A Necessary Evil

by Abir Mukherjee

  Punit mulled it over, then turned to Arora. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In the Rose Building, Your Highness,’ replied the colonel. ‘Given the events of last night, the entire Cabinet is there.’

  From somewhere high up, as though from within the walls, came a faint drumming, like the beating of a bird’s wings, and within seconds it had ceased. Punit looked up. His expression darkened further.

  ‘Summon him,’ he ordered. ‘Immediately.’

  Arora picked up a telephone, and moments later he was speaking to Davé.

  ‘Dewan sahib,’ he said, ‘His Highness the Yuvraj requests your immediate attendance in the Maharaja’s study.’

  He’d referred to Punit as Yuvraj, even though Punit’s investiture as the new crown prince wasn’t till tomorrow. Arora had obviously decided who his new master was.

  ‘He wishes to be apprised of the progress of the negotiations with Anglo-Indian Diamond,’ he continued, ‘and he requests that you bring Mr Golding’s valuation report with you.’

  I heard Davé’s voice on the other end, though his words were indistinguishable.

  ‘Immediately,’ said Arora, then replaced the receiver and turned to Punit. ‘It is done, Your Highness.’

  The prince looked up and a thought seemed to strike him.

  ‘Take two of your men,’ he said to Arora, get over there and escort Davé back here. I don’t want him getting lost or drowning between the Rose Building and the palace, not yet anyway.’

  Arora clicked his heels, turned and left the room.

  The storm outside grew stronger, the wind rattling the window panes.

  ‘Captain Wyndham,’ said Punit, ‘this is now an internal Sambalpori matter. Nevertheless, I wish you to remain. I suggest you and the sergeant stand as unobtrusively as possible to one side.’

  Surrender-not and I did as ordered and a few minutes later, the doors opened and in walked a rather wet-looking Davé, flanked by two sodden guards and with Arora bringing up the rear. In his hands, the Dewan clutched a document, its cover streaked with rain.

  ‘You wished to see me, Your Highness,’ he said in that oleaginous, lap-dog tone he’d used with Adhir the first time I’d seen him.

  Punit appraised him as though he were a bad smell.

  ‘That is correct, Dewan sahib. I want to know the status of your negotiations with Anglo-Indian Diamond.’

  Davé wiped a trickle of water from his forehead. ‘They are progressing smoothly, Your Highness. There are some outstanding areas of disagreement, but I am confident that these can be resolved and that a position favourable to Sambalpore can be achieved.’

  ‘I am glad to hear that,’ said Punit. ‘I shall leave the details to you, but what I wish to know is: how much are the mines worth and what will the bastards pay for them?’

  Davé became more animated. ‘There is good news on that front, Your Highness. The price should be a most favourable one.’ He held up the document. ‘I am pleased to say the report into the value of the mines is most reassuring.’

  Punit stretched out his hand. ‘May I see it?’

  ‘Of course, Your Highness,’ said Davé. He bowed, approached the desk and handed the report to the prince.

  Punit began to leaf through it. He nodded a couple of times, then passed the document to Arora. ‘Give it to the sergeant,’ he said, gesturing to Surrender-not.

  Davé spun round towards us. His face clouded in confusion.

  ‘Your Highness,’ he stammered, ‘that document is the basis of our negotiating position with Anglo-Indian Diamond. It is confi—’

  Punit cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Is it the real report?’

  Surrender-not examined the document, then looked up and shook his head and suddenly things began to happen quickly.

  Punit began roaring obscenities as Arora shouted at the guards, ordering them to arrest the Dewan. Davé began beseeching the prince as the soldiers took rough hold of his arms. He looked as though a mountain was collapsing on his head, and, given the way Arora had dealt with the traitors the previous night, being crushed by a mountain might have been more humane. He carried on pleading, invoking Lord Jagannath, the Maharaja and even the Maharani as those who would testify to his innocence. But the Maharaja was incapacitated, his young queen was under arrest and the god didn’t seem to be listening.

