The Last Kashmiri Rose

Chapter Fifteen

He awoke in a cocoon of disordered bedclothes. Not only disordered bedclothes – clearly the mosquito net had been in some way detached during the night as witnessed by a large number of bumps along his back. The bed beside him was warm from Nancy. His mind was a turmoil, remembering the innocence and the excitement with which Nancy had joined him in the night and remembering the smiles and gentle laughter, the tender clenching of her body as she lay with him. He supposed that everyone in that large household would know exactly what had occurred. And if they knew, it was to be assumed that it would be no time before the Governor would know. He had tried to talk about this with Nancy but she had been unable to acknowledge that there might be social implications to their tempestuous night. What, he wondered, would be the reaction of the Governor? “Ship this bloody policeman home on the next boat!” He didn’t think so. He thought her uncle was well aware of what would be the consequences of his so careful sleeping arrangements, to say nothing of his well-chosen wines. He even supposed that the Governor had brought this about for a purpose of his own. His mind ranged widely, seeking what may have been the purpose. He had, at their first meeting, spoken deprecatingly of Andrew Drummond. Feeling sorry for her, could he be putting a little distraction his niece’s way, condoning adultery? Joe had heard the stories everyone had heard about the looseness of morals in tropical India and wondered whether he had been too quick to dismiss them as wishful nonsense. All the same, there was something here he did not understand.

Tired of appearing in uniform and duly bathed, he dressed in plain clothes and sat down to an enormous breakfast. Government House, clearly suspended in an Edwardian vision of what such things should be, had provided egg, bacon, coffee, a rack of toast and – to crown everything – a plate of well-made porridge. He might have been breakfasting in Oxford in the nineties.

When he had worked through this and, lighting a cigarette, had stepped out on to the balcony, the khitmutgar appeared, salaaming.

‘The memsahib asks that you will visit her as soon as you are able to do so,’ he said. ‘And there is an individual downstairs to see you.’

‘An individual? What sort of individual?’

‘It is a Sikh havildar of police,’ he replied, managing to convey that a Sikh havjjdar of police waits until he is sent for.

Joe’s instinct was to say, ‘Show him up,’ but he decided that this would be a breach of protocol and asked that his visitor might be shown into an office where he could later come down and interview him after he had been announced to the memsahib.

Nancy greeted him with a beaming smile and, with a quick look round to assure herself that, for once, they were truly alone, advanced and put her arms round his neck. She kissed him firmly and said, ‘Good morning, Holmes. I see that Mrs Hudson has served you with one of Baker Street ’s best as well as me. Now tell me – what are your plans for today?’

‘Well,’ said Joe, ‘they were first to come and see how you are. No problem about that – you look absolutely blooming! How extraordinary! You’re supposed to look pale and woebegone – “Now by my morning sickness I have lost my virtue to this rude and rammish clown.” You know, all that sort of thing.’

‘Can’t be bothered,’ said Nancy. ‘You’re quite conceited enough already so I’ll merely say – you were wonderful! It was wonderful! I was wonderful – wasn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Joe.

And there was a washed and dewy freshness about her face that he had never seen before.

‘I’ll answer your question though as to what we’re doing today. Good Naurung awaits us downstairs.’

Suitably escorted they followed the khitmutgar down through the house, through the company rooms, through a discreet door into the offices at that early hour busy with Bengali clerks scribbling, chattering and bowing politely as they passed through.

Naurung greeted them with his usual self-sufficient deference. ‘I had thought, sahib,’ he began, ‘that we should speak to my father. He doesn’t have much to tell you but he was concerned – as a policeman, you understand – with the deaths of two of the ladies. Of Mrs Forbes and Mrs Simms-Warburton.’

‘Can you bring him to us?’ asked Joe.

‘I can certainly bring him to you but better, perhaps, that we should go to him. It is not far. He works outside the Law Courts. He is a letter-writer now that he has retired from the police. The letter-writers all talk to each other. It is what I think you would call a trade union. They know a lot.’

Joe turned to Nancy. ‘Shall we? Not too fatigued to attempt a little walk?’

Nancy gave him a repressive look and they set off into the mounting heat of the day to walk westwards along the Esplanade towards the red-brick gothic splendour of the Law Court building.

