The Last Kashmiri Rose Page 11

  ‘Memories of the Mutiny?’

  ‘Yes. I was completely overwhelmed myself by the sight of a bungalow burning and I expect others of my age were too. I was what they used to call a Mutiny Baby. Born in 1857, actually in the residence at Lucknow. I knew all about the Mutiny. Our friends talked about it a lot of course and the destruction of the Prentice bungalow gave me quite a turn. I wasn’t the only person who said, “It’s all starting again”. There is always, just below the ordered surface of army life, the fear that it could all happen again. And remember, Mr Sandilands, that it was Englishwomen, army wives, who were the first victims of the butchery.

  ‘I had no bad feeling after the war until Peggy Somersham’s alleged suicide brought back memories, and the bad feeling returned with a vengeance when I counted up and realised that there had been five deaths on the station in March in succeeding years and I don’t think it had occurred to anybody else until Nancy started to question everything. And now here you are ferreting about like a stoat or should I say stoating about like a ferret? What’s your next move?’

  ‘I’m going to Calcutta,’ said Joe. ‘Next week. To see Harold Carmichael and Philip Forbes. With Nancy.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘All right,’ said Joe, ‘I know what “Oh, yes?” means! Perhaps I should say we’re going in the Collector’s official car, driven by none other than Naurung!’

  ‘Impeccable chaperonage!’ said Kitty and she extracted a small gold watch pinned amongst the drapery of her bosom and studied it in a marked manner.

  Joe laughed. ‘One thing we learn in the police is to take a hint! Thank you very much for many things and I’ll see you again soon, I hope.’

  ‘Sooner than you expect, perhaps, Commander. This afternoon if you like. People come to tea with me on Sunday. You could say I am “at home”. If it were known that the mysterious and handsome police sahib was amongst the cucumber sandwiches, part of the menu, you’d see a good turn-out. Anyway, that’s what you’re here for – or so I understood – to calm things down … to reassure the hysterical women that Scotland Yard has everything in control. You’d better be here. Bring your smelling salts! Five o’clock. Don’t forget!’

  ‘I shall be delighted.’ Joe rose to his feet, bowed, resumed his cap, saluted and turned on his heel.

  ‘Oh, Commander, there is just one more thing …’ Kitty called after him. ‘It probably is not of the slightest interest or importance but there is one rather odd thing I’ve noticed …’

  Joe smiled encouragingly and waited for her to go on.

  ‘It’s the roses. They’ve appeared again. Oh, I know, you’ll tell me that every garden in the station is ablaze with roses and so they are but I’m talking about the ones in the graveyard. The crimson Kashmiri roses – well, that’s what I call them. I believe they’re actually a wild China rose that’s made its way through Nepal and Kashmir and down here to Bengal, Rosa indica minima, but I first saw them in Kashmir and that’s what they’ll always be for me – Kashmiri roses. They aren’t all that common. Dolly used to have one growing over her bungalow but, of course, that’s gone. There’s a good specimen in the Clubhouse gardens and I know Nancy has one or two but that’s about all. Most people are keener on growing the bigger, showier blooms, you know. Well, a bunch of them appeared on Joan’s grave and has done every year since her death. Nothing strange there but – can I be the only one who’s noticed this? – a bunch appears regularly, every March, on Joan’s grave, on Sheila’s, and on Alicia’s although there’s no longer anyone on the station who would remember them in that way. And, this morning at church, I saw that someone had put some on Peggy’s grave too. Now what do you make of that, Commander?’

  The Bengal Greys’ idea of an appropriate Sunday lunch in summer was, inevitably, mulligatawny soup followed by jam roly-poly. Joe found this anaesthetic in the extreme although he had refused the jug of claret which appeared at his elbow, contenting himself with a glass of India Pale Ale. He feared that if he gave way and slept for the afternoon as every instinct prompted him he would never wake in time for Kitty’s tea party at five. He supposed that, conscientiously, he should be there. On an impulse he decided briefly to get away from the station and, calling for his pony, he went back to his bungalow and changed into jodhpurs and a shirt. He would take a distant view of the station in the hope that it might clear his mind.

