Barbara Cleverly (29 page)

‘Oh, Lord! What now?’ muttered Nancy and got up to greet her.

Midge ran up the steps and, ignoring everyone else, threw her arms round Nancy in a storm of weeping, her pretty face congested and wet with tears.

‘Goodness me!’ said Nancy placidly. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘Oh, Nancy! You won’t believe! Something awful’s happened! Oh, why did it have to be like this? I was so happy — everything was utter bliss — and now I’m miserable. Miserable! I’m very sensitive — everybody says so and a shock like this could kill me! Don’t laugh! It could! A doctor once told me I was emotionally fragile. Fragile!’

‘Well, I’m not sure I would pay too much attention to that diagnosis,’ said Nancy, ‘but why don’t you tell us what’s the matter?’

Andrew, composed, favoured Nancy with a broad wink. Dickie Templar, looking concerned but outwardly calm, eyed Midge with affection from which amusement was not absent. He went over to her, kissed her cheek, rubbed at a paint stain on her nose and said, ‘Good morning.’ Midge burst into further floods of tears.

Nancy sank down on to a long chair and Midge came and firmly sat on her lap.

‘It’s Daddy,’ she said, ‘and I hate him!’

‘You don’t hate him,’ said Andrew.

‘I do,’ said Midge and, turning to Nancy, ‘you’d hate him too if you were me. It all began when I told him that Dickie had asked me to marry him.’

‘Has he?’ asked Nancy, throwing a look at Dickie.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Midge impatiently. ‘A long time ago. Coming through the Suez Canal

’

‘What did you say?’ Joe asked.

‘Well, I said yes, of course,’ said Midge. ‘Didn’t I, Dickie? Straight out. What else would you say — “Oh but this is so sudden”? It wasn’t sudden at all — I’d known it was coming since Malta. But Daddy was horrid. Just as horrid as he possibly could be! “You’re far too young

You’ve only just left school

You don’t marry the first man you meet

” And then — what a beastly thing to say — “You’re just like your mother.” I want to be like my mother! She came to a sad end, I know, but that wasn’t her fault. It sounds as if she had a lot of fun. I want to be like her and I want to marry Dickie! Nancy, you and Andrew are my guardians. I know Daddy’s left me to you in his will, he told me so, so you’ve got to speak to him! It’s your duty!’

Tears began again. Joe looked at Dickie Templar with interest and their eyes met. He was wearing stiff Gurkha shorts, bare feet thrust into nailed sandals and a white shirt open at the neck. He looked, Joe decided, strong, brown, handsome and just what any girl aged eighteen would want to marry.

Dickie said, ‘Now come on, Midge, you took the poor man by surprise. I mean — for God’s sake — give him a chance! He hadn’t seen me for twelve years — I might be the biggest rogue in Christendom for all he knows and whether we like it or not, you are only eighteen and you have only been back in India five minutes. We must give him time. I love you. I won’t go away. I won’t say I don’t mind waiting because I do but I can bear it. You can bear it. We can bear it. We’ll be all right. I’m not daunted. “Faint heart never won fair lady”, you know.’

‘Oh, Midge,’ said Nancy, tightening her arm about her, ‘it sounds like the voice of sense to me. I’ve not had the chance to say it yet so I’ll say it now — I think you’ve got a good chap there.’

‘And I’ll add — don’t ruin everything by going off at half cock,’ said Andrew. ‘Diplomacy. That’s the only way. You’ll only alienate Giles if he thinks you’ve come telling tales to us. What’s he doing at the moment?’

‘He was showing me how to do silk painting. I was enjoying it. We were having a good time until he spoiled it.’

‘Well, I suggest you go straight back as though nothing’s happened, pick up your brush and start painting again. We, meanwhile,’ he indicated everyone present with a wide gesture, ‘will put our considerable skills to discussing your problem and finding a way to its solution.’

‘That’s an outstandingly good offer, Midge, when you look at the talent on show,’ said Dickie. ‘Go back, love, and reassure him. Listen to what he has to say. And, above all, don’t go throwing down any gauntlets that someone else will have to pick up. After all, he’s been waiting for his daughter to come home and she’s hardly unpacked her bags before she announces her intention of marrying an unknown Gurkha. You must allow him time!’

‘Oh, all right. I’ll do what you say, Dickie. But I don’t think he cares a button about me,’ said Midge morosely.

