Death in Kashmir (23 page)

She looked up to find Charles watching her with an unreadable expression in his eyes and the shadow of a smile about his mouth, and became abruptly conscious of the fact that she was wearing nothing but an exceedingly flimsy chiffon and lace nightdress: and in the next instant, with fury, that she was blushing.

‘You look very nice,' said Charles pensively. ‘All the same, I think you'd better put on something else or you'll catch cold. Besides,' he added thoughtfully, ‘there are a lot of things I want to talk about, and I'd like to be able to keep my mind on the job.'

‘Oh!'
said Sarah breathlessly. ‘Oh! You … you … Give me that torch!'

She thrust Lager into his arms, snatched the torch from his hand and fled. To return a few minutes later wearing a severely tailored dressing-gown of dark green silk that clothed her from throat to ankles, and with her bare feet thrust into small green morocco slippers. An observant spectator might have noticed that she had also found time to apply a discreet amount of lipstick and powder and to run a comb through her red-gold curls.

She found Captain Mallory lying on the sofa nursing Lager in his arms and blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. ‘Please don't get up,' said Sarah frigidly, seating herself in the armchair opposite him. ‘And now, if it's not too much to ask, you will please tell me what you were doing on my boat?'

‘I didn't know it was yours,' said Charles, ‘and I didn't know anyone was on board. So few of the houseboats have been taken this year that it seemed a safe bet that it was unoccupied.'

‘Look,' said Sarah leaning forward, ‘do you see any green in my eye?'

‘Yes,' said Charles with disconcerting promptness: ‘emeralds and peridots and jade, sprinkled with gold dust and steeped in dew. Perfectly lovely.'

Sarah flushed rosily and drew back with a jerk. ‘Thank you. But what I wanted to point out was that though I may have green eyes, I'm not all
that
green. If you thought the boat was empty you'd never have come creeping into it in the small hours of the morning.'

Charles blew another smoke ring and regarded her meditatively over the tip of his cigarette before replying. He appeared to be turning something over in his mind. After a moment or two he apparently came to some decision, for he swung his heels off the sofa and sitting up spoke in a voice that was wholly free from flippancy: ‘All right. I didn't think it was empty. I had been told that it was occupied by a “maiden lady”. The description is my informant's, not mine. Her name was given as Harris. It rang no bell. I was further informed that she would be attending the dance at Nedou's Hotel tonight and would not be back until well after midnight. By the way, do you mind my smoking? I should have asked.'

‘No,' said Sarah. ‘Go on. Why were you on this boat?'

‘I wanted to have a look at it, and at the same time I did not want to appear in any way interested in it. I decided that the task of scraping an acquaintance with a maiden lady called Miss Harris in order to take a look at her boat, might take more time than I had at my disposal. So I came along to give it the once-over unofficially. I was therefore surprised, to put it mildly, to find Miss Parrish not only in residence but remarkably vocal.'

Sarah said: ‘That's not true either. Is it?'

‘What makes you think so?'

‘Because I don't believe that you're the kind of person who makes mistakes. Not when it really matters.'

‘I appear to have made one this time,' said Charles dryly.

‘No you didn't. You thought I'd be at the dance. So I should have been if Major McKay hadn't strained a muscle. And as the dance goes on until one o'clock tonight, and it takes nearly an hour to get back here by
shikara,
you knew you had plenty of time. You didn't expect to find anyone on this boat, but you knew I had taken it, didn't you?'

‘Maybe,' said Charles non-committally, watching Sarah with half-closed eyes. ‘Why do you think this is an occasion that really matters?'

‘Because——' Sarah checked suddenly. ‘No. Tell me first why you came here.'

Charles hesitated a moment, staring down at the glowing tip of his cigarette and frowning, and then he said slowly: ‘I knew the girl who had this boat last year. Her name was Janet Rushton.'

Sarah drew a sharp breath and Charles looked up swiftly: ‘You knew her too, didn't you. That letter you burnt on the lawn of the Peshawar Club was in Janet's writing. I was fairly sure of it. We checked back on you. You were in Gulmarg for the Spring Meeting. You had the room next to Janet's. You came up here and took over her boat, using the receipt signed by her. How about it, Sarah?'

