great human oaf come plunging in on top of you when you’re half asleep is a bit too much to take. And if you hadn’t happened to have that thing in your hand, and lashed out with it like that, he’d have been away out of sight the instant he hit the floor, and he might have got one of us yet.’ He held out the rod to Dominic. ‘Here, use this to strip your sheets down, don’t risk your hands… He may have brought two!’
‘No need,’ said Dominic, equally tense and pale, and pointed to the shirt now crumpled on the carpet, and the initialled bag at the foot of the bed. ‘He knew which was yours. He knew who he wanted, all right.’
‘Maybe, but don’t take risks,’ Purushottam insisted.
‘But could it really have been planted deliberately? Would anyone use such a chancy method?’ Dominic circled round the carcase warily, hooked the end of the rod in the neat covers of his own bed, and drew them down. ‘In all the time I’ve been in India, this is the first time I’ve ever actually
‘Plenty of people die of snake-bite in India,’ said Purushottam soberly, ‘who’ve never seen a snake – not even the one that bit them. But they’re everywhere, all the same. Not as common down here as in Bengal, maybe, but there are plenty round Madurai if you look for them. Yes, it’s quite a credible method of getting rid of someone you dislike. It’s been used often enough before. There are people who make a study of handling these fellows. A stick with a noose, and the right sort of meal… Some people even used to keep them and breed them, in the days when there was a tally paid for killing them, just to be able to produce a constant supply of bodies. They make a profession of snakes. Looks as if your bed’s clear, though. Two kraits in one room could hardly have been passed off as accidental. Do we still get out of here?’
‘Faster than ever,’ said Dominic, draping his bedclothes convincingly. ‘Because whoever planted this chap will be standing by, expecting one of us – me! – to rouse the house any moment. Just to make sure everything’s gone according to plan, and his job’s done. He may even be watching our window…’ The thought jolted him. Nothing would be gained if he withdrew Purushottam from this dangerous place only to draw the danger after him. But Purushottam reassured him instantly and confidently.
‘He won’t! That’s the last thing he’ll do if he’s not just a thug from outside, but somebody known around the place, staff, guide, guests, whoever you like. He’ll be with somebody else now, setting up all the alibis he can, preferably with three or four others – a card party, something like that.’ He was thinking, perhaps, of the voluble and intent card party they had seen going on by lantern-light in the car-park, round a head-cloth spread out on the sand, with two of the room boys, an off-duty porter, and the Manis’ sleepy, cynical hired driver, slapping down the cards like gauntlets. The Manis’ driver – yes. A bored professional from Madurai, where kraits are common enough. They had never really looked at that driver
‘He’ll be listening for the alarm,’ Purushottam said with conviction, ‘but round at the front, somewhere innocent, and in company, primed to be more surprised and shocked than anyone else. But if we delay, he may get anxious and come round to see if anything’s happening.’
‘Switch on the light in the shower-room,’ said Dominic. ‘As long as that’s on, and a bedside light here, he won’t wonder what’s gone wrong, he’ll just think we take the devil of a time to get to bed. That’s it! We’ll leave the curtains parted just a crack, to let the light show through.’
They took the wind-jackets they had luckily brought in with them, when they might just as easily have left them in the Land-Rover, and a torch which Dominic happened to have in his night kit, and cautiously parted the curtains to slip out on to the balcony and prospect the dark garden below. Everything was still. They stood tensed, listening, and there was no sound at all except from the distant sea, a muted, plangent, regular sound that had nothing of the spasmodic motivations of man in it, only the rhythmic cadences of eternity, reassuring and terrifying, like the Swami’s smile.
‘Wait a minute, we’d better get rid of the krait.’ Purushottam went back to hoist it carefully in the hook of the curtain rod, and carry it out to the balcony. ‘Not even a big one,’ he said in a whisper. ‘They grow to four feet and more, this kind.’ He slid the carcase through the railings, well aside from the iron pillar that held up the balcony, and let it slide dully into the thin grass below. ‘All right, I’ve got the key. You go first.’
Dominic climbed over the railing, and let himself down to grip the pillar, and edge his way silently down to the ground. Purushottam propped the rod back in its place, and readjusted the curtain behind him so that a chink of subdued light showed through, and then followed him over. The balcony continued on round the corner, providing access to all the first-floor rooms, and at the far end on the eastern side, close to Priya’s room, there was an iron stairway down into the garden; but the last thing they wanted was to run the risk of disturbing Priya. Purushottam lowered himself to the last decorative curlicues of wrought iron sprouting from the capital of the pillar, and then hung by his hands and dropped lightly into the sand below. They stood for a moment braced and listening, but the night was silent and still. The quickest way to cover was across the narrowest zone of the garden and out on to the road. They took it, moving carefully and quietly, the sand swallowing their footsteps; and once on the road, they turned towards the village.
The night was calm, mild and only moderately dark; after a brief period abroad in it they could distinguish each other’s features clearly, and make out the shapes of land and sea as lucidly as by day, though through a pure veil of darkness. There was less cloud in the sky now than at the sunset, and the stars were huge and many, encrusted like jewelled inlays on a vault of ebony.
They spent the first part of the night in the village, fascinated by a life which had not ceased with darkness, but only slowed its tempo a little, and rested half its cast. There was something very comforting in moving among people who accepted them casually as a part of normality, and had no special interest in them, and certainly no design on them, except perhaps to extort the occasional coin. They even toyed with the idea of sleeping in the dormitory provided for the pilgrims, but discarded it finally in favour of a solitude. They were not the only ones sleeping outdoors that night, but in this dormitory there was room for all. They found themselves a hollow in a sheltered, sandy cove, not far from the village, high and dry above the tide-line, though the tide was well down now and still receding, and made themselves a comfortable nest there. The sand, at this higher level, felt warm to the touch, unlike the coolness of the alluvial deposits on the foreshore.
‘I’ve slept in worse beds,’ said Dominic.
Purushottam laughed rather hollowly, remembering the bed and the bed-fellow he had just escaped. Until now they had said not a word about that since leaving the hotel, but now he peered into the recent past and frowned, wondering.
‘Dominic – was he really just trying the door, or just re-locking it? – Sushil Dastur? They’re old, big locks, maybe child’s play to a professional, after all…’
‘Do I know?’ Dominic had wondered the same thing. ‘But then there must have been a box, a bag, something – you don’t walk in with a snake dangling from your hand. A rush basket – some sort of container…’
‘That’s true. And he didn’t have anything.’
