Barbara Cleverly (9 page)

‘And so on

I notice that there’s no statement from the beggar! Not surprised. He must have taken his annas and run.’ Joe shook his head and smiled at the credulity of women. ‘Still — good witness, Emma. Brave girl too. She managed to scramble down to the river with her friends and they found Sheila or rather Sheila’s body. It seems she had died instantly from a broken neck. I think this tells us almost everything we need to know. I would just like to have a talk with Sheila’s husband to round things off.’

‘Do you agree, sahib, that this was an unfortunate accident? Now that you have seen the dangers of the place

’

‘No, Naurung. Nor do I believe that an evil spirit exacted a sacrifice, though it’s tempting in this place to imagine it. No — Mrs Forbes was murdered. With deliberation, with calculation and in very cold blood!’

They remounted and followed the trail for a further five miles until it arrived at the junction with one of the main roads to the station, a road which stopped abruptly at the river bank and continued across the other side north towards Calcutta.

‘This can’t be the main road north, can it?’ Joe asked, taking in the single small boat which made up the ferry service and which was just casting off on the further bank to make the crossing.

‘Oh no. Ten miles downstream there is a bigger road and there is a bridge. This is the road used by people going to the village of Jhalpani, two miles beyond the river.’

Joe watched as the boat came steadily towards them, rowed along by one Indian pulling on the pair of oars. His back was towards them but they could easily make out the two faces of the Indian ladies he was ferrying. Joe’s gaze intensified as the boat reached the middle of the river.

‘Now that’s about where the ox-hide ferry was when it went under?’

‘Yes, sahib. At the centre. About forty yards from where we are standing.’

‘Do Englishwomen from the station often use this crossing?’

‘No. Very rarely. They would normally have no reason to cross the river here. They would have no business in Jhalpani. If they came out riding they would have broken off at the place I showed you five miles south where there is a road branching back to the station, sahib.’

‘Then what on earth was Mrs Captain Simms-Warburton doing risking her neck on an ox-hide raft?’

Joe sighed. The heat was beginning to tire him and so much concentrated death was becoming unnerving. The slaughter on the Western Front which he had never expected to survive had disgusted and degraded him like every other man who had been involved but this digging up of dead memsahibs affected him quite differently. These were not soldiers expecting death at any moment; these were perfectly ordinary ladies, some happy, some dull, none outstanding apparently, and all being snuffed out in bizarre ways. Were they no more than random victims of their surroundings? People kept telling him, ‘Of course, India is a dangerous place, Joe. Watch out for

’

But no one had mentioned ox-hide ferries.

‘There’s a cool spot under that tree over there, Naurung. Let’s have another look at the notes on Alicia Simms-Warburton, shall we? Here we are — coroner’s verdict: accidental death by drowning.

‘Now first things first, why was she going over? Here’s an account from her husband, written to the coroner whom he apparently seems to know as he addresses him as “Dear Wilfred”. This seems to be leading up to it:

‘ “I curse the day when somebody told her there was a hatch of Camberwell Beauty butterflies over there. ‘The Mourning Cloak’ they call it. Ironic, don’t you think?

‘ “As you know, Alicia was a keen lepidopterist. But — for the record — I mean really keen. She had thousands of butterflies in her collection. And she didn’t do it like most of the mems — just a way of passing the time by finding something pretty and sticking it in an album. No, she really knew about them. Have a look at her collection! All carefully pinned out and labelled. Good God, she even collected samples of their eggs, chrysalides and caterpillars — what have you — and stuck them in alongside. A really professional job. Up to museum standards. The servants were always bringing her samples of butterflies and insects but what she really liked to do was to go herself to examine what she called their habitat. There was one specimen that had long eluded her. This Camberwell Beauty thing. ‘Can’t you get one in England?’ I asked her. Apparently not. They’re even rarer back home than they are in India. And anyway I think it was the thrill of the chase that appealed, you know.