Sarah did not answer. She sat quite still, her eyes meeting Charles's level, penetrating gaze while a minute ticked slowly by.

The wind blew another flurry of rain against the windowpanes and the candle flames swayed and flickered to the draughts, throwing leaping shadows onto the panelled walls and the intricately inlaid woodwork of the ceiling, and the houseboat jerked and rocked, creaking and groaning at its moorings.

Sarah spoke at last, and uncertainly: ‘I don't understand. If you are—one of them—if you were keeping tabs on me … What
is
it all about, Charles?'

Charles transferred Lager to a sofa cushion, and coming to his feet took a restless turn about the small room, and came back to stand over Sarah, frowning down on her and fidgeting with his cigarette.

After a moment he said abruptly: ‘I've no idea how much you know, but it's obviously a good deal more than is healthy for you. I think you'd better tell me. Everything please, right from the beginning and without leaving anything out.'

Sarah told him: sitting in the shabby armchair that Janet must have sat in, in the boat that had been Janet's boat, with the guttering light of the candles that Janet must have used throwing leaping shadows across her white face. And as she talked, it was as though she was reliving the incidents that she described: as though she saw again the lamplight glint along the barrel of Janet's automatic, and stared unbelievingly at a line of footprints in the blown snow on a moonlit verandah. Once again she seemed to hear Janet's voice in the shadow of the ski-hut on Khilanmarg, and to watch the flying shadow swoop across the snowfields and vanish into the darkness of the forest: once again to stare down across the shadowy bowl of Gulmarg at a far-off pinpoint of red light …

She told, her voice a dry whisper with the returning terror of that moment, of the thing that had followed upon Janet's departure—the sound of a door stealthily closing among the shadows under the snow-hung eaves of the ski-hut. Of the finding of Janet's body in the Blue Run, and her own visit to the house by the Gap. Every incident seemed etched so clearly in her mind that she could tell it all as though it had only happened yesterday. The tracks on that snow-covered pathway. The darkness and silence of the empty house. The faint odours that lingered in the cold rooms—cigarette smoke, damp, cordite, and that other cloying, elusive scent that she could not place. She told him of the bullet hole and the stain upon the floor. Of the man in the snowstorm, and, finally, of the arrival of Janet's letter months later in Peshawar.

She told it all in meticulous detail up to the burning of Janet's letter, while Charles sat on the arm of the sofa and listened; his face expressionless and his eyes intent. And when she had finished she shivered convulsively, and gripping her hands tightly together in her lap to hide the fact that they were trembling, said: ‘What's it all about, Charles? I don't understand, and I'm scared. Yes I am! I'm scared stiff. I wouldn't mind if I thought it was just some of the usual anti-British stuff … Indian terrorists. But it isn't. There was someone listening in the ski-hut. And then Reggie Craddock trying to get me off the boat, and someone who said he was from the agents, too. And this morning Mrs Warrender turned up with a story about a friend who wants to swop boats with me. What's it all about—? or am I going crazy?'

‘Say that again?' said Charles sharply.

Sarah laughed on a high note. ‘I said “Am I going crazy”?'

‘No, I mean about Reggie Craddock and Helen Warrender. Let's hear about that: word for word, please.'

So once again Sarah took up the tale and repeated all she could remember …

The cigarette burnt out between Charles's fingers and he swore and flicked the smouldering fragment into the ashtray. ‘Hell!' said Charles. ‘This needs a lot of thinking out. Go to bed, Sarah. You've had enough alarms for one day. We'll defer any further explanation until the morning.'

Sarah's mouth set itself in a stubborn line and her green eyes sparkled in the wavering light of the candles.

‘I am not budging,' said Sarah firmly, ‘until you tell me what it's all about. I shouldn't sleep a wink, and you know it. It's no good trying to be discreet and hush-hush and Top Secret, because like it or not, I'm in this too. Up to my neck, as far as I can see! What's it all about, Charles?'

