Stephanie by Winston Graham
III
Three people were taking tea at the Randolph Hotel. There had been a group of five to begin with. The solicitor, Mr Alan Webster, Colonel Henry Gaveston, James Locke and Teresa and Thomas Saunders, a defensive group, warding off the press. ‘Tell me, Mr Locke, what were your feelings when you were told of your daughter’s death?’ ‘Did you know your daughter was in India with this twice-married man?’ Taking refuge in the hotel they had talked business for five minutes, then Webster went to pick up his car with a commitment to be in touch again as soon as the date of the readjourned inquest was known.
Henry Gaveston left a moment later, feeling they would prefer to be alone but taking with him a galling sense of guilt that, as Bursar with responsibility for the well-being of the students of St Martin’s, he had let his old friend down by not keeping a closer or better eye on his daughter. His was a virulent frustration, knowing that while he and James talked at the Hanover Club about Stephanie’s life and prospects Stephanie was already lying dead in the city mortuary. He could only imagine how James was feeling. Soon he must go to see him and bitterly grieve for his own failure; but it did not seem appropriate to say anything more now.
And James sipped at a cup of tea and no one knew what he was feeling for he kept it very quiet. In the days before the inquest he had felt unable to believe anything. Even the identification … She had still looked pretty, so pretty and so pale lying like a broken flower. Only now and then reality broke in. This formal inquiry he had just witnessed had left him unbelieving. But there were ghastly rents in the canopy of disbelief – a sudden material one when the pathologist had been giving his evidence: his knife had cut into her body, dismembering, eviscerating, defiling, with hacksaw, chisel, mallet; James had choked and nearly left the court. And in the evidence of Errol Colton: the true defiling had come from him, through him, by his actions, by his smooth lies …
Eventually unable to bear the silence any longer Teresa plunged in. ‘The police superintendent says they are going to release the flat tomorrow morning, Daddy, so Tom and I can go round. There’s absolutely no need to upset yourself further.’
‘I went in yesterday,’ James said. There had been surprisingly little of her about, the most poignant things being the mortar board and gown that he had only seen her in once. (And how vividly her youth and blondeness had stood out, emphasised by the subfusc.) She had been uncaring about what she wore: there had only seemed a single rail of clothes.
‘I don’t know when we can move things,’ Teresa said. ‘Not yet, of course. But there’s books.’
‘Take what you want.’
‘And the rest?’
‘Oh …’ James put down his cup. ‘Whatever you think … You can bring some home – those that seem personal … There’s her room still, more or less untouched. She never liked anyone tampering with it. She never seemed to want to feel she had really left.’
‘I feel the same,’ said Teresa.
‘About the lease of the flat,’ said Tom. ‘How long does that, run?’
‘It’s paid till July. You could tell the estate agents. I imagine they’ll know …’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
James watched people going in and out of the room, undergraduates and their parents and girlfriends; and others not connected with the university, only connected with real life by the prosaic nature of their being alive. Two nineteen- or twenty-year-old girls, sisters probably, good-looking, well dressed, laughing and talking about no doubt the importance of the unimportant. Not Stephanie. Not Stephanie ever again. The peculiar personality, the charm, the talkativeness, the leggy elegance, the quirkiness of mood and mind; his blood, his daughter. Other girls, thousands upon thousands of other girls, all of some value, with one virtue or another, all prized by other parents, other lovers, all busy about private interests of their own, in which he had no part. Not Stephanie ever again.
He said: ‘About the funeral. I was told next week. She’ll be buried in Exton Tracey. It will be quite a way to go. Some of her local friends may not be able to make it. But it’s the family church.’
‘Of course.’
‘I hope it won’t be too far for you, Terry.’
Teresa looked down at her stomach. ‘Lord, no. I’m absolutely fine. And being a distance away may just choke off a few of these revolting paparazzi.’
‘Too much to hope,’ said Tom.
‘I only wish,’ Teresa said, and then stopped.
James picked up one of his sticks which had slid down beside his chair. ‘Wish what?’
‘Well, obviously …’
‘Don’t we all.’
Teresa said: ‘That man! I hope he sleeps badly for the rest of his life.’
‘I doubt if he will … I suppose he’s the type of man that impressionable young girls fall for.’
‘Not me,’ said Teresa. ‘ I didn’t take to him at all! He’s over life-size and everything comes too easily. I can’t understand. I simply can’t understand!’
‘What?’ Thomas said. ‘I mean what particularly?’
Teresa turned to him. ‘ Maybe you thought you knew my sister. I did know her. Well, if you want to go wild about someone and to feel terribly with it and live everything up, it may be a fairly good idea to swan off to India for a couple of weeks with a man like Errol Colton. Great. It’s a leaf in the book, a notch on the gun barrel, something to have done and be done with. Then, maybe if he is such a great lover that you can’t bear to part with him, it’s tough when you come home to become a single underprivileged undergraduate again, swotting for your Finals and he’s not around to hold your hand and tell you how wonderful you are! Bad luck. Boo-hoo. But beyond being merely miserable … She was always more up and down than I was. But not that far down! Good God, not that far!’