  He set off to follow again the mountain path that had been so fatal to Sheila Forbes. The sure-footed Bamboo made light of the crooked track, cantering easily upwards to follow the turns and finally arriving, as Joe thought of it, at the fatal corner. ‘How would I manage,’ he wondered, ‘if a naked saddhu bounced out from amongst the rocks?’ He was riding with a bitless bridle and would not have had much control but decided on the whole that Bamboo would be undaunted. And Joe had the advantage of two strong legs one on either side of the horse, perfect balance and years of riding experience. He glowered at the concealing rocks and fingered his crop, passionately wishing his enemy would make an appearance.

  The path wound on and finally debouched in a little enclosure amongst the rocks, shaded by trees and watered by a stream. He could quite see why this was a favourite picnic place and made up in his mind an alternative ending to that unfortunate ride. In his mind he saw Sheila Forbes arrive breathless and triumphant, catching up the others and dismounting to join them on the grass in a sandwich and cool drink. Something to put in her next letter home.

  Joe found himself consumed with rage, with a healthy hatred of the man who had persecuted and decimated this innocent group, who had plotted and planned and set up an ingenious series of cover stories and remorselessly watched while each of his victims had died before his eyes. He dismounted and looped his reins round a hitching-post obviously set there for the convenience of picnic parties and walked to the edge of the cliff looking down on Panikhat. ‘There’s my problem. Somewhere down there is my problem. Down there is a problem man. Perhaps he’s even looking up and wondering what I’m doing. Perhaps he’s afraid of me. I’d like to think he’s afraid of me.

  ‘“ ‘I am Nag,’ said the cobra, but at the bottom of his black heart he was afraid.”

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, let me be the bloody mongoose! Be afraid, whoever you are, you bastard! Make a mistake! Show your hand! Bring me some evidence, for Christ’s sake! Any little scrap will do. Something to hang an accusation on.’

  He found that he had come to identify his adversary as a cobra. Not the common Indian cobra but a King Cobra, a Hamadryad, sometimes twelve feet long and who could strike from the bushes and kill unseen. He made for a rock and, feeling foolish as he did so, he thrashed the ground around it, not wishing to be the second to be bitten by a snake basking in the sun, and sat down, lit a cigarette and began to search the distant rooftops below, trying to identify Nancy’s house. His eye moved on to the large expanse of Kitty’s roof and he wondered what on earth he was going to say to Kitty’s assembled flock of nervous ladies. His task, it seemed, was to reassure but, far from reassured himself, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how this was to be done.

  A seasoned lecturer, he was accustomed to leading committees, forming opinion, getting his own way and, above all, moving things forward. People of all ranks listened to him, liked him and generally did what he asked them to do or believed what he was telling them. But he had to admit that he was at a loss as to what he was to say to this small group of women. Wellbred, polite and struggling to force down their panic, they would be only too ready to absorb any word of wisdom or comfort he had to offer. Joe sighed. He would far rather face a hundred sceptical and bloody-minded bobbies! But he had a part to play and though it was not one he had chosen he would give it his best attention and make sure he was prepared.

  He sat on for a long while, rehearsing phrases, deciding the line he was going to take. ‘Naurung!’ he thought. ‘I’m going to need his help.’

  As the tinkling sounds of Kitty’s clock chiming five faded, Joe was u
shered on to the verandah by the khitmutgar. Cool from his second bath that day and comfortably dressed in a pair of box cloth trousers, white shirt and riding jacket, he strode forward to kiss Kitty’s hand.

  ‘My dear Commander,’ she said laughing at him, ‘how fresh you look! And how charmingly informal. Now, do I regret the passing of the wing collar, the lavender gloves, the pearl tie pin? Perhaps not. But you must come and meet the lady wives of the officers – the “Bengal Mares” as my father used to call them.’

  Joe turned to face the rest of the company. Nancy and six other women had been standing chattering in a tight group when he entered and now they broke up and approached in order of seniority to be introduced to him.

