The Last Kashmiri Rose

Chapter Eleven

Joe’s breakfast on Tuesday morning was interrupted by a squawk from the bulb horn of the Collector’s 1910 Packard and, hurriedly assembling maps, notebooks, cigarette case and camera, he went out to find Naurung standing to attention and Nancy sitting in the back seat.

They greeted each other as old friends. She reached out to shake his hand and as he sank into the grey corduroy upholstery it was a moment or two before he remembered to release it.

‘This is a very luxurious vehicle,’ said Joe, taking in the appointments with a good deal of pleasure and satisfaction. ‘Sliding plate glass window between us and the driver, comfortable seats…’

‘Yes,’ said Nancy, ‘and there’s even a little silver trumpet to put a flower in. Remind me to pick one if we see one. It’s as well to arrive in style when you’re visiting the Acting Governor.’

‘Uncle Jardine? We are to see him again? The man who shot me into this vipers’ nest!’

‘See him? We’re to stay with him! I’ve been busy on the telephone and I’ve fixed up everything. You don’t need to worry.’

‘That’s exactly when I need to worry! Tell me our programme.’

‘Well, to save time I’ve arranged for you to interview old Carmichael while I go to see Dr Forbes this afternoon. Then we meet up again at the Great Eastern Hotel for tea and then on to the Residence to spend the night with my uncle.’

‘More impeccable chaperonage,’ Joe muttered.

He opened the dividing window. ‘Good morning, Naurung,’ he said.

‘Good morning, sahib.’

‘You know where we’re going?’

‘Indeed,’ said Naurung, ‘but I thought it would be sensible if I took the same route as the Memsahib Carmichael in 1911. So we start from the Carmichael bungalow which is just down there,’ he pointed, ‘go to the end of the maidan and turn right.’

‘What is this?’ said Joe, surprised, as they followed a rough road some minutes out of the station. ‘New road?’

‘No, it is a fire break that the Forestry officer has cut through the jungle. It is a popular way for ladies to ride. It takes you up to the high ground where there is a fine view and the Memsahib Carmichael was a nervous lady, I have heard people say. She would have liked this open ride; forty yards wide, quite straight and no surprises.’

He pulled off the road and followed the bumpy ride onwards until he said, ‘It was here that the memsahib was killed.’

He stopped the car and they all stepped out.

‘Nothing whatever to see,’ said Nancy.

‘She was found just here,’ said Naurung. ‘There was a pile of brushwood here then and there is a pile of brushwood here now.’

Joe took a seat on the running board of the car and stared around, trying to recreate the scene of eleven years ago. ‘Horrible story!’ he said. ‘It really haunts me… What’s the matter, Naurung?’

Naurung was staring at the ground.

‘What have you seen?’

‘It’s not what I’ve seen, sahib, it is what I’ve always thought. But I’ll tell you. This is a very strange place to find a cobra.’

‘Strange? How strange?’

‘This was not a King Cobra, this was not a Hamadryad. They are sometimes found in jungle places like this but this was the common Indian cobra – Naja naja. They are not found in the open jungle. They are found where they can find what they like to eat which is rats and mice. And rats and mice live near human habitation in grain stores and gardens. Anywhere rats and mice can be found you may find a cobra – but not out here. You can find a cobra in every village. To some they are sacred. You will find a cobra in the village temple – the village priests put milk out for them…’

‘So what are you saying, Naurung?’

‘I am saying I have a different picture. I see this lady who is not well and she comes up here and she squats out of sight of everybody behind this brushwood pile because I’m sure there was always a brushwood pile here. Somebody comes out of the jungle with a cobra in his hand…’

‘In his hand?’ said Joe, horrified.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Naurung. ‘I could not do it but there are many who can catch a cobra. If you catch it just behind its head it may writhe and wriggle but the catcher is quite safe if he keeps hold of its head and puts it in a sack. I know six, perhaps more, Indians who could do this. He approaches the memsahib. She is shocked, she is horrified, she is terrified. He holds the snake in his hand and he throws it at her. She was bitten here, sahib,’ he said, pointing to his left buttock. ‘From here to the heart is not far for the venom to travel. She would have died very quickly. It is terrible but I think that is what happened. And then, because he is a very bad man, he stands and watches her die and when the poor lady is dead he cuts the snake’s head off and disappears into the jungle. I have seen it in my imagination so many times. Now I stand here I believe it is the truth.’