Ť ^ ť

They all stood and watched Midge walk slowly back through the street, dragging her heels and pausing to cast a last reproachful glance back at Dickie before she turned the corner.

‘Are you really the guardian of that bundle of trouble?’ Joe asked.

‘Not exactly,’ said Andrew. ‘Midge wouldn’t understand the distinction but I am Prentice’s executor and trustee. People in India die quite often and quite suddenly, especially the military. It’s safer to name an official by his position and there’s always a Collector of Panikhat. And, for the moment, I am he.’

The calm that followed the tornado of Midge’s appearance was welcome to all. Andrew called for another pot of coffee and, as though by agreement, they settled themselves at the table on the verandah. Discreetly, Andrew took charge of the coffee and dismissed the servants.

‘Joe,’ he said, ‘if I read your expression correctly, you have something to tell us.’

Dickie Templar stirred uncomfortably and started to get to his feet. ‘Look, if you chaps are about to have a conference or something, I’ll make myself scarce for a while

’

‘No!’ said Joe abruptly. ‘It is important that you stay. What I have to say concerns you, your future and your past very closely.’

Dickie looked puzzled. Nancy and Andrew exchanged glances.

Joe produced his notebook. ‘Templar, I have a list here of names which I copied from the mess records last night before the Manoli binge. They refer to the night of the 17th of March twelve years ago. It was a Saturday and it was the night the Prentice bungalow burned down. There were five officers of Bateman’s Horse dining that night. Their names are: Carmichael, Forbes, Simms-Warburton, Somersham and Templar.’

Nancy sat up with a jerk and Andrew put down his coffee cup very carefully. Neither spoke.

‘Take your time to remember and tell us exactly what happened that night. As I say, it is vitally important.’

Dickie was silent, his expression grave. Finally he said, ‘Important for whom? For you?’

‘For me, yes, certainly, but mostly for you yourself.’

‘Well, this is all very mysterious. And, quite honestly, it’s not something I have any pleasure in thinking back on. But if you have to know I’d better tell you, I suppose

It’s Prentice, isn’t it? Has he been talking? Has he asked you to rake all this up again? Is he trying to use this as a wedge between me and Midge?’

Joe shook his head. ‘Prentice has said nothing to me. As far as I am aware he has never spoken of it to anyone. Just try and recall the events of that evening if you can.’

Dickie paused for a moment, focusing on the past.

‘There were five of us dining in the mess that night. Most of us had cried off going to some awful Panikhat Week event — a midnight picnic, I think.’ He shuddered. ‘Being eaten alive by mosquitoes while you ate cucumber sandwiches and drank tepid champagne wasn’t my idea of fun. All the same, I wish now I’d gone

There we all were in the mess, some of us pretty drunk — no, I have to say, somewhat paralytic. I was not. In fact I was fed up with the rest of them. I didn’t like the Greys officers and they didn’t like me. They’d adopted the terrible practice of not speaking to junior officers and not expecting junior officers to speak unless spoken to. A lot of regiments used to be like that and cavalry regiments especially. I got fed up with them. “Snobbish, conceited, ill-mannered louts,” I said to myself at the advanced age of eighteen! I went off to have a pee to get away from them and looking out of the window I saw, for God’s sake, that the bloody place was on fire. Was anyone taking any notice? Not as far as I could see. Drawing a deep breath, I went back and told them. While they were drinking themselves senseless, the cantonment had caught fire. What were they going to do about it?

‘Well, you can believe it or not but what they were intending to do about it was absolutely bugger all! Oh, sorry, Nancy! Ticked me off for mentioning it! Junior officers were not expected to rush in announcing a fire apparently. They were interested enough to walk on to the verandah and ascertain that the rumpus — by that time there were shots to be heard too — was coming from Prentice’s bungalow. That made them laugh. They all hated him, I think, for one reason or another, and they just stood there and watched the spectacle. One of them actually called for a brandy and stood sipping it while the bungalow went up. That was Simms-Warburton. He was really blotto

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,” I remember he said. “Your house is on fire, your children are gone. Except that they aren’t — took his wife and daughter with him, I suppose. He usually does.”

‘Carmichael was the senior officer present. And he’d drunk more than any of us. Could hardly move.’

‘Five glasses of port,’ said Joe.

