Bombay Mail, page 4
“What do you mean?” There was a note of alarm in Hawley’s voice.
“You will see,” said the Brahmin, with a tired smile.
Hawley looked out the window. A soldier was on guard outside the compartment.
Inspector Prike, near the center of the train, was talking to Captain Worthing and Luke-Patson. The sun, shining on the burnished bronze coat-of-arms of the white flank of the private car, cast dancing reflections on the Inspector’s face.
“How are you, Luke-Patson?” was Inspector Prike’s greeting, as he shook hands with the Governor’s private secretary. “I haven’t seen you since the day of the Viceroy’s Cup.”
Luke-Patson nodded. “In the paddock, wasn’t it?” he said. “Just before the races.”
“You owned a horse called ‘Bahadur’ that missed being in the money by a short nose, if I remember correctly,” said the Inspector thoughtfully.
“You have a good memory, Inspector.”
“By the way, Luke-Patson, I understand we should offer you congratulations. I hear you’re up for a Government seat in the National Assembly when you get back from England,” said the Inspector.
“That’s the program,” Luke-Patson admitted modestly.
Captain Worthing was toying nervously with the ends of his blond mustache, obviously annoyed by the small talk of a man on a serious mission.
“We haven’t had time to make a very thorough search of the train, Inspector,” he interrupted.
The expression in Inspector Prike’s eyes was almost a reprimand as he turned to Worthing.
“No one really searches thoroughly, Captain, except myself,” he said. “I am taking over now. I will see you later.”
Inspector Prike stopped for a word with the European constables who were going through the compartments in the car occupied by the Governor’s clerical staff and the Maharajah of Zunjore’s retinue. Then he stepped into the next first-class carriage. In the first compartment, a man was bending intently over a Gladstone bag of black cowhide. As the door opened behind him, he snapped the bag shut, straightened up, whirled to face Inspector Prike. He was a tall man, with a black, close-cropped beard.
“May I be of service to you, Monsieur?” asked the tall man in French.
Inspector Prike replied in French. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “May I ask your name?”
“Doctor Maurice Lenoir,” said the tall man. “Of the Pasteur Institute.”
Inspector Prike walked past the doctor, threw open the door to the little lavatory adjoining the compartment, looked in, closed it again.
“May I see your passport, Doctor?”
“But certainly.”
The Inspector took the document, glanced at it hastily, refolded it, and put it into the pocket of his alpaca coat.
“I shall return it to you presently, Doctor.”
The door of the next compartment was hard to open. Something seemed to be holding it. With a gesture, Inspector Prike summoned a soldier to help. The soldier leaned his rifle against the side of the train and pulled with both hands. A woman screamed inside. The door swung open. A stack of suitcases, which had been piled against the door, fell out. The screaming continued.
Inspector Prike stepped into the compartment. The screaming woman was sitting upright in her berth, her angular outlines softened by the gauze of an elaborate system of mosquito netting.
“Sorry to disturb you, Madam,” said the Inspector.
“Don’t you ‘Madam’ me!” screamed the woman. “I’m Miss—Miss Ursula Klink. What do you mean, walking into a lady’s compartment without permission? I’m an American citizen. I’ll complain to the consul!”
Ignoring Miss Klink’s outburst, Inspector Prike explored the compartment with his impersonal glance. He looked into the bathroom. A dozen bottles of aerated water stood on the floor. Miss Klink had heard that drinking-water in India is alive with germs. She was not risking cholera morbus. She even brushed her teeth with soda water. When Inspector Prike left the compartment, she was still complaining shrilly, holding a sheet around her thin shoulders.
As Inspector Prike stepped up to the next compartment, a missile came hurtling swiftly through the window. The Inspector ducked. A revolver appeared suddenly in his fist. An empty bottle crashed to the platform behind him. The Inspector pulled open the door of the compartment, stepped in, brandishing his gun.
“Don’t shoot, Prike, ol’ boy, don’t shoot. ’S all a mistake. I wasn’t aiming at you, Inspector. Sorry.”
