'Exactly what Ronnie Ross thought,' said Murugan. 'Thought he'd found the lab of his dreams when he first got here.'
Urmila stepped back from the wall. 'So how was it that Ross came to be here?' she said. She ran her eyes over the smoothed-out sheets of paper in her hands. 'Was it this man D. D. Cunningham who invited him here?'
'No,' said Murugan. 'Exactly the opposite. Cunningham did everything he could to make sure that Ross wouldn't get here. Ronnie wrote him begging letters every couple of months, and Cunningham's answers were always the same, short and simple: no dice.'
'But still,' said Urmila, 'Ronald Ross did come here, didn't he?'
'That's right,' said Murugan. 'Cunningham stonewalled Ross for more than a year. And then one day, in January 1898, right out of the blue, Cunningham caved. In fact he handed in his resignation and left for England in such a hurry he forgot to pack his boxer shorts. On January 30 the Government of India finally approved Ronnie Ross's transfer to Calcutta.
'The official story is that all this was just coincidence: old Cunningham was aching for the honeysuckled cottages of Ye Olde England. Well, where he ended up was in a boarding house in Surrey with a view of the municipal gasworks. You're going to tell me he left his cosy little setup out here for that just because he was homesick for English muffins? Well, let me tell you: I don't buy it.'
'So what are you saying then?' said Urmila. 'Why do you think he left?'
'I don't have the answer to that,' said Murugan. 'But it's clear that something happened round the middle of January 1898 that made Cunningham change his mind. And it was no accident either: somebody worked pretty hard to set it up.'
Urmila examined her papers again. 'Here, look at this,' she said, pointing at a line. 'It says here that D. D. Cunningham was granted six days' leave in the middle of January – from the 10th to the 15th of February. That's when it must have happened.'
'Right,' said Murugan. 'And look at the date on that railway reservation chart: on the 10th of January 1898 somebody called C. C. Dunn took a train to Madras.'
'And who was that?'
'No one,' said Murugan. 'That's just it. I think someone is trying to get the message across that D. D. Cunningham travelled to Madras under a false name on that day.'
' Madras?' said Urmila scowling at the papers. 'Why Madras? What could have happened there? I suppose there's no way of finding out since it happened so long ago?'
'So you'd think,' said Murugan, 'I mean it's not like you can look up something that happened in Madras in 1898 in the back issues of Time, right? But the fact is that I do happen to know about a guy called C. C. Dunn who was in Madras about that time. Only I'd never connected him with D. D. Cunningham. Not until this morning, when I took those papers out of your hands. They were the missing link, you see; they tie it all together.'
'And how did you learn about this C. C… whoever he was?'
'Because someone wanted me to,' said Murugan. 'It's a long story. Are you sure you're up for it?'
Urmila nodded emphatically.
'A few years ago,' Murugan began, 'I was trying to update the malaria archive at the outfit where I work. I was three months into the North Africa and Middle East files when I came upon a weird report of a small, extremely localized epidemic in northern Egypt, about thirty miles south of Alexandria. The population of a tiny hamlet was wiped out in a period of a few days. There were no recurrences, no further outbreaks. This hamlet was settled by a family of migrants from the south – Coptic Christians. They didn't have much to do with their neighbours and they were a long way from the nearest village. When their bodies were discovered they were already in an advanced state of decomposition.'
'What sort of epidemic was it?' said Urmila.
'No one's sure,' said Murugan. 'There were no autopsies. In fact the only reason we know about it at all is because a British health officer wrote a short report on it. This was in 1950, soon after the war, and the British were basically still running the place. This health officer was a competent, nononsense guy, from the sound of it: he'd spent his whole career in Egypt. By the time he visited the hamlet the bodies had been disposed of. But he reported two kinds of anecdotal evidence about the symptoms of the deceased: swollen neck glands and large numbers of tiny skin perforations, like insect bites. He thought it might be an exceptionally virulent strain of malaria but he had no way of confirming his hunch. People from the surrounding villages said that there might be a survivor: the body count left one fourteen-year-old boy unaccounted for. He was reported to have been seen at the railway station in a nearby town at about the time of the outbreak. The health officer thought he might be a carrier, and he tried to find him. He thought an examination of the boy might yield a clue to what had happened. But he was never found.'
