Doctor, Inspector.’
‘Valsingham Doctor. But, DSP … But, sir, that name is known to me. It—’
‘Of course it is known to you, man. Have I not heard it from your own lips? And more than once. Much more than once. For what other reason did you think I was requiring your assistance, Inspector? Because you are renowned for your ability to handle a matter requiring discretion?’
DSP Samant laughed. Long and loudly. He enjoyed himself.
‘Yes, Inspector,’ he continued at last. ‘You and your precious Dr James Walsingham. You and your precious eye-surgeon who cured the whole of your village, was it, when you were a boy? Your hero, Inspector. On an island, Inspector. Somewhere in a river nobody ever goes to, Inspector. The River Man, Inspector, your Dr James Walsingham.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote said.
Could it be true? Surely Dr Walsingham, that benefactor, must be dead? Yet he had not heard that he was, and if he had been he would certainly have known. A man who had meant so much to him as a boy. Someone he had – how could he have done? – even mentioned so often to DSP Samant that he had been marked down for it? But it was certainly possible Dr Walsingham was still alive. After all, he had looked hale and hearty in newspaper pictures, with that neat beard no more than grey, some twenty years ago. So he could well be alive. A man of perhaps eighty or more. Alive and well.
Or not well …
‘Sir, you have said destitute, sir. Is he not well, sir? Sir, a man like Dr Walsingham – oh, sir, a public benefactor, not too much to say a saint, sir – ought not to be left alone and ill.’
‘Precisely, Inspector. The point, of course, that Dr Kumaramangalam made to his friend the Commissioner. And that the Commissioner made to me. Only …’
‘Only, DSP sahib?’
‘Only this man, this River Man, is he truly Dr James Walsingham, Inspector? Because he certainly appears to take pains not to own to that name, to any name. And that is creating a certain difficulty.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote said.
Later that day Ghote, propelling forward with difficulty a commandeered fisherman’s boat, little more than a hollowed-out log, felt himself becoming more and more perturbed by the problem that the identity of the River Man presented. He had seen him already, a figure that could have been no one else, prowling haggardly about the tiny island out in the wide river mouth. With DSP Samant he had watched him through binoculars for some considerable time. But the gaunt, long-bearded emaciated old man he had seen at that distance was nothing at all like the trim Dr Walsingham he had followed through the village when he had come there to carry out eye operations on the afflicted brought from miles around.
He looked mad, the old River Man. There could be no doubt about it. They had seen him through the glasses muttering to himself. While ‘Valsingham Doctor’ – as the non-English speakers among the poor always called him – had been far from mad. A dynamo of concentrated energy, selfless, tireless, working all the hours of light and falling asleep exhausted almost as soon as darkness had come. A powerhouse of good-doing, giving everything, asking nothing.
Except for Garibaldi biscuits.
Ghote glanced down at his feet. There on the rough-hacked bottom of their lumbering boat was a super-smart shiny packet of Garibaldi biscuits. DSP Samant had ordered him to get them – and a fearful chase he had had to find any – because he had remembered that once Ghote had mentioned the great healer’s touching liking for just this sweet, currant-filled biscuit. A gift of this kind would perhaps ensure their welcome in what might be extremely difficult circumstances.
‘There. Make for that tree.’
The DSP pointed. Ghote plunged his crude paddle into the swirling brown water and pushed with all his might. Their heavy craft swayed alarmingly and Ghote almost hurled the paddle at the water on the other side. The boat, which hitherto had moved no faster than a buffalo watering in some pond, suddenly surged forward and plunged suckingly on to a submerged bank of mud two full yards clear of the slimey-rooted tree.
‘Idiot,’ said the DSP. Ghote back-paddled desperately, sweat pouring down him. The log-like boat remained exactly where it was.
‘Damn it,’ the DSP shouted. ‘I cannot remain here all afternoon.’
He stood up, eyed the firm platform of the tree’s exposed roots and jumped.
The force of his departure did what Ghote’s paddling had been unable to do. The heavy boat slid sharply off the mud bank. Deprived at the last instant of a firm footing, the DSP landed with a splash and a long slow squelch about half-way between boat and bank.
He forced his way to dry land in terrible silence, then turned.
‘Get that boat to where I ordered,’ he exploded. ‘Get it there. And then come to join me. And do not come barging in when I am talking. This is a matter that requires discretion. Discretion, Ghote. Discretion.’
He marched off. His trousers, till now immaculate and wonderfully smart, were up to the knees black as sin.
For ten dispiriting minutes Ghote manoeuvred his intractable craft in and out, splashing and cursing, sweating from head to foot and sometimes feeling near to tears. But at last he got it right up to the tree the DSP had indicated and tied the sopping rope at its prow to one of the roots. He got himself carefully ashore and set off cautiously across the little island towards the sole building on it, a tumbledown hut of palm leaves.
He had hardly set out, however, when he heard the DSP’s voice. And as he neared the wretched hovel the words came more and more clearly to his ears.
‘… cannot go on saying nothing, man. What is your name? Come on, you must have a name. You must. Now, answer up. Answer up.’
The voice rang all about the tiny, densely overgrown island.
Discretion, Ghote thought. Oh, DSP sahib.
But the fury apparently produced no answer. After a little, the DSP began again.
‘Very well, I will go over the whole thing once more. Just once. Yes? Yes?’
Again he seemed to receive no answer. Ghote stood where he was in the shade of a stubby banana palm. Insects hummed and whined in his ears. In a moment he heard the DSP’s voice once more.
‘Oh, very well then. But listen to me. Acting on information received, I came to this disgraceful shack on this island in the middle of nowhere and I find one inhabitant, aged approximately eighty years, apparently of European extraction, not in a good state of health or of cleanliness, wearing a pair of old khaki shorts only, lying upon a charpoy which is in a state of disintegration. I put it to this individual “You are Dr James Walsingham?” And what does he do? He refuses to make answer.’
The DSP’s voice paused … and then resumed on a note of rising indignation.