Cootie Neal grinned as he raised his hands in mock terror.
“I don’t know you,” said Prike.
“ ’S all right. I don’t feel hurt, Inspector. Everybody knows Inspector Prike of the C.I.D., but everybody don’t know Cootie Neal, of the Associated News and Photo Service—”
“These your cameras?”
“You bet, Inspector. I got an idea you and me are on this train for the same business, ain’t we?”
Prike looked narrowly at Neal. “Possibly,” he said. “But for your sake, I hope not.”
“The Maharajah gettin’ ready to stick his foot in it, Inspector?”
The Inspector did not reply. He looked into the bathroom. He glanced under the berths. From Breeze’s berth he picked up a thick album and hurriedly turned over a few pages, all art photographs showing sunken tubs and flushing apparatus so silent that it would not embarrass the most sensitive host. The Inspector tossed the album back to the berth.
“Let me have your passports, please.” He addressed himself to Breeze, who had been watching with his mouth open.
“I’m Edward J. Breeze, Indian Import Manager for the International Plumbing Fixtures Corporation. My card—”
“I’m not in the market,” said the Inspector dryly. “Your passports.”
In the next compartment he found three rich Moham medans kneeling on prayer rugs, bowing toward Mecca in unison. He waited until they had finished their brief ~ devotions, questioned them, examined the compartment, and passed on to the next car—a second-class carriage.
The first door led to a compartment designed for two passengers. The shades were drawn. Lettering on the window read: For Purdah Ladies Only. He went in. In the far corner a lone girl sat. Her blond hair seemed to glow by its own light in the gloom of the compartment. At first glance she appeared to be cowering. Closer scrutiny assured Inspector Prike that her limbs were rigid, that there was defiance in her attitude.
“Traveling alone?” he asked.
“I don’t see how that could interest you in the least,” said the girl.
“Traveling alone?” repeated Inspector Prike.
“Of course not,” said the girl. “Can’t you see my mother and my six children sitting here beside me?”
“Let me have your passport,” said the Inspector.
The girl’s expression changed. Her sophisticated lips suddenly lost their sarcastic smile. A fleeting shadow of alarm came and went in her gray eyes. Then she was defiant again.
“What do you want with my passport?” she demanded. “We aren’t crossing any frontier or anything, are we?”
“What are you? English?”
“Canadian.”
“Let me have your passport,” Inspector Prike repeated. He did not raise his calm, even tone of voice, yet his words were full of quiet, inexorable authority. He could command in a whisper.
The girl fumbled in a bag, handed him her papers. Prike glanced at them.
“Beatrice Jones,” he said to himself, putting the passport in his pocket with the others he had collected.
He moved to leave the compartment. The girl stood up quickly, started after him.
“Why are you taking my passport?” she asked anxiously. “Aren’t you going to give it back to me?”
“Later,” said Inspector Prike. He stepped down and jumped into the next second-class compartment. Jack Hawley stood aside to let him enter. The Brahmin had resumed his attitude of contemplation in his corner.
Prike scarcely glanced at Hawley. He looked more closely at the Brahmin. Then he stepped to the door of the lavatory. The door did not open readily. Inspector Prike put his shoulder to it, forced the door open a few inches. Then he closed it quickly. He turned on Hawley, with drawn revolver. With his head he motioned to the Brahmin.
“Stand away from that door” he ordered.
Hawley moved. His revolver still in his hand, Inspector Prike called to two constables standing on the station platform.
“Anderson, the Civil Surgeon who drove down with me from Benares is in the private car attending Lady Daniels. Tell him to come here at once. Collins, pass the word along that anyone attempting to leave the train without my permission will be shot on sight.”
“Say what’s all this row about, Inspector Prike?” asked Hawley.
“Take your hands out of your pockets, please,” Prike ordered. The Inspector briefly tapped Hawley’s hips and armpits to make sure he was not armed. The dark, round face of the stationmaster appeared in the doorway.
