One morning in the month of Kartik, Byomkesh and I had just finished our tea and eggs in our Harrison Road lodgings and settled down with the newspaper. Satyabati was engaged in household chores inside. Putiram had gone to the market.

After Byomkesh’s marriage, I had proposed to find another place to live; after all, it is a friend’s duty to ensure the newlyweds’ life is undisturbed. But neither Byomkesh nor Satyabati would let me go. And so, for the past four years, we have lived together under the same roof. With Byomkesh, I no longer felt the want of a brother; with Satyabati, I found both a sister and a sister-in-law. Moreover, the prospect of a nephew arriving soon had recently become imminent. Life passed in unexpected happiness and peace.

We divided the newspaper between us. I took the front page, Byomkesh the inside pages. Byomkesh had little interest in the headlines printed in bold on the front; his mind wandered more in the bylanes than the main thoroughfares of the news.

Suddenly, looking up from the paper, Byomkesh asked, “Do you know the name Ishan Chandra Majumdar?”

I thought for a moment and replied, “The name sounds familiar. Who is he?”

Byomkesh said, “He was a professor of history. I was his student for a while in Berhampore. The gentleman has passed away.”

I said, “Well, if you were his student, he must have been old enough to die by now.”

“Perhaps so. But it wasn’t a natural death. He died of snakebite.”

“Oh.”

“Last year, where we went to recover our health, he went there this year. That’s where he died.”

That hill-encircled town in the Santhal Parganas! We had spent a few joyful weeks there; memories of those days, which had begun to fade, returned to me. Mr. Mohidhar, Purandar Pandey, Dr. Ghatak, Rajani—

There was a knock at the outer door. Opening it, I found the postman. An envelope, addressed to Byomkesh. Letters were a rare occurrence for us. Handing the letter to Byomkesh, I watched him with curiosity.

He read it and looked up with a smile. “Guess who it’s from?”

I said, “How should I know? I don’t have X-ray eyes.”

“From D.S.P. Purandar Pandey.”

In surprise I exclaimed, “Really! I was just thinking about him!”

Byomkesh nodded, “So was I. Not only that, the matter of Professor Majumdar—”

Durgarahasya 293

“—exists.” “Astonishing!” Byomkesh said, “Such strange things do happen from time to time. Someone I haven’t thought of in years suddenly comes to mind, and then, as if conjured, appears in the flesh. The pundits call it ‘coincidence’—samapattan. But the mystery runs deeper. Somewhere, there is a hidden connection, invisible to our eyes—” “Let that be. What has Pandey written?” “Read it for yourself.” “Read it for yourself.” I read the letter. The essence of what Pandey had written was this:

Recently, a mysterious incident has occurred here. Some distance from the city, atop a hill, lives a prosperous family; the master