‘I put a perfectly polite question. Are you or are you not Dr James Walsingham? It is perfectly easy to answer. Yes, I am. Or no, I am not. Whichever applies. But you refuse to answer. Why is that? What in God’s name, man, can there be in such a question that you refuse altogether to make any answer whatsoever?’
Another pause. Shorter this time. Then again.
‘The days of the British Raj are over. The Angrezi Sarkar is no more. I am an officer of police duly authorised to question. I am DSP Samant, Bombay CID. And you are committing an offence. Under Section 179 Indian Penal Code. So answer up. Answer up.’
The voice rang and rang, but not the faintest murmur of reply followed. Silence stretched. Ghote heard, down in the river, the heavy plop of a fish rising.
‘Oh, very well then,’ the DSP’s voice had a note of familiar sarcasm in it now. ‘Oh, very well. But I am not finished yet. I have something still that you have not at all thought about.’
And then with total abruptness the voice changed.
‘Ghote. Ghote. Inspector Ghote.’
The shouts rang out.
‘Yes, DSP. Coming, DSP. Here, DSP sahib.’
Ghote ran towards the sagging palm-leaf hut. He tripped over the root of a tree, staggered, righted himself and arrived, panting, at the dark entrance.
‘Yes, DSP? Can I be of assistance, sir?’
It was yet darker in the hut and he could make out little beyond the DSP who was standing just inside. Only down near ground level the glint of what must be two eyes, like the glaring eyes of some animal.
‘Now then, Mr River Man,’ the DSP said. ‘Here is something you were not expecting. Ghote, what was it at the age of six years or seven you were privileged to witness? Hm? Eh? What?’
Ghote swallowed.
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘DSP, I take it that you are requesting me to refer to the time when our village was visited by the great Dr James Walsingham?’
‘Exactly, man,’ the DSP snapped. ‘And at that time you saw a good deal of Dr Walsingham? Eh? Eh? You followed him round like a faithful dog only, yes?’
‘Yes, sir. Yes, I did.’
‘Good. Fine. Excellent. And now, tell me, who is that individual you can see lying on that charpoy there?’
Ghote took a step forward and looked down. He was quickly able to see a good deal more, the spreading tangled beard of the man he had watched through the binoculars, his bare and ribby chest, the torn khaki shorts. Soon all that remained of the face as it emerged from its frame of matted hair was fully visible.
‘Sir, it is difficult,’ he said.
‘Nonsense, man, nonsense,’ DSP Samant snapped. ‘Go nearer. Take a damn good look.’
Ghote obeyed. He did not feel altogether happy to do so, but nevertheless he put his face close to that of the man on the charpoy and peered hard. Two red-rimmed eyes looked back at him, blankly and ferociously.
‘Well?’ barked the DSP.
‘Sir …’
‘Come, man, tell him you are well recognising him as Dr Walsingham and that this tactic of silence on his part is now altogether useless.’
‘But … But, sir,’ Ghote said.
He took a great swallow.
‘Sir, I cannot say that.’
‘What? What? You mean the fellow is not Dr Walsingham? You mean I have come all the way out here on a wild-goose chase? That the Commissioner …’
‘No, sir,’ Ghote said, wondering how he could produce the words. ‘Sir, it is not that. It is that I cannot be sure, sir. It was a long time ago, DSP. Dr Walsingham was a neat English sahib with a trimmed, pointed beard, sir. But this – but the River Man, sir … Well, you have only got to look. He is dirty, sir. Filthy. You can hardly—’
But with the suddenness of a springing beast a voice came from behind him, low, growling, fury-filled.
‘How dare you? Standing there. Peering at me, prying, poking. Talking about me as if I was—’
But as suddenly as he had begun to speak the old man came to an abrupt halt. It was as if something else had been forced between him and the words he had been saying like a descending steel barrier.
He gave a long shuddering sigh that seemed to have in it something of the very mark of the end of a life. And then he spoke again. But now the words were murmured, tentative, hard to catch.
‘As if I was … As if I was what? What? What?’
DSP Samant firmly ignored the doubtful content of what the old man had said and seized on an essential.
‘Ah, so you are able to talk.’
He bent over the charpoy, but the River Man ignored him.
‘As if I was what?’ he murmured again.
‘Now look here,’ the DSP said, keeping himself somewhat in check. ‘If you please, are you or are you not one Dr James Walsingham?’
‘Dr James Walsingham?’ the aged, lined, cracked and matted-bearded figure answered, his voice wavering at first but gathering strength and purpose. ‘No, I am not Dr James Walsingham. Who is Dr James Walsingham? I know nothing of any Dr Walsingham.’
The DSP was shocked.
‘But – but – but, look here—’
Daringly Ghote forestalled the coming lava flow.
‘Sir. Sir, no. Sir, he has denied. I think, DSP sahib, with respect, all we can do now is to go.’
In the darkness a sharp gleam seemed to come into the River Man’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, more briskly than anything yet. ‘Yes, go. Leave me in peace.’
DSP Samant looked at him in bafflement.
‘But then how was it …’ he began. ‘Oh, damn and blast. The Commissioner would have … Well, look here, in any case, what is your name, then?’
‘Yes, go, peace,’ the River Man answered.
‘Sir,’ Ghote ventured again, ‘I think since he has asked …’
‘Peace,’ the River Man muttered, seemingly far away now. ‘Peace. Ponder. Think it out.’
‘Yes, but all the same,’ the DSP persisted, answering Ghote. ‘Why did the fellow not give a straight answer in the first place?’
He swung round to the River Man again.
‘Look, you, are you not after all truly Dr Walsingham?’
‘Go, go,’ he answered. ‘What do you want here? How could I be the great Dr Walsingham? Look at these hands of mine. They shake, they tremble. Are these Dr James Walsingham’s hands?’
In the sun-shaded gloom Ghote could see the River Man was holding out both hands. The nails were long and curling, split here and there and grimed with earth. And certainly they shook.
But DSP Samant pounced.