  ‘Nancy of course you know,’ said Kitty proceeding down the line. ‘Now, Mary, may I present Commander Joseph Sandilands of the Metropolitan Police? Commander, this is Mary Crawford, the wife of Major Crawford …’

  There followed Biddy Kemp, Jane Fortescue, Lucy Meadows, Phoebe Carter the MO’s wife and the wife of the veterinary officer, Joyce Wainwright. He tried to form an impression of each as she passed in front of him but ended with a blurred vision of bright colours, floating fabrics, scented hands, shy smiles, teasing smiles and, above all, of clever and calculating eyes. What he did not see a trace of was panic.

  Colonial wives had a reputation for being dowdy but the selection before him brought to mind an English herbaceous border at its midsummer best. Kitty and Mary Crawford were dressed with the utmost correctness in ankle-length crepe tea gowns. Hemlines rose, he noted, in inverse proportion to age and the youngest, little Lucy Meadows, was wearing a rose pink day frock which barely covered her knees. The youngest three wives all, like Nancy, wore their hair short, their figures uncorseted and their expression direct.

  Kitty waved a hand towards a table laid out with a lace cloth on which stood two silver teapots, one with a red ribbon attached to its handle, the other with a yellow ribbon. There was a Coalport china tea service, plates of sandwiches and a cake stand laden with slices of Dundee cake and iced sponge cake. The khitmutgar presided, smiling, over the table as Kitty invited everyone to choose their tea – red ribbon for Indian, yellow for China.

  Joe chose Indian tea and an anchovy paste sandwich and chatted with each of the ladies in turn. They compared the weather in London with that of Panikhat, they told him of their plans for the coming hot weather season when the traditional exodus to the hill stations of the Himalayan foothills took place and Jane Fortescue offered flirtatiously to show him the delights of Simla should he care to make the journey. The teapots were refilled from a spirit kettle and Joe sipped his third cup of tea, beginning uneasily to wonder exactly why he had been asked to come. He cast a furtive glance at Kitty’s clock and was surprised to find he had only been there for forty minutes.

  At last Kitty called the tea party to attention. ‘And now, ladies, if you would make yourselves comfortable, the time has come to ask Commander Sandilands to sing for his cup of tea.’

  Cups and plates were laid down on tables and the chattering company fell silent. They began to exchange sideways glances and Jane Fortescue stepped forward. ‘Oh, no, Kitty! It is not the Commander who shall sing! We shall! Come on, girls!’

  To Joe’s amazement she seated herself at the piano and the other girls grouped themselves around her. After an opening chord from Jane they began to sing.

  ‘Watch your back! Be ready!

  For no one will heed your cry.

  There are five of us dead already;

  Under six feet of earth we lie.

  Hold the line, girls! Steady!

  And wipe the tears from your eyes.

  Here’s a toast to the dead already,

  And here’s to the next girl that dies!’

  They broke up, laughing, and settled into chairs watching for his reaction.

  Joe knew the tune. It always brought a shudder of horror with it. He had last heard it sung in tones of bright despair by a quartet of young Flying Corps officers before they took off for the last time over the German lines. The women had just treated him to a bastardised version of the old ‘Calcutta Cholera Song’. Challenging him? Telling him they weren’t afraid? Hiding their fear under a flourish?

  He waited for a moment then hummed the first line reflectively. ‘Yes, I thought I recognised it! “The Panikhat Panic Song”! We used to sing the same tune in the trenches but if I were to tell you the words we used Kitty would have me ejected.’

  Some of them smiled and out of the corner of his eye he noticed Nancy begin to relax. The khitmutgar began silently to clear away the tea things and Joe went into his talk. He moved forward and sat facing them on the edge of a table. He had decided that these bold and lively women deserved nothing less than the truth as he now saw it, however unpalatable.

  ‘I know about fear. I know about death. And I’m not going to tell you not to worry your pretty little heads about the deaths that have been occurring on the station. I am going to tell you that you may have good cause to be afraid. You are members of a group which for a reason I have not yet ascertained is the target of a killer. And a very particular type of killer …’

  Soft-footed, Naurung entered the room. He was wearing, not his usual police uniform, but the loose white outfit of a house servant, a red waistcoat and a blue turban. Joe went on talking, the women’s attention riveted on him. Naurung began to help the khitmutgar with the clearing of the table. Suddenly he dropped a plate which crashed to the ground and broke. Naurung exclaimed loudly and began to sweep the remains together. The khitmutgar advanced on him and Naurung, hissing invective at him, was hurried from the room. The women, who had all turned to stare at Naurung on hearing the noise, averted their eyes in embarrassment or distaste at the extraordinary scene and fixed their attention once more on Joe.