Naurung’s father was easily recognisable amongst the line of scribbling or tapping figures seated under the arcade. A Sikh turban marked him out from the rest and, given only the disparity of years, Naurung senior looked exactly like his son. He was at work. Joe paused for a while and watched. The old man’s client squatting on his heels in front of the smart new Remington typewriter leaned over and whispered urgently and volubly. Naurung listened and replied, obviously rephrasing what he had just heard, and then proceeded to tap out an agreed statement on his typewriter. Coming to the end of the letter, he wound the sheet out, read out what he had typed and handed it to his customer. Grateful thanks and a handful of coins were politely accepted and before the next client could shuffle forward, Naurung hailed his father and led them to him. He made the introductions in English and the old man turned to greet them in the same language.

‘I am honoured.’ he said, ‘that the police sahib from the Scotland Yard visits me in my humble place of business.’

‘I am honoured,’ said Joe, ‘that the renowned retired officer of police should set aside important concerns and spare a little time to illuminate the past for a London policeman but it has seemed to your son and it has seemed to me too that there may be thoughts that it would be sensible for us to share.’

‘I am of that opinion. But this is not a seemly place for such a discussion. Will you allow me a few minutes and I will be at your service?’

Naurung senior closed and locked his typewriter. He turned to the man on his left and addressed him at length. ‘He is an ignorant man and a humble man but he is honest and I will leave my typewriter and my place under his protection. Now, perhaps the sahib and the memsahib will follow me?’

Walking with Joe while Nancy and his son fell in behind, the old man led them north round two corners into a backstreet and to a staircase above which there was an inscription in Hindustani. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a Sikh establishment and it is run by friends and relations of mine. Here we will be private.’ And he led them up a narrow staircase to a wide room from which arcaded windows led to a balcony and in which tea and a dish of sweetmeats appeared. It was clear to Joe that they had been expected. He sat down with Nancy at a table and Naurung’s father sat down opposite. Naurung himself took up a sentry-like stance at his father’s side and the old man listened with the closest attention to everything that Joe had to say but it was clear at intervals that he had lost the thread and when this happened Nancy intervened in translation and occasionally Naurung did the same. The conversation proceeded in English with intervals of Hindustani.

‘My son has told me all he knows of your investigation and I add this to the knowledge of the affair I have derived from my own experience when working with Bulstrode Sahib at Panikhat,’ the old man began. Joe thought he caught the ghost of an expression at the name Bulstrode, an expression he had seen many times on the face of the younger Naurung. Dislike? No – disdain. ‘I am aware of a disturbing implication,’ he said.

Nancy stumbled over the word and after a short debate Naurung supplied it.

‘I will explain. I think, outwardly, in Bengal all is calm. Money was made during the war and people – though not all people – are prosperous but the burra sahib – your uncle – is not a fool. He looks under the surface. He did not invite the distinguished police commander…’ He bowed to Joe. ‘He did not invite you, sir, for nothing, or just – excuse me – just to humour his niece. He has a long memory. He thinks of the past and he also thinks of the future. The decision to move the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi is resented by educated people in Bengal. And there is much resentment still about the war. The English talk always of the gallantry of Indian soldiers in France and there are gallant legends. What we know is that of the “gallant” band who set off to France a very great number did not return. Look, if you do not believe me, at the casualty returns amongst Bateman’s Horse. It is believed that valuable Indian lives were squandered.’

He paused and looked a question at Joe.

‘I was in France,’ said Joe, ‘and that same opinion was widely expressed by returning British soldiers including myself. The Germans described the British army as “an army of lions led by donkeys”. I agree. But it is not of Indian troops alone that this could be said. I started the war with six cousins and now I have one.’

‘Many Sikhs could say the same,’ said the old man and went on, ‘but it is our religion to die always with our faces to the enemy and serving our King. The Sikhs do not complain but there is much ill feeling among others towards the British for involving the Indian people in a struggle that is not their own. But further…’ He paused for a moment to emphasise the point he was about to make. ‘… it is believed that the British are subtle and clever and they are taking steps to separate Hindu and Muslim. I believe this myself. And it is being said openly that this move to divide Hindu and Muslim is motivated by the policy of “divide and rule”.’

The last thing Joe wanted was to find himself stirring about in the snake pit of Indian politics but the Naurungs appeared so earnest in their desire to prevent a catastrophe which they could clearly see on the horizon that he made an effort to listen closely. Could the Naurungs be uncovering the undisclosed reason Uncle George had been so eager to involve him?

