Barbara Cleverly (14 page)

He sat on for a long while, rehearsing phrases, deciding the line he was going to take. ‘Naurung!’ he thought. ‘I’m going to need his help.’

As the tinkling sounds of Kitty’s clock chiming five faded, Joe was ushered on to the verandah by the khitmutgar. Cool from his second bath that day and comfortably dressed in a pair of box cloth trousers, white shirt and riding jacket, he strode forward to kiss Kitty’s hand.

‘My dear Commander,’ she said laughing at him, ‘how fresh you look! And how charmingly informal. Now, do I regret the passing of the wing collar, the lavender gloves, the pearl tie pin? Perhaps not. But you must come and meet the lady wives of the officers — the “Bengal Mares” as my father used to call them.’

Joe turned to face the rest of the company. Nancy and six other women had been standing chattering in a tight group when he entered and now they broke up and approached in order of seniority to be introduced to him.

‘Nancy of course you know,’ said Kitty proceeding down the line. ‘Now, Mary, may I present Commander Joseph Sandilands of the Metropolitan Police? Commander, this is Mary Crawford, the wife of Major Crawford

’

There followed Biddy Kemp, Jane Fortescue, Lucy Meadows, Phoebe Carter the MO’s wife and the wife of the veterinary officer, Joyce Wainwright. He tried to form an impression of each as she passed in front of him but ended with a blurred vision of bright colours, floating fabrics, scented hands, shy smiles, teasing smiles and, above all, of clever and calculating eyes. What he did not see a trace of was panic.

Colonial wives had a reputation for being dowdy but the selection before him brought to mind an English herbaceous border at its midsummer best. Kitty and Mary Crawford were dressed with the utmost correctness in ankle-length crepe tea gowns. Hemlines rose, he noted, in inverse proportion to age and the youngest, little Lucy Meadows, was wearing a rose pink day frock which barely covered her knees. The youngest three wives all, like Nancy, wore their hair short, their figures uncorseted and their expression direct.

Kitty waved a hand towards a table laid out with a lace cloth on which stood two silver teapots, one with a red ribbon attached to its handle, the other with a yellow ribbon. There was a Coalport china tea service, plates of sandwiches and a cake stand laden with slices of Dundee cake and iced sponge cake. The khitmutgar presided, smiling, over the table as Kitty invited everyone to choose their tea — red ribbon for Indian, yellow for China.

Joe chose Indian tea and an anchovy paste sandwich and chatted with each of the ladies in turn. They compared the weather in London with that of Panikhat, they told him of their plans for the coming hot weather season when the traditional exodus to the hill stations of the Himalayan foothills took place and Jane Fortescue offered flirtatiously to show him the delights of Simla should he care to make the journey. The teapots were refilled from a spirit kettle and Joe sipped his third cup of tea, beginning uneasily to wonder exactly why he had been asked to come. He cast a furtive glance at Kitty’s clock and was surprised to find he had only been there for forty minutes.

At last Kitty called the tea party to attention. ‘And now, ladies, if you would make yourselves comfortable, the time has come to ask Commander Sandilands to sing for his cup of tea.’

Cups and plates were laid down on tables and the chattering company fell silent. They began to exchange sideways glances and Jane Fortescue stepped forward. ‘Oh, no, Kitty! It is not the Commander who shall sing! We shall! Come on, girls!’

To Joe’s amazement she seated herself at the piano and the other girls grouped themselves around her. After an opening chord from Jane they began to sing.

‘Watch your back! Be ready!

For no one will heed your cry.

There are five of us dead already;

Under six feet of earth we lie.

Hold the line, girls! Steady!

And wipe the tears from your eyes.

Here’s a toast to the dead already,

And here’s to the next girl that dies!’

They broke up, laughing, and settled into chairs watching for his reaction.

Joe knew the tune. It always brought a shudder of horror with it. He had last heard it sung in tones of bright despair by a quartet of young Flying Corps officers before they took off for the last time over the German lines. The women had just treated him to a bastardised version of the old ‘Calcutta Cholera Song’. Challenging him? Telling him they weren’t afraid? Hiding their fear under a flourish?

