The Day of the Scorpion (41 page)

‘Then why didn’t he say so? He was examined by the Assistant Commissioner, and by a magistrate appointed by Judge Menen, as well as by the District Superintendent.’

‘Who would have believed him? He had listened to innumerable criminal cases in the courts as a reporter for the
Mayapore Gazette
and knew what he was up against. He is an intelligent man – a product of your own English public schools.’

‘I know. I went to the same one.’

Gopal stared at Rowan – as if suddenly suspicious.

‘Oh? Does he recognize you then?’

‘No. I was in my last term when he was in his first. But I remember him. He was the first Indian Chillingborough ever took, a bit of a showpiece. A few years later I watched him
play cricket for the school against the old boys. He was very popular. I have a vague recollection of his friend Colin, too.’ Rowan poured a glass of water also. ‘It’s one of the reasons H.E. chose me to make the examination. Until the other day I’d no idea the chief suspect in the Bibighar case was the fellow I knew as Harry Coomer. I wish I’d known years ago what he was having to face. There must have been several old Chillingburians out here who’d have been willing to help him.’

After a while Mr Gopal said, ‘Do you think so, Captain Rowan? Willing, perhaps. Able – no. He is an English boy with a dark brown skin. The combination is hopeless.’

‘Yes,’ Rowan said after a while. ‘Perhaps it is.’

II

‘The examinee’s last statement, please.’

The clerk flicked back one page of his notebook.

‘“So it was obvious the inquiry was about a woman who’d been assaulted.”’

‘No – the whole of it.’

The clerk cleared his throat and recited in a monotone, ‘“When he’d finished he said – So you’ve been intelligent enough to wash, we almost caught you at it, didn’t we? Later he said: Well, she wasn’t a virgin, was she, and you were the first to ram her? So it was obvious the inquiry was about a woman who’d been assaulted.”’

‘Thank you. Mr Gopal – you were making a point.’

‘Yes. It is really a question of the order and time at which the detenu alleges certain things were done and certain things said.’ Gopal now spoke directly to Kumar. ‘I should like to go back to the moment when the police came to your house and took you into custody. According to the police report this was at approximately 21.40 hours. Is that correct?’

‘I expect so.’

‘I see – also from the report – that some three-quarters of an hour earlier the DSP called at your home to see if Miss Manners happened to be there. He spoke to your aunt. She said she had not seen Miss Manners for several weeks. She
said you had not yet returned from the newspaper office. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Later when you came in she told you of DSP’s visit and inquiry?’

‘Yes.’

‘At what time did you get home?’

‘I didn’t think to look.’

‘Did your aunt not say something like, The DSP came here asking if Miss Manners was with us, because Lady Chatterjee has reported her missing?’

‘She said the DSP had called wanting to speak to Miss Manners.’

‘And you then asked how long ago?’

‘Yes – I did. But she didn’t reply.’

‘Oh? Why was that?’

‘Her attention was taken.’

‘Taken by what?’

‘She had noticed the state I was in.’

She sensed the little wave of Gopal’s shock. Rowan’s voice cut in, ‘According to the police report that state was as follows: “An abrasion on his right cheek and a contusion on his left cheek, stains on shirt and trousers from contact with muddy ground or dirty floor.” Is that an accurate report?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it also correct,’ Rowan continued, ‘that when the police, led by District Superintendent Merrick, entered a room on the first floor of number 12 Chillianwallah Bagh, the shirt and trousers in which you’d come home were found discarded, that you were wearing a clean pair of trousers, no other garment, and were bathing your face in a bowl of water?’

‘Yes.’

‘After reaching home and speaking briefly to your aunt who told you DSP had called looking for Miss Manners you went upstairs, changed and began to wash.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were still washing when the police arrived, so you can’t have been back home for longer than, say, ten minutes?’

‘It would have been about that.’

‘So if the police arrived at 21.40 you reached home about 21.30?’

‘Yes.’

‘According to the statement of Mr Laxminarayan, the editor of the
Mayapore Gazette
, you left the office of the
Gazette
, which was in the Victoria Road in the Civil lines, at approximately six-fifteen that evening.’