James said quietly: ‘More tea, Tom?’
‘Thank you, no.’
Teresa said: ‘Forgive me for going on about it, Daddy. I know how you must feel, just to talk about it hurts and hurts. And we’ve all been over this in our minds, over and over ever since we heard … Well, it’s done. She’s dead and gone. Your daughter and my sister. It’s done and there’s nothing we can do about it to bring her back. But I can’t accept it, how it seems to have happened, not even as a possibility!’
‘Nor can I,’ said James. ‘Nor will I.’
Chapter Three
I
It was called the Grove Garden Hotel and it was in Belgrave Road, near Victoria Station. It had been originally a smart town house, but unlike most of the hotels in the street it had not expanded to take in properties on either side. By dividing the upstairs drawing room three extra bedrooms had been created, bringing the total to fifteen. It was owned officially by a Mr and Mrs Daman Subarthi, who offered reduced terms for new arrivals from the subcontinent. White guests were always told the hotel was full and white staff were not engaged.
Naresh Prasad had been there four days. On the first day he had voided sixty-six packets, on the second ten; since then there had been nothing in spite of all the aperients.
At first the pain had gone – such an infinite relief – and he had thought all was well. But on the third day it had come back, not so comprehensively involving the whole abdomen, but down the left side – and just as acute. He would be free of it for a couple of hours, then it would return, gripping and griping until he groaned aloud and rolled backwards and forwards on the narrow iron bed, trying to ease it.
His hosts were waiting to know what they should do with him. Three days was the maximum any traveller of Nari’s kind had ever stayed before. They had got seventy-six packets, but the letter he carried stated definitely eighty. But it was not merely the four missing packages (which represented a street value of over a thousand pounds), it was that they could not risk him becoming ill and being taken to some hospital and the remaining packages coming into the possession of the police. He knew too much. Probably he would be too scared to talk, but you never could be sure how a drugs enforcement
It was possible of course that Nari had voided the four packages earlier somewhere along the way and had passed them on to a confederate in Brussels to make a profit for himself. Or the packages had caused an inflammation of the bowel which had closed on them and would not allow them to pass. A third possibility could not be considered seriously, for if the packages had burst open or leaked the carrier would be dead.
In the meantime he moaned at frequent intervals and would eat nothing. Even the castor oil he sicked up.
Nari had become aware that the people here, even the two women, were not remotely interested in him as a human being and did not care whether he lived or died. He was simply an embarrassment and a danger to them, threatening the possibility of exposure, imprisonment or deportation for them all, the break-up of a safe and profitable house.
On the fourth day in mid-morning he had a period of temporary easement and got out of bed and put on his smart shirt and long-sleeved white sweater, pulled on his trousers and shoes. From his window he looked out at the traffic in the street, the parked cars, the hurrying people. All so much more prosperous than Bombay – no beggars, no street-sellers, no rubbish, no broken pavements. But apart from that he thought there was very little difference. Civilisation created the rush, the pressure, the noise, the indifference.
On the table by the bed were the remains of his breakfast: samosas and sponge cake, and he tasted a spoonful. It was cold and unappetising but this time it went down. He finished the plate, anxious to disperse the wind in his stomach. As he did so he caught sight of himself in the mirror, his face sallower than ever, drawn, cadaverous.
Yet he was a little better. His strength was returning, even though the dread of the pain hung heavy in his mind. He must get away from here. To save his health he must get away. His fingers fumbled as he tied his smart tie. He struggled into his long-waisted grey jacket.
He must face them, demand that he should be paid what was owed him and set free to enjoy his three weeks in England. At the very least they must give him some idea of their intentions.
He turned the handle of the door and found it opened. (At night it was locked.) In the passage outside a Tamil maid was cleaning out the next-door room; dirty sheets and a towel and a pillow case were in a heap by the door. He stepped over them and went downstairs.
Subdued voices on the first floor. One was that of Mr Subarthi, the other that of Pavel, the man who usually brought him his food.
‘Well, we can’t go on much longer,’ Pavel said, talking in Hindi. ‘Why don’t we call Dr Yaqoob?’
‘What could he do? We have no facilities for surgery here.’
‘Would that matter?’
‘Well, my God. We cannot have the hotel turned into a slaughter place! … Personally I would like to put him on the next plane back to India, have done with him. But we must get permission first. Or send him back to Brussels – where he could be met, safeguarded.’
‘If we have to, it’s better to be rid of him here. Take him to that high-rise building where Miss Roberto has her offices. A convenient fall …’
‘Like Sita Ram? But that was a different case in which his guilt was proven … Anyway, we must wait until instructions come through, I tell you. Meantime see he does not talk to passing guests. When a man is ill it unlooses his tongue.’
