Barbara Cleverly (7 page)

Pretty girl, thought Joe automatically. He glanced at his programme to see who this might be but there was nothing listed after the melodrama. He was turning to Sir George for some explanation when she began to speak.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the theatre management committee I have to make an announcement.’ Her voice was low and musical and carried well to all parts of the auditorium. This was a girl who was used to appearing on stage, Joe thought. Taking her time, she swept the gilded boxes with a confident gaze, gathering attention.

The audience settled into a rustling, whispering expectancy.

‘A tragic announcement, I’m afraid. We’ve had many distinguished performers in the Gaiety Theatre and all had been looking forward to hearing perhaps the most distinguished of all – Feodor Korsovsky, booked to perform here for four nights this week.’ There was a long pause. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you that Monsieur Korsovsky was shot earlier today on his way to Simla. He was killed on the Kalka road.’

The gasp and the roar of astonishment that greeted her words drowned for a moment what she had further to say and once again she held up her hand for silence.

‘At the moment,’ she continued, ‘there is little more to say but, in his honour and in his memory, I am going to sing a Russian song.’

The murmur of expectancy and surprise broke out again. An Indian with a stringed instrument in his hand slipped quietly into the orchestra pit below her.

‘This song,’ she went on, ‘should properly be accompanied by a balalaika but Chandra Lai will do the best he can.’ She nodded to the Indian who plucked a chord on his instrument. They nodded to each other again in an unbroken silence and she began to sing.

Her voice was untrained and soft but sweet and true. Joe knew enough Russian to make out that this was a lament. A song of sadness at a parting. A song sung, as far as he could guess, in perfect Russian. And perhaps here in the foothills of the Himalayas this haunting farewell was not out of place. It was a song of the mountains, the distant Russian mountains, beyond which a girl’s lover had strayed never to return.

The song wound its way through three verses to the soft accompaniment of the strings. Joe was spellbound. Who, he wondered, could this be? Who was this girl, herself overcome by the pathos of her song and with tears, he noticed, running unheeded down her cheeks?

So, after all, someone had been waiting for Feodor. Someone in Simla was mourning him.

Ť ^ ť

As the last note died away the singer smiled sadly and instantly left the stage. It was clear that any applause would have been out of place and Joe noticed that, so moved was the audience, everyone stayed silently in their seats for a full minute, eyes downcast.

‘For God’s sake, George,’ said Joe urgently, ‘who was that? I want to meet that young woman.’

George rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t think even James could fix that for you. You’ll have to join the queue, I’m afraid. No use going backstage when Mrs Sharpe has just performed! I know, I’ve tried it myself. You can’t move for the bouquets and the strings of eager young mashers waiting to throw themselves at her feet.’

‘Mrs Sharpe?’

‘Wife of Reginald Sharpe. They’re both on the board of the Dramatic Society. And he’s another obstacle to intimacy with your little songbird – you’ll generally find him backstage like a lurking Cerberus!’

‘Look, George, my interest is purely professional,’ said Joe firmly. ‘I want to know how well that girl knew Feodor and why she was weeping at his memory.’

‘Oh, come on, Joe! Don’t let your romantic imagination run away with you – there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, including your own, including mine

but I see what you mean. James! Our guest has made his choice. Help us to hack our way through to Mrs Sharpe’s dressing room, would you?’

As steam gives way to sail, the crowds hung back and moved away before Sir George’s majestic approach. Joe followed him down corridors and around to a series of poky little rooms behind the theatre – the backstage of any provincial theatre in the world – where actors and singers were calling subdued goodbyes and closing doors. A tall spare man in evening dress approached them with a questioning smile.

‘Reggie!’ said Sir George heartily. ‘Good to see you! It went very well, I have to tell you. And here’s someone I’d like you to meet. Joe Sandilands who’s staying with me for the next few weeks. Joe is from Scotland Yard. Pretty useful chap to have around in our present mysterious circumstances! Would you mind introducing him to your wife? I think he has something he’d like to ask her.’

