Barbara Cleverly (36 page)

As the glow-worms drew level with the fort the bobbing torches were suddenly extinguished and there was movement which told Joe that men were spreading out to cover the fort. Joe asked uneasily, ‘Ours or theirs? And if ours, how are we going to attract their attention? They might take us for enemy and open fire.’

‘They might be a party of Rheza Khan’s people coming to take delivery of a bundook or two. Possible but not likely. Too many of them. But get the torch out of my right saddlebag. Got it? Signal something. Anything.’

Standing in the window embrasure Joe began to signal.

‘What are you sending?’ said Troop.

‘Well, anyone who was on the Western Front might recognize it – something we used to use in the trenches. “O

K” – something we picked up from the Yanks. I think it stands for “orl korrect”.’

At once someone at the head of the advancing column began to signal back.

‘What’s that?’ said Troop anxiously.

‘Dee dah, dee dah, dee dah. Ack, ack, ack,’ said Joe. ‘ “A” for “Acknowledged”. Didn’t they have the Morse code in the army of Imperial Russia?’

‘If they had, there wouldn’t be anyone down there who’d know it and if there was anyone down there who knew it, they wouldn’t have a torch and if anyone down there knew it and had a torch it wouldn’t occur to them to reply, if I know anything about the Imperial Russian Army.’

Soon they heard the clatter of advancing hooves and then the jingle of curb chains and the clash of equipment. Just below the fort the column halted and two men cantered up the hill alone.

‘Who goes there?’ said Joe.

‘Friend.’

‘Advance one and be recognized,’ said Joe remembering the formula.

‘This is getting all very Sandhurst!’ said Edgar Troop.

They walked out to meet their visitors, a young British officer and a bearded sowar, his lance pennant fluttering in the wind off the hill.

‘Good God!’ said the advancing figure in cheerful tones. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting to find but I wasn’t expecting to find you, Edgar! You tricky old bastard! Before we say any more, be good enough to tell me – just for the time being, of course – which side you’re on. I like to establish these things.’

‘Where’s Charlie Carter?’ said Joe.

‘Here!’ said a voice, and a weary and dishevelled Charlie Carter rode into the circle of torchlight.

Ť ^ ť

Sir George Jardine, resplendent in a quilted smoking-jacket whose pocket bore the insignia of a long defunct Cambridge dining club, was ensuring that all the final touches were complete and in order. He was giving a small dinner party. A dinner party for four. A partie carrée, he called it to himself. The perfect size. And no women.

An amontillado with the turtle soup, a light burgundy with the saddle of mutton (he’d ordered up four bottles from the cellar and now gave instructions for two to be opened), a mont-bazillac with the fabulous water ice for which the Residence was famed and a good Stilton assisted down by a glass of 1910 port by Williams, Standring. ‘Yes! That should be enough.’ And he gave instructions that his guests as they arrived be shown straight to the library, the windows of which stood open to the balcony and the balcony open to the moon and to the murmurs of the town.

The first to arrive was Joe Sandilands. ‘Good evening, Sir George,’ he said easily. ‘This is very kind of you. A little cooler this evening, perhaps?’

‘That’s all the flannel you’re allowed, young Sandilands,’ said Sir George. ‘I won’t anticipate but I’m expecting some direct and straight-from-the-shoulder explaining.’

Joe had long learnt that it was unwise to let Sir George get away with anything and he said, ‘Dash it! I was hoping for a good dinner. The last few days have been rather austere. A few campaign biscuits don’t go a very long way’

‘Have a glass of sherry,’ said Sir George, ‘and don’t try it on with me!’

Next to come and arriving together were Charlie Carter and Edgar Troop, the latter perhaps a little embarrassed to find himself comfortably at the heart of the Simla establishment and in company with citizens of such impeccable respectability. His ‘Good evening, Sir George’ was a little over-affable as Charlie Carter’s had been a little over-deferential.

‘Good evening! Good evening!’ said Sir George. ‘Delightful occasion! Thought we’d have dinner straight away.’

He picked up and tinkled a little silver bell. ‘Sherry? Or if you prefer a madeira? I find it a little heavy these spring nights but do please help yourselves.’ And, to Joe, ‘Saw your friend Jane Fortescue today. Asked to be remembered to you.’ And to Charlie Carter, ‘Those girls of yours did well in the potato race at the gymkhana yesterday. Sorry you weren’t there. I really enjoyed it.’ And to Edgar Troop, ‘While we’re waiting, do please take the long chair. Kind to saddle sores, you’ll find.’