“Inspector Sahib,” said the stationmaster. “Bombay Mail is now twenty minutes late. How soon—”
“The train will leave in five minutes,” said Inspector Prike.
Constable Anderson pushed the stationmaster aside to make way for the Civil Surgeon, a slow-moving, gray-haired physician who seemed slightly short of breath.
“Anderson,” said Inspector Prike, “those two men are under arrest. Take them to the Governor’s car until I come.”
“Who’s under arrest?” protested Hawley.
“Come along,” said Anderson.
Hawley, as bewildered as he was belligerent, went grudgingly. The Brahmin accompanied the constable, smiling philosophically.
“I want you to look at this, Doctor,” said Inspector Prike to the Civil Surgeon.
The inspector forced open the door of the bathroom. The obstruction which had made the door hard to open was stretched across the tiny white-tiled floor. It was the figure of a man, lying face down.
Inspector Prike stooped to turn the man on his back. The glazed eyes that stared at the ceiling were the eyes of Sir Anthony Daniels, Governor of Bengal.
Chapter Five: THE SCRAP OF PAPER
The Civil Surgeon mopped the perspiration from his forehead as he knelt on the floor beside Inspector Prike.
“How long has he been dead, Doctor?” the Inspector asked.
The Civil Surgeon felt the Governor’s joints to judge the advance of rigor mortis.
“About three hours,” he said.
“Since four-thirty o’clock this morning?”
“About that.”
The two men spoke quietly, in matter-of-fact tones. Death was the common substance of the day’s work of both of them.
“I’ve examined the body casually,” said the Inspector. “I don’t find any wounds. What caused death, Doctor?”
“From the livid condition of the face,” said the Civil Surgeon, “and the dark color of the blood—you notice the bruise on the lower lip, Inspector?—I should say death was caused either by suffocation”—the Civil Surgeon sniffed—“or poison.”
“You smell the same thing I do, Doctor?”
“I caught a faint whiff just then, very faint. It’s gone now.”
“Bitter almonds?”
“Yes.”
“Indicating cyanide poisoning?”
“That’s the characteristic odor,” said the Civil Surgeon. “But it’s very faint. Of course, the odor dissipates rapidly, and it has been three hours now. I couldn’t be absolutely certain without an autopsy, but the condition of the body indicates poisoning, by perhaps potassium cyanide or hydrocyanic acid.”
“What acid?”
“Prussic acid to you, Inspector.”
“Is there any possibility that the Governor committed suicide, Doctor?”
The Civil Surgeon pondered a moment. “Was that bathroom window closed when you found the body?” he asked.
“The window was open,” said Inspector Prike, “but the slatted wooden shutter was up, the way it is now.”
“And you find no trace of a bottle or container?”
“Nothing.”
“Then the Governor very decidedly did not kill himself,” said the Civil Surgeon. “Even if the bruised lower lip did not indicate that a phial may have been forced into the Governor’s mouth, the fact that the cyanides are the quickest acting poisons we know is sufficient to satisfy me that the Governor would have been dead before he could have gotten rid of the bottle and closed the shutter. And if he had taken cyanide anywhere outside this bathroom, he could not have come here on his own legs. Prussic acid penetrates human tissue instantly. A few drops on the tongue will paralyze the heart and lungs in a fraction of a second.”
“It’s murder obviously,” said the Inspector.
“I’ll have the body removed to the station temporarily,” said the Civil Surgeon.
“No,” said Inspector Prike. “I want a stretcher brought around to the side of the train away from the station. I’ll have the body taken to the Governor’s private car, out of sight of the crowd on the station platform.”
“But surely you’re not thinking of taking a dead body across India at this time of year!” exclaimed the Civil Surgeon incredulously.
“Absolutely necessary for my investigation,” said Inspector Prike.
“But aren’t you going to hold your investigation here in Moghal Sarai?”
The inspector shook his head.