  The storm raged on. A flash of lightning rent the sky, throwing the room into sudden and stark relief. Davé’s face was frozen in a rictus of fear. In that split second, though, something changed. He looked up at the tapestry and the latticework wall above Punit’s head, and his features changed. From outside came an explosion of thunder. Davé stopped pleading and seemed to straighten.

  ‘I am ready to answer any charges Your Highness may have,’ he said, ‘in the presence of an attorney.’

  Punit exchanged glances with Colonel Arora.

  ‘Get him out of here,’ he ordered.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Sambalpore cut a sorry sight in the rain. Lamps lit drenched, desolate streets, the bunting that had adorned its buildings on the day of Adhir’s funeral now hung tattered, in places torn down and washed into overflowing gutters.

  The railway station looked no less forlorn as the car halted beneath its sagging awning. Surrender-not and I made our way inside and the driver went in search of a porter for our cases.

  The half-deserted concourse was manned by a handful of attendants doing their damnedest to keep the waters at bay with as much success as King Canute.

  Gone were the crowds, soldiers and pomp and circumstance that had greeted our arrival. Gone too was the royal train, replaced by a locomotive that looked like a child’s toy, and carriages that might have belonged to one of those pretend trains that plied the promenade at Brighton.

  There weren’t many passengers tonight. A few native traders, some European salesmen with their sample cases, and farmers returning home from market with empty baskets and coops.

  ‘I thought Carmichael was organising our tickets?’ I said, scouring the concourse for the Resident.

  ‘Perhaps he forgot?’ suggested Surrender-not.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I asked.

  Surrender-not pointed to a fat man in a uniform and a peaked cap.

  ‘He’ll have some,’ he said.

  I didn’t question him. In India, it was often the case that the fattest man in the room was the one with the power. Sure enough, I watched as Surrender-not walked over and chatted to him, before handing over some rupees and returning with two squares of soggy brown cardboard. He passed me one. There were some illegible words printed on it.

  ‘Tickets,’ he said. ‘First class.’

  Slipping a couple of annas to the porter, we took our cases and climbed the iron step onto the train.

  The carriage smelled musty, its wooden benches ingrained with a musk acquired from years of contact with human bodies. Other than an Anglo-Indian who sat dozing at the far end, though, it was blessedly empty. Surrender-not pushed our cases onto the narrow rack above our heads while I sat down and tried to make myself comfortable, though that seemed like yet another battle I was destined to lose that night.

  Surrender-not sat down opposite me, then stood up with a start.

  A flicker of hope stirred inside me. Had he seen Annie on the station platform?

  ‘What is it, Sergeant?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘Tea!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The journey to Jharsugudah will take several hours. It would be wrong to start it without a cup of tea.’

  He hurried to the end of the carriage and descended on to the platform.

  Where there’s tea, there’s hope, as some wag once said.

  Surrender-not ran over to the old man in the red turban with his makeshift bicycle tea-stall. He returned a few minutes later with two small clay cups.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing me one. ‘It should make you feel better.’


  I looked at him, but said nothing.

  The guard on the platform blew his whistle. There was a hiss of steam and the train moved gently off. I sat back, took a sip of tea and stared into the rain. I wasn’t sorry to see the back of Sambalpore. My case – the murder of the Yuvraj, Prince Adhir of Sambalpore, was over the moment the assassin put a bullet through his own head on the roof of a seedy hotel in Howrah. It had been solved to the satisfaction of everyone including the Viceroy and if I’d had any sense, I’d have left it there. But I couldn’t let it go. The Maharani Shubhadra had called me a seeker of truth. It was a fine phrase, but Sambalpore had taught me that I was no more a seeker of truth than I was a canary. The truth, when it challenged my perceptions, was just as unpalatable to me as it was to anyone else: that an Englishwoman might fall in love with an Indian; that a woman behind purdah in a harem might have the power to assassinate a prince; and that I might lose out to a fop. All of these things were true and I didn’t particularly want to face any of them.

