The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) by Paul Scott Page A

village? Would she recognize any of the men who had hit her?
    Satisfying though it would be to have questions like these settled, the picture of old Miss Crane sitting by a dead body in the road in the pouring rain was of less intense interest than the picture of the other victim, the girl who was criminally assaulted, Miss Manners, whom no one in Pankot knew, of whom no one had ever heard even if the name Manners was familiar to people whose connection with the province extended back ten or fifteen years. That the late Governor Sir Henry still had a widow living in Rawalpindi was a surprise to most people; that he had a niece in Mayapore living with an Indian woman (so the reports had it) was a greater surprise.
    Apparently her other name was Daphne which for those who still remembered snippets of classical mythology produced the image of a girl running from the embrace of the sun god Apollo, her limbs and streaming hair already delineating the arboreal form in which her chastity would be preserved, enshrined forever; forever green. From her, then, the god could pluck no more than leaves. But this image could not be sustained and the other unknown Daphne stumbled on from antique laurel-dappled sunlight into a plain domestic darkness, dressed in her anonymity, and something simple, white, to suit her imagined frailty, her beauty and vulnerability; now half-sitting, half-lying on a couch in a shaded room with her eyes closed and one hand, inverted, against her aching forehead, speechless in the presence of friends who smiled when they were with her but otherwise looked grim.
    And the violence done to her was not over yet. In due course she would have to leave the darkened room, go half-blinded by sunlight (or soaked by rain) to the ordeal of courtroom evidence unless she could be spared that which was not likely, so deeply had the democratic process undermined personal privilege. No closed doors for Miss Manners. The press would make sure of that. And the arrested men would not lack clever Bengali lawyers who would plead without fee, anxious for the publicity and the opportunity to sling mud, to impugn the morals of an English girl. It would be a high court case with a full gallery and the police out in force in the city to discourage the inevitable demonstrations on behalf of the accused. The judge would probably be an Indian. It was hoped so. The sentences of transportation for life to a penal settlement would come better from Mr Justice Chittaranjan than from Clara Fosdick’s brother-in-law, Billy Spendlove. And then, only then, might poor Miss Manners fade back into the oblivion from which she had been cruelly dragged.
    But her name would be written on the tablets.
    *
    The riots spread to Ranpur. Several lorry-loads of British and Indian troops left Pankot, ostensibly on convoy exercises but in fact bound for an encampment outside the city. In Ranpur the city police fired to disperse mobs. The military assisted them on two occasions. An attempt to sabotage the railway between Ranpur and Pankot was discovered in time. The night train up and the day train down now went under armed guard. For several hours the telephone connection was cut. When it was repaired reports came in thick and fast. The Ranpur Gazette offices had their windows broken. A mob had penetrated the civil lines with the intention of surrounding Government House. This mob carried banners demanding the release of ‘the innocent victims of the Bibighar’, meaning the boys arrested for the rape. Scurrilous pamphlets appeared accusing the Mayapore police of torturing and defiling these six Hindu youths by whipping them and forcing them to eat beef. Factories were at a standstill and so was public transport. Life was reported quiet in Ranpur cantonment but there was a sense there undoubtedly of calm before storm. Things were said to be very bad farther afield, particularly in Mayapore and Dibrapur.
    Politically in Ranpur it was a difficult time; in Pankot