‘ “Anyhow, word got to her that a Camberwell Beauty had been spotted on the other side of the river south of Jhalpani and that was it. She was off the very next day. Couldn’t wait for me to come home and escort her. I was away on tour in the mofussil and didn’t find out what had happened for a week. I hear it was through Prentice that she found out about the wretched thing. One of his bearers or somebody had spotted one. You’d better ask him. I know about all this because she’d rushed off and left an unfinished letter to her sister who’s as mad as she is

was

on her desk. I think you should probably see this but I’d like to have it back when you’ve finished with it.” ’

It was signed ‘John Simms-Warburton’.

‘And where, I wonder, is Captain Simms-Warburton now? Is he still on the station? Would you know, Naurung?’

‘Alas, sahib, he is dead. He was killed in the war.’

‘Pity. Well, let’s hear what the lady herself has to say.’

The attached copy of an unfinished letter confirmed all that Captain Simms-Warburton had to say about his wife. Joe winced at the innocent enthusiasm with which Alicia communicated her coming coup to her sister Anne in Surrey.

‘ “

news to make you turn positively green with envy, Anne! I have in my sights no less than — a Camberwell Beauty!! I heard just this morning from Colonel Prentice that they are to be found in a clump of willows on the river bank near a small native village just a few miles north of the station. What luck! His mali — that’s his gardener (see how I’m picking up the phrases!) — came to him and asked him to tell the memsahib who loves butterflies that there was a rare one near his own village. He described it and Colonel Prentice looked it up and there it was! And there shall I be very soon. The only problem will be crossing the river. You know how I feel about rivers! And John is not here to go with me — he’s off gashting round the countryside with ten other like-minded, pig-sticking shikari

” ’

Here the letter had broken off.

‘Well, this gets her to the scene. She came here, presumably on horseback, tethered it where we have left ours and climbed aboard the ferry. And look, over there, that’s where she was going — those willow trees! So she wouldn’t have needed transport on the other side, not even her horse. Now I think we have an account by an eyewitness here

yes

here it is. Signed by Gopal who was the ferryman involved on that day. Translated from the local native language by

’

‘By my father, sahib. He too was a sergeant in the police force at that time,’ said Naurung with pride.

‘He says, “I was the ferryman working on Friday the 12th of March 1913. Before noon an English lady arrived on horseback and asked me to take her across the river. She was alone. The ferry would only carry one lady in English skirts so the three people who arrived shortly after seeking to cross to the village waited on the bank for our return. Yes, sahib, there were also people waiting on the opposite bank. I started to paddle across when suddenly the two hides on the downstream side collapsed. The air came out of them with a rush and the ferry capsized. The lady screamed and fell into the river. I think she could not swim. She struggled and sank under. I dived under to help her but the water is so dark I could not at first see her. I found her and pulled her to the surface but by then she was no longer conscious. I tried to swim with her to the bank but she was too heavy. Two of the men who had been waiting to cross jumped in to help me and between us we managed to get her to shore.”

‘And here is what one of the bystanders had to say: “The memsahib did not look at ease as she climbed on to the ferry. She was shouting a lot of instructions to the ferryman and took a long time to settle down. When they reached the middle of the river the left side of the raft sank under the water and the platform on which the memsahib was sitting tilted over, throwing her into the water. She was screaming and thrashing around in the water and then she sank under. The ferryman swam after the memsahib and dived under to find her. They were both under water for a very long time and we were watching, wondering what to do. Then they came to the surface again and my brother and I jumped in and swam out to help them. She was weighed down by water in her skirts and it was a struggle to get her back to land although we are both good swimmers. The ferryman was exhausted but the lady was dead.”

‘Mmm

Anything known about the hide boat, I wonder? Was it even examined?’

Joe riffled through the documents relating to the drowning with disappointment. ‘Doesn’t seem to be anything here.’

‘It was never found,’ said Naurung confidently.

‘How do you know this?’ asked Joe.

