the water alone.’
‘I fear,’ said the Swami apologetically, ‘that he may succeed in reaching his own.’ He pointed into the lee of the headland, where they could just see the high prow of a smaller boat, almost hidden under the jutting rocks where Priya stood with Sushil Dastur, and by its slight, rhythmic motion riding to anchor. ‘I could not beach it alone, either, I had to leave it afloat. Though of course,’ he added reasonably, ‘it may not be his own, it may very well be stolen.’
‘Where is he now?’ The swimmer was out of sight, concealed by the rocks. When he appeared again, it was off the point, in quieter water, and well clear of the saw-edged reefs.
‘He’s seen the boat,’ cried Purushottam. ‘He’s coming in for it!’ He turned to run across the narrow, grassy crest of the headland, with the intention of setting off down the path and reaching the shore first, but he halted before he had gone many yards, and Dominic checked with him. ‘Not a chance! He’ll be there long before we shall.’
Sushil Dastur had also marked the fugitive’s change of course. He looked down into the blue, bright water beneath him, and saw the long, vigorous strokes carrying the swimmer steadily nearer; he saw a long arm stretched up to get a hold on the gunwale, and a brown shoulder heaving up out of the water. He had discarded the wrapping from round his head, or the surf had taken it, and streaming black hair half-covered his face. His hands gripped strongly; he rested for a moment, and then heaved himself steadily up to climb aboard.
It was too much for Sushil Dastur. He saw the enemy escaping, after all the evil he had done, after all they had risked in this one night to render him ineffective for ever.
His sense of justice was outraged. He stooped to prise loose and hoist in his arms the largest stone he could lift, and hurled it down at the boat below. It seemed an endless while falling, before they saw it strike near the stern in a flurry of splinters and spray, causing the boat to plunge wildly and ship water; but it was a glancing blow, and the stone rebounded into the sea, though it took a length of shattered planking with it. The swimmer had clung tenaciously to his hold through the shock, and as soon as the boat righted, he hauled himself dripping over the side.
Silently they watched as he stooped to slash the riding line free, and leaned with all his weight on the heavy bamboo pole, thrusting off into deeper water. Slow though his progress upcoast might be, it would serve to get him out of sight, and ashore in some safer place, before they could do anything to prevent.
Sushil Dastur came clambering back to the headland, leading Priya with anxious solicitude. She came to Purushottam’s side, and took her place there, but without a word as yet, her face drained and exhausted; and Purushottam, without a word, took her hand and held it. They watched the wake of the little boat stagger its way out to sea, and dwindle drunkenly up-coast; and already it seemed to them that it was settling a little in the water, and listing to one side like a limping man.
‘I do not think,’ said the Swami, between reassurance and concern, ‘that he will get very far.’
The wreckage of the foundered boat did not begin to drift ashore for several days, and then most of it made its way to the Keralese beaches further to the north-west. But the boatman was brought in by the next tide, less than a mile up-coast.
The police took Dominic and Purushottam out by jeep to identify the body. Alone upon a brilliant expanse of dark crimson and jet-black sands, like an imperial pall, stripped of his last length of saffron cloth and naked as the day he was born, lay the muscular body and once agreeable and obliging face of Romesh Iyar, the boat-boy of Thekady.
Fifteen
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They sat in one of the small, seaward lounges of the hotel that evening, after Priya had slept through most of the day, after the Manis had departed, stunned and incredulous, without Sushil Dastur, and the Bessancourts, grieved but unshaken, without Romesh Iyar, and after Larry had cruised his way in a local boat fruitlessly but gallantly up the coast and down again, only to hear that everything had happened without him, and that everything was over.
The hotel was very quiet, most of its guests out on the dunes or in the village, enjoying the cool of the evening after sundown. The police had completed their notes and interrogations, and departed, taking with them Romesh Iyar’s rifle, stolen during the night from the belongings of one of the room-boys on duty, but strongly suspect of being the same one originally stolen from the baggage of a well-to-do guest more than a year previously. At Malaikuppam, tomorrow, Inspector Raju would be waiting to close his file on the case. Even the sad, repulsive carcase of the krait had been removed from under the balcony. The traces were being softly sponged away out of half a dozen lives, but only to make way for something new, which in its turn had arisen out of the old.
So they sat in the hotel lounge, Priya, the Swami, Purushottam, Larry, Dominic and Sushil Dastur, and told one another whatever remained to be told.
‘After I had spoken with you,’ said the Swami, ‘I knew that I must come. The miscalculation that sent you here was mine. There at Malaikuppam it was already clear that no one was interested in us, and even more clear that Lakshman Ray is a very honest, estimable, though perhaps rather stiff-necked young man. He will accept any challenge if he thinks a reflection has been made upon him. And indeed I did, for a while, entertain the thought that he might be the person for whom we were looking, since it had to be someone, and apparently someone closely connected with your party. Lakshman is showing a marked interest in our programme for Malaikuppam, by the way. I hope you don’t mind, Purushottam, that I discussed it with him? He is an intelligent boy. I think we must see that he completes his university course, he may be very useful in the future. Now where was I? Oh, yes! I thought I should join you here at once. So I took my hired car – if you had approached from the lane instead of the garden you would have seen and recognised it – and drove down here at once. Lakshman is in charge in Malaikuppam, should there be anything needing attention. I arrived here somewhat after midnight – no, later, it must have been nearly one o’clock – parked my car, and walked a little way towards the road and the dunes, in case I might be able to find you somewhere. So it happened that I was the first person to encounter Sushil Dastur. But Sushil will tell you.’
Sushil Dastur, in some celebratory exuberance, had put on his
‘You see, Mr Felse, Mr Narayanan, after I left you I was so upset, so ashamed, I could not possibly go to bed and sleep. I could not think how to make things right, and I was so restless, I went out to walk a little. I was among the trees at the edge of the garden, when I saw this man going out to the road, driving Miss Madhavan before him… It was terrible! He held her by a cord tied to her wrists, and he had a knife in his hand. You understand, I was afraid to call for help or make any sound, for fear he should kill her. So I followed them. It was
