The Last Kashmiri Rose Read online

  ‘Yes,’ thought Joe, ‘far too early but what can one do?’

  He watched as Jardine poured out two generous glasses.

  ‘I have your chit, sir,’ he said, hoping he didn’t sound as resentful as he felt.

  ‘Yes, well …’ the Governor began. ‘Funny business. I’ve wired your chaps in London, and hope you don’t mind my having done so, over your head, as you might say. But – your lecture the other night – I was very impressed … Everybody was. Opened our eyes to a lot of things! Don’t want to cut down our chaps here – they do a wonderful job – but they’re up to their ears and it has come to me that maybe we need a little bit extra. May be nothing in it, of course. Once the women start gossiping you never know quite where it’s going to end and …’ He paused and sipped his drink. ‘Do help yourself. But the fact is that I telegraphed your chief to ask if we could borrow you for a bit longer. Everyone here would be delighted – but the problem isn’t here, it’s in a place called Panikhat about fifty miles south of here. It’s on the railway. Not a bad journey and they’ll put you up in splendour and state, no doubt. Pretty good fellows down there. It’s a civil and military station.’

  Joe Sandilands was hardly listening. ‘I could have been sailing down the Hooghly River by now! Why the hell didn’t I go last night?’

  The Governor resumed, ‘I don’t suppose this is what you wanted for a moment but if you’ll take this on it couldn’t do your career any harm, I think. As I say, there are some very good fellows down there – Bateman’s Horse. We call them the Bengal Greys – grey horses – the Indian equivalent of the Scots Greys, don’t you know … But I won’t waste any more time chatting.’

  He held up a letter by its corner. ‘It’s all here but there’s somebody I would like you to meet.’ He seemed for a moment reluctant to come to the point, finally concluding, ‘It’s my niece, you see. She’s about the place somewhere … Her husband is the Collector of Panikhat and they’re stationed down there. Between you and me and strictly between you and me – he’s a peaceful sort of chap … anything for a quiet life. Not much go about him. Perhaps Nancy’s only taken this up because she was bored. But, I don’t know – they seem happy enough together. Anyway, Nancy’s as bright as a new rupee and ah! Nancy, my dear, there you are! This is Commander Sandilands. Sandilands, my niece, Nancy Drummond.’

  For the first time since this terrible news broke for Joe, he woke to the possibility that there might be compensations in this so unwelcome interruption to his life. Mention of the Collector’s wife had instantly produced a vision of Anglo-Indian respectability at its most oppressive but the figure before him was quite a surprise.

  For one thing, she was younger by twenty years than he had been expecting and for another, she was smartly – even fashionably – dressed. White silk blouse, well-cut jodhpurs, broad-brimmed hat in one hand, fly whisk in the other and an enquiring – if slightly suspicious – face. He tried not to be too obviously appraising her. He was aware that she was fairly obviously appraising him. This could just be rather fun.

  ‘Now, Nancy,’ said the Governor, ‘sit down and tell Sandilands what you told me. I’ve warned him that there may be nothing whatever in it but you’ve interested me at least and we’ll do our best to interest him.’

  Nancy sat down in a chair opposite Joe and looked at him seriously and for a long time before speaking. Now she was closer he saw that the pretty face was pale and strained. She made no attempt at a smile but went straight into her narrative. Her voice was low and clear, her tone urgent. She’d obviously prepared and prepared again what she was going to say.

  ‘A week ago a ghastly thing happened on the station. Peggy Somersham, the wife of William Somersham, Captain in the Greys, was found dead in her bath with her wrists cut. Of course, everybody said “Suicide” but, really, there was absolutely no reason. They weren’t very long married. Quite a difference in age – that’s often the way in India – people wait to get hitched till their career is established and an officer does not in fact qualify for a marriage allowance until he is thirty. One can’t always tell, of course, but they seemed not only happy, but very happy together. People often said – “Ideal marriage”.

  ‘I know that funny things happen in India but just the facts by themselves, to my mind at any rate, were suspicious and Bulstrode, the Police Superintendent, didn’t seem able to explain anything to anyone’s satisfaction. We all thought for one moment he was about to take the easy way out and arrest poor Billy Somersham …’

  ‘Now Nancy,’ said the Governor, ‘tell it straight.’