He waited for a moment then hummed the first line reflectively. ‘Yes, I thought I recognised it! “The Panikhat Panic Song”! We used to sing the same tune in the trenches but if I were to tell you the words we used Kitty would have me ejected.’

Some of them smiled and out of the corner of his eye he noticed Nancy begin to relax. The khitmutgar began silently to clear away the tea things and Joe went into his talk. He moved forward and sat facing them on the edge of a table. He had decided that these bold and lively women deserved nothing less than the truth as he now saw it, however unpalatable.

‘I know about fear. I know about death. And I’m not going to tell you not to worry your pretty little heads about the deaths that have been occurring on the station. I am going to tell you that you may have good cause to be afraid. You are members of a group which for a reason I have not yet ascertained is the target of a killer. And a very particular type of killer

’

Soft-footed, Naurung entered the room. He was wearing, not his usual police uniform, but the loose white outfit of a house servant, a red waistcoat and a blue turban. Joe went on talking, the women’s attention riveted on him. Naurung began to help the khitmutgar with the clearing of the table. Suddenly he dropped a plate which crashed to the ground and broke. Naurung exclaimed loudly and began to sweep the remains together. The khitmutgar advanced on him and Naurung, hissing invective at him, was hurried from the room. The women, who had all turned to stare at Naurung on hearing the noise, averted their eyes in embarrassment or distaste at the extraordinary scene and fixed their attention once more on Joe.

He continued to talk to them, concisely setting out the dates and details of the pre-war deaths and summarising his suspicions. Suddenly he broke off and reached into his pocket. He took out some sheets of paper and pencils and passed one’tb each lady.

‘Before we go on — and believe me there is a point to what I’m about to ask you to do — I want you to think back to what happened in this room five minutes ago. Take your pencil and write down a description of the Indian who came in to assist the khitmutgar. What was he wearing? What were his features like? What language was he speaking? What did he do?’

Puzzled looks were exchanged, pencil ends were chewed and short notes were written down. Joe collected the papers in and put them on the table by his side.

‘Coming now to someone you all knew,’ he went on, ‘— Peggy Somersham who died last week. I know you have been told that she committed suicide but I have to tell you that, like the others who preceded her, I fear she was murdered. Murdered and not by her husband. It is my intention to have the coroner’s verdict of suicide overruled.’

There was a murmur and a nodding of heads in approval of this.

He went carefully over the evidence he had collected and concluded, ‘There was one witness, a vital witness who unfortunately was allowed to go free after giving his statement

’

‘Bulstrode!’ someone interrupted. ‘The man’s an incompetent idiot! He should have locked him up and thrown the key away!’

‘The witness was an Indian. We do not have a good description of him although he was seen by several people and even interviewed by the officials. From the accounts I’ve given you, you will have noted that at or near each murder scene an Indian of one sort or another was noticed. Where are they? Who are they? One man or several? How can they, or he, just have slipped into the sand? I’ll tell you how. People are very bad observers. Ask any group of six onlookers to describe a man who has just knifed another in a London street and you will be given six different (and possibly all incorrect) descriptions. Let’s take this group of six. I asked you to write a description of the Indian servant who created a disturbance a few minutes ago.’

Joe leafed though the notes, discarding one that said, ‘It was Naurung, you fool! Nancy’ and read out a sample:

‘ “It was an Indian. He was wearing Indian clothes and he shouted in Indian. He broke something. A teacup?’

‘ “It was Kitty’s bearer Ahmed. Tall, dark, blue jacket, beard, yellow turban. Broke a teacup. Kitty won’t be pleased! Spoke Hindustani.’

‘ “Vicious-looking. Elderly. Red turban. Medium height. Struck the khitmutgar and swore in Hindu.’

‘ “Young. Short. Shifty-looking with a large moustache. Red turban, green jacket. Spilled a cup of tea on Khit’s foot. He spoke Bengali.’

‘These descriptions reflect well on your imagination, ladies, but less well on your powers of observation! Come in, Naurung!’ Joe called.

Naurung appeared smiling and bowing to the ladies who gasped when they recognised him, laughed and turned to each other pointing out that it was Naurung Singh the policeman in disguise.

