Death in Kashmir (26 page)

‘But no one could
possibly
have known about that!' objected Sarah.

‘Don't interrupt. On receipt of this letter she suddenly changes her plans, and instead of going to Ceylon, decides to return to Kashmir. Now I don't suppose that anyone else got onto that letter of Janet's. We did—through you! But I admit I think it's unlikely that anyone else did.
But
—Miss Parrish, still almost certainly under surveillance, arrives in Kashmir
and produces the receipt for Janet Rushton's boat.
Now do you see?'

‘I suppose so,' said Sarah slowly.

‘There's no “suppose” about it. Why has Miss Parrish decided to come to Kashmir? And where did she get the receipt for the
Waterwitch?
Obviously, from Janet Rushton. The
Waterwitch
immediately becomes worth watching again—and so does Miss Parrish!'

‘But if, as you think, they have already searched the boat—' began Sarah.

‘Of course they've searched it. But that doesn't mean they feel any easier about letting someone whom they have every reason to be suspicious of do a bit of independent searching. Because you
have
been searching; and I bet you any money you like, your
mānji
has reported to that effect. In fact the whole set-up is probably causing a lot of uneasy speculation. Why are you here? How did you get hold of Janet's receipt for the
Waterwitch,
and what are you looking for? The sooner they get you off the boat the better.'

‘Of course,' said Sarah slowly, ‘there's another thing. I might even find it for them.'

Charles gave her a curious slanting look and said softly: ‘That, I should imagine, is pretty well at the top of their list. For all they know you may have been told where to look. If so, and supposing they can't shift you off the boat, and next best thing is to keep tabs on you and let you do the finding. Should you turn up anything——' Charles broke off and frowned.

‘Go on,' said Sarah. ‘And should I turn up anything?'

‘Oh well,' said Charles lightly. ‘I imagine they'd find it fairly simple to steal if off you. They'd have saved themselves a hell of a lot of brainwork, and pinching the solution off you would be child's play.'

‘That isn't what you were going to say,' pointed out Sarah.

Charles stood up suddenly and walked restlessly across the small room, his hands in his pockets. Then he turned and came back to Sarah and stood in front of her, frowning down at her.

‘I've changed my mind,' said Charles shortly. ‘The sooner you get off this boat and out of this country the better. You can pack up and move into Nedou's Hotel tomorrow morning, and we can get a car to take you down the hill the next day.'

Sarah smiled disarmingly at him. ‘Suppose I don't want to go?'

‘You'll do as you're told,' said Charles curtly. ‘As long as you are here you are a nuisance and a liability.'

‘Oh no, I'm not,' corrected Sarah firmly. ‘That's where you're wrong. As long as I'm here there is just a chance that I may be merely a simple-minded tourist after all, who has got mixed up in this entirely by mistake and doesn't know a thing. And who quite possibly
bought
the receipt off this Miss Rushton, at that! For all they know, Janet may have decided she didn't want the boat, and seen a chance of getting her money back by selling it to someone who wasn't likely to know that houseboat rents would fall considerably this season. Don't you see? They can't be sure.'

‘That's not the point,' said Charles roughly.

‘Yes it is. And there's another thing. If I go, this boat goes to the next applicant on what seems to be a nice long list.'

‘No it wouldn't. I should take it on.'

‘And become a marked man at once? You've said yourself that once anyone in your job becomes suspect his usefulness is reduced to a minimum. That's right, isn't it?'

‘Yes, but——'

‘No, it's my turn to hold the floor. I'm not going! It isn't because I don't know exactly what you were going to say just now when you pulled yourself up. You were going to say that if and when I find anything, I should go the same way as Janet.'

‘Exactly!' agreed Charles grimly. ‘In fact the chances of your being allowed to survive any discovery on this boat are nil. That's why I'm packing you off to Ceylon tomorrow.'

‘Charles—wait a minute. All this that you're working on, it's very important, isn't it?'

‘Very.'

‘How important? Is it only going to affect one or two people or hundreds of people—or what?'

