Death in Kashmir (20 page)

‘Only that it interested me to hear that Janet had told you last August that she had paid for the
Waterwitch
in advance for this year.'

Reggie's brows drew together in a scowl. ‘I don't see…' he began.

‘That receipt,' said Sarah softly, ‘was dated 3 December.'

Somebody in the press of guests stepped back and inadvertently jostled Sarah's elbow, jerking the remains of her sherry in an amber stream down her grey linen dress, and a breathless voice began to gasp incoherent apologies: ‘Oh dear! Oh, dear me, I am
so
sorry! How
exceedingly
clumsy of me!'

Sarah turned with overwhelming relief to find a small, anxious woman struggling to extract a handkerchief from a large and overcrowded handbag, with which, when she had succeeded, she made futile little dabs at the stained dress. At any other time such an accident would have been annoying, to say the least of it. As it was, Sarah could have kissed the offender, since but for this timely interruption she would have become involved in some impossible explaining. For her retort to Reggie Craddock had been a double-edged weapon.

If, as she had insisted, she had barely spoken to Janet Rushton, how was it that Janet's receipt for a lease of the
Waterwitch
was in her possession?

Turning away to reassure her rescuer, Sarah was aware that a large, hearty woman wearing puce-coloured crêpe de Chine had borne down upon Reggie Craddock and swept him away on a spate of voluble chatter, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief. She really
must
learn to keep her temper and guard her tongue. It had been stupid and foolhardy to make damaging admissions merely to score off Reggie Craddock, and she was not at all sure that by doing so she had not allowed Reggie Craddock to score off her!

‘I
cannot
apologize sufficiently,' the small woman was saying unhappily. ‘
Most
careless of me. Your pretty frock! But these parties—so crowded.' She groped agitatedly for a pair of rimless pince-nez that had fallen off her diminutive nose and were now swinging aimlessly from the end of a thin gold chain.

‘Please don't bother,' urged Sarah with her most charming smile. ‘As a matter of fact, I'm really terribly grateful to you.'

‘To
me?
' said the small woman blankly. ‘Now you are making fun of me!'

‘No, really,' Sarah assured her earnestly, ‘I mean it. I was involved in a most awkward conversation, and your bumping into me like that simply saved me. Sherry won't stain. I'll rub it down with a sponge when I get home, and it won't show a mark, I promise you.'

‘It is so kind of you to say so,' fluttered the small woman. ‘I am sure you cannot mean it, but it has made me feel a little better about my clumsiness. May I introduce myself? My name is Pond. Miss Pond.'

‘Oh!' said Sarah with interest. ‘I'm Sarah Parrish.'

‘How do you do,' said Miss Pond primly.

‘Fine, thank you,' said Sarah. ‘Here, let's sit down, shall we? That sofa looks quite comfortable.' She steered her companion towards a chintz-covered sofa from which they could look out over the garden, and having seated herself, turned with frank interest to look at the companion of the formidable Lady Candera.

Pond,
thought Sarah. Hugo was right. It really was a most suitable name. A small patch of somewhat weedy water; the haunt of homely, foolish things like ducks and tadpoles.

The little woman seated beside her might have been any age from thirty to sixty, and her features seemed to consist of a series of buttons: a small flat button of a nose, a primped button of a mouth and a pair of brown boot-button eyes. She wore, in addition to an anxious expression, a haphazard collection of garments that gave an impression of having been flung together in a hurry, and Sarah's fascinated eye observed that she was wearing short buttoned boots in addition to such miscellaneous items as a Batik silk scarf, mustard-yellow fabric gloves, and several strings of assorted beads.

Her voice was soft and breathless and she appeared to speak in a series of gasps. Was this Sarah's first visit to Kashmir, and what did she think of the dear valley? Where was she staying? And did she not think that the Lake was
too
beautiful?

Sarah, grateful for her escape from Reggie Craddock, replied suitably, while outside the windows the daylight faded and the garden filled with shadows and the scent of mignonette and night-scented stock.

They were still talking when, well over a quarter of an hour later, a stentorian voice cut through the cocktail party hubbub as a knife cuts through cheese: ‘Elinor!' trumpeted Lady Candera.

