wooden posts that held up the station awning.
"It was a horrible thing to do, of course, but it might have been swept under the carpet, had the administrator's wife not walked through the station door at the very moment that the train pulled out. Her husband did what he could. He dismissed the servants involved and gave the cat—or the pieces thereof—a respectable burial, but his wife had been pushed over the edge. She hanged herself from the platform canopy a week or two later."
"Tsk tsk," said d'Aumetz mildly, swirling the ice in his glass.
"That's not the end of it though," Benedict continued. "The company sent out another administrator, an Anglo-Indian by the name of Chandra. He was perfectly stable when he arrived, but after a couple of couple of months the servants began gossiping about how odd his behaviour was becoming. He would wander around at night, apparently, and have panic attacks. They'd find him crouched under the benches in the waiting room, or in the big records cupboard in his office, wide-eyed and shaking. He'd fight tooth and nail against any attempt to remove him, but once they finally managed to calm him down he'd have no idea of what had frightened him to such an extent. After about three months of this, he too hanged himself from the platform canopy.
"The railway company had apparently grown tired of the high employee turnover at Station 58, and built a cottage for future station masters to inhabit a little way down the road from the station building itself, hoping that this would solve the problem. The odd incidents did not stop entirely, however. The porters regularly reported prowlers lurking around the station at night, and two servants were crushed between moving coaches in quick succession.
"The administrator who replaced Chandra was an Irishman, and seems to have been a reasonably open-minded chap, by colonial standards. He agreed with the local factota that they should get a bonze in to give the place the once-over and advise them with regard to the appeasing of any malevolent spirits. By this time, the common consensus was that the administrator's wife was haunting the station, and some polite way of moving her on must be found. The priest, when he had completed his analysis, surprised more or less everyone involved by announcing that the administrator's wife had long since departed for her eternal rest, and their problem lay with the cat, whose malevolent spirit was infesting the building." D'Aumetz considered this information.
"It does seem like a particularly feline thing to do," he said eventually.
"The priest recommended that they set up a shrine to the cat's spirit, and provide regular offerings in atonement. This was done, not without a certain reluctance on the part of everyone involved, and the disturbing incidents slackened off for a while. Nevertheless, Station 58 continued to enjoy a poor reputation for accidents, and a long succession of Royal Thai Railways employees reported strange noises in the night and a sensation of being watched.
"In the fifties, the dispatch centre was added on, and the station itself closed down. The central administration could find no buyer for the building, and in any case it burnt down around six months after the final train stopped there. I dare say a few of the friendly locals had a hand in that. Even to this day, most of them avoid the place. Bounmi certainly did.
"After his daughter finished telling the story, he reluctantly offered to take me round the short way in future. I would have preferred this, but I refused out of politeness."
"You're right," d'Aumetz said judiciously, sipping his whiskey. "That is a little bizarre."
"Oh that's not the bizarre part. That's coming up." Benedict turned and nodded at the waitress, pointing at his empty glass. One of the servants was making the tour of the room, switching on a succession of dim, oblique table lamps with old-fashioned green shades.
"I am enthralled in any case," d'Aumetz assured Benedict happily. "This is far more thrilling than anything that has happened to me lately."
"Worth interrupting Céline for?"
"Worth even the distraction from my, ah…" d'Aumetz caught the waitress' eye as she poured the beer—she blushed and looked away "… other amusements," he finished dreamily. Benedict seemed a little uncomfortable. He moved his beer to allow the silent attendant to switch on the lamp by his elbow.
"Well, in any case, that also explained why none of the Isaan staff were willing to live in the rooms beneath the dispatch centre, though frankly I was surprised that someone as cynical and cosmopolitan as Pink should be impressed by the legend. I assumed that was why they didn’t want me there either – they felt an obligation to protect the poor bumbling foreigner from the local fauna, whether real or supernatural. Maew, was a different matter. He could go and get himself possessed by as many cat ghosts as he liked as far as they were concerned. They hated him.