‘Christ!’ said Joe. ‘I believe you’re right! It sounds terribly true. I didn’t know about cobras.’

‘I did,’ said Nancy, ‘but I never connected it. Naurung, we must catch this man.’

‘He is clever,’ said Naurung. ‘He is very clever. Now that we know he exists, we will find him.’

‘One last thing, Naurung,’ said Joe. ‘Have you ever heard of a white man, a sahib, who would know how to catch and handle a cobra?’

Naurung dropped his eyes to his boots and replied slowly, ‘No, I have never heard of such a man.’

Chastened, they climbed back into the car and made their way back on to the main trunk road through to Calcutta. Progress along the potholed road crowded with people and animals kicking up clouds of dust was slow in spite of Naurung’s enthusiastic use of the horn and Joe discovered that on Indian highways even the Collector’s Packard gives way to cows and elephants. Shaken and stiff in spite of the luxurious springing, it was well into the afternoon when they caught sight of the welcome green expanse of the maidan, the reassuring octagonal bulk of Fort William and the crowded masts and funnels on the river beyond. They drove north up the Chowringhee Road, their eyes dazzled by the glare of the whitened palaces along its route, and Joe was surprised, after his four days’ absence in the country, that he was finding the familiarity of the city reassuring. Naurung stopped the car.

‘Well, here you are,’ said Nancy. “This is where you get off. I think you know your way about? Carmichael ’s establishment is somewhere along this street – here, I’ve written out the address for you. Naurung is going to drop me off at the hospital where I’m to meet Forbes and we’ll meet up again for tea. Just take a rickshaw to the Great Eastern when you’ve finished with Carmichael.’

Naurung seemed anxious to go off on his own business and asked if he might be excused when he had finally dropped them off at the Residence, announcing that he was staying the night with a member of his family. Joe waved them off as they set off back towards the hospital and fixed his mind on Harold Carmichael, formerly second-in-command of the Bengal Greys, formerly the husband of Joan.

British India does not walk very often, but distressed by the anguished face in his imagination of Joan Carmichael, Joe resolved to walk the length of Chowringhee to Carmichael ’s office. As he made his way past the once opulent villas of bygone nabobs – many of which ranked as palaces rather than villas – he noted that the further he walked from the centre, the more multiplex the subdivision of these great houses became.

Initially, brass plates discreetly announced the presence of banks, insurance companies, the Calcutta office of internationally known trading houses, engineers, architects and solicitors. But soon the brass plates got smaller as the number increased. Brass plates gave way to cards. The number of bell pushes multiplied. Names appeared on upper windows, front doors stood open. Kites circled the damp air and crows pecked crumbling cornices. Numbers grew into the hundreds.

After about twenty minutes’ walk, keeping to the shade of the arcades whenever he could avoid being forced out into the road by the crowds, he found himself outside number 210. Number 210 had no fewer than twenty names at the door, some of these boasting new name plates, most boasting cards and amongst these – after quite a search – he identified Carmichael, Popatlal and Mandavia, Importers of Fine Wines, Beers, Spirits etc. There was an electric bell push which, without much hope, he duly pressed. An Indian emerged from the darkness within and spoke to him at length. Joe shrugged his shoulders and smiled, pointed to Carmichael ’s card and looked a question which only elicited a further flood of Hindustani but eventually a hand pointing helpfully up the dark staircase.

As he progressed, heads appeared in various doorways and eyed him with curiosity. A Metropolitan policeman in uniform was not often seen at this end of the Chowringhee.