Reginald Sharpe eyed George with, in sequence, irritation, resentment and suspicion but these fell before an imperious and steady gaze down the length of George’s aristocratic nose and he summoned up a tight smile. ‘Of course, Sir George. How do you do, Sandilands? But look here – my wife is very tired and I’d be grateful if you could confine your, er, interview if that is what this is, to a few minutes only. I’m sure you understand.’

Joe was not quite sure what he was supposed to understand but he managed a sympathetic murmur of agreement. Reginald Sharpe knocked on a door and called out, ‘My dear, you have a visitor. From Scotland Yard, no less. Will you see him?’

There was a moment’s pause and then the door was flung open. She had not had time to change or to remove her make-up but she had dried her tears. A smiling and quizzical face greeted them. ‘Scotland Yard? Good Lord! Was I so criminally bad this evening? And which one of you has come to arrest me? Surely not you, Sir George? How good it is to see you again!’

Introductions were made, with rather bad grace, by Sharpe. ‘My dear, may I present Mr Sandilands who is a guest of the Governor? Mr Sandilands, my wife, Alice Conyers-Sharpe.’

With good humour and not a sign of the advertised fatigue, Alice Conyers-Sharpe took control of the situation. Sir George and James and her husband were all dismissed gracefully and Joe found himself alone with the young woman. Alone and, for once in his life, lost for words.

‘Mr Sandilands? Do sit down over there and tell me why you wanted to see me. Something tells me that you have not fought your way backstage to compliment me on my awful singing.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, I have,’ said Joe. ‘I was moved by your love song. So was everyone in the audience. But I particularly, since I was with Feodor Korsovsky when he was killed.’

Alice nodded and he understood that the news of his involvement had obviously already reached her. She leaned forward, a look of deep concern chasing away the questioning smile. ‘What a terrifying and sickening experience you must have had! It makes me shudder to think that while you were being shot at, while Korsovsky was dying, I was here at the theatre dancing the cakewalk with the Tinker Belles!’ It occurred to Joe that she was the first person to acknowledge that he too, though unscathed, had been involved in a horrifying incident. He felt impelled to confide in her.

‘It has, truly, left me very disturbed, Mrs Sharpe. I had known Korsovsky for a few hours only but that was enough, I think, to count him my friend. I’m here in Simla on leave but with Sir George’s permission – indeed at his request – I’m going to make it my business to find his killer. And, by your reaction on stage this evening, I’m wondering whether you were personally acquainted with him? You appeared intensely moved by your song and your Russian, as far as I am any judge, was perfect

’

Alice nodded again and whisked aside a curtain under her dressing table, producing two glasses. These were followed by a bottle of Islay malt and, without a word, she poured two generous glasses and handed one to Joe. As she held up her glass to him in a silent toast he noticed that her deep blue eyes were large and still wet with tears. She sipped for a moment at her whisky before answering.

‘I don’t find your response at all strange, Mr Sandilands. I too am able to make an instant judgement about people. I know within minutes whom I am going to like, respect and trust. And you are very perceptive! That song always makes me cry. It has many memories for me. It was taught to me by my first singing master – I had a very old-fashioned English country upbringing – and he was a young Russian émigré fleeing from the Revolution. He was the penniless son of a Count from Georgia.’ She laughed. ‘Nothing very special about that; as far as I can see everybody in Georgia is a Count and all penniless – and he was trying to accumulate enough money to pay for a passage to America. He was the first glamorous man to come into my life. I was fifteen and ready to fall in love. I fell in love. He went to America. And that was the end of it. At least, not quite the end, because I still sing that song and I still weep.’

Her steady gaze had held his while she spoke and Joe was the first to look away.

‘Your singing master?’ he said hesitantly. ‘His name was not Feodor Korsovsky by any chance?’

She laughed again and shook her head. ‘No, my singing master was a tenor. But I would have liked to meet Feodor Korsovsky. He might have

you will think me very odd to say such a thing, respectable married woman that I am

he might have known, have heard of my tenor, might have been able to give me news of him. Korsovsky was much travelled. He had spent some time in America, I understand. Mr Sandilands, I was

’ again her intense feelings were clear in her direct look, ‘I was waiting eagerly to meet him. I am devastated that such a talent has been silenced. I will do anything I can to help you catch the man who has done this.’