  ‘Sorry, Uncle! And look here …’ She took an envelope from her uncle’s desk, slid out two photographs and handed them to Joe.

  His mouth tightened with distaste.

  ‘Who took these?’

  ‘Well, actually, I did …’

  ‘My niece served as a nurse on the Western Front for three years,’ said the Governor and sat back, apologetic but happy with this explanation.

  ‘Mr Sandilands, sadly, a bathful of blood in my experience is nothing. And I have first-hand knowledge of wounds. Even cut wrists …’ She paused, disturbed momentarily by her memories. ‘I suppose you think it rather shocking that I should be able to stand there in front of this appalling scene and take photographs?’

  Not wishing to stop the flow of her story Joe merely nodded. He did find it shocking but realised that a conventional denial would not deceive this determined woman. His professional curiosity was eager for details of how she had managed under those difficult circumstances to take photographs of such clarity but he remained silent and looked at her with what he hoped was a suitable blend of sympathy and encouragement.

  ‘Yes, well, I was pretty much shocked myself. She was my friend, Mr Sandilands, and this was not easily done. But this is the hot season. There was little else I could do to preserve the scene of the death as it was. Bulstrode was giving orders for the body to be taken away and buried at once and he authorised the khitmutgar to arrange for the bathroom to be cleaned up. I’m afraid I stepped in and insisted that Andrew – that’s my husband, the Collector – called him off. Of course the body had to be buried, after a quick post-mortem done by the station doctor, but we managed to get the servants to leave as much as possible of the bathroom untouched. I don’t want to interfere, of course …’ (The Governor smiled ironically.) ‘… but a word with the doctor mightn’t be out of place. His name is Halloran. I don’t know him very well. Irish. A lot of army doctors are. He seems nice enough.’

  ‘You preserved the scene of crime – if crime it was – Mrs Drummond, and with the skill, apparently, of a seasoned officer of the Met. But I’m wondering why it should have occurred to you to take these steps …?’

  ‘My uncle had spoken about you and the work you were doing here in Calcutta when I was last here some weeks ago. I popped into one of your lectures and I was very impressed with what you had to say. I tried to wangle a meeting there and then but you were besieged by a phalanx of earnest young Bengali Police Force officers and I had to drift away. But then, when this happened, I rang Uncle at once and he made a few telephone calls, worked his magic and here we are.’

  She smiled for the first time since they had met and her face lit up with mischief. ‘And I don’t suppose you’re at all pleased!’

  Joe smiled back. He had an idea that there was not much he would be able to conceal from the Collector’s wife.

  ‘It’s difficult to make out but if you will look at the second photograph …’ she said, drawing his attention back to the horror he still held in his hand.

  Joe concentrated on the close-up of the dead girl’s wrists and saw at once where she was leading but he let her go on.

  ‘You see it, don’t you? She couldn’t have done that herself, don’t you agree?’

  Joe nodded and she went on, ‘But that’s not all of it, nor perhaps even the worst of it, Commander. After Peggy’s death the gossip started. I’ve only been on the station for t
hree years and I hadn’t heard the stories … in any case, I think people thought it was all over … like a nightmare. It stops and you lull yourself into thinking it’s never going to happen again. And then it does. And it’s worse than before.

  ‘Everyone who had been there since before the war was eager to tell me the stories.’ She leaned forward in her chair to emphasise her point. ‘Mr Sandilands, every year before the war and going back to 1910, the wife of a Greys officer has been killed. In March.

  ‘The first to die was Mrs Major Prentice – Dorothy. In a fire. Tragic, of course, but no one paid all that much attention as it was quite clearly due to an act of dacoity – banditry. The forests and some of the villages too used to be infested with bandits before the war. They are still to be found but it’s nothing like so bad as it was thanks to Prentice and others. The following March in 1911, Joan Carmichael, the wife of Colonel Carmichael, was fatally bitten by a snake. And there’s nothing strange about that in India, you’re going to say – but in this case there was an oddity … The next March, Sheila Forbes fell over a precipice while out riding and in 1913 Alicia Simms-Warburton was drowned.’