‘Hands,’ he repeated, with rising delight. ‘Hands that shake. Never heard of Dr James Walsingham? Those were your words. Then how was it that you knew it mattered whether his hands would shake? A surgeon’s hands, an eye-surgeon’s hands? Eh? Eh?’
He glared down at the thin-armed old man on the bed. It was some time before the aged, tired voice could get out more than a few broken words. But at last more came.
‘No, no. I did not say that. A mistake. All a mistake. I take it back.’
‘What is said is said,’ returned the DSP. ‘There can be no taking back of the truth, Dr Walsingham.’
Ghote bobbed in.
‘But, please, Dr Walsingham,’ he said, ‘please do not think we are meaning you any harm whatsoever. That is far from the case.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the DSP added, coming back to the realities of the situation. ‘We are here to help only. To act with the utmost discretion.’
‘No.’
‘No?’ the DSP asked. ‘What no is this?’
The old man raised himself a little and looked at them with a new steadiness.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you think you’ve got me trapped, don’t you? Think you’ve got a poor old man trapped?’
‘It is not at all a question of trap,’ the DSP replied.
‘But you haven’t,’ the old man went on. ‘You have not. That’s a trap I can walk right out of.’
‘I repeat,’ said the DSP with a touch of returning asperity. ‘There is no question of trap, Dr Walsingham.’
Down on the charpoy what could only be an expression of animal cunning came over the dirty aged features.
‘No,’ the old man said. ‘Not Dr Walsingham. Not at all. Listen to me. I deny that I am Dr James Walsingham. I tell you that I am not. I walk out of it.’
‘But, look here—’ the DSP began.
‘No. If I say that I am not that man, what can you do about it? Ha? Who should know better than I who I am? And I say that I am not Dr James Walsingham. There.’
The River Man’s pleasure was malign.
‘But … but, Mr River Man,’ Ghote said, ‘we are not at all meaning to accuse.’
‘No,’ he almost snarled back. ‘No, I shall hear not a word more. I am not Dr James Walsingham, and there you will have to leave it. You must.’
‘But then, Mr River Man, who are you?’ Ghote asked simply.
For a palpable moment the River Man did not reply. Then he spoke, and his voice once again had taken on a plaintive note.
‘Who am I? Young man, you ask more than you know. There you are – what are you? A police inspector? There you are, going about your business of arresting people, detecting crimes, whatever it is, and never for one moment do you stop to think. Do you?’
Ghote saw that the ancient, staring eyes were demanding an answer.
‘Well, excuse me,’ he said, ‘but often I am attempting to consider my whole position in this world. But on the other hand there are a great many duties I have to undertake. Statistics to compile, reports—’
‘Routines,’ snarled the River Man. ‘I was caught in them myself – once.’
‘But, no,’ Ghote protested. ‘Saving the sight of so many people, that was not at all routine.’
At once the cunning look came back into the old, old face.
‘Hah, you think you can catch me that way? Saving sight? That was Dr Walsingham. That wasn’t me; I am not Dr Walsingham.’
‘Dr Walsingham,’ Ghote said, ‘please. Please, DSP Samant has already proved. But, Doctor, why is it that you do not wish to admit to being what you were? Sir, if ever I have hoped to do good to my fellow men, sir, it was from you that hope came.’
But the River Man only glared back at him malevolently.
‘Look, please, Dr Walsingham,’ Ghote went on. ‘Here is proof of how much you were meaning to one small boy. All these years he has remembered this.’
And he abruptly thrust forward the glinting, shiny-packed Garibaldi biscuits.
‘Sir, you liked,’ he said.
‘What? What?’ the River Man blurted out, reduced suddenly to an old, confused creature.
‘They are Garibaldi biscuits,’ Ghote explained.
‘Garibaldi biscuits.’
There was – plain to hear – a note of wonder in the River Man’s voice. A chord struck and faintly reverberated.
‘To us boys you were calling them always squashed flies,’ Ghote said. ‘It was joke.’
‘Yes,’ murmured the River Man. ‘Yes, seeing them there, holding them now, the taste buds tingle. And so long ago that I … So is it the same thing in me that quickens to these absurd, flat, currant-filled sweet things? In me? Is it?’
DSP Samant stood above him and rocked gently back once on his heels.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Excellent. And now, Dr Walsingham, now that we have finally dealt with the matter of identity, perhaps I could ask a number of questions? Now, have you been in residence on this island since the date of your retirement, I understand in 1945?’
The River Man looked up at him from his clutching at the shiny packet with the bright picture of its contents.
‘I retire in 1945?’ he returned. ‘And who are you to say that that was me?’
The DSP sighed.
‘I much regret, Dr Walsingham,’ he said. ‘But the matter of identity has now been thoroughly established. All that I am asking is have you been resident here since 1945?’
‘No,’ said the River Man, ‘I cannot answer. It is too hard.’
‘Too hard? What non—’
The DSP remembered where he was. He began again.
‘Dr Walsingham, I think there must be a misunderstanding. All I have asked is how long you have been in residence here. There can be nothing difficult to that.’
‘Nothing difficult? You pup.’
The River Man spat back the words.
For one long instant Ghote watched the DSP’s face, saw the blood come up into it, the cheeks puff hard, the eyes widen.
‘DSP sahib,’ he said hastily. ‘I am sure that Dr Walsingham did not mean …’
The DSP rounded on him.
‘Mean? Mean?’ he barked. ‘He said it, man. He said it. He said that that simple question was too hard to answer. Pah!’
He wheeled back to the River Man.
‘That is nonsense, Dr Walsingham,’ he declared. ‘Altogether nonsense.’
The River Man rose, still holding the shiny packet, till the top half of his rib-revealing body was almost upright. He gave the DSP a look of sweeping contempt.
‘Oh, you poor certainty-monger,’ he said. ‘What do you know? I am Dr Walsingham, am I? The great, benevolent eye-surgeon, the friend of the poor? Is that it? Is it? Is it?’
In face of these demands the DSP straightened his back.
‘If you are stating, then yes,’ he said.