‘I was twelve at that time and very interested in police work. I was a great help to my father. I could go to places as a village boy that my father could not have visited in his uniform without attracting attention. I overheard many useful things which my father was pleased to use in his enquiries. He was very concerned that the boat should be found. He very much wanted to examine it. My little brothers and I were sent to search the river for it. We went for ten miles along each bank in the direction of the current and we could find no trace of it. No one had found it, no one had even seen it. I talked to the old man who ran the ferry about the accident. He enjoyed talking about it. He said he did not know the ferryman who was working that day. His own men had been taken ill three days before and he had been desperate for help. Usually there are two swimmers to take these rafts across. It would have been a most difficult and tiring job for one man. Most difficult. It is not a job, you understand, sahib, that most men would want to do or would be able to do. A man appeared in the village at the right moment, he blessed Shiva for his good luck, and set him to work. He was very happy with him. And then the accident happened. The man who tried to save the memsahib came forward. But after the enquiry he told the old man he no longer wished to do the work and he left. The old man says he was a local man, judging by his accent, but not from the village, and he told him he was on his way to find work on the station. Is this helpful, sahib?’

‘Yes, Naurung. But I’m afraid what you have to say raises as many questions as it answers!’

‘It answers a question, sahib?’

‘Oh, yes, Naurung. The question, was Alicia Simms-Warburton murdered? And the answer is yes, decidedly yes.’

Ť ^ ť

They mounted their horses and swung away from the river and back towards the station. As the day declined they parted and went their separate ways, Naurung to his wife and the welcome of his family and Joe to the austere comforts of his guest bungalow. He was casting about for a scheme to help him while away the dead hours, wondering whether his reception would be more congenial in the mess or at the Club when, on the road down to his bungalow, his eye was taken by a notice. A notice of a dance at the Club. ‘Saturday, March the 11th at 7.30. Last of the Season.’

‘Tonight!’ An impulse came over him to attend. He would surely see Nancy Drummond there, he thought with a spurt of excitement. He had been made an honorary member of the Club — so why not? He looked again at the notice and read ‘Black tie’. Somewhere in his luggage there was a dinner jacket, probably by now crumpled, but ‘This is, after all, Anglo-India — presumably all I have to do is clap my hands and call for someone to come and press it for me.’

On entering his bungalow he called, as to the manner born, ‘Koi hai!’ With a gesture he indicated to his bearer the dinner jacket, a boiled shirt, butterfly collar, dress studs — no cummerbund, he would have to make do with an evening waistcoat — but he really needn’t have bothered. He was obviously not the first person for whom his bearer had had to put out evening clothes. With a further gesture he indicated his bath.

At seven o’clock, duly bathed, shaven and starched, he set off for the Club. ‘Protective colouring,’ he thought. ‘I think I have it!’

The clubhouse and its gardens occupied the best part of one side of the maidan. Dating from the spacious days of the East India Company, it was a building which, though it had seen better days, was luxuriously designed. Somewhat in the Italian manner, somewhat in the Islamic manner and owing not a little to Hindu architecture, it made a very confident statement. A fitting residence for its first owner, a Calicut nabob whose summer residence it had been. If the stucco was perhaps beginning to peel, the swarming bougainvillea and jasmine and the embracing spray of climbing roses concealed most of the effects of time. The Club employed five full-time gardeners and the lawns were watered and immaculate, the flower beds ablaze with English flowers.

There was a press of buggies, horses, men in dinner jackets, women in evening dresses gathering round the door of the Club and Joe lost himself in this crowd, making himself briefly known to the servant on the door before walking past the long bar on to the verandah to get his bearings.

Internally, the ‘large ballroom’ had been converted by a vandal hand into squash courts but the smaller ballroom remained. The dining-room, lit through a series of french windows opening on to the all-embracing verandah, was furnished in the heaviest possible Victorian style with furniture from Maples in the Tottenham Court Road. But the life of the Club, Joe guessed, was lived on the verandah and the tennis court and even on the croquet lawn. In more recent years a single-storey extension surrounding a courtyard had been added at the rear with spare bedrooms for the use of visitors, for the use of bachelors from up-country, for the use of the bereaved such as William Somersham whose grief and despair had taken refuge here.