He came at last to an open door through which he saw a white-clad figure seated at a desk and writing without much urgency on a pad in front of him. He was balding, he had a grey moustache which might once have been the standard moustache as issued to, or at any rate worn by, British cavalry officers. His collar, which had once been stiff, lay on the desk beside him and his shirt was open at the neck. A large copper ashtray was full of the butts of many cheroots. There were two empty whisky bottles in the waste paper basket and another about half full at his elbow. An Army and Navy Stores ‘Colonial’ refrigerator in a mahogany case stood against the wall but the door was open and the contents were gone.

The walls were lined with photographs, mostly, Joe noticed, of the Bengal Greys, but these were spotted and damp-stained and thunder flies had made their way in and perished behind the glass. There was not much about the figure before him to recall the dapper cavalry major.

Joe knocked tentatively on the door and then, getting no response, with more authority. He was greeted by an irascible ‘Yes?’ Putting his cap under his arm, he strode into the room.

‘Major Carmichael?’ he said. ‘My name is Sandilands.’

Carmichael looked round. ‘Sandilands! Good Lord! Is it three o’clock already? Oh, I am sorry! It’s been rather a hectic day. One damn thing after another in this business… but now – come you in.’ He rose to his feet and extended a damp and hairy hand. ‘Funny time of day, this,’ he said. ‘Seems too early or too late to offer you a peg but I expect you won’t say no. You’d think in this humidity you wouldn’t necessarily need to keep up the fluids but everybody says you should so, here we are – a khushal ye.’

Joe knew the appropriate response but wondered whether in the light of what he saw it was entirely appropriate. ‘Khwar mashe,’ he said, the literal meaning of which he understood was ‘May you not be poor.’

‘Now,’ said Carmichael, as two fairly full tumblers of whisky appeared on the desk, ‘what can I do for Commander Sandilands? Of the Metropolitan Police, I understand? Rare bird in Calcutta!’

Joe went into a prepared speech, ‘… here at the invitation of the Governor… no particular anxiety to stir up old troubles or open old wounds… the Collector… some anxiety when – as you’ve probably heard – the death of Peggy Somersham last week awoke old rumours… thought it better to scotch these at the outset and reaffirm the finding of the coroner… not a good idea to let speculation grow…’ And so on.

Carmichael eyed him bleakly and in silence for a moment or two. Joe remembered Nancy ’s words, ‘A bitter man… the worst kind of Indian army officer… all moustache and bluster… not popular with the men…’

Moustache, yes, bluster no. Joe did not believe he had ever seen such a figure of defeat.

‘If you’re thinking about poor Joanie’s death, I can certainly reassure you. Very clear case. Killed by a snake but I expect you know all that.’

‘Was that usual – being bitten by a snake?’ Joe asked. ‘Remember I’m only an ignorant London bobby.’

‘Don’t know about usual… Not very common but by no means unknown. One or two a year, I suppose. If you’re quick and medical attention is immediately available it doesn’t have to be a fatality but Joanie was all on her ownsome and that’s all there is to say about it.’

Something prompted Joe to say, ‘You must have been very distressed?’

‘Have been?’ said Carmichael. ‘Still am. Most distressing damn thing by a long way that ever happened to me. And, of course…’ He paused for a long time and then resumed, ‘… I suppose this often happens in marriages. Something happens to one partner and all you can think of is the things you never said or did. Are you married? No. Then you probably wouldn’t appreciate this but, every marriage is full of times when you could have been a bit kinder, more considerate. Give you an example – Joanie hated snakes. Terrified of them and at that time we were living in a thatched bungalow – one of the old pre-Mutiny ones. It had a canvas ceiling. One night we were sitting there and we saw a big snake crossing from side to side above the ceiling under the thatch. Looking for mice. I thought Joanie would have a catalepsy! She screamed and sobbed and cried… damned embarrassing! Servants came running from all directions! Nothing would please her but that we should move house. We couldn’t at that time have sold the house without dropping quite a lot of money and I said, “Quite out of the question!” I didn’t have to say that, you know. Not a kind thing to say. And then, of course, this cobra business. It seemed like a terrible fate. A judgement on me perhaps. I was just going to say it took me a long time to recover but I don’t think I’ve ever recovered. Ah, well. You do your best at the time. It may not be very good but nobody can do better than their best, I’m always saying.’

