Arctic Summer Read Free Page B

to him.
    â€œI wonder why Searight wanted to kill him,” he said.
    â€œWhat?” Goldie said. “Whatever do you mean?”
    He reminded Goldie of the incident, which had occurred nearly two weeks before, at Port Said. A strange story had gone around the ship: the Indian had reported his cabin-mate to the steward for wanting to throw him overboard, but then the two of them had made it up and became the best of friends again. Morgan hadn’t thought about it much at the time, but now it had returned to him, in the shape of this troubling question.
    Goldie blinked in confusion. “Oh, but you’re mistaken,” he said. “That wasn’t Searight.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo, certainly not. It was Searight who told the story to me.”
    â€œOf course,” Morgan said, suddenly very embarrassed. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
    It was a leap of logic to assume that Searight was sharing a cabin with the Indian; such an arrangement was unlikely. Morgan didn’t know how the idea had come to him. But afterwards, even when he knew it was untrue, he continued to be fascinated by what he’d imagined. Lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky, breeding dreams of murder: he sensed the beginnings of a story.

C HAPTER T WO M ASOOD
    T he voyage to India had begun several years before, and on very dry land. In November of 1906, Morgan and his mother had been living in Weybridge, Surrey, for just over two years, when one of their neighbours, Mrs. Morison, who was friendly with the Forsters, made an unusual enquiry. Did Lily know of anybody who might be able to act as a Latin tutor to a young Indian man who was about to go up to Oxford?
    â€œI wondered, dear,” Lily enquired, “whether you might have any interest . . . ?”
    â€œCertainly,” Morgan said immediately. He had taught Latin at the Working Men’s College in London for the past couple of years, but his curiosity ran deeper than his competence. Who was this young man from the other side of the world, what was he doing in suburban England?
    â€œWell, it’s a complicated story,” his mother told him. “The young man is the Morisons’ ward. You know that Theodore Morison was the Principal of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in, I forget where in India . . . ”
    â€œAligarh, I believe.”
    â€œYes. It seems that his grandfather was the founder of the college, so he is from a very good background.”
    â€œNo doubt. But how did he come to be the Morisons’ ward?”
    â€œI am not exactly sure of that. You will have to ask him yourself. Mrs. Morison did explain it, but the story was unclear. They refer to him as their son.”
    â€œBut the Morisons have a son.”
    â€œWell, it seems they have two.” And Lily, who had been in a perfectly good humour till then, became unaccountably fretful and began calling peevishly for the maid, so that Morgan thought it best to retire to the piano room to practise his Beethoven.
    The Indian man stayed with him, however, in the form of a mystery. A small mystery, to be sure, but with sufficient colour to stand out against the surrounding drabness. Since coming down from Cambridge five years before, he had felt himself gradually losing his way. The bright and interesting world remained, but for the most part he had to go out and visit it. Rarely did it come to visit him; much less with an appointment, and a desire to brush up on its Latin.
    On the day arranged, Morgan hovered anxiously around the front door half an hour before the time. Nevertheless, his pupil was late. Syed Ross Masood was tall and broad and strikingly handsome, appearing far older than his seventeen years. His smiling face, with its luxuriant moustache and sad brown eyes, looked down on Morgan from what felt, on that first morning, like a remote height.
    They had shaken hands in greeting, but Masood wouldn’t release his