‘All the same,’ said Dominic very seriously, ‘no one can logically be ruled out. There are six people here who were also at Thekady. Not counting our own party. Not forgetting myself,’ he said firmly. ‘From where you’re standing…’
‘Lying,’ corrected Purushottam drowsily, working his shoulders comfortably into the sand.
‘— you can’t afford to rule out any possibility.’
Purushottam’s tranquil face gazed up into the stars, and smiled, quite unshaken. ‘I’ll overlook that. Just so long as you don’t ask me to suspect Priya.’ He lay quiet for a moment, relaxed and still. ‘Dominic! Are you… is there a girl somewhere belonging to you?’
‘I’m engaged,’ said Dominic. ‘Tossa’s still at Oxford, finishing her arts degree. After that we shall get married. We haven’t made any further plans yet, but I think – I really think we may come back here together.’
‘You make it sound so easy,’ sighed Purushottam.
‘Don’t kid yourself, it’s never easy. You have to work at it, like everything else. What are you worrying about?’ he said reasonably to the silent, doubtful figure beside him.‘You’ve got virtually no family to make difficulties, and she’s got a family that could absorb half a dozen sons- and daughters-in-law, and never turn a hair.’
‘She has, hasn’t she?’ agreed Purushottam warmly, remembering and taking heart. ‘Not that I’m the best bargain there ever was in the marriage market. Did you know that even an ordinary close friendship with a fellow- student in England – a girl, that is – could send a bridegroom’s prospects crashing to the very bottom of the scale? And having crazy ideas about getting rid of your money, instead of making more and more, wouldn’t do a man’s chances any good, either. But
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Dominic encouragingly, ‘if they’re eccentric enough themselves positively to
‘Good, you hearten me.’ He lay still for a few minutes, his eyelids low over the dark, thoughtful eyes, his fingertips playing gently in the sand. ‘So now all we have to do is get clear of this tangle. Alive.’
‘That’s all.’
Purushottam sighed, stretched, turned on his side and scooped a hollow for his shoulder. In a few minutes he was asleep. Dominic braced his back into the slope of the ground, worked his heels comfortably into the sand and settled down to stay awake through the night.
They worked their way back to the road opposite the hotel at the first hint of daylight, some time before the sun began to colour the eastern sky. From the garden they could see the staff already stirring, and a light in one or two of the guest-rooms, where visitors were rousing themselves in good time to go out and see the sunrise. The timing appeared to be good; even if they were seen strolling in from the road and mounting the stairs to the balcony at this hour, they would merely be written off as eccentric enough, or over-anxious enough, to have got up an hour too early for the prescribed spectacle. They looked under the balcony for the carcase of the krait, and found it where Purushottam had let it fall, its bright black and white dulled now to a dim greyness. It was a reminder of a situation which was still with them, and still unchanged, but in the first light of day it was difficult to believe in it. The bedroom was as they had left it; no sign of any further intrusion, though they tended to handle things and move about the room with wincing care, and to watch every step they took.
‘Better wake the others, if they’re not up already,’ Dominic judged.
‘I think we’re leading the field this morning.’ But they were not. When they walked along the corridor it was to see the Bessancourts just descending the stairs, almost certainly going out to watch the sunrise before breakfast, prior to making their planned tour of the temple and the village afterwards. Dominic watched the two straight, square backs marching steadily away towards the outer doorway, and suddenly saw for the first time the immensity of what they had done. Even for a middle-aged English couple, taking up their roots and committing themselves and all their capital to a new and unknown life at this stage would have been a daunting step; for these twin pillars of the solidity of France it was at once lunatic and heroic. Ideal undertakings like Auroville so often foundered for want of both faith and works, and they had made no preliminary inspection on the spot – though no doubt there had been correspondence – but simply realised everything they had, and set out. Auroville was to be the end of their journey; they were committed. He thought, the chances of one dream being realised will at any rate go up several notches when those two arrive.
They knocked on Larry’s door, and elicited a sleepy grunt from within, and then a clearer utterance promising compliance. In a few minutes they heard him moving about, and the splash of the shower. They tapped on Priya’s door and got no answer.
‘Still asleep,’ said Purushottam. ‘Ought we to disturb her?’
They waited a little while, listening for any sound of activity from within. Then they knocked again, but still there was no answer. Larry opened his door to them, towelling his crew-cut vigorously, and still there was no reply from Priya.
‘Perhaps she’s dressed and gone out already, before we came,’ said Purushottam, arguing with himself. His face had grown pale, and his eyes large. ‘May I go through by the balcony, and see?’
They followed at his heels, across the room and out to the balcony beside the iron stairway. Priya’s window stood open, the curtains half-drawn across it, just as when they had passed it quietly on coming in. The quietness began to seem ominous, the pre-dawn light inauspicious, though it had not seemed so then.
Purushottam tapped at the glass. ‘Priya? Are you awake? Priya!…’
He knew she was not there; there was no sense of her presence, no lingering hint of her movements in the air, nothing. He opened the window wider, and went into the room.
The nearer of the two beds still bore the light imprint of her body, and was disarranged only as it would have been if she had recently risen from it in a perfectly normal way; but it was cold. The door was locked, and the key in the lock. Nothing seemed to be disturbed. But in the shower-room the film of water and the splashed drops from her overnight shower had already dried completely; the hand-basin, too, was dry, the towels were dry. The sari she had worn yesterday was draped neatly over the back of a chair in the bedroom, ready to put on again. Priya had neither washed nor dressed this morning. Of all her belongings, nothing was missing but her white night sari and her dark silk dressing-gown, and the sandals of light fawn leather she habitually wore.
‘Look,’ Larry said, hushed and uneasy, ‘she was writing a letter last night.’
The letter, to her Punjabi room-mate in the Nurses’ Home at Madras, was necessarily in English. It had reached