None of them spoke, all looking at him warily. ‘So good of you fellows to come at such short notice. Perhaps I don’t need to tell you – you’re all in serious trouble. You’re not under arrest, of course, but the only reason why you’re not under arrest is that with Charlie in handcuffs, there’d be no one to arrest you!’

They all took their seats around the table and, as though by rehearsal, shook out in unison large table napkins.

‘But to start at the end and work back from there

one of you gunned down Rheza Khan? No particular loss! Deplorable fellow! Arms aren’t the only thing he’s moved across the border. Scallywag if ever I knew one but nevertheless an episode that stands in need of some explanation. Influential man, Rheza Khan. Considerable following in the Hills. Vast consignment of arms on its way north under the eyes of the police and, worst of all, a deplorable young woman, guilty beyond question of pulling off the most bare-faced fraud in the history of the Indian Empire and more than suspected of complicity in no fewer than two murders — ’

‘Possibly three,’ said Joe.

‘We shall get on a little bit faster, Sandilands,’ said Sir George repressively, ‘if you don’t interrupt. As I say, this bare-faced miscreant allowed, possibly even encouraged, to slip quietly away under your benign gaze.’

‘Not my benign gaze,’ said Charlie happily, appreciatively sipping Sir George’s admirable burgundy. ‘I wasn’t there at the time.’

‘No indeed! Forty miles away at the time, I understand, searching railway sidings. Looking the other way? I’ve marked you down as an accessory,’ said Sir George.

‘Could I ask,’ said Edgar Troop, ‘how you know these things, sir?’

‘You’re not stupid, Troop! Apart from myself, possibly the only person in this room who is not – so I don’t need to tell you that any group containing half a dozen or so in this town is likely to contain one of my agents. Charlie, I understand, had twelve policemen with him – need I say more? You must not assume you are the only man in Simla with interesting things to tell me.’

‘But there were no witnesses conveniently placed when Alice shot Rheza Khan,’ Joe said mildly. ‘Apart from myself, of course, so you’ll just have to hear and accept my version of the killing, sir.’

Sir George sighed impatiently. ‘Very well, Sandilands. Why don’t you tell us your version of the events? Your memory of them? Illuminated, no doubt, by hindsight.’

All listened intently as Joe recounted the outline of his carefully rehearsed story.

Turning to Edgar Troop, Sir George asked, ‘Now, tell me, Troop, how much of this litany of lapses are you able to corroborate? Tell me first – did you leave undiscovered the knife in Rheza Khan’s boot?’

‘I am responsible, yes, sir,’ said Edgar uncomfortably. ‘I searched both prisoners.’

‘It was a most remarkable knife,’ Joe explained. ‘Very slender with a six-inch blade. It fitted down the seam of the boot – the handle was part of a boot pull-on – it was virtually undetectable. Very clever!’

He fell silent at a glower from Sir George. ‘And the next virtually undetectable item was a gun. You allowed Alice to retain – uninspected – a hat containing a revolver but, as it transpires according to Joe’s account, this lapse had laudable consequences. If we are to believe it — ’ he paused for a moment, ‘and why would we not? – she saved Joe’s life by pulling this gun and shooting Rheza Khan dead. Then, while he and Edgar run around like headless chickens, Miss Alice leaps nimbly through a window and makes off into the sunset, saddlebags stuffed with her ill-gotten gains, having had the forethought first to run your horses off? Am I getting it right, Edgar?’

‘More or less, Sir George, more or less.’

‘And the question which we should all be asking ourselves – and perhaps Joe will have an answer – is why should Alice, in unexpected possession of a gun and with two chaps at her mercy to choose from, put her bullet in her comrade in crime rather than in the police officer whose avowed intention is to haul her back in chains to face justice?’

All remained silent waiting for the next thrust.

‘I’m sure we’re all grateful to Alice. She saved us a little trouble in shooting Rheza Khan but will someone tell me why she should do that? Her associate, her partner? Her interests and his were one, were they not? I’ll tell you why,’ he went on, answering his own question. ‘She’d raised Rheza Khan up to a position of special power in the firm. He’d started out in a relatively humble position, in spite of his background and family wealth, in ICTC. Alice spotted his potential; she saw he could go all the way. And he did. He had authority and prestige, money and unshakeable status. Without Alice’s support he would have been nothing in Simla commerce and society. He owed all to her and she trusted him without question. It was more than she could easily bear that he should have – and with great success – played his own game. Another man to have failed her. Used her and failed her. It cost him his life.’