‘And what if I say no?’ the River Man roared back, his voice high and cracking. ‘What if I say, no, I am as different from that man as cheese is from chalk? What if I say I am a killer? A mass-murderer? The foulest of killers? Eh?’
‘Dr Walsingham,’ the DSP said, ‘that is thoroughly ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous? You pig-headed jackass. I tell you that I am. I am one Jack Curtin. Jack Curtin. Never heard the name? No? Then perhaps you’ve heard of my title? The title they gave me? The Beast of the Beaches.’
And the instant the words were uttered Ghote, at least, knew that he had heard of Jack Curtin.
‘DSP,’ he said, feeling himself floating in an unknown sea, ‘DSP, that is a well-known case of past times. But I was reading of it only recently. In the Illustrated Weekly of India, DSP sahib. It was a case that occurred in Bombay itself some sixty years ago.’
‘Yes, that’s so, read it myself,’ the DSP said slowly. ‘A celebrated case.’
Ghote looked at the scrawny figure on the dilapidated charpoy.
‘Dr Wals— Mr River Man,’ he said, ‘are you telling that somehow you were the perpetrator in that affair?’
The River Man looked at them both with blazing scorn.
‘Well, what do you feel now, you cock-sparrows?’ he asked.
‘Sir,’ Ghote said doubtfully, turning to the DSP, ‘I suppose it is possible. He is looking as if he is in excess of eighty years of age, and the killer was a youth of twenty only. And that man was never apprehended. That is the point. He was never apprehended.’
The DSP pulled his face into a semblance of stern inflexibility.
‘Am I to understand,’ he asked the matted-bearded old man, ‘that you are confessing to be the killer of six Anglo-Indian girls on the beaches in or near Bombay during a period of some four months in or about the year 1910?’
‘Sir, no,’ Ghote burst in. ‘I see what he is doing now. He is attempting only, for reasons of his own, to persuade us to leave. He is attempting to create a state of confusion.’
‘You fool,’ snarled the River Man. ‘I am making it clear. At last I am telling you everything. And you will hear.’
His lean body was taut now with the passion of what he was saying. The eyes under the tangled eyebrows were wide and fierce.
‘DSP sir,’ Ghote said softly and quickly, ‘I think that we ought to leave without delay. If this River Man is truly Dr Walsingham, sir, he is telling something he ought not.’
The DSP made an apparent effort to put the affair on a level of normality, shrugging his shoulders loosely and assuming a man-of-the-world expression.
‘Now, look here, Dr Walsingham,’ he said, ‘I do not know what all this is about, but let me assure you it is altogether unnecessary. Inspector Ghote and I are here simply to help. Here are you, living in appalling conditions, and your friends in Bombay are anxious about you. All we need is a few particulars.’
‘Anxious about the Beast of the Beaches?’ the River Man answered with a cutting edge to his voice. ‘Anxious about the man who within one month took six lives for his pleasure?’
‘I do not know anything about all that,’ the DSP persisted. ‘You have shown me to my own satisfaction that you are Dr Walsingham, and that is all there is to be said. This other business is sheer tommy-rot.’
‘You need convincing still, do you? It was here, you know. Here, to this island, that I came, came when they were hunting me.’
‘Doctor, Mr River Man,’ Ghote said urgently. ‘Do not utter one more single word.’
But the old man appeared not even to have heard him.
‘The last one of them, the seventh one, screamed,’ he went on in a voice that was low but terribly clear. ‘Screamed and screamed. People were coming down to the beach. I had to leave her and run. To run through the heat of the night. And then I saw the boat, and got out to sea in it. But they brought up a steam launch. If it hadn’t been for the mist they would have caught me like a wriggling fish. But in the mist I left that boat and swam for it, and when the sun came through I was here in the river mouth. And on this island I found shelter.’
‘Sir,’ Ghote asked the DSP in a whisper, ‘do you think this fellow has been here for sixty years, that he is someone else?’
‘No, no, man, nonsense. I have proved he is Dr Walsingham.’
The River Man had caught the words; he glared at the DSP.
‘You block of wood,’ he said. ‘You still do not understand, do you? What do you think I did here? What do you think Jack Curtin – the lad who had been a butcher’s apprentice in England before he took that job as a liner steward – what do you think he did?’
The wild eyes were glaring at Ghote now. Ghote swallowed.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘I do not know.’
‘No, you lily-livered creature,’ the River Man spat at him. ‘No, you wouldn’t know, wouldn’t have the guts even to guess. Why, I carved at myself, man, carved at myself.’
‘Carved?’ Ghote asked.
‘Carved my face, you loon. I still had my butcher’s knife, my killing knife, and I carved the flesh of my own face, looking down into the water of the river there, carved it and let the cuts heal, and carved again. I made myself a new face.’
‘DSP,’ Ghote whispered. ‘It is possible. Inside that beard Dr Walsingham’s face was somewhat lumpy.’
‘Yes,’ said the River Man, dropping a little from his rigid pose. ‘Yes, I tricked them. I went back to Bombay and I walked the streets, safe as safe. I got myself work, made money, enrolled at Grant College. I studied.’
The voice abruptly took on a new note. The tinge of almost childish pride dropped away, to be replaced by a wondering.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I became a different man.’
Again he paused. Neither Ghote nor the DSP made the least sound.
‘Yes, tricked them,’ the River Man said. ‘Became a new man. But who else did I trick? Did I trick myself as well? What did I do to myself?’
And there was now, plainly, an appalledness in the old, old voice. If the DSP and Ghote had been silent before, they were now doubly held so. Only able to stand and to try to grasp just what they had heard.
So that two women’s voices, talking loudly, were already within twenty yards of the shack before either Ghote or the DSP was aware that they were no longer the only visitors on the island.
The DSP wheeled round on Ghote.
‘What do you mean by it, Inspector?’ he let rip. ‘Allowing persons to land here? Did I not specifically say this was a matter requiring the greatest discretion?’
‘But, sir, how could I prevent?’
