Barbara Cleverly (13 page)

‘I’m so glad you’re here in Simla, Commander. And please let me know if there is anything at all I can do to further your enquiries into this wretched business.’

The Indian stood his ground by the door post watching Joe with eyes as dark and unyielding as obsidian. As Joe passed him he caught again the fragrance of sandalwood but much stronger than the delicate ghost of a scent that he had breathed from Alice Sharpe.

‘Hmm,’ thought Joe. ‘So that’s how it is between them!’

Joe decided to start out on foot to walk down the Mall looking out for the dress shop run by the nurse and companion Marie-Jeanne Pitiot. He was half-way along the Mall when an uncomfortable thought struck him. He patted his pockets. No, he was not mistaken. Alice Sharpe had failed to hand back Korsovsky’s programme. And he hadn’t even noticed the sleight of hand by which she had concealed it. He hesitated, wondering whether to go back for it. He decided to leave it for the moment. It might come in useful later on if he needed an excuse to interview Alice again.

As he stood uncertainly weighing his thoughts, a baby carriage as splendid as a Rolls Royce went by pushed by an ayah. The baby at that moment woke up and started to yell. The ayah hurried to pick up the red-faced scrap and talk to it tenderly. It gathered its strength and released another ear-splitting scream, Joe flinched.

‘My God!’ he exclaimed to himself. ‘Of course! The baby! Little Henri!’

He summoned a rickshaw and directed the runners to take him to the Governor’s Residence.

Sir George had not yet returned, to Joe’s relief, so he was able to go straight back to the guest house without having to give an account of himself. As he hurried across the garden he was struck by the thought that the trunks might have been dealt with in the efficient Indian way in his absence. He’d forgotten to leave instructions to say that they should not be touched. Entering his room he found that all had been cleaned and tidied but the trunks were still as he’d left them in the middle of the room, the piles of clothes a reprimand in the centre of such orderliness.

Ignoring the clothes, Joe picked up the French newspaper which had lain at the bottom of one of the trunks. The date was 5th April, three years ago. A fortnight after the Beaune railway disaster. By the time this edition of the paper came out, he calculated that Alice would have been at sea for a day on the next leg of her voyage to India in the care of Mademoiselle Pitiot. She would not have seen it.

The headline which had been nagging at the back of his mind since his conversation with Alice now screamed at him and he remembered similar headlines carried in the English press. ‘Miracle baby, little orphan Henri safe in his grandmother’s arms.’ He had even seen little orphan Henri looking with unfocused eyes at the camera on a Pathé News report in the cinema in Leicester Square. Yes, the article referred to the same baby. A second class passenger in the Beaune railway disaster, Henri had survived cradled tightly in his dead mother’s arms and had been cared for by nurses in Beaune until he could be identified and returned to his grieving grandparents.

This article was not a fresh news item and, cynically, Joe saw it as an effort to keep the story alive but also an attempt to sum up and to bring a ray of hope however faint from the whole bleak disaster. The official list of the dead and the three survivors was given on page two. Three survivors? He turned hurriedly to page two. The passengers were listed by class – first, second and third – and classified again by nationality, the main lists by far being French and English with a sprinkling of other Europeans. Joe ran his finger down the page. No third class passenger had survived the crash and only one second class passenger – baby Henri. In the first class two names were listed: Alice Conyers and Captain Colin Simpson.

Alice Conyers! Joe looked again at the message scrawled by Korsovsky’s agent across the top of the paper. ‘As requested.’ So Korsovsky had asked him to supply a copy of this paper. Why? He had assumed it was connected with the bookings listed for that summer. But his agent would have found a more efficient way of telling him his itinerary, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t have trusted to the vagaries of the press to announce his bookings. No, Korsovsky must have had some other reason for wanting this paper. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am,’ he had added. Why sorry? There was something in the contents that he knew would distress Korsovsky. Joe checked the lists again. No Russian names. The name of Alice Conyers was the only link he could see. Surely this was no coincidence? And yet common sense (and Alice herself) told him that there could never have been any link in the past between the singer and the little English schoolgirl leading her sheltered life in the Hertfordshire countryside. And, anyway, the girl had survived against all odds. A cause for jubilation not sorrow for anyone who knew her, surely?

