Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

He returned to the present with a jolt: their own gate was opening and the person pushing it open was a policeman.

“Nobody is to bother your mother,” Amulya said to Nirmal. He turned to his wife. “You’re not to talk to anyone, have you understood? Now, is my bath water ready or not? What has happened today? Is everyone stuck at a window?”

Not getting a response from either Nirmal or Kananbala, he went outside to the head of the stairs and yelled, “Shibu! Is anyone around? Bring my bath water. What a bunch of fools, something happens to a stranger and they forget everything else.”

Kananbala was peering so hard at an upper window in the opposite house that Nirmal said, “Are you feeling alright?”

“Babu, the police are here,” Shibu called out in a high quaver from downstairs a little later. Amulya gave up all thought of his bath. He smoothed his clothes and went downstairs to the drawing room.

* * *

The policeman had finished asking everyone questions, even Gouranga, who stammered that he was always asleep by nine-thirty and had seen nothing. The policeman tapped an impatient finger on the arm of his chair and with a preoccupied air refused another offer of tea, then called the servant back and said, “Alright, tea, bring me a cup, my throat’s dry with all the talking.” He turned to Amulya, running his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. “Is that all? Is there anyone else in this house?”

“Only my wife, but there’s no need to bother my wife, is there, Inspector Sahib?” Amulya said. “She is ill and never goes out. In fact none of us in this house have anything to do with those people.”

“Precisely, Amulya Babu, precisely!” the policeman said with new energy. “She never goes out and you said your room is right opposite that house. What does that make her?”

“What?” Amulya said.

“Makes her a witness. Bird’s eye view. Ideal witness. We have to ask her if she saw anything.”

“But she is not well,” Amulya repeated, full of trepidation.

“No need for worry, Amulya Babu,” the policeman said, soothing. “We are human too. Give us a chance, we are servants of the state, doing our jobs.”

* * *

Kananbala looked at the drawing room with wondering eyes. It was perhaps a year since she had been in that room. It seemed dark, a little musty. It seemed to have many more cushioned chairs, heavy carved arms poking out from the sheets that shrouded them. Why were they covered? she wondered. Were there no visitors at all? Did they never use the room? “Why the sheets?” she asked in a whisper, and Amulya said tersely, “Dust.”

She saw that the polished table-tops were dull with dust. What were her daughters-in-law doing?

Kamal steered her by an elbow into a chair. Kananbala’s face was hooded by the aanchal of her sari. She took a quick look past its awning at the policeman.

“So Mataji,” said the inspector, “Did you see anything? Tell me everything. Even what you do not think important. Especially what you don’t think important.” He turned to Amulya and Kamal: “One’s work has over the years taught one that witnesses often leave out the most crucial detail. They cannot know what is useful for a police investigation.”

“Of course, of course,” Kamal said, crooking his thumbs through the striped braces of his trousers. “Witnesses have no sense of the value of certain clues.”

Kananbala tried to slow her thundering heart. After all her isolation, to have to speak before a stranger, and on something so important, something that might save her friend’s life. She would surely get it wrong. Taking a deep breath, she said, “What would an old woman do lying? Yes, I did see something.”

“Go on, Mataji,” the policeman said with a warning look at Amulya.

“The poor man had just come back. He must have been tired, these British people work so hard. He had been away for several days.”

“How many?” the policeman asked, and turning to his deputy rapped out, “Noting everything, aren’t you?”

“I think three or four days.”

“Carry on.”

“There were some tribals waiting at his gate. The guard was not there. It was already quite late, and the road was dark. They surrounded him and they were arguing and fighting. One of them was very tall, with long hair, very dark.”

“Did you hear what they said, Mataji?” the policeman asked. “Did anyone have a knife? Could you see their faces? Would you recognise them?”

Kananbala seemed to flail under the flurry of questions, making a few incoherent noises in response. Amulya, alarmed, half rose to take her away. The policeman gestured him down and returned to her.

“Did you see any weapon?”

“The tall man had something at his waist. But I can’t say. It was dark, I could not see so clearly. My eyesight … the doctor has said I need new glasses, but for that my eyes need to be tested and … And they were fighting: something about the mine in the forest, and money. They are poor people after all and they have homes in the forest … ”

“What happened then, Mataji?” The policeman tried patiently. Old ladies had to be handled with care.

“Then there was a scuffle, some confusion, what happened inside the crowd I couldn’t see. But the group left quickly, ran away. And the man was on the ground.”

“Where was Mrs Barnum? The guard says she had gone out and given him the evening off as she always did when her husband was away.” He turned to Amulya and said, “Strange thing to do, isn’t it? You would think she needed the guard with her husband away.”

“Oh, she was at home all night after she came back. I saw her coming back. It must have been quite early still — I had not yet had dinner. Then she was upstairs,” Kananbala said, pausing as if trying to remember. “I can see her quite clearly from my bedroom window when her light is on. She often forgets to draw her curtain. She was sitting at her window and yes, of course! For a little while she played her piano. Didn’t you hear it?” Kananbala asked Amulya.

Amulya looked at her and said, “Piano?” He wanted to tell her not to talk so much. Could it be long before one of her vulgarities slipped out? What if she called the policeman a cuckolded jackass as she had the gardener just before he left?

“Well, she plays something every night and Nirmal told me it’s a piano. What do I know of such things?”

“Did you see Mrs Barnum come down?”

“She didn’t know he was back, I think. Poor girl! Maybe she never heard the car with her piano playing!” Kananbala said, “To think she stayed up all night in her room not knowing her husband was bleeding to death downstairs. She might have been able to save him. How she must torment herself with the thought.” Kananbala sighed.

The policeman scribbled in his notebook and then turned to Amulya: “She will have to be a witness.”

“Out of the question,” Amulya said.

A month passed, and half of another. The Barnum murder began to fade from memory. In the absence of reliable witnesses, the investigation lost its top priority status and files went from desk to desk, losing a page here, getting dog-eared and tea-ringed there. It was a messy affair into which the mining company did not press for much poking about. Digby Barnum’s short temper and foul mouth had not earned him many friends at his workplace, and besides, other cans of worms lay buried that might inadvertently be unearthed. The man reputed to be Mrs Barnum’s lover left town. The police lost his trail in Calcutta — from where he had fled to Sydney, people said. The house opposite 3 Dulganj Road seemed to have stepped away from the town. There were no parties, and Mrs Barnum hardly ever left the house. People stopped talking about the killing.