"The next thing that happened was at lunchtime on the following day. They all used to bring their little wicker baskets of sticky rice and their plastic bags of fried vegetables with them to eat in the dispatch room. Bounmi's wife always made something up for me. It was generally more or less edible, I suppose, and they didn't charge me extra for the service. Anyway, Maew was sitting in his corner as usual, and he opened his basket of sticky rice, only to find that someone had hidden a live cockroach in there.
"Normally he'd just ignore this sort of thing, but this time he said something oh-so-ironic-and-detached about there being a lot of them in the area. It could have been a perfectly innocent remark, of course, but the others were spoiling for a proper fight, so they weren't going to let it drop. Tuy or Ice, I can't remember which, asked him what he meant by that, and Lek said something about like calling to like, et cetera, et cetera. You know the sort of thing, surely?
"Maew looked ready to let it drop. He picked up his cigarettes and was heading out for a smoke when Lek asked him who made his lunches. Maew just looked at him coldly and replied, in exactly the same polite tone he always used: ‘Your wife.’ He closed the door carefully behind him – you’ve got to admit it was a hell of an exit line. Ice had to hold Lek back, and Pink was screaming after Maew like a fishwife. Maew just walked slowly and carefully downstairs and sat on the step smoking.
"It was more or less open warfare from then on. Lek was refusing to speak to Maew, and Pink followed his lead. All messages had to be relayed via Tuy or Ice, who would then pass them on to me, if I happened to be in the office, and I would then have to tell Maew. It was utterly ridiculous, and very uncomfortable. I started avoiding the office as much as I possibly could.
"A few days later, the weather began to grow hotter once more, and Maew and I walked down to the cat ghost shrine. As the only two members of staff not terrified of it, the task of laying out sticky rice and lighting incense sticks to the miserable creature had gradually been delegated to us. We walked silently for a while. As I say, it was a hot day, and talking was an effort.
“We made our offerings, with Maew looking particularly gloomy. I asked him what was up. It turned out that he was regretting the crack about Lek’s wife. Not just because it had made life far more awkward at the dispatch centre but because – as he said – such a cheap remark was out of character for him. He couldn’t think what had possessed him to say it. It was, he said, beneath him.
“I advised him to admit the same to the others (though possibly without the part about it being beneath him), but he wouldn't. Tolerating their jibes in dignified silence was one thing, requesting more bullying by means of a humble request for forgiveness was something else entirely.
"We stood there a little longer. By this time, I was making lets-be-off sort of motions. I won't lie; I was itching to get back to my work. Maybe the stories were beginning to get to me, but it did feel decidedly creepy out there near the cat ghost shrine. Hushed and breathless, exactly as though someone was watching you. I said as much to Maew. He didn't reply for a while. After a few minutes he said something vague about liking the peace and quiet out there.
“He was right, of course. Even the constant, frantic chirping of the crickets sounded more subdued when we were standing by the Cat Spirit House, though this did n
ot seem entirely comforting to me. One of the local (flesh and blood) strays was winding itself around his ankles.
"That night we got in from our surveying at around six, and Tuy was extremely excited. You could tell he had a secret that he was just dying to share. Maew and I ignored him, and the others didn’t seem particularly interested either. He was loud and camp and clumsy and, had Maew not been available, he would have been a prime candidate for office whipping-boy himself. As it was, the others felt pressed into solidarity with him against the interloper.
"That night he kept making comments about corruption in high places, going on about how he had friends in Bangkok who told him all about the latest scandals. He obviously wanted us to ask him what these were, but no one wished to give him the satisfaction.
"It didn't take him long to crack, unfortunately. He cleared his throat importantly and I winced. It turned out that he had some important information about Maew that he was sure we’d all be fascinated by. Maew froze, and the others all looked up. Tuy was crowing now, almost ecstatic with self- satisfaction. It turned out that he’d been talking to a friend at the Ministry of Transport who had let slip that Maew had been caught accepting bribes, and that is