  He continued to talk to them, concisely setting out the dates and details of the pre-war deaths and summarising his suspicions. Suddenly he broke off and reached into his pocket. He took out some sheets of paper and pencils and passed one to each lady.

  ‘Before we go on – and believe me there is a point to what I’m about to ask you to do – I want you to think back to what happened in this room five minutes ago. Take your pencil and write down a description of the Indian who came in to assist the khitmutgar. What was he wearing? What were his features like? What language was he speaking? What did he do?’

  Puzzled looks were exchanged, pencil ends were chewed and short notes were written down. Joe collected the papers in and put them on the table by his side.

  ‘Coming now to someone you all knew,’ he went on, ‘– Peggy Somersham who died last week. I know you have been told that she committed suicide but I have to tell you that, like the others who preceded her, I fear she was murdered. Murdered and not by her husband. It is my intention to have the coroner’s verdict of suicide overruled.’

  There was a murmur and a nodding of heads in approval of this.

  He went carefully over the evidence he had collected and concluded, ‘There was one witness, a vital witness who unfortunately was allowed to go free after giving his statement …’

  ‘Bulstrode!’ someone interrupted. ‘The man’s an incompetent idiot! He should have locked him up and thrown the key away!’

  ‘The witness was an Indian. We do not have a good description of him although he was seen by several people and even interviewed by the officials. From the accounts I’ve given you, you will have noted that at or near each murder scene an Indian of one sort or another was noticed. Where are they? Who are they? One man or several? How can they, or he, just have slipped into the sand? I’ll tell you how. People are very bad observers. Ask any group of six onlookers to describe a man who has just knifed another in a London street and you will be given six different (and possibly all incorrect) descriptions. Let’s take this group of six. I asked you to write a description of the Indian servant who created a disturbance a few minutes ago.’

  Joe leafed though the no
tes, discarding one that said, ‘It was Naurung, you fool! Nancy’ and read out a sample:

  ‘“It was an Indian. He was wearing Indian clothes and he shouted in Indian. He broke something. A teacup?’

  ‘“It was Kitty’s bearer Ahmed. Tall, dark, blue jacket, beard, yellow turban. Broke a teacup. Kitty won’t be pleased! Spoke Hindustani.’

  ‘“Vicious-looking. Elderly. Red turban. Medium height. Struck the khitmutgar and swore in Hindu.’

  ‘“Young. Short. Shifty-looking with a large moustache. Red turban, green jacket. Spilled a cup of tea on Khit’s foot. He spoke Bengali.’

  ‘These descriptions reflect well on your imagination, ladies, but less well on your powers of observation! Come in, Naurung!’ Joe called.

  Naurung appeared smiling and bowing to the ladies who gasped when they recognised him, laughed and turned to each other pointing out that it was Naurung Singh the policeman in disguise.

  ‘Not in disguise. Merely wearing clothes you are not expecting to see him wear and appearing in a context in which you would not expect to see him. He has no connection with Kitty’s household in your experience so you did not recognise him. Thank you, Naurung,’ said Joe, and he left exchanging a joke with the khitmutgar who had obviously enjoyed the whole performance.

  ‘Well, you didn’t get many details right, did you? By the way – he broke a plate – an old one, with Kitty’s permission! He was speaking Hindustani and he said something unrepeatable about the khitmutgar’s parentage. And your descriptions of the man himself were far from accurate. Although you all in fact have seen him on many occasions. The reason for this? Because he is Indian. You simply do not register brown faces with any interest or accuracy. And this is precisely the failing that enables our killer to get close to his victim unnoticed and then get away.’

  ‘So what are you suggesting, Commander?’ piped up Lucy Meadows. ‘That we should all sleep with a hockey stick under our bed and avoid all brown faces? Pretty jolly difficult in India, you know!’