Barbara Cleverly (4 page)

As they climbed higher, the air grew fresher and the scenery more spectacular. Here now began to appear the majestic cedar trees of the Simla Hills, the deodars, their graceful hazy-blue branches dipping gracefully towards the slopes below. Scents grew sharper and more varied. Joe was intrigued by smells unfamiliar and familiar. He breathed in the nostalgic scents of an English garden – lily of the valley, roses, wild garlic and – like a knife to his lungs – was that balsam or wild thyme? Joe and his companion began to feel almost light-headed. The sluggishness and discomfort of the plains fell away and left them light-hearted, merry, celebratory. Rounding a bend, Feodor jumped to his feet, swaying precariously, pointing ahead. ‘There it is! Driver – pull over there into that passing place and stop for a moment!’

The driver turned to them, smiling, and announced, ‘This is Tara Devi, sahib, and there,’ he gestured grandly ahead, ‘is Simla!’

A sight Joe would never forget. In the middle distance the town spilled, higgledy-piggledy, down from the wooded summit of a precipitous hill flanked by other thickly wooded dark slopes, and beyond and above it, the lines of the Himalayas shading from green through to deepest blue and iced with a line of dazzling snow.

For a moment Joe was speechless but not so Feodor. ‘Now this is an auditorium worthy of a serenade from the world’s greatest baritone!’ he announced and to Joe’s amusement he stayed on his feet, expanded his lungs, filling them with intoxicating mountain air, and with a wide gesture burst into ‘The Kashmiri Love Song’.

‘Pale hands I loved, beside the Shalimar

’ Fortissimo his rich voice rolled along the narrow valley, waking flights of agitated pigeons and raising alarm calls from deer and other forest creatures. Joe joined in but found he was laughing too much to continue and, reaching the final line with its swift descent down the scale, he had to trail off and listen in admiration as Feodor’s voice, echoing and bouncing from the crags, plumbed the emotional depths of that most sentimental of songs.

‘Pale hands I loved, beside the Shalimar.

Where are you now? Where are you now?’

As he held the last deep note Joe almost expected to hear a thunder of applause. Instead there was a thump and a simultaneous crack and the bass note rose, tearing uncontrolled up the scale until it climaxed in an unearthly scream. A second crack cut off the sound abruptly.

Joe’s soldier’s instincts had hurled him instantly to the floor of the car. Turning his head, he was horrified to see Feodor Korsovsky, thrown back against the upholstery of the car, collapsing slowly across the seat.

‘Drive on! Drive on!’ Joe yelled urgently at the driver but his driver needed no order. Hardly had the echo of the two shots died away before he had put his foot down and the big car surged forward in a shower of gravel, bouncing across the potholes until it came sharply to a halt in the shelter of an outcrop of rocks. Scrambling up, Joe knelt on the back seat and turned to the Russian who, with arms asprawl, lay prostrate across the back seat. A glance was enough to tell Joe that he was dead and as he tore his clothing apart he saw two neat bullet holes, one just above and one just below the heart.

‘Good shooting,’ he thought automatically and as he slipped his hand behind Korsovsky to lift him it came away drenched in blood. The entry holes were small; the exit holes had run together in a bloody mess of torn muscle and chipped bone. .303, he thought. Service rifle perhaps. Soft-nosed bullet anyhow.

Pallid with alarm the driver turned towards him and, to his relief, addressed him in English.

‘Where to, sahib? The Residency?’

‘No,’ said Joe, thinking quickly. ‘To the police station. But first, look about you. Note where we are. Does this corner have a name?’

‘Sahib, it is bad place. It is called the Devil’s Elbow.’

Without delay the driver let the clutch up and stormed ahead, cornering dangerously to cover the few miles that separated them from Simla. With the driver’s hand perpetually on the bulb of the horn, the Packard edged its way, squawking a warning, into the town.

Ť ^ ť

Police Superintendent Charlie Carter yawned, screwed the cap on his Waterman’s fountain pen, stood up and stretched, walked to the door and shouted for tea. He strolled out on to the balcony for a breath of fresh air and paused for a moment, leaning on the rail and looking out with approval at the disciplined activity below him.