With an unsteady hand he refilled his glass and Joe took him quickly through the other deaths. ‘Sheila Forbes?’

‘Nasty, dangerous place, that. Could happen to anybody.’

‘Alicia Simms-Warburton?’

‘Those bullock-skin rafts – damn dangerous, if you ask me.’

‘Peggy Somersham?’

‘Wouldn’t know. Never met her. Sorry, I don’t think I’m being much help.’

‘If you’re in the police it’s sometimes just as helpful to know where not to look as to know where to look,’ said Joe and it was not the first time he had said it.

‘Yes,’ said Carmichael, ‘yes, I suppose that’s true. Never thought of it like that. Know where not to look – eh?’

‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘Well, that’s it, I’d say. Thank you very much for your patience. You’ll think I’m an infernal nosy parker, I’m afraid.’

‘No, no,’ said Carmichael. ‘Not at all. Come and see me again next time you’re in Calcutta and choose not such a busy day, if you know what I mean. Excuse my coming down – I’ve got this, er, these, er, to put together before – tomorrow.’

Joe found himself back in the baking street. Very reluctant to walk all the way back up the Chowringhee, he hailed a passing rickshaw and, confident that he had not unmasked a subtle, devious and skilful multiple killer, he made his way back, calling at one or two shops on the way, to the Great Eastern.

Here, amidst the strangeness of Calcutta and following the depression of his interview with Carmichael, he was overjoyed to see Nancy presiding over a small tea table. He strode forward with outstretched hands and seized hers as she rose to greet him. A longing to kiss her was only overcome by the assumption that the room would be full of people she knew and he compromised by kissing her hand and then, after a minute hesitation, her other hand.

‘Ah, my dear Watson,’ he said, ‘I hope you’ve spent your afternoon more profitably than I!’

With the fluent rapidity that he envied, she ordered him some tea and in due course a fresh pot, a plate of sandwiches and a substantial slice of fruit cake appeared.

‘I don’t know whether I’ve achieved much,’ she said, taking out a notebook and setting it on the table, ‘but he’s quite a useful chap, Philip Forbes. After all, he was the MO from 1910 right through until the regiment came back from France. He did a post-mortem examination on Dolly Prentice and Prentice’s bearer and the same for Joan Carmichael. Same, indeed, for his own wife. That was a sad case, Sheila. She was really terrified of heights, you know…’

Joe put down his slice of cake and said sharply, ‘Say that again.’

‘She was really terrified of heights, you know…’ Nancy dutifully repeated and went on, ‘So I said, “Well, why did she go up that path if she was terrified of heights? It’s not the best place in the world for anyone with vertigo,” and he said something so pathetic. As a member of the IAMC, he and Sheila were never really part of the regiment. They were tolerated rather than welcomed and when she was invited to ride out with these people to a picnic, Sheila was flattered and delighted. It was the social breakthrough she’d been waiting for. Poor kid, she was only twenty-three! So although she didn’t fancy that track, she just gritted her teeth and went for it. Oh, snobbery! What crimes are committed in thy name, I sometimes wonder. He has no idea, you know, Forbes I mean, that Sheila may have been murdered. None at all. Just accepts it as a particularly grotesque joke on the part of Fate.’

She was silent for a moment then said hesitantly, ‘Joe, do you think there’s any chance we may have got this wrong? That it was no more than an appalling accident? Given that Sheila was a nervous horsewoman at the best of times, very anxious to do the right thing. Nervous and a bit scared. It communicates itself to the horse, you know.’