‘I don't know,' said Charles slowly. ‘That's the hell of it. We simply do not know yet. But it could be millions.'

‘Well then, do you think you've got any right to take chances with something like that? Suppose they
are
suspicious of me? It doesn't really matter, because they can't be quite sure. As long as I'm on the boat you stand a better chance of keeping other people off it, and unless it can be proved that I'm up to my neck in this, I doubt their doing anything very drastic just now. Can't you see that?'

‘Maybe you're right,' said Charles thoughtfully. He stood still, his hands deep in his pockets, staring down at the faded carpet, and presently he jerked his shoulders uncomfortably and said: ‘All right, you win. But with conditions.'

Sarah said: ‘It depends on the conditions.'

Charles ignored the remark. ‘First of all,' he said, ‘you will carry a gun with you always, and use it without hesitation in a crisis. If you shoot some innocent citizen by mistake, I'll get you out of it. But as I've said once already this evening, the golden rule in the present situation is shoot first and argue afterwards. I'll give you a heavier gun. That one hasn't much stopping power. Next, you will get a set of bolts and fix them to every available door and window. You can do that, can't you?'

Sarah nodded.

‘Finally,' said Charles, ‘you will go nowhere by yourself. Always keep in company when you leave the boat. Is that clear?'

‘As pea soup,' said Sarah flippantly. ‘All right. I'll do it. But where do we go from there?'

‘We take this boat to bits if necessary,' said Charles. ‘And as we haven't any time to lose, we may as well get on with it now. Sleepy?'

‘At the moment,' confessed Sarah, ‘I don't feel as if I shall ever be able to sleep again.'

‘Good,' approved Charles callously. ‘In that case let's get on with it. How far did you get with the books and what were you looking for?'

‘A loose sheet of paper or else pages marked so that you could read off a code. That was all I could think of!'

‘And not a bad idea either. Oh well, let's get to work.'

They settled themselves on the floor, surrounded by stacks of novels, and proceeded to go through each one methodically; looking down the spine of each book and investigating the thickness of each cover with a penknife. The night was at last both quiet and still, and although they could occasionally hear a far-off growl of thunder no breath of wind returned to disturb the lake, and the houseboat lay motionless at her moorings in a silence broken only by an occasional soft arpeggio of plops as a frog skittered across the water from one lily-pad to the next, the splash of a leaping fish or the cheep of a sleepy bird from the branch of the big chenar tree.

They worked methodically, stacking each book to one side as they finished with it, and reaching for the next. Hour after hour seemed to slip by, and Sarah's back began to ache and one of her feet had gone to sleep. She began to listen for sounds on the bank outside and to start nervously at each tiny night noise.

Charles, who had apparently never once glanced in her direction, appeared to be aware of the state of her nerves, for now he looked up from his work and smiled at her.

‘It's all right,' he said, ‘I told you no one would come back tonight. I think we've done enough for the moment. Let's put this lot back. Sorted on the right-hand shelves, unsorted on the left. OK?'

He stood up, and reaching down a hand pulled Sarah to her feet.

‘Ouch!' said Sarah, collapsing on the sofa and massaging her left foot to restore the circulation while Charles replaced and stacked the long line of books. ‘As a matter of fact,' she said defensively to Charles's back, ‘I wasn't thinking of anyone trying to come on board—not with that man of yours on the bank. But suppose someone was watching from much further off? After all, they'd be able to see that a light was burning in this room, even though the curtains are drawn.'

‘You forget,' said Charles with a grin, ‘that you are a nervous spinster living alone. You would be more than likely to have a lamp lit in reserve on a night like this. In fact I bet you left one on when you went to bed, didn't you?'

‘Well, yes. The pantry one,' confessed Sarah a little shamefacedly.

‘I thought as much. You'd have to be an exceptionally strong-minded woman not to. No, I don't think you need worry about a light in this room being suspicious. And if your boat should happen to attract any more visitors tonight, Habib will deal with that.'

‘How much does he know?' asked Sarah curiously. ‘About all this, I mean?'