‘Yes.’

‘During interrogation, whenever you were asked to account for your movements between 6.15 and 9.40 p.m. your invariable reply was: “I have nothing to say.” Do you have anything to say now?’

Kumar glanced down at the table. Gopal suddenly came to life. ‘I have a point here,’ he said. Rowan nodded. ‘This contusion on the detenu’s left cheek. There is a copy on this file of the medical report made out when the detenu was admitted to this prison. It was dated August 25th. It referred to traces of contusion still being visible on the face. Still visible, that is to say, after sixteen days. Unless further bruising was inflicted one might assume that the original blow or blows were therefore of considerable strength. Of course, it was never established what caused the contusion, but in the absence of any explanation by the detenu the impression the police reports seemed to leave was never counteracted. That impression was that the bruising was the result of blows by a woman defending herself from attack.’ Gopal took out his handkerchief again, dabbled his lips. ‘It is a point which a court of law might well have subjected to deeper consideration – the extent to which the contusion suffered could have been caused by a member of the female sex. I make the point in case it encourages the detenu to say what he was doing that led to his return home in the state described.’

‘You have heard Mr Gopal’s point. Are you prepared to comment on it?’

‘I’m prepared to comment on it.’

Gopal nodded. ‘Please do so.’

‘It is a good point. I appreciate it being raised. I don’t think
it would have helped me in a court of law, if things had come to that.’

‘Why?’ Gopal wanted to know.

‘Expert medical evidence would probably have held that a frightened woman can hit as hard as a man. But even if that had been expertly refuted the prosecution could have turned the point to my disadvantage.’

‘How?’

‘By suggesting that the men who assaulted Miss Manners fought among themselves.’

‘Is that what happened?’ Rowan asked casually.

Kumar stared at him. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Are you prepared to say where you were between 6.15 and 9.30 p.m. on the night in question?’

Kumar glanced at the table, then back at Rowan.

‘No. I’m sorry. But I’m not.’

Rowan leaned back in his chair. Watching, she became aware – as though she sat at it herself – of the expanse of table-top that separated the interrogators from the interrogated. It was an area of suspicion that none of them apparently had the capacity to diminish – although Rowan was now attempting to do so.

‘I find it difficult to understand,’ he had begun. ‘So far this morning you have been extremely co-operative. The impression you have made is of frankness and candour. Now suddenly you revert to that unhelpful attitude of “I have nothing to say” which nullified every attempt made at the time to allow you to state a case. I use the word unhelpful advisedly. It does not help us and it certainly doesn’t help you. The purpose of this examination is to go over evidence which at the time seemed strong enough to warrant your detention. It may or may not be so that at the time other considerations – well let us call them suspicions – coloured the views of those whose responsibility it was, at a moment of acute crisis resulting from civil disorder, to weigh the evidence in regard to that detention. Such suspicions do not enter into what is being considered this morning. I hope that has become clear as the examination has gone forward. These suspicions do not enter into the question of what is being considered, but if the record suddenly disclosed a lack of
candour that today might be called uncharacteristic you must see how that would allow room for suspicion once again to enter into the weighing of all the various considerations.’

‘Yes,’ Kumar said. ‘I see that. But the suspicion is unavoidable. However hard you try to avoid questioning me about the criminal assault you’ll find everything leads to it. And every time the question of the assault comes up the suspicion comes up too.’

‘Well, need it? It’s come up now, certainly. Perhaps it could be eradicated by your answering the question. I wonder if you realize how foolish your original refusal to answer was? I wonder if you realize how very close you were to being charged? Or if you realize the extent to which that charge – rather, I should say, the failure of the charge to be made – depended almost exclusively on Miss Manners’s vigorous rebuttal of any suggestion that you were involved in any way whatever? If she had shown the slightest uncertainty, if she had – however reluctantly – admitted that in all fairness she could not actually swear you weren’t among those who attacked her, in the dark, suddenly, then you would have been charged and tried. I put it to you, if you had been charged and tried, in court, been put on oath, would you in those circumstances have refused to answer this question?’