‘I need someone to talk to!’ Joe thought. He tucked the paper away in his pocket and strode off to the front of the Governor’s house where he knew a rickshaw would be waiting. He climbed aboard. ‘Police headquarters,’ he said.

It was five o’clock and the sun was beginning to slide towards the western mountain range when Joe was dropped off at the police station. He was shown at once into Carter’s office. Carter, who had been poring over a thick file, flung it down with relief.

‘You want to know who is the biggest criminal in Simla? He is!’ he said tapping the file. ‘Big Red! Two or three thefts a week reported and now he’s branching out into physical attacks on children. Very nasty incident yesterday up at the temple on Jakko Hill. Little Lettice Murray, daughter of Colonel Murray, is said to be in a hysterical state after her awful encounter. Brave girl though! Stuck her lollipop in his eye and escaped.’

Joe looked at him in puzzlement.

‘Bloody monkey! Gang leader of that pack of vermin who infest the monkey temple. Sacred to Hanuman the monkey god and I can’t touch them! Mind you,’ he added confidentially, ‘that’s not to say some of them don’t disappear at dead of night sometimes! Especially when my Sikh chaps are on duty!’

‘You don’t

?’

‘Of course not! No, we round them up and take them for a little excursion into the country. There’s a sort of monkey paradise about ten miles from here. When they’ve gone whooping and hollering up the trees we sneak off and leave them there.’ He laughed. ‘First time we tried this we made the mistake of hanging about to make sure they were all right, having a happy time, enough food to eat and so on, and as they seemed to like the place we got on to the cart and started off back for town. Well! We’d only gone a few yards when the warning was sounded. They all came piling down from the trees and climbed back on the cart ready to go home! Just like a bunch of kids at the end of a Sunday School outing! Ah, but now – we’re as clever as they are!

‘But Joe, come out on to the verandah at the back and I’ll order us a cup of tea. Tell me where you’ve got to. Save my sanity – you see, I risk being obsessed by the simians of Simla.’

Joe gave him his impressions of Alice Sharpe and an account of his conversation with her, adding, ‘And remember, Alice does give Reggie good reason to resent her – hate her even. I don’t know if that signifies, but it should be borne in mind, don’t you think? And tell me, Carter, what do you know of her secretary, this Rheza Khan?’

Carter looked at him shrewdly. ‘Clever chap. Very able. Not a Simla man so I can’t tell you much about his background. I know he is from a well-to-do Indian family – father’s a rajah, I believe, up in the hills towards Gilgit – and he was sent away to school in England. Perfect English of course, and perfect manners. You’ll have noticed that he wears European dress. He was employed by ICTC in quite a high position, I believe, before Miss Conyers came out to Bombay. Virtually running the whole thing, according to some. No acknowledgement of that naturally. It appears that Alice came in and spent some time observing what was going on in the firm then made some pretty unpopular decisions. Under his influence many family members found themselves on a boat to Southampton! And Rheza Khan, whose qualities were, they say, immediately recognized by Alice, was promoted and now openly does the job he is best fitted for.’

‘So you’d say he has strong reasons for preserving the status quo? He wouldn’t have welcomed the arrival of Lionel Conyers in Simla, I’m thinking. Does he have an alibi? Though I’m assured by none other than Alice herself that the more prominently positioned you are in the eyes of Simla at the moment of the crime, the greater the likelihood that you’re involved.’

Carter grunted. ‘Well, by those rules, he’s most probably innocent. He was on leave the week Lionel was killed. Off back in the hills celebrating his father’s birthday, I think. Which is to say – no alibi! But really, if you look closely at motive, not as strong as you might think. This chap is the brains behind the company – everyone acknowledges that – and it’s not likely he would have lost his job even with Lionel in the saddle. I think he’d have won over any resistance and would have gone on doing what he’s doing because the plain fact is – the feller’s made himself indispensable.’

‘Might he have killed Lionel as a favour to Alice – to keep her in place?’

‘It’s possible. They’re certainly very thick. And there are those who say she is too dependent on him and listens too closely to his advice.’