Miss Pond sprang up as though she had been stung in a sensitive spot by a hornet. ‘Oh dear! I'm afraid that is for me … Yes Ena, I am coming. So nice to have met you, Miss Parrish. I am so sorry. About the sherry, I mean. Yes, Ena, yes … I'm coming.' And gathering up a scattered collection of gloves, handbag, handkerchief and scarf, she scuttled out of the room.

‘What are you giggling about?' demanded Hugo, plumping himself down on the window-seat near Sarah. ‘Has the human doormat been amusing you? Incredible creature, our Pondy. How do you suppose she does it?'

‘Does what?'

‘Puts her clothes on. I have a theory that she first covers herself with glue and then crawls under the bed, gathering up fluff as she goes.'

Sarah burst out laughing. ‘You
are
an idiot, Hugo. But possibly you're right, at that.'

Fudge came across the room and leant on the back of the sofa: ‘What are you two laughing about? Do finish that drink, Hugo. It's quite time we left. They'll be sweeping us out with the crumbs soon. Sarah! What on earth have you spilt on your dress?'

‘Sherry,' said Sarah. ‘And believe me, I was never more grateful for anything in my life. Is Reggie still around?'

‘Reggie Craddock? No, I think he left about twenty minutes ago with Mir.'

‘Thank God for that,' said Sarah devoutly. ‘Come on, Hugo.'

They said goodbye to their host and hostess and moved out into the hall to wait while a red-robed
chaprassi
*
went off to summon the car.

Twilight was merging into dusk, and the lights of the Srinagar Club twinkled through the trees beyond the Residency gates as Sarah went out on to the front steps—Fudge and Hugo having stopped to talk with some friend—and stood looking up to where the bright blob of light glittered from the summit of the Takht-i-Suliman temple, high above the chenar trees of the garden.

A lone figure, obviously one of the departing guests, appeared suddenly at the far end of the drive near the gateway, from the shelter of a clump of bushes. There was a strong light above the gateway, and as the figure passed through, Sarah noted that it was wearing a striped blazer and wondered idly what Major McKay had been doing in the garden? A moment later someone came swiftly out of the shadows across the gravel drive from the direction of the tennis-courts, and ran lightly up the steps.

‘Hello Meril,' said Sarah. ‘You're just in time to see us off.'

Meril stopped, and putting up an uncertain hand to push back a lock of hair that was straggling untidily across her brow, said anxiously: ‘Is it late? I felt I couldn't bear that stuffy room a minute longer, so I went out to walk round the garden. The flowers all seem to smell so much sweeter at night. I didn't realize it was so late. Are people leaving?'

‘They've mostly left I think,' said Sarah, turning to look over her shoulder into the lighted hall: ‘Your aunt is still there—telling Hugo where he gets off, judging from her expression! And at a guess there are still quite a few people left, so you don't have to worry: you're in time to speed at least a dozen departing guests.'

Meril looked alarmed. ‘Oh dear, I suppose I shouldn't have gone out.' She pushed ineffectually at the errant lock of hair, and inquired abruptly: ‘Why did you come up here again?'

Sarah raised her eyebrows, more at the tone than the question itself, and said with a laugh: ‘It's a free country!' and Meril blushed suddenly and hotly in a wave of scarlet colour that temporarily eliminated her freckles. ‘I–I didn't mean it like that,' she said. ‘I only wondered——' Her voice trailed away as she turned to peer anxiously over Sarah's shoulder to where her aunt stood among a small group of departing guests in the hall, and Sarah suffered a pang of conscience: poor Meril! It was a shame to snub her. She must lead a dreary and frustrating life with that aged autocrat of an aunt. No wonder she was such a milk-and-water nonentity!

‘As a fact,' she explained, ‘the Creeds were coming up, and everyone told me that I really ought to see Kashmir without its snow before I left India. So here I am. We're parked in a sort of backwater just outside Nagim. You must come out and bathe and have lunch with me some day.'

‘I'd like to do that,' said Meril absently, her eyes still intent on the group in the hall: ‘We don't get much bathing here.'

‘Then it's a date. We're just the other side of the Nagim Bridge. Chota Nagim, I think they call our backwater. My boat's the green and white one. It's called the
Waterwitch.
'

‘The
what?
' Meril turned quickly.