Nari crept past, his heart thumping. He was weak and lightheaded but fear gave him strength. He had had no intention when leaving his bedroom of doing more than confront these men; but their answers had been plainly given him. If he once went up again he might never be allowed down. He patted his pocket. They had his passport, but the wallet he had brought with him was still there. It held fifty pounds in ten-pound notes and some English silver. Of course he had been paid nothing of what had been promised him here.
On the ground floor no one was about. The front door was closed but it seemed improbable that in a hotel it would be locked. Someone was banging about in the kitchen. A little reception desk on the right of the door had a register upon it and a board on the wall with keys hanging. No one in the hall at all.
Holding his breath, he slid behind the counter, turned the key that was in the drawer in the desk. Here were more keys and a bundle of English notes. He grabbed at them and stuffed them in his hip pocket. A voice was calling now. Pavel’s voice.
When he opened the front door the light outside made him blink, and the cold air caught at his breath. His grey coat was far too thin for this climate and he had no hat. Shivering he went down the five steps and turned towards Victoria Station. Just now there were not enough people to hide him, but he had the presence of mind not to run.
II
Thirteen five-pound notes in the bundle he had grabbed. It was largely luck that had made him take the direction of Victoria Station, but when he saw it and the signpost Underground he dived into it, and decided to take a train to Oxford Circus. It was a more or less random choice, but he had a cousin living in Oxford. He knew that that was not in London, but he thought the name might bring him good luck. After a couple of false starts and being sent back to buy a ticket, he caught a tube and sat in it hunched up and sickly until the name moved across the windows in front of him. Then he was out again and into the crowded streets, wandering and cold and lost and in pain again, but free. Temporarily free.
He walked about for a bit and stopped before a shop that offered cut-price clothing. Fingering his money, he hesitated long and then went in and bought a waistcoat, a scarf, a trilby hat and a pair of gloves.
The assistant seemed friendly enough, so Nari asked if he knew how he could get to Edgbaston, Birmingham, where relatives were expecting him.
‘Birmingham? Cheapest would be long-distance bus, mate, but I don’t know where you catch it. Next best is train. Euston’s the station.’
‘Eustons? Is that in London?’
‘I’ll say. From here … look, you can turn left and keep straight on till you get to Oxford Circus, then a tube will take you to the station. If you can afford it, you could be there in ten minutes in a taxi. Cost you a couple of quid.’
‘Quid?’
‘Pounds. Maybe less; traffic isn’t bad today. You all right? You’re looking seedy.’
‘Thank you,’ Nari said with dignity, ‘I am very well.’
Nevertheless he took a taxi, as the pain was hovering.
III
Satish Mehta had been living in England for twenty years. He was a kind but grumpy man of fifty-five with a thin energetic wife and five children, all born, with the exception of his eldest boy, Prem, in England. Two of the children were still at school, the eldest of them helped in the shop.
A prosperous business, for it was at the corner of intersecting streets, the side streets being so unimportant that parking in them was still permitted, and he was on the edge of a comfortable middle-class area of white people who might shop mainly in the supermarkets but found Mehta useful not only as a sub-post office but for all the shortfalls in their domestic purchases.
Before the Mehtas came an English family called Robinson had run the shop with far greater efficiency than the Mehtas and kept open just as long, but the Mehtas still made a comfortable living and slept seven in the small accommodation over the shop. They had hopes of Prem, who was studying to pass his degree as a chemist, and father Mehta had already taken a lease on the shop next door to turn it into a chemist’s shop when his son qualified. There were two doctors’ surgeries nearby.
Prem was finding it hard work and had failed the exams once. In this he was a disappointment to his parents, chiefly to his mother who had most of the enterprise of the family. The younger children yawned their way through the days, and her husband suffered from catarrh and found the climate depressing. Sometimes she thought he only came properly alive when the subject of cricket was mentioned. His children shared this passion, and when there was a test match at the nearby county ground the shop was almost unstaffed. In a recess of the small recess g
One afternoon early in May there appeared in the shop a tall young Indian who looked to them like a Rajasthani, in a thin grey waisted coat and a brown trilby hat; his face was haggard and drawn and he had not recently shaved. He asked the boy behind the cheese counter if he could see Mr Satish Mehta.
The boy gestured with his knife and said briefly: ‘Post office.’
At the back of the shop behind the usual counter and grille a plump balding Indian was filling up forms. After due time he looked up.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Satish Mehta?’ the young man said.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Mehta. I am your cousin, Naresh.’
Mehta’s smooth gloomy face did not change. ‘ Cousin Naresh? Who is that? Who are you?’
The young man’s face twitched as in a spasm of pain. ‘Naresh Prasad, Cousin Satish. From Bombay. I am but recently arrived from Bombay. Last Thursday I was in Bombay. I came by air, on a Boeing 747, in but a few hours. My mother … my mother was first cousin to your wife’s sister-in-law, Ania. They send you greetings from Indore.’
Mehta’s face did not relax. ‘It will soon be thirty years since I was in Indore. Then I was a young man, younger than you. You must ask my wife about her cousins – I know nothing of them. She is at the main till. You must ask her.’