The DSP was saved from explaining how easily Ghote could have been at one and the same time down by the shore and in the old man’s shack by one of the two women outside saying loudly, ‘It is here,’ and the opening to the hut being at the next moment blocked by the figure of a woman aged about thirty-five, dressed in a sari at once expensive and functionally neat, wearing a pair of heavy spectacles on her smooth-skinned face.
She stood for a moment blinking at the shadowed gloom inside. Then she turned and addressed her companion.
‘Intruders, Dr Abrahams,’ she said. ‘It seems we have intruders.’
‘Well,’ came a thick voice from outside, speaking English with a strong Germanic accent, ‘well, it would seem so, my dear.’
A moment later she came into the hut, a tough-looking old lady of perhaps seventy-five, dressed in old-fashioned white clothes, a blouse and thickly pleated skirt, and a sun helmet.
‘Ah,’ she said, as soon as she had got accustomed to the gloom, ‘but one of these intruders is known to me. Deputy Superintendent Samant, is it not?’
The DSP stiffened.
‘Dr Frieda Abrahams,’ he replied. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘I imagine,’ Dr Abrahams replied, with a certain heaviness, ‘that I am on the same business as you yourself.’
‘But—’ the DSP stammered. ‘But how was it that you knew there was any question of … of Dr Walsingham being here?’
Dr Abrahams gave him a smile that was at once pitying and comforting.
‘It was you who came to me with a lot of questions about a colleague I thought was dead. An old woman who has seen something of the world can draw conclusions, you know.’
Appalled and ashamed at hearing this revelation of how indiscreet the DSP had been in a matter so heavily labelled ‘Be discreet’, Ghote hardly listened as the formidable German lady went on to explain that, with the aid of a few inquiries at CID Headquarters, she had been easily able to find out where the DSP had said he was going, and that she had followed posthaste with the young woman who had first entered the hut, Dr Sooni Doctor, a specialist in the care of the aged, just back from Britain and America with a string of impressive qualifications. He was only fully aware of what was going on when Dr Abrahams turned to the darkest corner of the hut where the River Man now lay flat on the old charpoy, only a pair of red-rimmed, wide-open eyes betraying that he was at all aware of the invasion of his lonely home.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘all this talk, all these introductions, and I have not yet greeted my old friend.’
She moved across to the charpoy and looked down at the silent, bearded, hostile-looking form of the River Man.
‘James,’ she said. ‘My old friend. It is Frieda Abrahams after these many years.’
The River Man said nothing.
‘James?’
‘Dr Abrahams,’ the DSP said, quietly and quickly, ‘you are in no doubt that this is Dr Walsingham?’
Dr Abrahams turned to him.
‘It is many years. He is much changed. Indeed, I do not think he is in a very good state at all. So, well, really, if it was a court of law I could not swear. But, before this, why is he staying so silent?’
She looked at the DSP with sharp shrewdness and concern plainly stamped on her square battered face. Then Dr Sooni Doctor, who had stepped briskly forward and given the River Man a quick professional scrutiny, turned round.
‘There will doubtless be a good deal of loss of hearing,’ she suggested.
‘If it was that only,’ said the DSP.
‘That only?’ Dr Abrahams queried. ‘There is something wrong here, I think. When I first came in I sensed something. An old woman develops a certain feeling for tensions, for trouble.’
She turned authoritatively back to the River Man and picked up one emaciated hand.
‘James,’ she said. ‘My old friend, what is it?’
But the River Man still obstinately remained silent.
Ghote took it on himself to explain.
‘Madam, DSP Samant and myself came here at the request of Dr P. R. Kumaramangalam, as perhaps he has told you. When we arrived Dr Wals— this person, who in the neighbourhood they are calling the River Man, at first refused to speak at all. Then, when the DSP most ingeniously proved, truly and beyond doubt, out of this man’s own mouth, that he must be Dr Walsingham, suddenly he told us that … Madam, he told us that he was the Beast of the Beaches.’
‘The Beast of the Beaches,’ Dr Abrahams said, ‘but didn’t I read …’
‘In Illustrated Weekly of India, madam.’
‘Really, Inspector,’ Dr Doctor put in, ‘do you think Dr Abrahams would waste her time on publications of that sort?’
‘But nevertheless an old retired lady has time to waste,’ Dr Abrahams answered. ‘Or rather she had time to waste till now. Now she sees a very nasty situation.’
‘Dr Abrahams,’ the DSP said thoughtfully, ‘does it then seem possible to you that he could indeed be both? Both Dr Walsingham and the Beast of the Beaches?’
‘Possible?’ the old German lady answered slowly. ‘As a matter of pure chronology it could be so, if I remember the article correctly. And then … There always used to be something mysterious about James Walsingham’s origins. I remember he would never state a date and place of birth. We used to make jokes about it.’
She sounded extraordinarily sad.
‘But, madam,’ Ghote broke in, swept by feelings of unfathomable dismay, ‘madam, is it possible as more than a matter of dates only? Madam, could two such people, two such totally different people, truly be one?’
Dr Abrahams shook her head in bewilderment.
‘I am an old woman, Inspector,’ she answered at last. ‘And perhaps I no longer know what to believe. Dr Doctor here has more experience in such matters. What do you say, Doctor?’
The young England-returned doctor looked as gloomy.
‘In Europe,’ she said, ‘I read many accounts of such people as the guards at Nazi concentration camps who later appeared to be model citizens, kindly even. Then there is the famous American murderer Leopold, of the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping and murder case, who became a medical missionary when he had served his prison term. You cannot ignore such examples.’
Ghote sadly looked at the ground. Even the DSP seemed a little pensive. But, surprisingly, Dr Abrahams looked up with sudden decisiveness.
‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘all that is a matter requiring much thought. In the meantime there are things to be done. Plainly James … plainly the River Man, as you call him, is not at all well. He needs hospital care. Hospital care at once. Is that not so, Doctor?’
‘Why, yes,’ Dr Doctor answered, after a moment’s hesitation ‘Yes. Yes, his condition is decidedly morbid. Immediate hospitalisation is indicated.’
‘No.’