‘I’m sure her death was arranged,’ said Joe firmly. ‘And that it was planned for some time before. Someone who had access to the stables and who knew her horse, knew even that she was about to ride out with her new friends, deliberately caused it. I think this someone put a stone under the frog in her horse’s hoof at some time before they set out. You remember that she began to fall back almost at once and waved to the others to carry on without her and that she would catch them up. That delay was just enough to ensure that she was out of sight of the rest of the party at the time she was passing the precipice. I think that someone hiding in the rocks, perhaps the saddhu, leapt out and pushed her over. And her worst fears became a reality and her last thoughts were sheer panic.’

They sat together for a moment in silence. ‘This,’ said Joe, ‘is a pretty bloody sad investigation, you know. Everywhere we turn there’s sorrow and grief.’ And he recounted what Carmichael had told him about Joan.

‘Ah, yes, Joan,’ said Nancy. ‘I’ll tell you something else – Philip Forbes was treating her for cystitis.’

‘Cystitis?’ said Joe. ‘What’s cystitis?’

‘Can there be such ignorance? It’s a bladder complaint. Makes you want to pee all the time. It all hangs together, doesn’t it? Poor Joan, “squatting”, as Naurung would say, in the brushwood and out leaps her very worst nightmare…’

Nancy gasped and dropped her teaspoon in shock and as a waiter hurried to replace it she stared at Joe, white-faced.

‘Her nightmare?’ she said again softly.

‘Thought you’d get there in the end!’ said Joe.

Nancy glared at him. ‘I would guess I was precisely two minutes behind you and that’s not bad for an amateur! But, Joe, if what I’m thinking is what you’re thinking and we’re both thinking correctly, this is pretty bloody disgusting, isn’t it?’ She shuddered and looked at him searchingly, appealing to him to contradict her awful suspicions.

‘We said we were looking for a coincidence, something all these killings had in common, and then we would begin to be able to tease out a thread between them. And this is shaping up to be a pattern, wouldn’t you say? Let’s look at it backwards from here. Peggy: her husband said – volunteered the information – something like, “It was exactly the way she would not have wished to go… Peggy couldn’t stand the sight of blood.”’

‘Oh, my God!’ breathed Nancy. ‘That’s true. She used often to ask me how on earth I could have coped in the war with the blood and the wounds.’

‘And Joan – her husband tells me she had an intense fear of snakes. Now you’re saying that Sheila who fell to her death had an unreasoning fear of heights. Alicia – we can’t check with her husband but – wasn’t there something in her letter to her sister…?’

‘ “… I shall have to cross the river and you know how I feel about rivers!’” Nancy supplied. ‘I wondered about that when we read it! I bet she was afraid of drowning! Don’t you think? Can we check? Who would remember? Kitty probably.’

‘And that takes us back to the first – to Dolly. Death by fire? Lots of people have a fear of fire. It won’t be difficult to check on that. But we’re looking at three definite phobias out of a possible five.’

‘Joe, what sort of a man kills women in the way that holds most terror for them?’

‘It would be all too easy to say a disciple of le Marquis de Sade but no, actually, I don’t think that’s what we’ve got here. You see, there’s no sexual aspect to any of these killings, is there? Unless the doctor had other revelations?’

‘No. And I don’t think he was keeping any sordid details from the mem. I told him I’d been a nurse and he paid me the compliment of talking to me in medical terms and very openly. I was very sad to hear from him though, and this was not generally known at the time, that Dolly Prentice was pregnant when she died. Did you know that?’

‘Good Lord! No. There was no autopsy report with the papers I was given.’

‘Sounds as though someone suppressed it because Dr Forbes definitely did one. It must have been kept quiet out of respect for Prentice. He finds sympathy hard to take, Forbes said. All the same – one does feel sympathy and one begins to understand the ferocious revenge you say he took on the dacoits. Losing your wife and your unborn child in one fell swoop – it’s unimaginably distressing! But apart from that piece of information, nothing at all salacious. I’m sure he would have told me if anything – er – sexually driven had occurred.’

