Rogue Officer (33 page)

Deighnton had brought the same seconds who had attended him at the last duel he had fought with Jack. Jack was secretly pleased to learn this. Any witnesses who might have been suspicious of his courage were here today. They would go away knowing that Jack Crossman had not failed to meet the requirements of a gentleman. Honour was everything, in England, and in India. A man could not live without it and feel whole.

If Jack had believed he would feel any different at this duel – if he expected to be nerveless and carry a clear head – he was totally wrong. Righteousness did not banish his fear. He found he was still afraid, still had a racing heart and racing brain, and still wished himself elsewhere now that he was faced with death. He glanced at his opponent, now shedding his coat, and saw a man who looked calm and iron-willed. Deighnton appeared invincible and Jack felt entirely vulnerable. He tried to focus on the positive qualities of his tool for the task: the single-shot pistol he now owned, which was supposed to be so well-made, so accurate, that even a blind man could not miss with it.

Indeed, the Wurfflein felt comfortable in his grip. It was a well-balanced weapon with superior killing power.

‘Are you ready, Jack?’ asked Lovelace.

‘Yes, I am,’ he heard his voice saying.

‘Jack, smooth and steady,’ murmured Rupert. ‘Don’t fire too quickly. He’s not a swift shooter.’

‘Thank you, Rupert.’

‘Gentleman!’ came the call. ‘Take your places!’

Deighnton strolled seemingly cool and untroubled towards the middle of the glade, while Jack found himself striding out. Very soon they were back-to-back. Jack could feel the heat of the other man’s body through his shirt. Then followed the order to proceed, and the count began.

It seemed to Jack that his heart had already stopped. He could no longer feel the beat. A parrot shrieked precisely on the count of ten, confusing things and making Jack start. He turned, quickly – too quickly – but took steady aim along the long-barrelled Wurfflein. He fired. The smell of burning gunpowder smoke filled his nostrils. Deighnton jerked backwards. Jack was momentarily exultant, but was then immediately despondent as his opponent remained on his feet.

A red stain was sweeping across Deighnton’s white shirt around the left shoulder. He had been hit, but on the wrong side.
The wrong side.
Given the large calibre of Jack’s pistol there must have been a hole in Deighnton’s back as big as a fist, yet the captain was still on his feet. The man had unbelievable fortitude. Why had he not fallen to the dust? The shock and pain would be enough to drop a wild beast. Yet there he was, still able to lift his arm and take slow aim at Jack.

Deighnton’s face was set in a hard expression. He seemed grim and taut as he squinted down the barrel of his pistol. Jack knew now that he was going to die. With all the time in the world at his disposal his adversary could not miss. Deighnton was a deadshot. Jack had to stand and wait for the ball to hit him. It struck him as peculiar that now the end was nigh, his nerves were steel. No shaking, no fear, no sorrow in his veins. He awaited the inevitable. All movements seemed remarkably clear as time came almost to a halt.

Jack heard a spectator shout as if from a long way off.

A cry of alarm.

‘Look out!’

In a haze he saw a phantom-like figure stepping swiftly from the tree line wielding a sabre. The bright curved blade of the sabre swished through the sunlit air, flashing as it did so, decapitating Captain Deighnton with a single stroke. Then the shadowy swordsman was gone again, like a forest spirit, back into the trees from whence he had emerged.

Deighnton’s head fell to the ground with the thump of heavy fruit dropping from a branch. It rolled like a ripe green coconut under a bush, disappearing from view. His body remained upright for a split second, standing on the spot, the right arm with the pistol still extended. Then the legs collapsed and the corpse fell forward, driving the muzzle of the pistol into the soft mossy earth of the forest clearing. Deighnton had fought his last duel, one he had been sure to win, if only . . .

No one moved for a moment. Then two officers, Deighnton’s seconds, ran into the woods looking for the killer. The doctor took a cursory glance at Deighnton and pronounced him dead on the spot. He took Deighnton’s coat and threw it over the body.

Jack felt two pairs of hands holding his arms, strong pillars on either side of him. He was glad for that, for he had been almost certain to collapse himself. Deighnton’s gory end had shaken more than one witness to the beheading. There were others who were also quite unsteady. A death had been expected, but not the manner of it.

Even as Deighnton’s two seconds returned, empty handed, a troop of soldiers had entered the glade led by Sergeant King. An arresting party, that much was obvious. Had King decided to inform the authorities about the duel? Jack could not think so. He could see that the captain in charge of the troop was surprised to see such a large party in the woods. The eyes showed puzzlement as they went from one pale face to another.

‘Where’s Captain Deighnton?’ the officer finally asked.

Major Lovelace asked him tersely why he wanted to know.

