A Necessary Evil

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘Oh come now, Derek,’ she continued. ‘Everyone knows he’s off to Switzerland next month to see his doctors. The question is, will he come back?’

  I had to hand it to Mrs Carmichael; she seemed to have more inside knowledge of the goings-on in the Sambalpore court than anyone else I’d met so far. If she ever tired of being a diplomat’s wife, she could try for a career in intelligence. I’d happily introduce her to Section H myself.

  ‘No father should have to bury his son,’ she continued, ‘especially after losing the boy’s mother too . . .’

  She let the sentence hang in the air, obviously keen to tell the story. I guessed it was salacious – three parts gossip to one part fact – and I wanted to hear it.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  A smile spread across Emily Carmichael’s face, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

  By the flickering candlelight she began to tell the story of the Yuvraj’s mother – the Second Maharani – a beautiful princess, the brightest jewel in all of Sambalpore. Of a woman who had cemented her position at court by giving the monarch the male heirs he so craved. But she became bored: stifled by the world of the durbar, trapped in the confines of the zenana, while her husband lived it up in Paris and London. Mrs Carmichael told lurid tales of swimming pools filled with Dom Perignon and dalliances with telephonists and typists all mesmerised by the gifts lavished upon them and with thoughts of becoming a princess. Concubines were one thing, but affairs with European girls were quite another. Then came the tale of Miss Norma Hatty, a chiropodist’s assistant from Bolton whom the Maharaja had met one night outside the Ritz.

  ‘The Maharaja became besotted with her,’ said Mrs Carmichael, ‘and within the space of a month, had asked her to be his third wife. Of course, the little adventuress was overjoyed. She thought she’d hit the jackpot.’

  I could understand that. It isn’t every day that a girl from Bolton gets the chance to become a princess.

  ‘The Dewan and the Cabinet were panic-stricken,’ she continued. ‘The idea of such a common girl marrying into the royal family was anathema. A chiropodist’s assistant as Maharani? Obscene.’

  ‘I imagine the situation wasn’t helped by the fact that “Hatty” sounds an awful lot like hathee,’ mused Surrender-not. ‘It means “elephant” in Hindi.’

  Mrs Carmichael ignored the interruption. ‘What was surprising, though,’ she continued, ‘was that the only person who didn’t seem to mind was the Second Maharani. Better, I expect she thought, to have Norma as a princess in the zenana where she could be kept an eye on, than to have the Maharaja’s lover in the outside world. And she may have hoped that Norma would be a breath of fresh air in the stuffy world of the court.

  ‘But it was not to be. In the end, the First Maharani prevailed on the Maharaja and convinced him that Miss Hatty was unsuitable, and the wedding was called off. Norma came out to Sambalpore anyway; they say she parked herself at the Beaumont Hotel and refused to leave until the Maharaja agreed to pay her half a million pounds.’ Her eyes widened as she marvelled at the sum. ‘I’m sure Mr Golding could confirm the amount.’

  The accountant coughed and took a sip of wine.

  ‘You were telling us about the death of the Second Maharani?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes. Anyway, the story goes that about a year after the whole Norma business, the Second Maharani decided she couldn’t stand living in the harem any longer. She threatened to leave the palace and return to Calcutta. You can imagine the scandal. The wife of a maharaja leaves him and runs off to Calcutta. Of course, they tried to convince her to stay, offered her all sorts of inducements, but she was having none of it. In the end they threatened her. Told her she’d never see her two sons again. That’s what made her reconsider.

  ‘And then, within three months, she was dead. The doctors said it was typhoid fever but no one believes that. They say she was making plans to leave once again, and that she was murdered. Poisoned, probably.’

  Portelli let out an audible gasp, which caused the candles on the table in front of him to flicker. Golding’s reaction was hidden behind the wine glass that he raised to his lips.

  ‘By the Maharaja?’ asked Surrender-not.

  ‘That’s the funny thing,’ said Mrs Carmichael. ‘By all accounts he was distraught at her death. He cancelled his trip to Europe for the season and remained cloistered in the palace. For a year he cut himself off from everything, including the running of the kingdom. They say that when he came out again, he was a different man.’