‘If you mean Reggie Craddock and Co., I don't know. As for the rest, I can't tell you much more than Janet told you…' Charles stood up and began to pace the small expanse of faded Axminster carpet once more; his hands in his pockets and his frowning gaze upon the floor.

‘A year ago,' began Charles slowly, ‘one of our agents sent word that he was onto a big thing. He didn't even give a hint as to what it was, but he sent a–a signal. One that we only use very rarely, and which means that we are onto something white-hot and must be contacted with all possible speed.'

Sarah said: ‘Janet told me that Mrs Matthews had sent for help last November. Before they even moved into Nedou's Hotel.'

‘She had. And a Major Brett was sent off as soon as it was received. But——'

‘Wasn't he the man who fell out of the train?' asked Sarah on a gasp.

Charles nodded, and turning away, resumed his pacing: ‘But the first warning arrived last May. It came from Srinagar and had been sent by my best friend. We sent someone to contact him at Murree, but Pendrell never got there. The car he was travelling down in was involved in an accident on the way, and he was killed. It was a very well-staged accident.'

‘Like–like that Indian who came up in December to meet Mrs Matthews,' whispered Sarah.

Charles glanced at her and nodded again. ‘Ajit; yes. Mrs Matthews was sent up to take over after Pendrell died. There were a few lines to go on, but nothing very much; for though there were several of our people up here, they weren't in the same class as Mrs Matthews. Janet came up as a sort of Number Two to her, and we heard nothing more from either of them until we got that signal from Mrs Matthews towards the end of November. It meant that she had got the goods and to send someone at once.'

‘I still don't see why she didn't go herself,' said Sarah frowning: ‘Janet said they weren't allowed to, but——'

‘They weren't. If Pendrell had sat tight he might be alive today; who knows? But he decided to leave Kashmir, and the move was fatal. He must have been suspect already, and when they heard he was leaving for 'Pindi they obviously decided to take no chances. They played safe and rubbed him out.'

‘But Janet——? And you said there were others…'

‘It's far easier to send a new agent who has nothing against him or her, to contact one “on the ground.” Any move on the part of Mrs Matthews or Janet Rushton to leave Kashmir would perhaps have been construed as suspicious; supposing the other side were in any doubt about them. It was safer, in theory, to stay where they were—though unfortunately it didn't prove to be so in practice. And after Ajit and his car and his driver were swept over the edge of the road by a convenient avalanche, we realized that the chances were that Mrs Matthews and Janet had been spotted, and that there was a far more efficient team operating against us up here, and in northern India, than we had hoped.

‘With Ajit dead, it was decided to use the Ski Club Meeting as protective colouring and send up a skier, ostensibly just another winter-sports addict, to contact one or other of those two women. The agent was to arrive after dark and the meeting would take place in great secrecy. After which he would stage a second, and public arrival, on the following day, and for the rest of the time avoid being seen speaking to either of the women except in the middle of a crowd.

‘The meeting-place and the signal—that red light you saw—was worked out and sent to Mrs Matthews by catalogue. It was a risk of course, but after what had happened to Pendrell and Major Brett and Ajit, less of a risk than trying to send any plan by word of mouth. One or other of them, Janet or Mrs Matthews, were to have watched for that light every night after they arrived in Gulmarg: if it had been noticed by anyone else it would only have been taken to mean that the
chowkidar
—a watchman—was cooking a meal or sleeping the night in an empty hut. Having seen it, either Mrs Matthews or Janet would have visited the hut. They were both excellent skiers and it would have been a great deal easier than it sounds for one of them to have slipped out of the hotel in the small hours and skied over, and back again half an hour later, without being observed.'

‘But suppose there was a storm or something, and they couldn't see it?' asked Sarah.

‘If they didn't come the first night, the messenger was to remain two more nights. No longer.' Charles stopped in front of one of the candles and said irrelevantly: ‘These things will burn out soon.' He stood staring down at the unsteady flame for so long that Sarah moved restlessly in her chair and said: ‘Go on.'

Charles lifted his head with a jerk as though he had temporarily forgotten about her.

‘That's about all,' he said curtly. ‘You know the rest.'

‘No I don't,' said Sarah, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘What happened to the man? The messenger. They killed him too, didn't they?'