‘Not in disguise. Merely wearing clothes you are not expecting to see him wear and appearing in a context in which you would not expect to see him. He has no connection with Kitty’s household in your experience so you did not recognise him. Thank you, Naurung,’ said Joe, and he left exchanging a joke with the khitmutgar who had obviously enjoyed the whole performance.

‘Well, you didn’t get many details right, did you? By the way — he broke a plate — an old one, with Kitty’s permission! He was speaking Hindustani and he said something unrepeatable about the khitmutgar’s parentage. And your descriptions of the man himself were far from accurate. Although you all in fact have seen him on many occasions. The reason for this? Because he is Indian. You simply do not register brown faces with any interest or accuracy. And this is precisely the failing that enables our killer to get close to his victim unnoticed and then get away.’

‘So what are you suggesting, Commander?’ piped up Lucy Meadows. ‘That we should all sleep with a hockey stick under our bed and avoid all brown faces? Pretty jolly difficult in India, you know!’

‘I think the Commander is trying to tell us,’ drawled Phoebe Carter, ‘that we should give up and go home to England next March. Can you guarantee that the streets of London are any safer, Mr Sandilands? Have you caught Jack the Ripper yet?’

Her jibe earned a ripple of laughter.

‘Mrs Carter,’ said Joe seriously, ‘you would, I can tell you, be at far less risk of your life in Whitechapel where the murder rate is less than one per year among a population of many thousands, than here in Panikhat where one out of six of you could well die next March. And the drawing-rooms of the home counties, I believe, are still reckoned to be entirely safe

though there is the ever present danger of an attack of terminal boredom

and, seriously, this is an option, should our man still be at large next year.

‘But I wanted to say, in conclusion, this: I believe no one here is in danger before next March. The man I’m looking for is not a deranged killer. He is following a plan — I am tempted to say, a sacrificial ritual. I’m going to work out what scheme or compulsion lies behind the killings and bring the man to justice. It’s my opinion that there is some religious or quasi-religious motive at the bottom of all this, a motive which as Westerners we may be hard pushed to understand. We have all heard of the religion and despicable (to us) habits of the Thugs who infested this part of India until quite recent times

’

Again the girls nodded in understanding. Thuggee. The word still had the power to terrify. The thousands of innocent travellers, garotted and buried in mass graves in the last century and all in the name of sacrifice to the blood-thirsty goddess Kali, were not forgotten.

‘

it is quite possible that our man is acting under the same kind of compulsion.’

‘So what can you do, Commander, to get hold of this man before he strikes at another one of us? You’re only here for a short while and you say Bulstrode’s let him go!’ said Jane indignantly. ‘How can you get him back? He could be anywhere in India by now!’

With a confidence he didn’t feel, Joe set out to reassure them. ‘These are the days of the telegraph and the telephone and the train. If he can move about the country easily, how much more easily can the forces of Law and Order! I am going to Calcutta to check on this man’s story and I’ll inform the Governor. Wherever he’s fled, we’ll follow and we’ll stay on his trail until we’ve caught him.’

He looked around his audience, catching each woman’s eye and said quietly, as though making a promise to each individually, ‘And I’m going to get him. If it takes another week, another month or another year!’

Ť ^ ť

After breakfast on Monday Joe put on his topee and set off to catch Bulstrode before he started out on his rounds. Presenting himself at his office building he was politely asked by a young Sikh officer to wait for a few moments. The few moments turned into several minutes of waiting time, carefully calculated to annoy, Joe guessed. He sighed and set himself to wait patiently, using the time to leaf though his notes. Eventually the door to Bulstrode’s office opened.

‘Sandilands!’ said Bulstrode with bonhomie. ‘Glad you could spare the time. Come in. Take a seat? Had coffee, have you? You’ve been turning the Somersham bungalow over, I hear. Up-to-date forensic methods hot from the press in Scotland Yard. Manage to turn up anything?’

The tone was friendly in the extreme but the eyes were suspicious.

Joe felt his professional detachment slipping. He desperately wanted to punch Bulstrode on his arrogant nose. Instead he said easily, ‘Nothing of any great consequence

Only perhaps two facts you might like to consider. One, that Peggy Somersham was certainly murdered and secondly that she was expecting a baby.’

Bulstrode stopped dead and turned to face him.