  The atmosphere seemed to die with the talk of the Second Maharani’s possible murder. Golding had turned ashen-faced. He took another sip of wine while the conversation broke down into several small groups. Ignoring Surrender-not, Mrs Carmichael whispered quietly to the accountant while her husband discussed something with Portelli.

  ‘Well,’ said Golding eventually, checking his watch, ‘if you will excuse me, I shall take my leave. It’s getting late.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Carmichael, who seemed quite eager to call an end to proceedings himself. ‘Maybe we should call it a night.’

  That suited me well enough. It would give me a chance to have a chat with Surrender-not, assuming he still had his wits about him. Not that mine were as sharp as they might have been. It was now almost forty-eight hours since my trip to Tangra, and the aching in my sinews was getting worse. As the pain had grown, so had my enthusiasm for trying out the contents of my travelling case. My concerns over the foolhardiness of such a course of action, so concrete before, evaporated like the afeem above the flame of the opium lamp. I had an almost visceral urge to get to my room and the sooner I finished with the sergeant, the sooner I’d be able to assuage the hunger.

  As the guests made their way to the drawing room, Golding pulled me to one side. He seemed somewhat the worse for drink. Sweating, he removed his bow tie and loosened his collar.

  ‘Captain Wyndham,’ he said, in a hushed, wine-coated tone, ‘I need to speak to you.’ He pulled nervously at the signet ring on his little finger. ‘A most troubling matter.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  He looked around and spotted Emily Carmichael approaching with more drinks.

  ‘Has it anything to do with the prince’s assassination?’

  He continued to fiddle with the ring. It was a curious thing, with the image of a swan etched on it. ‘I’d rather not say here. It’s possible, I suppose. But I would urge you to tread cautiously.’

  ‘Shall we go outside?’ I asked.

  He shook his head resolutely. ‘No, no. Tomorrow. Early.’

  ‘Tomorrow then,’ I said. ‘I’ll be at the Rose Building by nine.’

  ‘No, not there. I’ll meet you here, at the Residency gates at eight.’

  EIGHTEEN

  I sat on a chair in Surrender-not’s room, mulling over Golding’s words. Something had spooked him. What exactly, I didn’t know, but he’d seemed perfectly fine at the start of the evening. Was it something that had been mentioned over dinner, maybe one of Emily Carmichael’s revelations, or was it just a case of the alcohol affecting his judgement? Either way, I’d find out at eight the next morning.

  I glanced at my watch. The Germans had lobbed a shell at it, and me, during the war, and it had been a bit eccentric about keeping time ever since. It read a quarter after eleven. I took that to be a fair approximation, given that the second hand was still moving.

  Surrender-not’s room was smaller than mine, and less well furnished. The view was probably worse too but you couldn’t tell in the dark.

  ‘Well, that was interesting,’ beamed the sergeant. There was an alcohol-fuelled radiance to his face, as though he’d been out in the sun too long.

  I didn’t disagree with him. ‘I can’t help feeling,’ I said, ‘that if Emily Carmichael was investigating this case, it would be solved within twenty-four hours. At the very least she’d have rounded up a decent number of suspects.’

  He grinned. ‘Maybe
we should interview the Yuvraj’s widow, sir?’

  ‘That’s what I plan to do,’ I said.

  That wiped the smile from his face. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘She’s got a motive. Or do you think that Indian women never murder their husbands?’

  ‘To be honest, I’d be surprised, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘I assure you, Sergeant, Indian women are just as capable of mariticide as their English counterparts.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘Not Bengali women, sir. They just browbeat their husbands into submission. I doubt the need for murder would arise.’

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘we will need to interview her, as well as the Englishwoman, Miss Pemberley, that the Yuvraj was apparently seeing.’

  ‘Fair enough, sir, but interviewing the princess?’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Might that not prove somewhat tricky?’

  ‘Why, because she’s a princess?’