He accepted another sweet pastry and asked carefully, ‘What are you saying? Where is this leading?’

‘I am saying that, though apparently calm, the political situation is explosive and – if you will hear me – our affair of the memsahib murders may have a disastrous part to play. Remember that in 1858 it was in Bengal that the match was applied to the powder trail that so nearly blew British India to smithereens.’ He produced the word with pride. ‘And remember that then the powder keg was suspicion – unfounded perhaps but suspicion all the same – that the British were intent on forcibly converting the sepoy soldiers to Christianity. The fuse seemed a trivial enough matter to the British. They had issued to the soldiers cartridges which it was rumoured had been greased with pig and cow fat. To load his gun the soldier had to bite off the top of the cartridge thus polluting himself whether he were Muslim or Hindu. It was said that this was a cunning British means of destroying the caste of the Indian regiments. But the British were not cunning – careless perhaps and thoughtless, but the tragedy was that this was the fuse that was lit in Bengal in the hot weather when tempers grow short. Stations like Panikhat here in Bengal and Meerut near Delhi saw the first explosions.’

Joe remembered the pathetic plaques on the older bungalows. He remembered Kitty lost in a past which to her was only a touch away.

‘Who will forget Memsahib Chambers, a young wife and pregnant, cut to pieces, the first victim. The first of hundreds of Englishwomen to die hideously at the hands of the mutineers. And because their women and their children had suffered so badly the English reprisals were equally hideous. The hangings, the sepoys tied to cannon and shot to bits… a dark time.

‘And it would not need much to bring that horror back. Already we have the same pattern – many grievances, many suspicions. Let it be suggested in the bazaars that there is a movement, a movement to dislodge the British, and many – often ignorant – people would follow. The situation is once again extremely dangerous.’

‘Again,’ said Joe, ‘I am asking where you are leading me?’

The room fell silent while they awaited his reply until at last he said, ‘I think, Commander, you believe, as I do, that all these tragedies are linked? And looking at the evidence it would seem that in each case there was present a mysterious and disappearing figure. Consider the wife of Carmichael Sahib. Who was it who killed the cobra? People would assume a native. The wife of Forbes Sahib. Where now is the saddhu – a material witness if ever there was one? And the ferryman who made so gallant a rescue attempt when the wife of Simms-Warburton Sahib was drowned? And, most recently, the native box-wallah who came forward so helpfully to say that, though he had been in the alleyway by the bungalow of Memsahib Somersham at the time of her death, he had seen and heard nothing suspicious?’

Naurung cleared his throat deferentially, obviously with something to say but reluctant to interrupt his father who turned to him, however, in enquiry.

‘I have made a small investigation, if you will pardon me, in respect of this death. Perhaps you will recall this disappearing witness – a merchant, a representative of Vallijee Raja. I have a friend who works for this firm and I asked him if he could find out who was the box-wallah in Panikhat who came a couple of weeks ago to sell the products of this firm. They have no record of any representative of the firm in Panikhat at that time or indeed at any time this year so this too is a figure of mystery.’

The silence which greeted this revelation was broken by Naurung senior. ‘Now I will tell you something which is not generally known. That is to say it is no secret but it is not widely spoken of. Six weeks ago at Bhalasore, that is twenty-five miles from here, the wife of a post office official was killed when she was out riding. It was thought that she had been kicked by her horse. Fractured skull. Three weeks ago the wife of a planter who lives ten miles from here was killed “accidentally” by misreading the label on a medicine bottle. Such things happen. They are not what you would call the “stop press news”. But for those with eyes to see a connection between these things a connection can be found. I myself think that we are looking at no more than the kind of thing that happens in India. Probably the kind of thing that happens in London? But I am remembering that in 1858 connections were seen which were not there. Truth was ignored because a lie was more valuable.

‘Sandilands Sahib, you know that I am a letter-writer. We letter-writers hear things spoken in confidence – secrets, policies, mysteries. We speak little but we know a great deal. When we are concerned we share our knowledge and our fears. And there is a fear, a great fear in the bazaars and in the corridors of Government House that the country is on the point of another and greater rebellion than the one sixty years ago. Then the Sikhs stood with the British against the mutineers. If terrible times should come again, the Sikhs would stand with you once more. It is their way. But many fear the powder keg is in place.’

