Death to the Landlords

would be no great journey here. Oh, they have reported their presence everywhere scrupulously. But there are still eight hours in the night. We shall check on everyone.’

‘We are fortunate in having an officer who knows the district as Inspector Tilak does,’ said the Swami warmly. He already knew from Purushottam’s cook and watchman that the inspector was a native, born and raised not twenty miles away. ‘So he will have everyone’s goodwill and assistance in his inquiries about any strangers recently seen in these parts.’ That hardly followed, Dominic thought, until he remembered that the stranger they were looking for was a Naxalite terrorist. In theory the extreme left-wing Marxist forces were on the side of the great suppressed majority; but in practice the members of that submerged class were the most likely of all to die in the ideological carnage, and nobody knew it better than they did, or resented it more bitterly.

‘May I continue? I am talking chiefly to clarify matters in my own mind. Then we have the present outrage, and this unknown person who is responsible for it. It seems that we are confronted with two possible theories: one, that X was following up a pre-arranged pattern of events in attempting the murder of Purushottam, one more representative of “the chief class enemy”: two, that he followed Miss Galloway here in order to wipe out what he had cause to believe might be a dangerous witness against him in the previous case. In short, in the first case the bomb was meant for Purushottam, in the second for the victim it actually claimed, Miss Galloway. Let us take the second case first.

‘If it was Miss Galloway he wanted, then he must have followed the Land-Rover here, otherwise there would have been no way of tracking it afterwards on a cold scent to this particular place. Then again, X must have observed Miss Galloway using the office for her typing, and supposed – perhaps because of the diary she left behind? – that she was likely to do so again, or why plant the bomb there? But if he was there watching her during the evening, why risk the bomb at all? Why not a knife on the spot, or his hands? The office is one of the remotest buildings, with windows away from the court. Entry and exit would not be difficult, a cry could be cut off quickly, there was darkness to cover his retreat. He would have been a fool to take a more devious but extremely haphazard way. This militates against the theory, but does not altogether invalidate it, for we all know that sometimes men under pressure are fools, and do take the most inept ways of achieving their ends. And perhaps this one, previously merely the messenger, was too afraid of being personally responsible, too wary of ever actually showing his face. Better an inefficient attempt from a safe distance than a possibly disastrous direct confrontation. So let us still bear the theory in mind as a possibility. And what is in its favour? The matter of the diary, which Miss Galloway discovered she had left behind, but which was not in her handbag when she was found, nor anywhere in the office. So perhaps, after all, someone was watching, someone who wanted that diary removed and destroyed. Someone who both planted the bomb that night, and stole the diary. Miss Madhavan, did you ever notice this diary? Can you tell us what it looked like?’

‘She had a little red leather address book and stamp-case,’ said Priya, ‘and a big red leather writing-case. The diary could have belonged to the same set.’

‘This we have found,’ said Inspector Tilak. ‘But no diary.’

‘I don’t actually recall seeing her writing up a regular entry in any book. But that needn’t mean anything. It would be only a matter of a few lines, perhaps not even filled in each day. After all, I was with her for such a short time, only about ten days.’

‘Nevertheless,’ the Swami maintained, ‘it remains a possibility that she had written down in it something of vital importance – perhaps something she did not even realise to be important at the time. If so, it can only have been something connected with the bomb outrage at Thekady. Now you were all together there, as we know. Even before the two parties joined, at the forestry bungalow, Miss Madhavan was with her, travelling with her, sharing a room with her. Now what can Miss Galloway have seen or realised that the rest of you did not?’

They could think of no possible juncture at which Patti’s experience at Thekady had been different from theirs.

‘And yet,’ said Larry slowly, ‘when we found the boat she did come to pieces – to a rather surprising degree. I mean, it might be only a temperamental difference – I was knocked pretty useless myself at first. But she went down for the count, they had to give her a sedative and let her sleep through until next day.’

‘Yet she had seen only what you saw. So it was not something witnessed then. Could it have been something recognised and made sense of then? Something that linked up with something else she already knew, and had not realised she knew? Go back, Miss Madhavan, to the journey up to Thekady. Go over it in detail in your mind, and see if there is not at some point something which she did, and you did not do, something she saw, and you did not see.’

Priya opened her tired eyes wide, and stared back into the recent past, and began to recount the whole commonplace detail of that bus trip into the hills, proceeding with a patience which expected no excitement on arrival.

‘We got off at the bungalow, and took a room. No one else left the bus there. The French couple were already there, and the Manis arrived just as we came out to walk down to the fruit-stall below. It was while we were at the stall that Larry’s Land-Rover passed on its way up to the bungalow, but it was nearly dusk then, especially there among the trees, and they didn’t notice us. Then we walked back. There was nothing else, I think – except that Patti looked to see if the sadhu was still sitting by the lingam, and then she went back and gave him some small coins. For luck, she said.’

For luck! Whatever force had been allotting Patti her luck had made sure that all of it was bad.

‘Sadhu?’ said Inspector Raju, taking his long, worrying fingers abruptly out of his tangled grey hair. ‘What sadhu?’

‘Just a sadhu. He was sitting by the Siva lingam, one bend of the road down from the bungalow. I don’t remember noting him when we drove past in the bus, but we saw him as we went down to the stall, and then on the way back Patti turned back to give him some money. Suddenly she said: “Wait for me a moment!” and gave me her parcels to hold, and she walked back to him. I saw her reach in her bag for some coins, and heard her put them in his bowl.’

‘Now this,’ said Inspector Raju, unsheathing his pen, ‘is interesting. I know that road as I know my hand, and never yet have I seen a sadhu choose that particular place to sit. Did your friends also see him?’

‘No, he wasn’t there when we drove back to Madurai,’ Lakshman said for them all. ‘And we hadn’t noticed him on the way up.’

‘So only you two girls saw him face to face, and might know him again?’

Priya hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t know him again – I don’t think I could ever be sure. He wore a devotional mark like this…’ She drew the three lines and the small upright oval joining them. ‘But he was sitting back among the trees, and it was getting dusk. I didn’t go near, I just waited for Patti.’