  The train ploughed on into the night, towards the railway junction town where we would switch to the broad-gauge to take us back to Calcutta. The deluge drummed off the carriage roof and reminded me of the rain in the trenches, bouncing off tarpaulins and men’s helmets.

  Our progress seemed painfully slow, a combination of monsoon rains and a pitifully weak engine. Nevertheless, with every additional mile, I felt my spirits lift. Sambalpore was behind me. Annie was, too, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  It was after one in the morning when we pulled into Jharsugudah station, not that you’d have believed it looking at the number of people milling around. Surrender-not and I retrieved our cases and alighted onto a platform swarming with pilgrims, porters and saffron-shirted sadhus. The calls of vendors touting their wares mingled with the chanted mantras of Hindu devotees.

  ‘Any idea what’s going on?’ I asked Surrender-not.

  ‘No, sir. I’ll see if I can find a railway official.’

  He set off along the platform and I soon lost sight of him amidst a sea of bodies.

  ‘Captain Wyndham?’ came a voice from behind me. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure!’

  I turned to find the anthropologist I’d met at the Carmichaels’ dinner party standing in front of me.

  ‘Mr Portelli,’ I said. ‘This is a surprise. What are you doing in the middle of nowhere at this hour?’

  ‘The same as you, I imagine, Captain.’ He smiled. ‘Waiting for the arrival of a train to take me onwards.’

  ‘You’re going to Calcutta?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, sir. Like most of these people, I’m bound for Puri, to witness the final day of the Jagannath festival, assuming a train ever arrives to take us there. It appears the rains have washed away several sections of track to the east. No trains have come in from there for almost a day now. But the pilgrims keep arriving from the west, and without the trains to take them on to Puri, they’re stuck here.’

  ‘You should have stayed in Sambalpore,’ I said. ‘I believe they have the same festival tomorrow.’

  ‘True enough,’ Portelli nodded, ‘but in Sambalpore there will only be one chariot. In Puri, there are three: one for the Lord Jagannath and one each for his brother, Balabhadra and his sister, Shubhadra.’ His eyes widened at the prospect.

  ‘Puri might be politically insignificant compared to Sambalpore,’ he continued, ‘but it’s the centre of the Jagannath cult and home to its most holy temple. In religious terms, it’s by far the most important place in the region. So much so that the king of Puri has precedence over all of the local maharajas, even our friends in Sambalpore, and tomorrow is the highlight of his calendar. As the chariot of the Lord Jagannath returns to its temple, the king has the duty of sweeping the path before it with a golden broom. They call him the Sweeper King.’

  Those final words. They were an echo of something important, a whisper of something someone had told me not long ago. But what was it? Frantically, I searched my mind for the answer. I could feel it there, lodged in my skull, just out of reach. Then it hit me.

  Emily Carmichael.

  I recalled the Resident’s wife’s words that night at the dinner where I’d first met Portelli.

  I once heard someone at court say she was the daughter of a sweeper, if you can believe such a thing.

  She’d been talking about one of the Maharaja’s wives. At the time, I’d dismissed it as drunken nonsense. A king would never marry a sweeper’s daughter. But he would marry the daughter of another king. With a thudding clarity, everything dropped into place and my stomach lurched as I realised the error I’d made.

  ‘Captain? Are you all right?’

  I snapped out of my thoughts.

  ‘I’m fine, Mr Portelli.’ I thanked him, hastily made my excuses, then turned and ran in Surrender-not’s direction. Finally I spotted him coming towards me with a railway official in a cap and mutton-chops in tow.

  ‘Surrender-not,’ I gasped as I reached him.

  ‘This is Mr Cooper,’ he said, stationmaster at Jharsugudah. He says the train to Cal—’

  ‘Forget Calcutta,’ I interrupted, ‘Punit is still in danger.’ I turned to the stationmaster. ‘We need to get a message to Sambalpore, urgently.’

  The man’s jowls wobbled as he shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir. All lines to Sambalpore have been down for the last three days. Some sort of problem on their end.’

  I cursed. Of course the lines were down. I’d been the one to request them cut in the first place.