‘And the spark that could ignite it?’ asked Joe, already knowing the answer.

‘A fuse. A trail of murdered memsahibs. Already it is spoken of. One thing is lacking, sahib. The match. And that you hold in your own hand.’

‘Joe Sandilands holds it?’ Nancy said sharply. ‘What do you mean, Naurung?’

‘He means,’ said Joe, ‘that when the great detective from Scotland Yard finishes his investigations and declares to the Governor of Bengal that five English ladies, wives of officers in a smart cavalry regiment, have each been murdered with much malice aforethought by Indians or even a single Indian, there will be reprisals. There will be token arrests, there may even be executions. And with a dedicated and implacable Colonel like Prentice in command of the regiment, who knows how far it will go? We all know what his reputation is for exacting revenge.’

‘And then there will be retaliation and overreaction from native groups,’ said Nancy, white-faced. ‘The Congress wallahs could seize on this and use it! Just what they need as a battle flag to wave in our faces! Oh, Joe…’

Naurung, who had stood in almost total silence throughout the exchange, now spoke quietly.

‘Sandilands Sahib says when he makes his revelation. May we know if it is indeed his decision to incriminate Indians in the deaths?’

Joe looked at the three strained faces around him and shook his head, smiling bleakly. ‘You must think that so far I have done very little to justify my professional status and the confidence the Governor has shown in me. You may well even be recalling the title the press frequently gives us at Scotland Yard – the Defective Force. It is difficult to take over cases years old, badly managed from the outset, cases in which I cannot use any of the new forensic methods I have been so proudly demonstrating to the Bengal Police for the last six months.’

Naurung nodded in understanding.

‘No fingerprinting, no blood-typing, no door-to-door enquiries, no string of informants. I’ve been forced back on to a dependence on reason and common sense… but something more.’

He paused for a moment, wondering how receptive his audience would be to what he had to say next, and then plunged on.

‘I was billeted in the war with a very clever man – a well-read man. He’d brought two books to the war with him – the works of an Austrian psychologist, Sigmund Freud, and a Swiss called Carl Jung. I had snatched up the works of Shakespeare and Kim. When war isn’t being instant noisy death whizzing past your ears it’s being a boring longueur and my companion and I whiled away the waiting between pushes by reading each other’s books. I don’t know which of us had the better bargain! I learned much about the science of psychology of the unconscious mind, about psychoanalysis and the development of character. My friend didn’t believe in the existence of evil and he laughed at the policeman’s idea of the “criminal type”. He believed that a man’s character was set for life – moulded if you like – by circumstances in the first seven or so years of his existence. If he is born into poverty and crime, he is likely to grow up poor and a criminal, through no fault of his own.’

The Naurungs looked at him alertly and nodded. Naurung senior said, ‘We have a saying in Bengal – “The Rajah’s son does not exchange shoes with the cobbler’s son.” ’

‘Just so,’ said Joe a little deflated. ‘I have also made a study of a phenomenon in the history of crime in Europe and America which began with the slaying of five ladies of the night – five prostitutes – in the East End of London fifty years ago.’

Naurung senior listened with heightened attention and his son nodded eagerly. It was clear they were both aware of the case.

‘Jack the Ripper?’ said Nancy. ‘Are you talking about the Whitechapel murders? The police never solved those crimes, did they?’

‘No,’ said Joe. ‘But, with the help of my friend in the trenches, I do believe I have worked out Jack’s identity. The motive, I think, is very different in the sequence of murders we’re investigating but there are aspects in common. We’re not looking here at a frenzied attack carried out through an overriding sexual motive but at a carefully executed pattern of killings. The victims have been selected. They didn’t just happen to stray into range of the killer when he was experiencing a maniacal urge to destroy. Their habits were well known to him. He could follow them, even into their bathroom in the case of Peggy Somersham, murder them and instantly disappear. Like Jack, he could disappear with ease because he was at home.

‘When I was doing some research into the Ripper murders a couple of years ago I came on a paper – or letter rather – addressed to the head of the CID in 1888 by a Dr Thomas Bond who was much concerned with the Ripper investigation. I was fascinated. What I had in my hands was a portrait of the murderer in words. The good doctor, as if by some magic it seemed at first reading, was sketching an outline of the man – his height, his weight, his disposition, his job, the place where he was to be found and the make-up of his family. Had I been on the strength in 1888 I could, on reading that letter, have walked down the Whitechapel Road and felt his collar! On second reading I was impressed for quite a different reason. The doctor was using nothing but sound common sense and inspired reasoning, drawing on information from the scenes of crime. And I could do the same.’