  ‘And then came the war.’

  ‘Yes. People were moved around. The series was broken and – goodness knows! – there were enough deaths to worry about in the next few years … people forgot. But this fifth death revived memories. It began to be said that marrying an officer in the Greys was a high-risk occupation! Gossip and speculation are meat and drink to officers’ wives and they live in a very restricted circle. They can and do talk each other into a high state of panic about the slightest thing – you can imagine what this is doing to their nerves! One of the wives is talking, quite seriously I believe, about returning to England. And some of the younger ones are running a sweep-stake on which one of them is to be the next victim! Just a piece of bravado but I think it’s a sign that the tension is becoming unbearable. Commander, we need you to come to Panikhat and get to the bottom of this. Either we investigate the whole thing, decide there’s no foundation for any of these wild theories and reassure the ladies or …’ She paused for a moment and her expression grew grim,‘… or we find the … the … bastard – sorry, Uncle! – who’s killed my friend and make absolutely sure he’s in no position ever to do it again!’

  Chapter Three

  ANGLO-INDIA GOES TO bed early. By ten o’clock the rattle of trotting hooves had died away. Sweet and haunting, the strains of the Last Post played by the buglers of the Shropshire Light Infantry, sharing the station with the Bengal Greys, had died away and Joe Sandilands, glad of the peace that had descended, set himself to write up the notes of the day.

  A very long day! A day that had started in the Governor’s office at ten o’clock that morning and had extended onwards through the railway journey to Panikhat in the company of Nancy Drummond.

  Half his mind was on the flood of information and speculation, gossip and rumour she had poured out and half was on her. He remembered her reclining, her feet on the opposite seat, fanning herself as her narrative unfolded, pausing occasionally to pass an order in enviably fluent Hindustani to her bearer, organising the day, ensuring that the ice block which sat melting in its tin tray between them on the floor of their first-class carriage was duly renewed as the train drew into one station after another. He recalled listening to the staccato whine of the extractor fan and gazing through the window as the lush, grey-green landscape unfolded.

  And he remembered the surprise with which, as she had searched her hand luggage, his eye had been taken by a pistol. Nancy had caught his interested look. ‘Andrew makes me carry it. It’s only a Smith and Wesson .22 target pistol and it would take me hours to dig it out, slip the safety catch and “load, present, fire!” but it makes him happy. Mind you – I’m a pretty fair shot.’

  Joe believed her.

  ‘It’s nice to be locked away from prying eyes for an hour or so,’ she said, finding her cigarette case. ‘Even in 1922 a Collector’s wife can’t be seen smoking in public! You’re a bit surprising, Commander,’ she added.

  ‘Surprising? How so?’

  ‘When Uncle George first suggested I go to hear you speak I was expecting a London bobby. Inspector Lestrade at best, perhaps.’

  ‘Well, you’re a bit surprising too! I was expecting an irongrey mountain of rectitude, a one-woman Deed That Won the Empire, if you like. Instead of which …’

  She laughed. ‘Instead of which – what?’

  ‘Now how can I answer that?’ he thought. ‘If I said what I was thinking – young, beautiful, clever, energetic, talented – what would she think of me?’

  He drew a deep breath. Oh, the hell with it!

  ‘Instead of which, you’re young, beautiful, clever, energetic and talented,’ he said.

  ‘Great heavens!’ she said. ‘I was just about to say the same to you! But, tell me, Uncle George is taking all this very seriously – are you?’

  ‘Yes, I am. I don’t see how one could do otherwise. We’re considering five deaths. “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action,” as they say in America. What does that make five times, I wonder? Come on – begin at the beginning and take me through it again.’

  ‘Well, I’ll begin at the beginning … No, come to think of it, I’ll begin at the end because that’s the bit I’m clearest about. That horrible thing that happened last week. We were looking at the photographs. On the advice of Bulstrode the coroner brought in a verdict of suicide but I saw the cuts, now you’ve seen the cuts and so has Uncle George and I think we can start from a point where we all agree that they could not have been self-inflicted. How we can just sit here and talk about it so dispassionately is more than I can imagine. But, it’s just run-of-the-mill stuff for you, I suppose?’