‘And the man who shot your brother also?’ said Joe. ‘Mrs Sharpe, forgive my mentioning your previous sorrow but we have reason to believe that the two killings may have been carried out by the same person. They were ambushed in the same place, shot by the same calibre bullets. Can you think of any connection, any connection at all between your brother Lionel and Korsovsky?’

She turned from him to the mirror and rubbed absently at a scar running the length of the right side of her face. ‘I have given it much thought. I have no answer for you. What connection could there be but that they were travelling on the same road? There are bandits even in this part of India, you know, Mr Sandilands. Three years ago the train was stopped by a boulder on the line. Five dacoits walked along the line of carriages shooting passengers and robbing them. Carter caught them and there has been no trouble since then but others may try. On the tonga road perhaps.’

Faced with his silence, she shook her head and agreed with his thoughts. ‘No, it’s not likely, is it? I believe, and you will know the truth of this, that no attempt at robbery was made. Very well, here’s my serious theory: political killings. You have heard of Amritsar?’

Joe nodded. The shooting down of over three hundred peacefully demonstrating Indians by British troops three years earlier in the town of Amritsar had been a scandal that had reverberated throughout India and Britain.

‘Amritsar is not all that far from here. Someone may be seeking revenge on the British. Any British. My brother with his fair hair would have been an obvious target and Korsovsky looked British from a distance. And last month,’ she hesitated, wondering how wide Joe’s knowledge of the Indian political scene might be, ‘last month, you may have heard that Mahatma Ghandi was sent to jail. For six years. On what many consider to be a trumped-up charge. He has many friends in Simla, Mr Sandilands, amongst whom he counts no less than the Viceroy, Lord Reading, and Lady Reading. There are both English and Indians who might try to voice their disapproval of such a sentence in a telling manner.’

‘But Ghandi abhors and rejects violence, doesn’t he?’ Joe objected.

‘Yes, indeed, he does. But one cannot always control one’s supporters. And there are many in India who are ready to stir up trouble for the British by any means at their disposal. Even these green hills, Mr Sandilands, could prove to be the slopes of a sleeping volcano. The population of Simla in the summer months is forty thousand. And do you know what proportion of these are European?’

Joe shook his head.

‘Four thousand. And it is the same all over India. There are millions of Indians who have never even set eyes on a white face. You could say we only scratch the surface of the continent. And, like an irritant flea, we could be swept away with one flick of our host’s finger.’

‘Any moment now,’ thought Joe, ‘she’s going to start lecturing me on the Indian Mutiny.’ Aloud he said, ‘I’ll bear this in mind, Mrs Sharpe. But I’m reluctant to begin to form any theories until I’ve seen the forensic evidence, however slight it may be, gathered from the scene of the crime. And this I will do tomorrow with Carter.’

‘I expect you would like to see me again?’ she volunteered.

Joe was taken by surprise. Her tone had been almost flirtatious. He was unaccustomed to his interview subjects requesting a second session.

She laughed, again, he suspected, reading his thoughts correctly. ‘I’m sure you’ll need to ask me if I was responsible for my brother’s death

where I was at the moment he was killed

how I may have profited from it and so on. When you’ve learned all you can from Carter why don’t you come to see me at my place of work – it’s just off the Mall.’

‘Your work?’ said Joe.

‘Oh, yes. I work, Mr Sandilands. I work hard. I am a director of a big – a very big – international company. It’s based in Bombay but I prefer to run things from Simla in the summer. Now we have telegraph and telephone such an arrangement is not out of the question. Heavens! They run the whole of the Indian Empire from here for seven months of the year, one business is nothing in comparison! Take a rickshaw – all know where to find me.’

And, with a dazzling smile and an unambiguous gesture she managed to convey without any possibility of contradiction that the interview was at an end.

Much puzzled, Joe returned to the auditorium, still full of chattering people reluctant to disperse. Sir George, accompanied by James, was still holding court. Over the heads of the crowd and discreetly watching, Joe caught the eye of Carter and made his way to him.