It was DSP Samant. The forceful syllable rang through the hut.
‘What do you mean, no?’ Dr Abrahams asked.
‘If,’ the DSP explained with stiff formality, ‘it is possible that this man, as you have just said, is both Dr Walsingham and Jack Curtin, the Beast of the Beaches, then the whole matter becomes a police affair. Offences in contravention of Indian Penal Code Section 302.’
‘Murder,’ Ghote bleakly explained.
For a moment no one spoke. Then Ghote turned earnestly to the DSP.
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Sir, if he – the River Man is Dr Walsingham, if he is that great benefactor, well then, sir, he has asked us to leave him in peace. And … and, sir, I am thinking we ought to do same.’
‘Nonsense, Inspector. A serious allegation has been made. A confession, even. It must be investigated. And, back in Bombay, there would be plenty of corroborative evidence once I am starting to look.’
It was, however, Inspector Ghote who in fact did the looking for corroborative evidence. In the ancient, crumbling, antmined reports of the Beast of the Beaches murders, written out long before by hand by babus who had learnt regularity of script but had evidently no conception of the need to be readable.
‘… sent to the Chemical Examiner,’ he pieced out, and realised with a faint shock that what had been sent to that dignitary of years gone by, for what reason it was impossible to conceive, was an entire rowing boat, the one that had been found drifting after the escaping Beast had made off in it.
He raised his head and wondered aloud.
‘So after all was that fellow drowned, and was Dr James … Was the River Man …?’
He plunged back to his task. The DSP had said that, although they had put a guard on the river bank opposite the little island, he wanted to get out there again as soon as some corroborative material had been found.
But, at last, there were only the newspapers of the time to be gone through. He had nearly finished his search of their columns, forcing himself to be totally thorough however repetitive they were, when the door of his cabin burst open and DSP Samant was there.
‘Well, man?’
‘Sir, there is nothing.’
‘Nothing? Nothing? Well, that’s excellent. There is nothing that contradicts the confession we were both hearing.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote sadly agreed. ‘Nothing in the case papers is contradicting that.’
‘Very well. So you’ve finished, eh? I will order transport to be here in five minutes.’
‘Sir, almost. Just one or two more newspapers to check.’
‘What can newspapers only have to tell? Pack up, Ghote.’
‘Yes, sir. But I will just only …’
Once more Ghote plunged into the tall yellowed pages.
He had believed the DSP had been away less than five minutes when his door was flung open once more.
‘Damn it, Inspector. I have been waiting out in the compound for one half-hour. One half-hour. What the devil have you been doing?’
‘Sir, I was reading only.’
‘Reading? Reading? I’ll give you reading, Inspector. Wasting my time in this fashion, I’ll—’
‘No, sir, no.’
Ghote was unable to stop himself cutting the DSP short.
He saw the fierce eyes beginning to blaze with redoubled fire.
‘Sir,’ he jabbered hastily. ‘Sir, I have proof. Proof. I have just only realised it, sir. Sir, in each and every one of the newspaper accounts there was not one mention of one thing.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, man? Come along, we’ll never get to that island at this rate.’
‘No, sir. Sir, it is this. There is no mention in any paper whatsoever of the Beast having been a butcher in his early days. But, sir, he – the River Man, sir. He was saying Do you think Jack Curtin, the lad who had been a butcher’s apprentice … Sir, I heard. You also heard. Sir, it is proof. Proof, I am altogether afraid.’
Back out on the island once more there had been no sign of the River Man prowling his little kingdom as there had been when they had first watched him through binoculars. And, when their boat had touched the shore – Ghote managed it more adroitly this time – there was still no sign. It was only when they had reached the hut and peered inside that they saw why. The old man was lying on his charpoy, feebly coughing from time to time and looking yet worse in health than when they had left him the day before, after the DSP had persuaded the two doctors that their ruse to take him to some private hospital had failed.
Ghote ducked his head, entered the hut and went across to the sick man.
‘Dr Walsingham,’ he said, deciding in an instant that this was the only form of address he wanted to use. ‘Dr Walsingham, you are not well? Can I get you tea?’
He checked himself.
‘Well, there does not seem to be any fire for making such. But can I fetch you some water? Or … Or perhaps one Garibaldi biscuit? May I open this packet?’
He pointed down at his still unopened shiny purchase.
‘Quiet, man,’ the DSP said, coming to his side and looking at the emaciated figure on the bed.
He cleared his throat loudly.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I have one or two questions to put. You were informing us yesterday that the Beast of the Beaches had been in youth a butcher, yes?’
The old man on the charpoy was silent.
‘Well,’ the DSP said eventually, ‘you can take it from me that you were making such a statement. Inspector Ghote here witnessed the same. Now, tell me. How do you account for your knowledge of that when none of the published records describe the Beast as other than a ship’s steward?’
There was another silence.
But at last the old man broke it himself.
‘Perhaps,’ he suggested feebly, ‘it was somewhere in the papers at the time?’
‘Ghote here conducted a cent per cent thorough search.’
‘You’re hard. A hard man.’
‘Perhaps,’ the DSP answered. ‘But it was you yourself who started this. Did you expect a police officer to take no notice of such a confession?’
‘Yes,’ the River Man answered, coughing dryly and hard. ‘Yes, I suppose I did.’
‘Please, Dr Walsingham,’ Ghote put in. ‘Please, is there not an explanation of how you knew the Beast was a butcher also?’
‘Before I came here, to this island, the second time,’ the River Man responded with a new meanderingness. ‘Before. I never had time to think.’
‘Come,’ the DSP barked. ‘This is not a matter requiring thought. You told us the Beast had been a butcher. The records confirm the killings were expertly done. But there was nothing of that in the newspapers. Unless you are the Beast itself, how do you account for that?’
‘I was busy,’ the River Man went on, apparently not having heard. ‘I was always working. Working.’
He looked up abruptly at Ghote.
‘You,’ he said. ‘You as a boy saw that.’
‘Yes, I was seeing. From dawn to dusk you worked. But – but, please, tell us one way you could have known the Beast was this butcher’s apprentice.’