  ‘In that case we need to get back to Sambalpore immediately,’ I said. ‘Do you have a car?’

  The man stared at me as if I’d asked to borrow his wife.

  ‘There are no cars in Jharsugudah. The local brickworks has a lorry, but it’s two in the morning. The driver will be in his bed.’

  ‘I don’t need the driver,’ I said. ‘Just the lorry.’

  ‘It’s a five-minute cycle ride down the main street,’ he protested, ‘but I’ll be damned if I’m going out there in this downpour!’

  ‘Then give me two bicycles,’ I said.

  Soaked to the skin, Surrender-not and I hurtled down the main street on bikes commandeered from the station staff. The brickworks weren’t hard to spot. We just headed for the largest chimney in town.

  A decrepit-looking lorry stood soaking in a yard that the rains had transformed into something resembling an Irish bog. A durwan, one of the ubiquitous nightwatchmen who appear indispensable to any organisation in India but who generally run for cover at the first sign of trouble, dozed in a hut nearby. Surrender-not shook him awake and hit him with the news that we were requisitioning his vehicle.

  The man must have thought he was still dreaming. He was about to protest when he saw me. The sight of a white man, dripping from head to toe, gave him a shock and within seconds his objections melted away. I wrote and signed a note informing his bosses that their vehicle had been commandeered by the Imperial Police and that it could be retrieved from the royal palace in Sambalpore. In the meantime, Surrender-not waded through the mud, opened the driver’s door and climbed in.

  ‘Where are the keys?’ he shouted.

  ‘Try under the seat,’ I said, running over.

  I reached the passenger door and hauled myself up just as the engine spluttered to life. Surrender-not checked his watch. In a few hours, the sun would rise, heralding the day that would see Punit crowned Yuvraj.

  I only hoped we’d make it back in time to stop his murder.

  ‘What are you waiting for, Sergeant?’ I exclaimed. ‘Get moving!’

  Surrender-not reversed the vehicle, then accelerated out of the exit and onto the main road heading south, back to Sambalpore.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Thursday 24 June 1920

  The sky turned from black to blue and finally to grey as we drove the fifty miles back to Sambalpore. On a good day and in a fast car, it might have taken two hours. On a monsoon night an
d in a lorry that moved at the pace of a bullock cart, it was over four before the walls of the town came into view.

  That gave me plenty of time to explain my theory, and my fears, to Surrender-not.

  ‘I should have spotted it myself, sir,’ he said as he drove, the hang-dog expression back on his face.

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘I only figured it out myself after speaking to Portelli last night.’

  ‘Still,’ he said, ‘I am a Hindu. It should have occurred to me.’

  ‘The point is, we need to get back and warn Punit,’ I said, though even as I uttered the words, a dissenting voice spoke softly in my head. Was there really any threat to Punit?

  Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe I was wrong – Lord knows I’d been wrong about enough things to do with this case already, but something told me this was different. I dismissed the thoughts, though not before registering a sharp pang of guilt.

  The streets of Sambalpore were thronged with people despite the torrential rain.

  ‘Head for the palace,’ I ordered.

  ‘It may be better to head for the temple, sir,’ said Surrender-not.

  ‘The crowds are out for the procession of Lord Jagannath’s chariot back to the temple.’ He frowned. ‘From the start, the whole case has been inextricably linked to Jagannath. Adhir was assassinated on the twenty-seventh day of Ashada, the start of the Jagannath festival. Now Punit is leading the procession back to the temple on its final day. If something is going to happen to him, it will probably happen there, while he is exposed to the crowd.’

  ‘Good point, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re not such a bad Hindu after all.’

  We inched our way through the hordes, finally reaching the bridge across the Mahanadi. On the other bank, the Rath of Jagannath, the Juggernaut, towered over thousands of the god’s devotees. It lumbered forward, pulled along by a frenzied mass to a cacophony of drums and cymbals and chanting voices. Punit was down there, amid the mêlée, maybe with Annie close by. Time was running out.