‘Very thick? Just how thick, I wonder? Or rather, what exactly is the nature of their closeness? Seeing them together I had wondered

’ Rather embarrassed to be heard exchanging what Carter might think of as unworthy gossip, Joe shared his suspicions.

‘Well! Well! That kind of relationship!’ Carter paused for a moment, smiling. ‘Two attractive people so in a way I’m not surprised, but I am amazed that not a hint of it has ever come to the surface. Not even Meg has any suspicions, I’ll swear it. And in Simla that’s quite something!’

‘I have a feeling that Alice Sharpe is very good at keeping secrets,’ said Joe. ‘There’s something I’m uneasy about regarding Alice. I can’t get it out of my head that there is some connection between her and Korsovsky.’

‘Can’t see it,’ said Carter. ‘What have you got? This eight-year-old programme with English writing on it? Not much, is it?’

‘There’s more,’ said Joe slowly. ‘When I met Alice last night at the theatre she was suggesting that I might have been the killer’s true target and she said something rather strange. She said, “Korsovsky looked English from a distance

” How did she know? I’ve asked about and nobody else in Simla has a clue about his appearance! They’ve all heard of him but no one has seen a photograph apparently. He might well have been five feet tall with a red beard for all they knew. She denies ever having met him. And I’m still sure that the grief she showed when she sang her Russian lament was real.’

‘Mmm. Nothing in the press she could have got that idea from. What about publicity she might have seen in London before she left England?’

‘He did appear at Covent Garden but not until she’d already left for India. I went to see him myself and that’s how I recognized him.’

‘I’ve got it! Catalogues from record companies. Perhaps there’s a photograph of him in one of those?’

‘I looked at her collection today. No opera. All jazz and ragtime.’ Joe sighed. ‘And there is a third connection. Look at this, Carter

’

Joe took the French newspaper from his pocket and showed it to Carter, drawing his attention to the agent’s strange message and then to the name of Alice Conyers amongst the first class passengers.

‘That’s damned odd!’ said Carter. ‘Look, we’ve sent off telegrams to this Grégoire Montefiore in his Paris office to tell him Korsovsky’s dead and ask for names of next of kin and so on. I’ll send off another one to ask if he can remember why he sent this edition of a paper to his client three years ago. But let me look at it again.’

He looked closely at the lists of passengers, occasionally asking Joe to translate a passage he was unsure of. ‘Hang on a moment! There’s something else we can try for faster results. It’s a shot in the dark perhaps but look here, Joe, do you see? – someone else survived the crash. Someone travelling first class. Captain Colin Simpson. Returning to his regiment in Bombay. Perhaps he could shed some light on Alice Conyers. I don’t expect so but I think we ought to try. Do you think he might be still in Bombay? What does it say about him? Anything?’

‘Well it’s mostly tear-jerking blather about baby Henri,’ said Joe, reading down the column, ‘but I thought I saw

Yes, here it is. Not much I’m afraid. It mentions Alice and says she left almost at once to continue her journey and then it says, “An English soldier, Captain Colin Simpson, was also bound for Bombay at the time of the accident to rejoin his regiment, the 3rd KOYLI, but his departure will be much delayed on account of the serious nature of his injuries

So badly concussed was the captain that he was at first taken for dead and his body had lain for several hours in the morgue before it was realized that he was still alive. He was conveyed to the hospital in Lyons where there were better facilities for treating head injuries. He was at first reported as killed but his grieving family who had been informed of this have now been reassured that he is still alive.” ’

‘His regiment ought to be able to tell us where he’s got to. I’ll get off a telegram straight away. So – one to G.M. and one to the Adjutant of the 3rd battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry!’

Carter took a pad and a pen and carefully wrote out two messages. He called out and a young officer appeared. Instructions were given, the officer nodded in understanding, put the messages away in a leather pouch which he buttoned on to his belt and set off at the double for the telegraph office.

‘Of course,’ said Joe, ‘no matter how much digging about we do into these little mysteries, sleuthing about, you might say, and trying to look clever, there’s one step we would be negligent if we didn’t take – and as soon as possible.’

‘Edgar Troop, you mean,’ said Carter glumly. ‘Alice’s accusation seems to have been pretty blunt. Yes, I agree, we would be neglecting our duty if we didn’t follow it up.’