‘Then my hands went,’ the old man continued wanderingly. ‘The processes of age. And what use was there for an eye-surgeon with shaking hands? So I left. I came here again. To think. At last. To think. And when you start to think the world begins to look very different.’
‘Are you about to say the world looks like a place where the Beast of the Beaches did not exist?’ the DSP cut in.
‘Yes,’ the old man said, seizing on the words. ‘Yes, yes. Where that young man does not exist.’
‘Now, look,’ the DSP said, his famous terrier anger evidently rising once more. ‘I am asking one simple question, and I require an answer. How did you know the Beast of the Beaches was a trained butcher?’
‘I have given you your answer. People who once existed cease to exist.’
‘Pah.’
‘Look at me. Old. An old man on an old and rotten charpoy. Can you see it, this thing, me, pulling down ripe young girls in the darkness of the night?’
‘It is not a question of what I am able to imagine. It is a question of what you were or were not doing.’
‘But, sir,’ Ghote felt obliged to offer. ‘Sir, is there not something in what he is saying? Can you charge such an old man with a young man’s crimes?’
‘I can, Inspector. And I will, unless he can explain how he knows what no one but the murderer should know.’
But the River Man was paying no heed.
‘Time to think,’ he muttered. ‘Out here. What we are. That’s the centre of it. What can we say for certain that we are? We change. At every instant. I am changing now. I feel it. A cold slow heaviness creeping on.’
Ghote leant forward.
‘Dr Walsingham,’ he said. ‘There is no need for any more. He is understanding what you are meaning now.’
He was hardly sure that the DSP was beginning to have any doubts. But at least he was now silent. However, the River Man ignored everything.
‘Change. Everything changing. The river. The old conundrum. The water flows. Is it the same stream that it was a moment ago? Am I the same man?’
‘Dr Walsingham, do not tire yourself. Lie back. Take rest. Look, DSP sahib is convinced.’
‘An old man is not a young man. Is not. Once, long ago, somewhere, there was a young man tormented by desire, who came in the end to be called the Beast of the Beaches. The Beast.’
‘The Beast, yes,’ the DSP broke in. ‘That is what we have to cling to. That man committed six murders. Offences under Section 302. The law does not have these doubts.’
He thrust his face down at the River Man’s.
‘Now,’ he jabbed out, ‘are you or are you not the Beast of the Beaches? Yes or no?’
‘Sir, he has said it is no.’
‘Let the chap speak for himself, Inspector. He has been attempting to spread confusion, and it is plain he has succeeded. But some of us can see through such fancy work.’
‘Wait,’ the River Man replied, looking up at his interrogator. ‘Just you wait thirty or forty years, and then you won’t talk about fancy work. Then you will know.’
‘But now I am only knowing what I know. That it is my duty as a police officer to charge a murderer.’
‘Oh, you poor fellow,’ the River Man answered with more fire. ‘Things are not so simple. No, they are not.’
‘Yes,’ the DSP shot back. ‘Yes, they are simple. There is a logic to things. It is only when you start playing with logic that you come unstuck. Like when you forgot no one could know you were a butcher by training.’
‘That,’ said the River Man, with a stirring of his matted beard that might have been a smile. ‘That. Now that is something simple.’
‘Simple enough to catch you out.’
‘No,’ Ghote broke in again. ‘Dr Walsingham, you were saying there is a fault in our claim, that it does not show you must be the Beast?’
‘You forgot one thing.’
‘Impossible,’ the DSP snorted.
‘No, no. You see, if you were in Bombay at the time and followed the newspaper reports—’
‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘I must state clearly. There was not one single mention of butcher.’
‘No, I dare say there was not. But there would be one man who could have deduced from all those accounts that the Beast was in fact a butcher.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense.’
‘Dr Walsingham, who?’
‘Why, another trained butcher, you ninny. Another man who knew the ways a knife could be used.’
‘But you …’ Ghote said. ‘But is it that you are saying Dr James Walsingham was once also a butcher’s apprentice?’
‘There. There, Mr Deputy Superintendent of Police. There’s a hole in that logic of yours.’
‘And, Doctor,’ Ghote hastily added, ‘was it because you had once been a simple butcher that you were concealing your origins, as Dr Abrahams was stating was the case? I can see it would not have done for a surgeon to be known as a butcher only.’
‘I knew a case like this was altogether too much of good luck,’ the DSP muttered, seeing all his happy suppositions apparently deflated. ‘Come along, Inspector. Come along, for God’s sake.’
They were on the point of beginning the awkward business of getting into the boat when they heard the noise coming from the hut. A monstrous bout of coughing.
‘Sir,’ Ghote said, one leg in the boat, one in the mud. ‘Do you think he is all right?’
‘Yes, yes, man. Why not? He’s been out here for years, why should he be any worse now?’
‘Yes, DSP sahib. Yes. But – but it is altogether most quiet there now.’
‘Yes.’
Ghote heaved his leg from the mud.
‘You think we really should go now, sir?’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so, Inspector.’
Then in the still air there came the sound of a distinct groan.
‘What was that? Did you hear, Ghote?’
‘From the shack, sir?’
‘Quiet, man.’
They listened.
And it was quite plain that from the shack the River Man was calling to them.
‘Come on, man,’ the DSP snapped. ‘Can’t you hear? The fellow needs help. He’s ill.’
The River Man plainly saw that they had come back into the hut. But he seemed to speak as much to himself as to any listener.
‘When I go back I can see it all as if it was yesterday. The first. She was stupid, a stupid girl. Able to think of nothing but her stomach. I got her down to the beach with a promise of Turkish Delight. A box of Turkish Delight. The fool.’
‘What is it you are saying?’ Ghote heard himself whisper.
‘After her, after the timid boy had killed, I thought I would never be able to stop. And each one made it worse. But then … Then when I came to this island, rowing in that boat, swimming in the end, then, then I found I could stop. I was someone different. Afterwards, back in Bombay, I used to think about those girls sometimes. But not often. I was too busy. You. You remembered how hard I worked.’