‘You’re about to tell us that you’ve solved our problem?’ Nancy asked.

Joe grimaced. ‘Your problem, I’m afraid, is a lot more complex than the Ripper case! There we had the same modus operandi – the same knife was used, the killings were done in the same framework of time and place and the motive was blatantly obvious. The killer experienced an ungovernable and psychotic rage against women – women of a certain type, that is.’

‘You mean he was trying to clean up the streets? Get rid of the prostitutes?’ said Nancy.

‘No. I’m certain there was no element of crusade in what he did. I think it was an outburst of sexually inspired fury against a class of women he had good cause to hate. I believe he had personal reasons, springing from his own early days perhaps, for hacking to death and obliterating these women. He was possibly the son of a prostitute, reared by a prostitute – certainly the man was a client of and probably actually knew the women he murdered. It’s my theory that he actually lived with one of them.’

‘But none of the ladies in this case was molested, sahib, and all were killed by different methods,’ said Naurung.

‘And that is what makes it almost impossible to explain,’ said Joe. ‘Let’s look for a moment at motivation. We have already ruled out the two most common ones – lust and financial gain. Not even the ladies’ husbands gained in the slightest by their deaths. So we are left with four: jealousy, elimination, revenge and conviction.’

‘Well, we can rule out jealousy, I think,’ said Nancy. ‘None of the wives had given cause for suspicion… At least I’m not quite certain about Dolly Prentice… There are stories that she was, well, a bit of a flirt… But about the rest there was no gossip at all. You’d say that all the men loved their wives and were quite devastated when they died. None has remarried and I think that’s very significant, don’t you?’

‘Yes, and that in a sense rules out the next motive of elimination. You know – “I will kill off my wife because I want to marry someone else or because she is in possession of a hideous secret concerning me.” Dr Crippen, for example, needed to eliminate his wife in order to marry his lover. But, no, the facts don’t support this explanation in any of the cases. None of our husbands would appear to have profited and flourished as a result.’

‘No. I agree,’ said Nancy. ‘Colonel Prentice, as witnesses claim, was horrified by his wife’s death and out of his mind for a fortnight. There are rumours that all was not well with that pair but, according to Kitty, he took it very badly.’

‘And yesterday I interviewed a wreck of a man. The husband of Joan Carmichael. You’d say he never smiled again after her death. He had some money from Joan but, as her husband, he could probably have had access to it at any time and he didn’t make use of it until two years after her death.’

‘And Dr Forbes whom I saw at the hospital yesterday. He’s thrown himself totally into his work which is his whole life now. His distress at Sheila’s death was still evident.’

‘Simms-Warburton, well, we’ll never know. He went straight into the war and never came home again but certainly there was no whirlwind remarriage, no instant elopement with the daughter of a subhadur-major!’

‘And lastly Billy Somersham. You’ve met him. I know him. He gained nothing but heartache from Peggy’s death. No, he had absolutely no reason to “eliminate” her. So that leaves only two motives – revenge and conviction, whatever you mean by that!’

‘Revenge? Would anyone, seriously, have cause to be revenged on these women?’ Joe asked. ‘What had they done? All perfectly innocent creatures who had annoyed nobody, not even their husbands. I really can’t see this as a convincing motive.’

‘So – you’re going to have to explain what you mean by your last motive, conviction.’

‘Conviction.’ Joe sighed. ‘This could take us into the realms of madness. If a person is convinced, for example, that he has a God-given right to kill for religious motives, I would call that a conviction killing.’

Naurung could not wait for the end of Joe’s explanation. ‘Suttee!’ he said. ‘As in suttee! The disgusting Hindu custom of burning alive a man’s widow on his funeral pyre! The British have tried to stamp it out but it goes on, oh, yes, it still goes on in the villages! Sometimes the lady goes willingly to her death as it brings great honour to her family but often her relatives force her. There was a case, in my father’s memory, where the widow escaped from the fire and ran away. She was found hiding by her own son who dragged her back and threw her once more into the flames.’

‘Yes, that would be, as far as an Eastern mind could encompass it, an example of killing for religious conviction.’