  ‘Well you do acquire a modicum of detachment, but, come to think of it, I’ve never investigated the death of anyone I knew. Certainly not the death of anyone I was fond of. Perhaps the old detachment would wear a bit thin if ever I did.’

  ‘But I knew Peggy Somersham very well. We hadn’t known each other long but I suppose you could say she was my best friend.’ She paused and ruminated a bit and then said, ‘In this funny world of India friendships brew up very quickly. Peggy and I had the same background, we knew the same jokes, we’d both suffered an English education – well you get very fond of each other when you have so much in common. And, besides, she was a bright and amusing girl.’

  She looked bleakly at him for a moment. ‘I was shattered. I was nursing in France for three years in circumstances where one corpse more or less is hardly stop-press news. But I know what you mean – when it’s someone you know …

  ‘When it came to us that all was not perhaps what it seemed, I discovered quite by chance what had happened before the war. I think it was Ronny Bennett who said, “Poor old Bengal Greys! They don’t have much luck with the memsahibs!” I asked him what he meant and he said, “But wasn’t there a bit of a scandal before the war? Weren’t there one or two sudden deaths?”

  ‘And then I started enquiring and I found that Alicia, the wife of Captain Simms-Warburton, was drowned crossing the river on the ferry. They all used the ferry then and they all use it now. Since the accident, though, the bullock-hide contraption has been replaced with a less terrifying and much more solid boat.’

  ‘Bullock-hide?’

  ‘Mmm. Ingenious arrangement and obviously effective because I’ve never heard of another accident using one, but, as I say, totally terrifying! Four bullock hides are inflated (legs still attached and sticking up into the air, can you imagine!) and a little platform bridges the central two. That’s where the passenger sits. And then you have two native ferrymen lying stretched out like outriggers one on either side and they propel the thing along with their feet. On this occasion though there was only one.’

  ‘And it capsized?’

  ‘Yes. Two of the hides burst at the same moment and the whole thing tipped over shooting Alicia
into the river.’

  ‘Any odd circumstances?’ Joe asked. ‘Were there any other passengers? Spectators? Was the raft inspected?’

  ‘Plenty of spectators. The whole thing was witnessed from both sides of the river. No other passengers – they can only carry two persons at the most and she was crossing by herself that day. But the ferryman gave a clear account of what happened.’

  ‘The ferryman?’

  ‘Yes. He was interviewed afterwards, of course. I’ve got copies of the coroner’s notes at the station. You can examine them. He was a brave man. The coroner commended him for his courage. He could have just swum to shore but he saw Alicia struggling in the water – sinking under the weight of her long skirts I should think, and there’s some doubt as to whether she could even swim – and he dived under and tried to rescue her. He nearly made it. They were seen struggling together but by the time one or two bystanders had jumped in and swum out to help it was too late.

  ‘But it was a long time ago – 1913. Quite difficult to beat up any fresh evidence now.’ She broke off and shouted, ‘Koi-hai!’ to the bearer in his little cabin and issued an order, resuming her story with the words, ‘I thought we could do with a cup of coffee – unless you’d like something stronger? I’ve got some whisky somewhere.’

  ‘No. No whisky for me. Anglo-Indians start rather too early in the day for me. Don’t forget I spent some time fending off Uncle George’s hospitality this morning!’

  ‘Well, to continue my trip down Memory Lane, we turn back now to 1912 and Sheila Forbes. There’s a favourite ride in Panikhat. Everybody does it all the time. You go across the river at the ford and then you go up a very narrow little track up the side of the mountain.’

  ‘Mountain?’ asked Joe with a glance through the window at the endless stretch of low-lying paddy fields they were passing through.

  ‘Don’t worry, the hills will be coming up soon on the starboard bow. Of course it’s not a real mountain, more an outcrop of reddish, rocky high land. It’s not a dangerous track but you have to be careful what you’re doing. It seems that Sheila’s horse shied at something and threw her off. She was riding sidesaddle and when you’re riding side-saddle you can only depend on balance so, at best, it’s a bit precarious. They all rode like that in those days and even now you’ll find an old jungle salt who will look sideways at the Collector’s wife for riding astride. Men! But that’s not fair – the women are just as bad!’