Free The Deceivers by John Masters Page A

‘Don’t look, dear. It’s ghastly.’
    She took his hands and held them. He saw that she was looking over his shoulder at the lonely bones. Her mouth set and she turned her eyes to his. He was afraid to meet them. She said, ‘You were right. I knew they thought you were seeing things. And now you can show them -- Daddy and all the rest of them!’
    He looked up in astonished wonder. ‘I was right? Show them what?’
    ‘You’ve found out something really big. Oh, it’s horrible, but you have discovered it, because you wouldn’t let that girl die!’
    His mind whirled. He had not been thinking in that fashion. She went on, ‘Now you’re going to catch this gang. They must be a gang. And you will save so many more people’s lives.’ She looked straight at him, and her eyes were like sapphires. With her, he would succeed all right, and make George Angelsmith smirk the other side of his scented, damned face!
    She said in a businesslike voice, ‘I’ve sent the bullock cart with our baggage on to Madhya. I’ve brought blankets on the horses, and some food. How long do you think you’ll have to stay here?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘I’ll stay with you. Here --’ She gave him brandy and a cold chicken and warm chupattis. She brought out salve and bandages and patched the wounds showing on his face and hands. Then she sat beside him and held his hand and did not speak.
    The digging continued through the afternoon and evening. Grumbling women arrived from the scattered holdings, bringing food. They set lanterns on the ground and held torches. The men dug. There were places where no one could dig, where the tree roots grew thick together; but in all the open spaces they burrowed into the earth. Travellers passed along the road; the police brought more in; William scanned them all closely and asked them questions. None had been among the party of murderers, he thought. Their recollections of other travellers were vague and useless.
    On the ground the row of skulls and thigh bones grew longer. A second row had to be started, a third. Some of the bones were older than the first they had uncovered, so old as to be pockmarked with the small holes of organic decay. Some were so fresh that the maggoty flesh still clung to them, and the strangler’s mark was clear on their necks. They had all been mutilated. Where flesh survived, great driven holes showed through chest and belly. Every major joint had been broken back on itself. Big men, so smashed and folded, took no more space than a child; children, broken, became small square bundles. There were no women recognizable. The strong sweet smell of death filled the grove. The diggers dug with the ends of their turbans flung across their mouths and spat frequently. Mary watched with lips tight and blue eyes afire in the lamp- light.
    As the second dawn broke, Chandra Sen’s face was as grey as the light, and his hand lay cold on William’s arm. ‘I am sorry. You were right.’
    William counted. There were sixty-eight bodies -- rather, sixty-eight skulls. None could tell now how many bodies there might have been. Some had lain here years beyond reckoning, two centuries perhaps. The newest was not more than a week in the earth. The bodies of the Sikh farmer and his son had not been found.
    The strength had gone out of William’s legs. Sher Dil helped him on to his horse. ‘Chandra Sen, let your men rest,’ he said feebly, ‘then bury all these again. Cause Hindu and Mohammedan prayers to be said over the grave. I will send back the priest from Kahari as I pass, and the maulvi from Madhya.’
    His head sunk on his chest, he let the horse walk at its own pace down the road. Miles passed and he did not speak. He did not feel the burning sun, or hear the robin in a tree, or see the cheetal stag arching across the path ahead. He did not notice the travellers on the road who stared up at him, or the men in the fields, and he did not know that his wife was at his side. He