‘Enough to be going on with,' said Charles noncommittally. ‘No one knows much more than that—except for one, or possibly two men at the top.'

‘Janet said something like that,' mused Sarah. ‘She said that she and Mrs Matthews were only links in a chain…'

‘Mrs Matthews was a little more than a link,' said Charles. ‘But Janet was right. Too much knowledge too widely spread can be very dangerous. That's been proved over and over again: this particular business being a case in point! Somewhere along the line someone has either been bribed, blackmailed or tortured into telling what they know. We've got a reasonable number of people, like the man who met me in Babamarishi, up here in Kashmir: all of them working on their own particular line, and by no means all of them knowing each other. They are the real nuts and bolts of the whole system; but not the spark or the petrol. And, unfortunately, not at a level to be handed the kind of information that Mrs Matthews and Janet Rushton seem to have stumbled upon—which was their bad luck.'

He was silent for a time, staring unseeingly at the flame of the oil lamp that etched harsh lines and hollows in his face, and presently Sarah said: ‘Charles——'

‘Yes?'

‘Who are
“they”
—the ones you call the “opposition”? The people who killed Janet and Mrs Matthews and–and all the others? I asked Janet that, but she wouldn't tell. So I supposed that they were the usual Freedom Fighters—the “Quit India!” lot. But now that we're quitting anyway, and they know they've won, I can't see that there would be any point in that.'

‘There isn't.'

‘Then who?'

‘Work it out for yourself,' said Charles unhelpfully.

‘That's no answer and you know it. You can't fob me off like that now—not after scaring me nearly out of my mind tonight; let alone in Gulmarg! Is it politics, revolution, mutiny, drug-smuggling, or what? You say “nobody knows”. But you must have
some
idea.'

Charles sat down on the arm of the sofa, and said slowly: ‘Yes. We have an idea. You see Sarah, every country in the world has an Intelligence Service—a Secret Service, if you prefer to call it that. Here in India it's often kept busy with what Kipling called “The Great Game”. That game runs from beyond the Khyber to the frontier of Assam, and further. We have to keep an ear to the ground all over India, because a whisper heard in a bazaar in Sikkim may touch off a riot in Bengal. We have to keep eyes and ears in every town and village——

‘Well, something very queer has been happening in India during the last year or so. Something beyond the usual underground stuff. There have been, for instance, a phenomenal number of burglaries. Not just the usual line in theft, but really big money. Carefully planned robberies of State Jewels worth millions. Things like the Charkrale rubies and the Rajgore emeralds, that are almost beyond price. Some of these jewels have turned up in surprising places, but we have discovered that for some reason most if not all of them have passed into or through Kashmir. This State has been a sort of collecting house—a pool.'

Sarah said: ‘I remember about the emeralds. I mean, that was why you were playing polo the day that—' she stopped suddenly, and Charles looked at her curiously. ‘Those emeralds,' he said after a pause, ‘are here in Kashmir.'

‘How do you know?' asked Sarah, startled. ‘Have you got them?'

‘No. But we know they are here. We thought we had taken every possible precaution against them getting over this border, but someone's been too clever for us. They are here.'

‘But what for?' asked Sarah.

‘Well, in the first place, for re-cutting. A great many of the stones have been re-cut here, in grubby little jeweller's shops poked away among the back streets of the city. But the best of the stuff has gone out across the passes by Gilgit and over the Pamirs.'

‘Where to?'

Charles looked at her slantingly under his lashes. ‘Your guess is as good as mine,' he said dryly: ‘I told you to work it out for yourself.'

‘But–but they're our
allies!
' protested Sarah, horrified.

‘They are no one's allies. They never have been … Except just for as long as it happens to suit their own book, and not one second longer! They will even ally themselves—and will continue to ally themselves—with the most blatantly fascist, reactionary and brutal regimes, solely to serve their own interests—and no one else's! There are a lot of things that the people of other nations will stick at doing because of that outmoded idea, “moral principles”; but they will stick at nothing, and their goal is always the same. Themselves on top; and everyone else either kneeling, or if they won't kneel, flat on their backs or their faces and very dead!'