Page 58 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

Murderous Wood (continued from page 44)
and criminal prevarication in a suspect; the way they hold their head, or look away when the critical ques- tion is asked. And that sixth sense tells me there’s something queer about these two fellows.”
“Bull,” Graves exclaimed. “Why you puffed-up excuse for a man. Guilty behavior indeed. Put you on the Front Line for a day and I’d like to see how your sixth sense works in an artillery barrage. Moore and his companion are probably just twitchy from all the fighting they’ve seen. And you like all the other stay- at-home citizens don’t know how to deal with a sol- dier when we come to your civilized world of English manners and civility.”
“Why don’t we give the accused men the benefit of the doubt, Inspector?” Eliot asked, hoping to deflect Graves’ emotional outbreak. “They’ve been to hell and back.”
“Yes,” Frazer added. “I agree with Graves, that the outward signs of nervousness you describe might well be the facial tics and stammerings associated with battle stress.”
“All right, Gentlemen,” Horwitz said, “I’ll give you some latitude and let you put your questions to them. But I know what I know, just as you do in your refined and soldierly pursuits, and I’ll bet my badge that one of them, if not both, are as guilty as hell of murder.”
~
The fear of the dead, which on the whole, I believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the making of primitive religion.
—Sir James George Frazer
The jail beneath Scotland Yard was as harsh and as unfeeling as it’d been in Dickens’s day. Eliot half expected to see young Oliver Twist hunched over
in a last-minute tête-à-tête with Fagin, his one-time felonious foster parent, soon to be hanged at Gal- lows Square. Inspector Horwitz escorted the small group into a long rectangular room, which opened at the either end to iron bars and armed guards. On the enclosed sides of the rectangle were small holding cells that looked out onto a common space where two soldiers sat at opposite ends of a trestle table bolted to the floor.
Frazer noticed their taupe uniforms so different from Graves’ tunic and probably more conducive to the sandy landscapes of Palestine. Yet beyond the uni- forms the two men couldn’t have been more differ- ent. Lieutenant Moore was tall and blond with fair
skin and blue eyes, his face still reddened by the Mediterranean sun. The other was a Hindu who wore a turban in a proud upward spiral, framing a face both coffee-colored and broad. It was a familiar physiognomy to Frazer who recognized it from his days on the Indian sub-continent, indicative of the tribal groups baked of the plains of the Southern Raj. Compared to Moore’s hulking presence the Hindu appeared delicate and lithe as he slid from his seat, his hooded eyes quick yet withdrawn as if sheltering some thoughts better left unsaid in the back recesses of his mind.
After an explanation as to their visitor’s presence by the Inspector, Moore spoke first: “It was provi- dent that Bill sent you to see me, Captain Graves. You’ll see these charges are absurd once you’ve heard the facts.”
“And you,” Horowitz said nodding at the Indiaman, “I’ve forgotten your name again. Unpronounceable bollywash. What is it?”
“Sergeant Gaoushik Hariaksh at your service,” the young soldier answered with a surprising cockney accent, snapping upright with a slight click of his heels. “I am a member of the Rajputana Rifles,” he recited as if on parade. “We’ve been in existence since 1817, first under the East India Company and then the Royal British Army. We defeated the Marathas
in the Battle of Kirkee, then in 1880 during the 2nd Afghan war, we marched 145 miles in 5 days to lay siege and take Kandahar. In 1900 we quelled the Boxer rebellion in China. In the Palestine War we fight with General Allenby and recently captured Je- rusalem. For this determined fight, in the face of the combined German and Turkish armies, we received the honorific “The Prince of Wales’s Own.”
Frazer smiled at this display of martial pride; a man obviously happy with his lot in life. He noticed the regimental patch displayed on Sergeant Hariaksh’s tunic just below his right shoulder; a powder horn and muskets suspended by cords above a pair of rampant elephants, and just beneath them a pair
of serrated daggers. Looking at Moore’s shoulder patch he noticed a more typical English set of sym- bols depicting a village green overarched by crossed lightning bolts, and surrounded by garlands of woven branches.
“A distinguished military record, I see,” Frazer said taking Hariaksh’s hand. “But may I ask, how did you and Lieutenant Moore come to meet Colonel Rodg- ers here in Cambridge? A strange conjoining of ranks I would think: a command-post Colonel, an infantry
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