“Either the murderer of Sir Anthony Daniels escaped at Gaya, where the murder was apparently committed, or is still on the train,” he said. “My guess is that he—or she—is still on the train. We can’t hold up the Bombay Mail any longer, Doctor, so I’ll have to try to solve the mystery en route. If I have any luck, the Governor’s private car can be uncoupled at Chheoki Junction. By the way, you’re traveling with us as far as Chheoki, Doctor.”
“I? But I must get back to Benares, my dear Inspector. I’ve a confinement case due any day now, and besides, there’s a bridge tournament going on at the Cantonment. I’m playing tonight—”
“I need you,” said Inspector Prike. “You can get a train back from Chheoki this afternoon.”
The Inspector got to his feet, walked to the station platform, and began giving orders.
There were telegrams to be sent: To Calcutta, to Gaya, to the capital at Delhi, to London. There was the nasty business of breaking the news to Lady Daniels. There was the transfer of the body to the private car. All these duties Inspector Prike delegated to others. A final brief inspection of the outside of the train he undertook himself.
Inspector Prike left the compartment in which the body was found by the door on the same side of the car as the bathroom window—which was the side away from the station. He walked the length of three and a half cars to the end of the train, then retraced his steps. He examined the sides of the cars and paid particular attention to the accessibility of the windows from the ground. He was a short man, yet he found he could get his hands beyond the sills of the car windows. As he walked along he tried manipulating the sliding wooden shutters from the outside. On one shutter he found that the ratchet mechanism inside was not functioning properly and he could work the shutter down. He tried another one. It stuck. As he pulled at it, a small scrap of white paper slipped out from between two slats and fluttered to the ground.
Inspector Prike picked up the piece of paper. It was roughly triangular, and had apparently been torn from the edge of a sheet of letter paper. It contained the beginning of three lines of handwriting in ink. The fragmentary words on the torn scrap were:
rupees. Of cou…
personal chec…..
later, in ca……
Inspector Prike carefully put the scrap of paper into his wallet. Then he rapped on the window shutter from which the paper had fallen. The shutter dropped. The blond head of Beatrice Jones appeared,
“Bringing back my passport?” she demanded.
“Please come along with me, Miss Jones,” said Inspector Prike.
“Why should I come with you? I don’t know you. What do you want with—?”
“Please come,” repeated Inspector Prike.
“But what have—?”
“I want to question you in connection with the murder of His Excellency the Governor of Bengal in the compartment next to yours,” explained Prike.
Again the girl’s expression changed. Her lips parted, but no sound came from them. For a moment she seemed on the verge of tears. Then she said, “I’ll come. I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll come with you. May I bring my bag? It might be stolen, with nobody to watch my compartment—”
“You haven’t a bearer to watch it?”
“No.”
Inspector Prike held out his hand, helped the girl to the ground, took a small light handbag from her.
“You’ve sent the rest of your luggage direct to Bombay?” he asked, as they started walking toward the rear of the train.
“I haven’t any more luggage.”
“Then you’re not joining the ship at Bombay?”
“Yes. I’m taking the ship to Marseilles. I’m going on to Paris from there.”
“And you’ve no boxes? You’re going all that distance with this one small bag?”
“That’s my own business,” said the girl.
Inspector Prike did not reply. He opened a door and indicated to the girl that she was to climb into the private car. He followed her. He had enough people to question for the time being. He had the Governor’s staff, Lady Daniels, Hawley, the Brahmin, and Beatrice Jones. They would keep him busy until the next stop. At the next station he would talk to some of the other passengers. The fact that he held their passports and that they had been warned that anyone trying to leave the train would be shot by riflemen in the guard’s van ought to keep them in their compartments.
“Inspector Sahib!” It was the stationmaster, waddling up the platform in a terrific stew. “Imperial Indian Mail is now quite twenty-five minutes late. How long, Inspector Sahib—?”
“We’re ready to go now, Stationmaster.”
The grimy-bearded engine driver, leaning from his cab, responded to the stationmaster’s signal. Piston arms moved ponderously through clouds of steam. The Bombay Mail resumed its journey across India, carrying the body of Sir Anthony Daniels, and, Inspector Prike was reasonably certain, the Governor’s murderer.