His men were changing shifts. One group of police sowars was standing chatting, taking off equipment, and one, formed up under the command of a havildar, was preparing to go on duty. He smiled with satisfaction at their businesslike appearance, their neat uniform and their alert faces. He ran an eye over the line of tethered horses, gleaming rumps stirring and bumping.

Carter wished he could join the patrol but he had to finish writing up the week’s report for his Commissioner. Not that the lazy old bastard would bother to read it. And who could blame him? As usual it was almost void of incident or interest. Carter sighed. He accepted a cup of tea brought out to him on a brass tray and made his reluctant way back to his desk. He picked up the threads of his report, his meticulous account of the investigation into an alleged burglary the previous night rolling from his pen in a neat, firm hand.

The reported crime irritated him with its triviality and he resented spending even five minutes recording the fact that old Mrs Thorington of Oakland Hall, Simla, had accused her bearer of stealing a silver-backed hairbrush. It had taken him an hour to convince the old boot that it had in fact been snatched by the usual troupe of monkeys raiding down from their temple on Jakko Hill and gaining entry through a bedroom window which she herself had left open.

A clamour of voices and – surprise – the revving of a powerful engine on the road outside caught his attention. His havildar rushed excitedly into the office announcing the arrival of a motor car, a motor car going unsuitably fast for the tortuous streets of the town. Three cars only were allowed to enter Simla: cars belonging to the Viceroy and the local Governor of the Punjab, neither of whom was due in Simla until the following week, and that of the Chief of Staff, which had just gone to Delhi for repairs. Any other car owner knew very well that the rule was you left your car in the garages provided below the Cecil Hotel. So who the hell was this? Very intrigued, Carter put down his pen again and went out to see for himself.

A large pearl-grey Packard with the hood down roared the last few yards up the Mall, swung into the police compound and braked noisily in front of the police station. Carter recognized the plates and livery of the Acting Governor of Bengal. He recognized Sir George’s chauffeur, wild eyes in a dust-caked face, but the two passengers in the rear seat were unknown to him. One, a dark-haired man in a khaki linen suit, had been leaning forward urging the driver on and before the car rocked to a halt he had jumped out and now stood, hands on hips, looking around him, raking the lines of sowars and horses with a searching – perhaps even a commanding – eye.

He was a tall man and carried himself with confidence. He had a brown and handsome face or at least – Carter corrected his first impression – a face that had been handsome. Intelligent, decisive but Janus-like – a face with two sides, one serene, the other scarred – distorted – hard to read. Scarred faces four years after the war to end war were common enough and Carter speculated that he was looking at a man who had taken a battering in France. The second passenger appeared to be battered beyond repair. He was lying sprawled across the back seat, his white jacket soaked with blood.

With disbelief, Carter screwed an eyeglass in position and called down, authoritative and annoyed, ‘Perhaps you could explain to me who you are and what the hell you’re doing here?’

Unruffled, the stranger turned to look him up and down and replied with remarkable calm, ‘Certainly I could. It’s rather a long story though. Are you coming down here or am I coming up to you?’

Charlie Carter rattled down the steps, putting on his cap and saying as he did so, ‘I think I’d better come down to you and you might start by explaining who this dead gentleman is in the back of the Governor’s car. I assume he’s dead?’

‘Oh yes, he’s dead,’ said the stranger. ‘And you may not believe this, in fact I’m not quite sure I believe it myself, but his name is Feodor Korsovsky and he’s a Russian baritone.’

The superintendent looked at him with disbelief. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘That tells me everything I want to know. A Russian baritone – of course – how stupid of me and – lying dead in the back of the Governor’s car. Where else would you expect to find a Russian baritone? And before we go any further, perhaps you would tell me who you are?’

‘My name is Sandilands,’ he began but he was instantly interrupted by the superintendent.

‘Sandilands! Commander Sandilands? Ah, yes, the Governor mentioned your name to me. Told me you were a detective. From Scotland Yard? Yes? Didn’t tell me you were in the habit of hauling in your own corpses though

This man has been shot?’ He turned to the driver who explained rapidly in Hindustani what had happened and where it had happened.