‘The
Waterwitch.
'

‘But–but that is—that was Janet's boat!'

‘Yes,' said Sarah pleasantly. ‘Was she a friend of yours?'

‘Janet? Well no—not really. I knew her of course. She was up here all last year. She lived in that boat out at Nagim, but she went about a lot. Tennis and parties and things. Everyone knew her. Aunt Ena doesn't like me going to parties. Not that I get asked to so many,' added Meril with an uncertain smile.

Sarah said: ‘Would you say Reggie Craddock had been a special friend of hers?'

‘Of Janet Rushton's? I don't know. Why do you ask?'

‘Oh nothing. Idle curiosity, I suppose. Something he said this evening gave me the idea.'

‘Reggie Craddock and Janet,' said Meril thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps he did like her. I never thought about it before. He was up here on leave last year, of course, and Major McKay said——'

But what Major McKay had said was lost, for at that moment Fudge and Hugo came out of the hall and swept Sarah down the steps and along the wide gravelled drive towards the car park and home.

11

Sarah devoted the next few days to an exhaustive search of the
Waterwitch.
But the task proved far from easy, since Fudge and Hugo were apt to appear on the boat at all hours of the day, demanding her presence at bathing parties, picnics or expeditions, and she found it hard to produce an adequate supply of plausible excuses for not accompanying them.

On more than one occasion she had been sorely tempted to tell them the whole story and ask for their assistance in her search, and the only thing that restrained her from doing so (apart from a conviction that this was a matter best kept to herself), was the fact that she possessed no shred of proof with which to support her incredible story, and did not relish the prospect of its being received with polite or derisive incredulity.

Examined in the cold light of day it frequently appeared, even to her, as both fantastic and impossible, and she still sometimes wondered if she had not dreamt or imagined the whole thing. But the evident anxiety of some person unknown—Sarah suspected Reggie Craddock—to obtain possession of the
Waterwitch
did little to support that theory, for it was on the morning after the Residency party that a Kashmiri who said he came from the agents had endeavoured to persuade her to exchange the
Waterwitch
for another boat.

Sarah had refused to consider it, and suspecting bribery, had sent the man away with a flea in his ear. But though she remained on the boat and continued with her solitary search, she found it wearisome and disheartening work.

She had begun by looking in all the obvious places—enthusiastically assisted by Lager, who barked and scratched and evidently laboured under the impression that he was being encouraged to hunt rats. But her main difficulty lay in the fact that life on a houseboat could only be compared to living in a goldfish bowl, since apart from the sudden and frequent appearance of one or other of the staff, who were liable to walk in on her at any moment, the attention of water-borne hucksters requesting her to examine their wares, or attempting to sell her fruit or flowers, was as maddeningly recurrent as the clouds of mosquitoes and midges: and less easy to repel.

On one occasion she had been surprised by the
mānji,
while engaged in unpicking a section of her mattress in order to make sure that no folded paper had been concealed among its lumpy, raw cotton stuffing. (Lager had been particularly noisy, and she had been cross and preoccupied, and had not noticed the
mānji's
approach). Her explanation, that she was in search of some sharp object that had pricked her from the mattress, was not well received. The
mānji
informing her that never before had it been suggested that evil insects inhabited his boat, and not so much as the smallest flea would the Miss-sahib find—unless perchance one had entered the boat upon the person of the Miss-sahib's dog, and for this he accepted no responsiblity. Sarah's attempts to clear up the misunderstanding merely made matters worse, and the
mānji
had retired, offended dignity in every whisker.

But since it was impossible to move noiselessly on a houseboat—and nothing larger than a mouse could have stirred without advertising its presence—thereafter Sarah saw to it that Lager did not run excited races with himself while she was searching.

Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about the numerous vendors of shawls, carpets, papier mâché and underwear, whose
shikaras
—drifting silently over the water—would appear suddenly outside the windows with the request that the Miss-sahib should ‘Only look—do not buy!' The sudden and unheralded appearance of these gentlemen never failed to startle her, and she began to wonder how Janet had ever been able to make a record of anything without the entire population of Srinagar being aware of it! She must have written it and hidden it by night; when the lamps were lit and the curtains close-drawn, and every door and window bolted and barred …