‘I should have refused.’

‘In court that refusal could have been fatal.’

‘I know.’

‘Have you truly and deeply considered the reasonableness of this attitude?’

‘I have truly and deeply considered the attitude. I have considered it daily, since the night of August the ninth, nineteen forty-two. For one year, nine months and twelve days.’

‘And you still find it reasonable?’

‘I have never said it was reasonable. It has never been a question of reason. It isn’t now.’

‘A question of loyalty, perhaps?’

‘It’s not a word I much care for.’

‘Care for it or not, it gets us a bit further? Can we go a bit
further still and establish to what or to whom you felt you were being loyal by maintaining what looked to everyone else like an unreasonable silence?’

‘I’m afraid we can’t go further. At least, not in the same direction.’

Rowan leaned forward again, and referred to his file. Eventually he spoke. ‘Only two things of interest to the police seem to have been found in your room. A photograph of Miss Manners and the letter from Colin. The photograph was self-explanatory. She had given it to you. The letter from Colin is interesting though because – by your own evidence today – you had other letters from him. In fact I imagine that you heard quite often from him – at least until he came to India.’

‘Yes.’

‘I wondered why of all those letters you kept this particular one. It was an unfortunate choice because it was the one in which Colin told you two of your letters were opened by his father and not forwarded because his father thought them unsuitable reading for a young officer away on active service. The phrase “a lot of hot-headed political stuff” was the way he said his father described those letters. Why did you keep this particular letter from Colin?’

‘It was the only one I ever had from him that really struck an authentic note. He went through various phases after he left school. But that one was from the man I remembered.’

‘What sort of man was that?’

‘The sort that found the liberal atmosphere of Chillingborough the right kind of atmosphere.’

‘You would call Chillingborough a liberal institution?’

‘It wasn’t a flag-wagging place. It turned out more administrators than it did soldiers.’

She smiled and wondered if Rowan smiled too to be reminded so unexpectedly of his own words – ‘I wasn’t cast in the mould of a good regimental officer.’

‘But for a time after leaving school,’ Rowan said, ‘your friend Colin became what you call a flag-wagger?’

‘He was infected by the atmosphere of 1939, I think. He joined the Territorial Army, and wrote of nothing else.’

‘The letter which you kept was one he wrote after he’d been wounded at Dunkirk, I gather?’

‘Yes.’

‘His baptism of fire had an effect on him which you approved of?’

‘The effect of making him sound like the friend I knew.’

‘And what was the hot-headed political stuff his father objected to in your letters?’

‘It must have been mainly what I wrote about the pros and cons of Congress’s resistance to the declaration of war, and their resignations from the provincial ministries.’

‘And what were your views on that?’

‘I think it was to find out if I had any that I wrote to Colin about the pros and cons.’

‘You would write that kind of thing to Colin. Would you discuss it with Vidyasagar?’

‘No.’

‘In spite of the distance between you, Colin remained your closest friend, your confidant?’

‘In my mind he did.’

‘It was a way of maintaining contact with – what shall we call it – your inner sense of being English?’

‘Yes.’

Rowan sat for a while without speaking. Then abruptly he said: ‘Have we been discussing in any way the question you said we couldn’t explore further in the same direction?’

‘We’ve been discussing it.’

‘But not exploring it further?’

‘But not exploring it.’

‘So we are back to the moment when you were found by the police bathing your face?’

‘Yes.’

‘With this vital period between 6.15 and 9.30 p.m. unaccounted for?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you had been with Miss Manners that evening, where would you have been likely to meet?’

‘The most likely place would have been The Sanctuary.’

‘Why?’

‘Apart from caring for the sick and dying, Sister Ludmila
ran a free evening clinic. Miss Manners helped fairly regularly in the clinic in her spare time from the Mayapore General Hospital.’

‘You both found The Sanctuary a suitable place to meet?’

‘We were both interested in the work Sister Ludmila did.’