‘I offered the gentleman a lift in the car which had been sent to Kalka to meet me. He was the victim of a sniper about five miles down the road. .303 rifle, two accurate shots to the heart. Soft-nosed bullets – the entry wounds you see are quite small but turn him over and you’ll find holes the size of your fist. To say nothing of the extensive damage done to the Governor’s upholstery. May I suggest,’ said Joe, ‘that we travel to the scene of the crime? And perhaps we ought to go at once? The driver and I marked the spot. The trail is cold and cooling.’

The police superintendent appeared to consider. ‘My name’s Carter, by the way. Devil’s Elbow. This side of Tara Devi. That’s a damned nasty place you’re talking about. To search the ground you’d need a regiment. Now, if we were in the Wild West I’d say “Take a posse” and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’

He shouted orders, following which six police sowars mounted and led forward two horses for Joe and for Carter. Before mounting, Carter spoke urgently to a police daffadur with a gesture towards the body and the car. The Governor’s driver was escorted into the police station to make a statement.

‘We can talk as we go,’ said Carter as they mounted. ‘I’ve got a vague idea of what happened but tell me, what are you doing in Simla?’

‘I’m on leave,’ said Joe. ‘I’m a London policeman on detachment to the Bengal Police. I was, but now I’ve finished my tour and Sir George has kindly offered me the use of his guest bungalow for a month. To round off my tour of duty before going back to England. You’ve probably heard rumours, India being what it is, of what I’ve been doing in Calcutta?’

He shot a questioning look sideways at Carter. The policeman was struggling to suppress a smile. He had realized that the raised left eyebrow which had been fixing him with a chilling expression of query and disdain was, in fact, permanently fixed at this disconcertingly quizzical angle by clumsy surgery.

‘I’ve heard – and tell me if any of this is wrong – a lowly police superintendent is often at the end of the gossip chain, you know – that you are a highly decorated soldier – Scots Fusiliers, was it? – latterly of the Intelligence Corps and now recruited into the CID. An injection of brains and breeding to shake up the postwar force is what they say.’

Sandilands gave him the benefit of his left profile again but Carter pressed on, matter-of-fact and friendly, ‘And that you’ve had a success in Bengal bringing the force there up to scratch on intelligence-gathering, interrogation techniques – that sort of thing.’

‘True,’ said Joe. ‘But, look here, Carter, I’ll say again – I’ve finished my tour and I’m on leave. I’ve not come here to lecture you or get in your way. The last thing in the world I want is to get drawn into this.’ But even as he spoke, instinctive reluctance gave way to a rush of anger. Anger for Feodor Korsovsky, so genial, so excited and friendly and so alive. And Joe had heard the last note of that wonderful voice turn to an obscene scream of pain. Yes, it was his business.

Perhaps reading his thoughts, Carter eyed him with friendship. ‘I’ll tell you something, Sandilands. You are drawn into it so you might as well settle down and enjoy yourself. I expect baritones get shot two or three times a week in London but – I’ll tell you — it’s something of a novelty in Simla. Makes a nice change from rounding up blasted monkeys which it seems is how I spend my time nowadays.’

With the posse closed up behind them they threaded their way through the lower town and out on to the open road, breaking first into a trot and then into a canter. Carter ranged up beside Joe as they rode. ‘Tell me something about this Russian,’ he said. ‘You had plenty of time to get acquainted travelling up from Kalka. Apart from this appearance at the Gaiety, had he any business in Simla? Any friends? Any contacts? Was anyone meeting him? I’m trying to understand why anybody would want to shoot the poor chap.’

‘He didn’t say anything useful,’ said Joe. ‘He mentioned that he was in contact with the Simla Amateur Dramatic Society who’d booked his appearance. They’d made all his arrangements, hotel and so on. But I got the impression that it was all purely professional. He didn’t even mention a name. He’d taken the engagement entirely, I think, because he’d always wanted to see Simla. He’d turned down a good offer in New York to do it.’

Carter cast a sharp glance at Joe. ‘Feller was a tourist, are you saying?’ He barked out an order and four of the following sowars came forward and stationed themselves in front and on either side of Joe, all scanning the slopes ahead and on each side with increased alertness.

‘Ah! You think I was the target? And the marksman hit the wrong man?’ said Joe.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Carter. ‘Well, it’s certainly a possibility. What about you, Sandilands? Any contacts in Simla? Embarrassing connection with a disreputable past? Senior policemen pick up quite a few enemies on their way up. Especially those whose rise has been