  ‘Yes, but also . . .’ he stammered, ‘because she’ll be in the zenana. I would imagine that the only men allowed near her would have to be . . . you know . . .’

  ‘You mean eunuchs?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He blushed.

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ I said, ‘if we were forced to go down that route, it would at least solve the problem of your mother trying to marry you off’

  After apprising Surrender-not about the scheduled meeting with Golding, I made my way along the corridor to my own room.

  I locked the door behind me, pulled my suitcase from the wardrobe and placed it on the bed. My hands went to the locks, thumbs pressing down on cold, speckled metal. The clasps clicked open. I lifted the lid, threw the clothes that camouflaged my prize to one side, and paused.

  My head spun.

  I breathed out slowly and stared at the polished box with its silver decoration. In the quivering flame of the hurricane lamp, the dragon that formed the case’s handle seemed to dance.

  I felt as though I was at the edge of a clifftop. In front of me, a sheer drop into . . . I did not know what.

  It was suicidally foolish to try smoking opium here. For one thing, the risks of being discovered were ridiculously high. One of the Carmichaels, or more likely one of their servants, might smell the telltale aroma. Given Carmichael’s seeming fondness for cabling Delhi at the drop of a hat, if exposed, I didn’t doubt that news of my habit would be hitting the wires before sunrise.

  For another, I’d never prepared my own pipe before and my hands were hardly steady.

  But as I stood there, it seemed that the very thought of lighting a pipe was putting steel in my nerves and ideas into my head. My doubts felt inconsequential. I reached into my trouser pockets and pulled out the packet of Capstans and a box of matches. The packet was half empty, but I figured only five or six cigarettes were necessary for what I had in mind. I took out half a dozen, lit them and placed them carefully in a tin ashtray which sat on the desk. Within minutes, a cloud of grey smoke began to fill the room. I looked on with satisfaction and for the first time felt I truly understood the meaning of the phrase, necessity is the mother of invention.

  Leaving the cigarettes to burn, I turned to the travelling kit, lifting it gently from the suitcase and placing it on the bed. As I’d done on the train the previous night, I took the small silver key from my pocket, placed it in the dragon’s mouth and turned it.

  I don’t remember emptying the box, but before I knew it, the red velvet case was bare and I’d laid out the items neatly on the floor in front of me. The pipe and its porcelain end pieces, the saddle and the pipe bowl, the opium lamp and glass cover, a wick, a small brass container I’d filled with coconut oil for the lamp, a selection of thin tools – some used in the rolling process, others for scraping the burned dross from the inside of the pipe bowl, and finally, the opium needle, without which the process of cooking the resin was futile.

  I filled the lamp’s reservoir with the oil, trimmed the wick and placed it into the lamp. I lit it and placed the glass shade over it. From a small compartment in my suitcase, I removed the ball of opium resin I’d liberated from the assassin’s possessions and skewered it onto the needle. Settling onto my knees, I brought it above the flame, and began to try to emulate the actions that I’d witnessed in Chinatown a hundred times before.

  The O softened as I turned and pulled it delicately over the flame, becoming viscous. A wave of elation passed over me. I was doing it; I was cooking the O, altering it from inert to magical. Like an alchemist transforming base metal into gold, I felt the secrets of the universe opening up to me.

  And then it changed.

  Something was wrong. The O began to smoulder, then char. I racked my brain. Had I forgotten something? Some crucial step in the process? Was I holding the O too close to the flame? I tried altering my technique, but even as I did so, I realised it was futile. The O was burning, not evaporating. I quickly transferred it to the pipe bowl and placed it in the saddle, in the hope that maybe some of the precious vapours were salvageable. I held the pipe to my lips and inhaled.

  Bitter, charred smoke.

  My heart sank.

  I placed the pipe on the ground, then slumped to the floor beside it holding my head in my hands. A moment later, my body convulsed in a spasm of pain.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, but the opium lamp had gone out by the time I stirred. The pain had been replaced by a dull ache and a pounding in my head.