Nancy said angrily, ‘Not necessarily religious! I think that’s too convenient an excuse for such a revolting custom. Social, perhaps. A strong social reason – after all, who in a family wants to be saddled with a useless widow to support for the rest of her unproductive life? She cannot remarry and is bound to be a burden to her family if the problem isn’t solved by means of the funeral pyre and excused by the notion of religious observance!’

‘Which brings us to the second strand of “conviction”. The social strand. If our killer had an unshakeable belief that he was ridding society of an undesirable element – a belief so strong that he felt his actions were above all laws – he might kill off a series of similar victims. Prostitutes? Priests?’

‘Money-lenders?’ suggested Naurung.

‘Certainly money-lenders! But officers’ wives?’ Nancy exclaimed with derision. ‘We’ve all been irritated or bored out of our minds by them but hardly to the point of taking a knife or a cobra to finish them off!’

Joe smiled. ‘I agree. And this is where it all begins to get a little unreal. They are not just a series of officers’ wives. They are a very particular group of officers’ wives, chosen according to some obscure pattern. There are things they had in common, there are things they did not have in common. There are things a proportion of the group had in common – both Dolly Prentice and Peggy Somersham were pregnant. Is this significant or is it misleading? But there is one thing which I think is very significant. Naurung – Mrs Drummond and I have discovered that the ladies all had this in common – they had a phobia.’

Translations of the word rattled back and forward over Joe’s head until the satisfied nods of the two Naurungs encouraged him to go on. Nancy supplied the details of each victim’s special horror, linking it with the means of her death and the faces of father and son grew grim.

Finally, Naurung said seriously, “This is the work of a devil, sahib. I fear we have worked our way back to our first conversation if the sahib remembers?’

‘The Churel? Kali the Destroyer? I still do not accept this. But you and your father have added today another element to the motive of conviction killing and that is – political. To murder, not soldiers but soldiers’ wives and by subtle and repulsive means might be a calculated way of sowing terror and suspicion in the ranks of the British army. A way which would lead to the reprisals and overreaction we have discussed. But I don’t think the answer lies here either. For two apparently insignificant reasons. The murders have all occurred in March. On the grave of each victim has been placed a bunch of Kashmiri roses – all in March. This is a ritual aspect which rules out every one of the motives we have so far examined.’

Joe frowned. ‘And so I am reduced to working out this whole problem from what any decent policeman would consider the wrong end. I have built up a picture of the person who must have committed these crimes…’

‘Very well, Sandilands,’ said Nancy with a hint of challenge in her voice, ‘prove that you’re not a defective! Tell us who’s responsible.’

‘He is male. He is European. He is middle-aged, strong and agile in body and mind. He is very close to Indians and either has employed them to do these killings or is sufficiently confident to have tricked himself out as an Indian to get close enough to do the murders himself without arousing suspicion. He lives on the station at Panikhat. If you passed him walking on the maidan you would greet him by name.’

There was a deep silence as names crowded into everyone’s mind. Nancy shook her head and muttered, ‘No. That’s not possible.’

The young Naurung was more positive and Joe even wondered whether he had arrived at this point before he had himself. ‘Sandilands Sahib, I think you know and I too can guess who has done these dreadful things,’ he said, ‘but why? My father,’ with a short bow to Naurung senior, ‘will always say, “Know how and why and you will know who,” but what you are saying is quite the reverse.’

‘I know,’ said Joe, ‘and to fill in the picture I must go back to Panikhat. That’s where it started and that’s where the answers lie.’

‘One thing, Sandilands Sahib,’ said Naurung’s father diffidently. ‘I worked with Bulstrode Sahib on the case of Memsahib Simms-Warburton who was drowned. It was I who interviewed the ferryman who nearly drowned with her. I suspected him. He could, unseen by the bystanders, have secreted a knife about the raft and slit the hides when they were in the middle of the river. He dived under water to help the poor lady but they were both under the surface for a long time. It occurred to me that he could have been holding her down until he was sure she was dead. I spoke to him afterwards and took a statement which unfortunately did not attract the interest of Bulstrode Sahib but I remember it well.

‘Commander, Englishmen are brown down to their neck and pink below that. This man was naked apart from his turban and loin cloth. I saw his body. And he was Indian-skinned from head to soles of his feet.’