‘Yes, I remembered.’
‘So there was little time to think. Till my hands went. And since then, out here, I have had something else to think about. The change. The two selves I had been.’
‘So you were truly both?’ Ghote asked, though he knew he had no need to.
‘Oh, yes, I was both. But was each of them the other? And which was I really? They were very different, you know. The Beast, poor little Jack Curtin, was a sorry sort of chap. Good for nothing but his trade, cutting up meat. And timid. Now a surgeon cannot be timid. And James Walsingham was not. He was a driving man. A force. Was that not so, Inspector? You saw him.’
‘Yes, it was so.’
‘Then did he blot out the other? Tell me. Tell me the truth. Isn’t that timid, dark-minded butcher boy who took his prey on the warm foreign beaches in the soft dark, isn’t he gone? Blotted out? Vanished?’
‘Yes,’ Ghote said. ‘I believe he has vanished for ever.’
The DSP was adamant still. ‘He has not.’
‘Yes, you are right,’ the River Man answered him. ‘I remember it, remember it all, just as it was. So he must be here still, inside me. The Beast. In here.’
Ghote turned to the DSP.
‘Are … are we going to take him away now?’
‘Dr Walsingham,’ the DSP said, his voice less harsh. ‘You understand we must ask you to accompany us to Bombay?’
‘Yes. I understand.’
‘We had better secure some help,’ the DSP said. ‘Dr Walsing— the River Man had better be carried to the boat.’
‘Yes, sir, I will go at once, sir.’
‘No. In his condition … No, Inspector, you had better stay here. I will go.’
When the DSP had left, almost at a trot, Ghote turned to the old man on the charpoy again.
‘You are not well, Dr Walsingham,’ he said. ‘We would see that it is to a hospital you are taken. I – I am sure …’
‘Yes. Not well. Tired. Sleep a little.’
But the old man had hardly closed his eyes when he gave a startled cry.
‘Dr Walsingham, what … DSP sahib! Sir! Come back. Sir, he is most serious. Dr Walsingham, lie back. Lie down. What is it? You have something more you are wanting to say?’
‘Tell you.’
‘Yes, yes. I am listening. Take your time. I am here.’
‘Help.’
‘Yes, yes. You are needing help. It is coming. Soon. Most soon.’
‘Not that.’
‘Not?’
‘Listen.’
‘Yes, I am listening.’
‘Did – I – tell – you?’
‘That you were the Beast? About the girl and the Turkish Delight? Yes, you have told all.’
‘Yes. Thought – I – had.’
‘Dr Walsingham, was it not true after all?’
‘Fell asleep. Couldn’t remember if said.’
‘Yes, yes. You have told us. Do not worry any more.’
‘So it wasn’t dream?’
‘No.’
‘But what if …’
Behind him Ghote was aware that the DSP had returned.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘he is going fast.’
‘But what if – imagined?’ the man on the bed said with a sudden access of vigour. ‘What if I imagined it all? ’Magination run riot. Believe it was all ’magination. Self- … Self-delusion.’
He gave a sort of laugh, appalling to hear.
‘Had even convinced myself,’ he said, quite clearly. ‘Even convinced myself I was the—’
Then a tremendous cough broke out of him.
And ceased.
‘What are you saying, man?’ the DSP banged out. ‘Are you telling us now that you invented the fact that you were the Beast of the Beaches? Are you? Are you?’
‘Sir,’ Ghote said. ‘It is of no use to ask.’
‘But he cannot go back on it now. He must give us the truth. He must.’
‘Sir, death has taken place. We will never find out anything more now.’
But that was not to be the case. It was after a clergyman had intoned the words of burial at the funeral of the man Ghote had been reduced to thinking of only as the River Man that, standing talking to Dr Abrahams and Dr Doctor among the mournful, leaning tombs and rank undergrowth of Bombay’s European Cemetery, the DSP produced his bombshell.
‘Madam,’ Ghote had said to Dr Abrahams, ‘are you knowing what were his last words only?’
‘You were there, Inspector?’
‘Yes, yes. And DSP sahib also. And we are able to tell you that Dr Walsingham died stating that he had invented the fact that he was the Beast of the Beaches. One hundred per cent invention.’
‘Then, after all—’
‘No, madam,’ the DSP had interrupted then. ‘No, it is not a question of after all. I can prove now just who he was.’
‘But, sir—’
‘No, Inspector.’
He turned to Dr Abrahams.
‘Do you understand fingerprints, Doctor?’
‘Of course, of course. That they are unique to each individual.’
‘But there cannot be any prints for the Beast,’ Ghote broke in. ‘When it was all so long ago.’
‘That is where you are wrong, Inspector. You forget that the system was first used in India. And it so happens that the Beast’s prints were taken from the soft tar of the rowing boat he made his escape in and were transferred to plaster casts. They are in our museum. I looked at them this morning.’
‘But – But – Dr Walsingham’s prints? You cannot have taken them from his corpse.’
‘No need, Inspector. There was a very fine set on a certain packet of Garibaldi biscuits you yourself were thrusting into the man’s hands.’
Ghote gave a great sigh.
‘So, sir, you have proved your case after all. Fingerprints cannot be lying. Dr Walsingham and Jack Curtin were one and the same individual.’
‘I think so. I think so. No hard feelings, eh? I shall give you some credit when I publish my account in Asian Crime Digest. And I will see that you get a copy, Doctor.’
‘Thank you,’ Dr Abrahams said solemnly. ‘But I prefer not.’
And then it was that it came to Ghote.
‘Madam, no,’ he burst out. ‘No, kindly do not sound so down in the dumps. Listen, please. A thought has come to me, and it is this. If Dr Walsingham, if the River Man was dying believing that he had invented that whole part of his life, why then at the moment of his death he himself was not the Beast of the Beaches and never had been such. And that is what can never be taken away from him, not now or ever. When he died he was Dr James Walsingham and no one else whatsoever. No one else whatsoever.’
1974