  I stood up, and in the dim light of the hurricane lamp, wearily picked up the pipe. Removing the bowl, I stared at the remains of the blackened, brittle ball of O. I picked it up and crushing it in my palm, I walked over to the window and threw the dust out into the windless night.

  NINETEEN

  Monday 21 June 1920

  I fell asleep just before dawn. During the war, I’d learned to function on two or three hours’ shut-eye, and it had been a habit I’d been forced to maintain ever since. In Calcutta, waking up wasn’t exactly a problem. Anyone who’s spent a night there could tell you that the city likes to wake you by attacking all of your senses at once: the cries of the cockerels and pariah dogs, the stench of the drains, the bed bugs feasting on your flesh. They all combined to render your alarm clock an irrelevance.

  Sambalpore was different. It was quieter and it smelled better too, but that had its drawbacks. The silence meant I awoke with the suspicion that the sun was already far too high in the sky.

  The flu-like symptoms had returned with a vengeance: pounding head, watering eyes. I’d gladly have paid a month’s wages just to be able to turn over and lie there for another hour, but then I remembered Golding. I’d agreed to meet him at eight o’clock. I checked my watch. It had stopped at a quarter to three.

  I wrenched myself out of bed, threw on a shirt and trousers and ran out of the door and down the stairs. The clock in the hallway read ten to eight. Breathing a sigh of relief, I walked out into the compound in search of the accountant.

  The sky was overcast, the air heavy. A native in white shirt and turban was busy raking gravel near the compound gates.

  ‘Have you seen Mr Golding?’

  ‘Ji, sahib’ He smiled. ‘Golding sahib very nice man. He is coming yesterday only.’

  ‘Have you seen him this morning?’ I asked.

  ‘No, sahib’ he replied with a regretful shake of the head.

  I walked up to the gates, lit a cigarette and waited. After twenty minutes, the humidity and my headache became too much to bear and I headed back inside. There’d been no sign of the man. It was possible he was running late, but he didn’t strike me as the sort of person who was ever late. If anything, I expected him to be early, especially as last night he seemed anxious to unburden himself of something. But then he’d had a skinful to drink. Maybe he’d sobered up and thought better of it. Or maybe he was sleeping off a hangover. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to get off that easily. I would question him today whether he liked it or not.

  Bac
k at the Residency, Surrender-not was in the dining room having breakfast.

  ‘Have you seen Golding?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ said Surrender-not. ‘Hasn’t he shown up?’

  ‘It would appear that he hasn’t,’ I said.

  ‘He did have rather a lot to drink last night. Maybe it slipped his mind?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. I helped myself to a cup of black coffee from a porcelain pot on the table and pulled out a chair opposite him.

  We heard a car pull into the compound and minutes later, Colonel Arora walked in.

  ‘Would you care to join us for breakfast, Colonel?’ I asked.

  The colonel shook his head. ‘Thank you, no.’

  ‘You didn’t pass Mr Golding on your way here, did you?’ I asked. ‘We were supposed to meet at eight. Maybe people have a more liberal interpretation of time out here in the sticks,’ I added hopefully.

  The colonel gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Not our Mr Golding. He’s always most punctual.’

  ‘And what are you doing here so early?’ I asked. ‘I thought you’d be here at nine?’

  ‘Maybe I have been learning from you English?’ He grinned. ‘Anyway,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘I come bearing invitations. There is to be a small wake held this evening. His Highness the Maharaja has requested your presence. I’ll send a car at seven to pick you up.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. I checked my watch. Golding was now half an hour late. It didn’t look like the man was coming. ‘Where’s Golding’s office?’ I asked.

  ‘In the Gulaab Bhavan,’ replied Arora. ‘The floor beneath yours.’

  ‘In that case, we should get going. Maybe we’ll track him down there. Either way, there’s plenty to do and we need your assistance.’

  A thin smile appeared on his lips. ‘I’m at your service.’

  Forty minutes later, we were back in our temporary office overlooking the gardens. We’d stopped by Golding’s office on the first floor but it was locked. Now I took in the view as Surrender-not and the colonel discussed the list of people we wanted to interview.