‘Was it? Hmm

And you can add the claret he’d drunk earlier. He loathed Prentice and couldn’t see any reason for rushing to save his bungalow. “Stay where you are,” he said. “It’s not our job to go running around after a fire. Leave it to the Queen’s — they’re on duty. This is the army, you know. And to be more precise, the Indian army. Not the bloody Boy Scouts! So, stay where you are! I’ll make that an order if you like.”

‘And so we stayed where we were, for precious minutes — perhaps for as long as a quarter of an hour — and finally I could bear it no longer and Philip Forbes, the regimental doctor, backed me up and we went down there. The rest trailed down after us. I wouldn’t be surprised if, over all, we had wasted half an hour.’

Suddenly his tone changed and, haunted afresh by the memory, his face stiffened as he resumed, ‘You asked if I remembered. Of course. I shall never forget. And when we got there, the dacoits had got away and Dolly Prentice was dead. And Prentice’s bearer was dead, apparently going to the rescue, brave chap that he was. And it was only by the mercy of Providence and the brilliant improvisation of Midge’s ayah that she wasn’t killed too! Those buggers were high on hash. They’d have put anything white — man, woman or child — on the bonfire if they could. And

’

He stared vacantly around the company for a moment. ‘

it might so easily have been Midge. She was on the menu all right!’

There was a silence which Nancy broke. ‘But you were there. You saved her. That’s what’s important.’

Dickie looked gratefully up. ‘That may be,’ he said, ‘but perhaps I could have done more. I could have got them going earlier! I could have shouted at them! God knows, for a long time after it happened, I could think of nothing else. And now all that you’ve told me brings it back again.’

‘I must ask you, Dickie,’ said Joe, ‘if Prentice was aware of your — the group’s — negligence? Because negligence it would seem to have been.’

‘He knew. Oh yes, he knew. He went a bit barmy when he got back from Calcutta and they told him the news. He just sat about and wouldn’t speak to anybody. Cut himself off completely and wouldn’t be doing with words of sympathy from anyone. Then he pulled himself together and started making enquiries and we were all waiting for the wrath to descend on us. But it never did. He decided apparently to take it out on the people who were really responsible and set off on a punitive raid after the dacoits. He knew who they were — he’d been rousting them out of village after village for months. His information was always of the very best. This time he made a thorough job of it and cleared out the whole rats’ nest. But I could tell from the way he looked at us — he knew. Hard to pin down and it could just be my conscience enlarging on it, of course, but I thought I caught his eye on each of us at one time or another

Ever looked a cobra in the face, Commander, eye to eye?’

Joe shook his head.

‘I have. Chills you to the bone. But I can tell you this — I’d rather outface a cobra than Giles Prentice.’

Andrew voiced the thought they were each turning over. ‘It took some courage to appear last night and meet him again after all these years. Especially when you knew you were about to ask if he would kindly allow you to relieve him of his only daughter.’

‘Courage?’ said Dickie. ‘I don’t know about courage. Awkward, perhaps, but for me not more than that. After all, I’m not the beardless, unattached youth I was in those days. I’ve been on the frontier off and on for ten years. You might say I’m, to an extent, the same type as Prentice. And I knew what I wanted.’

Nancy looked from Dickie to Joe and back again. ‘There are things you should know, Dickie,’ she said. ‘Tell him, Joe. He has to be told.’

‘Do you know why I’m here in Panikhat, Dickie?’ Joe asked.

‘Of course. Nancy was telling me you’re on secondment from the Met and she shanghaied you over here to look into the murder of her friend Peggy

Peggy Somersham.’

‘I’m enquiring into the murders of four women and their names are Carmichael, Forbes, Simms-Warburton and Somersham

’

Dickie leapt to his feet. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘The mess dinner! On the night of the fire! Are you telling me that each of those men has lost his wife? That she’s been murdered? Can you be certain?’

‘Naurung and I have looked into each death and we are convinced that they were not accidental

’ He turned for confirmation to Naurung who nodded his agreement.

And so, in turn, and with frequent interruptions from Nancy, Joe and Naurung outlined for him the investigations they had carried out and Dickie listened in silence. When their account drew to a close, he muttered, ‘This is the most devilish thing! I won’t say I don’t believe you — I do. I have to. But it is the most appalling thing

’

‘It’s quite incomprehensible. I’ve never heard of anything so evil,’ said Nancy.