‘ “Tis the strumpet’s plague, To beguile many and be beguiled by one,” ’ Joe murmured. ‘I think there was more to it than the knowledge that he’d deceived her in the matter of the gun-running.’

‘Ah, yes, Sandilands, your theory that there was some romantic alliance between those two? I hear no evidence of that from any other quarter but it wouldn’t surprise me. Nasty piece of work, Rheza Khan, though quite seductive I would have thought.’

Edgar Troop poured himself a further glass of wine and passed the decanter to Charlie Carter. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe that Alice was romantically interested in Rheza Khan. In fact I’ll go further – I don’t think she was interested in men at all.’

‘Are you perhaps obliquely telling us that on some occasion or occasions unspecified you found her inappropriately uninterested in you? Now, Joe, perhaps you have something to add to this debate? Very taking little thing, Alice.’

‘I pass,’ said Joe.

Sir George’s generous grey eyebrows rose in query. ‘The deputy police superintendent passes! We must return to you, Edgar, for further illumination.’

‘I believe,’ said Edgar Troop shaking his head, “she had many admirers. And, yes, all right, I’ll agree, myself amongst them.‘ He turned to Joe. ‘Yourself amongst them too possibly, Sandilands?’

‘All right,’ said Sir George, ‘since this seems to be the fashion, I will add myself to this list. But, to get a dispassionate view, Carter, since you seem to be the only man in Simla proof to her charms – what have you to say on this subject?’

‘I agree with Edgar. The only person she was at ease with in Simla, the only person she did not deceive and manipulate, was her friend Marie-Jeanne Pitiot.’

‘Are you suggesting

?’ The eyebrows rose again.

‘I think I have an insight into that particular relationship,’ said Joe. ‘When we were staging the seance routine I remember Minerva Freemantle saying that Alice returned week after week in the hope of contacting her mother. Alice herself told me that her mother had died when she was eleven, leaving her to be brought up by her cold, uncaring and ambitious father. The first in a long line of men to betray and abuse her. Marie-Jeanne is much older than Alice – I think she sees her as a mother-replacement. Perhaps the only person in India or the world that she can truly trust. And since Alice has totally disappeared I would think it sensible to keep a watch on Marie-Jeanne because it is to her that Alice will go, I think, to find shelter.’

Charlie Carter added eagerly, ‘That’s taken care of, Sir George. I have had men posted outside her house for the last three days and I have had the house and her warehouse searched.’

‘Your stable-door-shutting techniques are second to none,’ Sir George said. ‘And what does Marie-Jeanne have to say about all this? I assume that you have interviewed her?’

‘Seems to have nothing to hide – well, we know she hasn’t because the search was pretty thorough. Says she hasn’t seen Alice for at least a week. She wanted to know if we were keeping her a prisoner, surrounding her house with troops, and gave us notice that she’s intending to leave Simla tomorrow. She has a long-standing engagement in Bombay and has booked her ticket. She said she wouldn’t object if a policeman accompanied her if I wanted to send one along. I think she was being ironic, sir.’

Clever, confident Marie-Jeanne. Helpful on the surface, Joe thought but, given her strong loyalties to Alice, surely she would make some attempt to help her friend? Joe decided that there was one more call he should make before his time in Simla was up.

Sir George sighed. ‘Go on, Carter, tell us what other steps you have taken to trail after your light-footed quarry.’

Businesslike, Carter replied, ‘Alice has two ways of getting out of the country. On the narrow gauge rail from Joginder Nagar and on to Amritsar or doubling back to Simla and getting out in a tonga or the Toy Train to Kalka and on to Delhi.’

‘Was there no sign of her on the Simla road when you came hot-footing it to the rescue up the mountain?’

‘No, sir. But it would have been very easy for her to hide herself along the route when she caught sight of the patrol.’

‘Yes,’ drawled Sir George, ‘well, you were certainly visible. From miles away, I should think. A squadron of Bengal Lancers, Slater’s Horse I believe, armed to the teeth and clattering along in the dark preceded by a dozen flare carriers and, if I know anything about those popinjays in Slater’s, singing the Eton Boating Song! Yes, she’d have seen you coming. So she could by now, three full days after the drama, be safely back and hiding in Simla or anywhere else for that matter. What about the other exit?’