‘Would that the doctor who examined your friend Peggy had been as thorough!’

Immediately Joe wished the words unsaid. Nancy stared at him in horror.

‘Peggy? You don’t mean… Oh, Joe what are you trying to say?’

‘No, no – there was no sexual attack. I mean that the doctor failed to discover that she was pregnant. Not obviously so – I think she had only just found out for certain herself. She had been writing to her parents to tell them the good news. I found the letter. I gather she had not shared the news with you?’

Nancy was silent for a very long time, staring at her teacup. Tears began to flow down her cheeks and Joe, cursing himself out loud for his poor timing, passed her his handkerchief with a muttered apology.

‘It’s all right, Joe,’ she said finally. ‘There really isn’t a good or a right time to give someone news like that, is there? I was going to be shattered by it whenever you chose to tell me. And at least I’m sitting down with a cup of hot sweet tea in front of me! Carry on. I’m ready. I’ll mourn for Peggy and her child in my own good time… Now it’s more important to find out who’s responsible. What else does this tell us about him? Are you beginning to see further connections here?’

‘Two of the women were pregnant,’ Joe went on, taking her at her word. ‘But I don’t think we can count that as something in common because we have no evidence that the rest were. Unlikely, I should have thought. And just think – if you, her best friend, didn’t know, and her doctor didn’t know – there’s no mention of it in his records – her killer would not have known of it either. Unless she was killed by Somersham himself. But there is something in common with all the victims. They were well known to the killer.’

‘He knew them? Well? How well? How can you be sure?’

‘He is close enough to them to know their phobias. Think for a moment, Nancy. Everybody has a phobia of some sort. I have a phobia which I am certainly not going to disclose to anybody in India so please don’t ask me! Have you a phobia? And who in your circle would know that you had it?’

‘Yes, I have. And – yes, you’re right – everybody, I’m afraid.’ Nancy sighed. ‘But, really, I can’t see Bill Bulstrode or Harry Featherstone creeping up behind me with a spider to make me jump out of my skin! But I understand what you’re saying. If I were standing on the top of a ladder at the time it might be a different story. Anybody on the station with ears to hear that sort of gossip will hear it. The servants know everything and they talk amongst themselves. They talk to their sahibs and memsahibs. How do you suppose Kitty knows everything that goes on? That chaprassi of hers is a one man information bureau!’

‘So anyone, Indian or British, could have known about the phobias.’

‘Certainly. But why? If we knew why, we’d know who, wouldn’t we? There could be no reason why anyone would want to kill these women at all, let alone in this cruel way! We’re dealing with insanity!’

‘I think so too. But insanity on our terms. Not in the murderer’s mind. There is a pattern and a purpose to his crimes. These are not random killings for lust or robbery. They are cleverly planned and for quite some time ahead. They are planned by the kind of man who, on a Friday, selects the Friday razor to slit the wrists of his victim. A stranger or a native or someone hired to do the killing would have taken up the nearest. This man is European, I’m sure of that. I’m sure he knows his victims. I think he’s playing some kind of game we haven’t even guessed at and though he doesn’t want to be caught, he wants something else – acknowledgement perhaps? I don’t know. I’m still fumbling about in the dark! What I do know is that these killings are not the work of an Indian Jack the Ripper, an opportunist who prowls outdoors in a defined area and leaps on whatever prey comes to his knife. They are not the sequential killings for gain of a “Brides in the Bath ” Smith. So two of the strongest motives for killing can be ruled out.’

‘Goodness! Two! How many does that leave us to sift through?’

‘Only four.’

‘Suddenly I’m tired! Come on, Joe! Let’s go and meet my uncle. I could do with a cold bath closely followed by an iced drink and an evening of conversation that doesn’t include multiple murders!’