‘I’m here to arrest him – for the murder of General Sir Matthew Martlesham.’

Lovelace strode over to Deighnton’s corpse and whipped away the coat to reveal a headless torso already swarming with ants.

‘Here’s the rogue you want. For the first time in his life he lost his head. You’ll find it under that bush, Captain.’ Then he added, ‘For myself, I’m off to write a quick letter. A vacancy has just occurred at the Houghton Fishing Club and you never know your luck unless you try.’

Aware that the arresting squad was going to come to its senses and ask for the other duellist, Jarrard spirited Jack away to where Cadiz was tethered. The pair of them rode back to Gwalior in silence. Jack still appeared to be wrestling with his demons which left Rupert time to calculate calmly whether he would have survived a duel with Deighnton. Certainly Deighnton was one of the coolest duellists Rupert had ever seen, not rushing his shot, nor showing concern for the other fellow. That last was the trick: to ignore the fact that your opponent has a pistol in his hand and treat the whole affair as a target shoot. It would have been a close-run thing, he decided. He was by no means confident he would have come away from the duelling ground alive.

Two British officers and an American newspaperman were sitting on the veranda of Lovelace’s bungalow with an Indian warrior. All except the Rajput were drinking long cool drinks with gin at the base. Raktambar had hot lemon juice laced with honey. They watched huge fruit bats gliding from palm to palm: giants of their kind. A red-sashed evening heralded the coming night and already the choirs of crickets were voicing their alarms and love calls. Charcoal-black tamerisks stood out on the plain, stark against the darkening sky. The
chowkidars
, those ever-reliable nightwatchmen, called to each other in soft voices as they took their posts,
chupattis
in their pockets, repast for the long middle hours.

India was laying down its head to rest.

Lovelace said, ‘Deighnton’s servant is missing.’

‘It was he who killed his master?’ questioned Raktambar, not without a note of approval in his voice.

‘So it’s believed,’ Lovelace replied. ‘A lot of servants are mistreated, of course. I used to be disgusted by what I witnessed but unhappily one becomes inured to the ill-treatment of the natives. After a while it seems normal. Then occasionally one runs amuck.’

‘Officers can abuse and humiliate servants to a point, then sometimes it’s like a stretched wire has snapped in their heads,’ Jarrard said.

‘Does it happen with the slaves in your country?’ asked Jack.

Jarrard had to think hard about that. ‘Not so often. Not so’s I recall. Maybe it’s something to do with being in one’s own land. The slaves back home have nowhere to run to. Here, they can vanish into the millions of others like them. They’ll never catch this one.’

‘Deighnton would have hung anyway, of course,’ said Lovelace, ‘for the murder of Martlesham. His servant saved the state the cost of the execution. Two snakes gone with one blow, eh? Not that it’ll make any difference. The opium trade will flourish without Martlesham, the army will still have its bully boys like Deighton, and the world is only marginally a better place for their absence. Now, jack, what will you do about this soldier of yours? Wynter? Shall we send him back to the 88th? You must be tired of his insolence and insubordination.’

Jack sighed. ‘It would kill him to rejoin the regiment. At best he’d be in the stockade within days – at worst before a firing squad for striking a senior rank. He has survival grit though. He walked over a subcontinent and lived to tell the tale. He spent a night in a bush of three-inch thorns and came out of it ugly but alive. He has a bitter gall flowing in his veins, that man, but I’ll put up with him, as I always have. Sergeant King keeps him off my back for a good part of the time.’

‘King’s a good man, then?’

‘We have our differences, but in the main, very steady. I just wish he could shoot. It’s very inconvenient having a sergeant who can’t hit a haystack from two yards.’

‘You have Gwilliams though – a sharpshooter, I understand.’

‘And good with the knife, when necessary. Rupert here can’t stand him, but I think that’s like the Irish and English, or the Irish and Scots, or the Scots and English. And the Welsh and everyone else. There’s nothing so abominable as one’s close neighbours.’

‘Amen,’ added Jarrard, swilling his drink round his glass.

Raktambar said, ‘Yes, it would be good if we were not neighbours for too long, sahibs.’

Jack threw a warning glance at the Rajput for revealing his dissentious ideas. Jack could cope with them, but he was not sure Lovelace could. Raktambar simply raised his eyebrows. There was no solid friendship between Jack and his reluctant bodyguard, only a truce. They respected one another, they would probably die in defence of one another, but they could not be bosom friends. That could only happen when Raktambar was released from the servitude placed on him by his maharajah and he was free to choose. Who knows, thought Jack, perhaps he would remain by my side if such a thing happened?

Major Lovelace appeared not to have heard Ishwar Raktambar’s remark and was simply staring out at the oncoming night.