'So they had no idea what happened?'
'Basically, no. The health officer admitted he didn't know what the fuck had happened. He added that the only time he'd heard of similar symptoms was some twenty or more years before, down south, in Luxor. Someone had told him that the archaeology buff Lord Carnarvon had died of a mosquito bite that had led to a fever and swollen neck glands. He even quoted from a letter written by his lordship's daughter, just before he bit the dust. "You know the mosquito bite on his [Papa's] cheek that was worrying him at Luxor, well yesterday quite suddenly all the glands in his neck started swelling and last night he had a high temperature and still has today.'"
'I don't follow,' said Urmila. 'We were talking about something that is supposed to have happened in Madras in 1898. How did we end up in Egypt fifty years later?'
'That's exactly what I'm trying to explain,' said Murugan. 'That's what comes next. What happened was this: after I found the health officer's report, I began asking around to see if anyone had any leads on this. I even posted some queries on a couple of chat groups on the Web. One day I logged on and there was this long message waiting for me: pages and pages long. There was no address or anything on it: it had been sent anonymously. I soon discovered that whoever sent it went to a lot of trouble to make sure that I wouldn't find out who they were: it had been routed and re-routed so many different ways I couldn't even begin to trace it.'
'And what did the message say?' Urmila asked.
'It was an excerpt from a book written by a Czech psycho-linguist. The excerpt was about a Hungarian highsociety type, who became a distinguished amateur archaeologist and professional eccentric – one Countess Pongracz. Towards the end of her life she moved to Egypt. The last time she was seen was in 1950: she was on her way to do a dig somewhere near this hamlet where the outbreak happened. No one knows what happened to her.'
'I still don't see the connection with Madras in January 1898,' said Urmila.
'I was just getting to that,' said Murugan. 'In her youth La Pongracz was a kind of prototype of a sixties jet-setter, travelling around the world, picking up gurus and stuff. And in January 1898 she was nineteen years old, just starting on her long career. And where do you think she was?'
'Where?' said Urmila.
'In India,' said Murugan. ' Madras to be exact. Now you'd reckon that if a guru-groupie was down in that part of the world at that time they'd home in on Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society like a heat-seeking missile seeks heat. But you'd be wrong. This Countess Pongracz was a real guru-gourmet and she didn't go in for any of that heat-and-serve stuff. The guru she settled on was Madame Blavatsky's arch-rival – a Finnish number called Madame Liisa Salminen, who ran her own little outfit called the Society of Spiritualists. The Countess was Madame Salminen's leading disciple, and she noted down everything that happened to her guru.'
Chapter 31
ON THE NIGHT of January 12 1898, records the Grofne Pongracz, a select few Spiritualists gathered, as was their custom, at a house rented by the Society for their weekly seance with Mme Salminen. Several independent sources attest that these seances were generally stately, highly regulated affairs. They usually began with a small reception, with Mme Salminen holding court and handing out cups of China tea. On this occasion however the solemnity of the tea-party was rudely interrupted by an unlikely and unexpected intruder. There were many in Madras who coveted invitations to join Mme Salminen's circle of intimates. Some had been known to go to considerable lengths to infiltrate the group. Thus it was not the mere fact of the arrival of an uninvited guest that took the assembled Spiritualists by surprise: rather it was because the man in question did not seem to be even remotely the kind of person who might wish to be associated with such a group. Quite the contrary. It ought to be noted that in general the Spiritualists, Theosophists and their fellowtravellers looked upon British civilian and military officialdom with undisguised loathing – a sentiment that was reciprocated in more than ample measure. Such was their mutual revulsion that in the barrack-rooms of Madras 's Fort St George, the phrase 'I would rather be a Spiritualist', when uttered by a cavalryman, was generally regarded as the equivalent, in connotative association, to such statements as 'I would rather be dead'.