The Palace Tiger

Chapter Four

Joe very much enjoyed Indian first class rail travel. He liked the comfortable buttoned black leather upholstery, he appreciated the block of ice sharing a tin bath with a dozen bottles of India Pale Ale, strong and hoppy, and he watched as one by one their labels floated off. He listened with half his mind to Edgar’s anecdotal conversation and was glad enough to have escaped from Simla.

It was late afternoon before they arrived at the junction with the private rail link with Ranipur. ‘Say goodbye to comfort,’ said Edgar. ‘From now on we’re on the narrow gauge, colloquially known as the Heatstroke Express. I keep talking to Udai about it but he never travels by train himself and he doesn’t know how the rest of the world suffers. You would think that some of the nobs who use the little railway would have told him.’ He rose to his feet, began to button himself up and committed his cigar to a deep ashtray. Joe joined him to look out of the window.

‘Behold the powerful state of Ranipur!’

‘Powerful? Would you say powerful?’ Joe asked.

‘Well, it’s all relative, isn’t it? Some would say prosperous, successful, untroubled.’

‘But having a bloodstained past?’

‘Yes, indeed, and possibly a bloodstained future as well.’

Joe gave him a sharp look. ‘You sound a bit ominous. Ancestral voices, do I hear, prophesying war?’

An unaccustomed look of uncertainty passed briefly over Edgar’s florid features and he paused a moment before replying. ‘Nothing as definite as that but I’ll answer your question properly when I find out why, I mean really why I’ve been summoned by Udai. Devious old twister that he is!’

They stepped down into the extreme of an Indian summer’s day.

‘Heatstroke Express!’ said Joe. ‘I see what you mean!’ And a little train whistling and steaming sweatily stood by on another line to receive them.

‘Only an hour,’ said Edgar. ‘We’ll probably survive. People mostly do.’

But they didn’t have to make the experiment. As they walked across the station forecourt they turned to look at a large white car approaching them at speed and trailing a cloud of dust.

‘Ha!’ said Edgar with satisfaction. ‘A great honour! They’ve sent the Rolls! I wonder if it’s for you or me?’

‘Can’t be for me,’ said Joe. ‘He didn’t know I was coming. Did he?’

‘My dear chap,’ said Edgar, ‘you haven’t begun to understand Udai if you imagine he doesn’t know who’s come, who’s gone, who to expect, who not to expect and what you’ve got packed in your luggage!’

For a startled moment, Joe had a vision of the dark metal of the snub-nosed gun nestling amongst his dress shirts and hoped he’d remembered to lock his trunk. Joe’s eyes followed it anxiously as it was moved with Indian efficiency along with other luggage from the mainline on to the waiting narrow gauge train. For a moment he regretted not keeping the gun tucked away in his belt in spite of the discomfort. He turned his attention back to the open-topped Rolls Royce Phantom and looked and looked again at the two people in the front seats.

The passenger seat was occupied by an Indian wearing a smartly tailored but dusty chauffeur’s uniform. Hatless and dishevelled, he was holding on to a leather strap, bracing himself as the car came to an abrupt halt at their feet. The driver, a slim figure in khaki trousers and white shirt, applied the handbrake and jumped out to greet them. She took off the borrowed chauffeur’s cap, releasing a shining fall of fair hair, and knocked the cap against her knee to shake off the thick layer of dust.

‘Edgar. How nice to see you again.’ Her tone was formal rather than warm and her attention moved rather more quickly than was polite from Edgar to himself.

‘And this is your English policeman? Cops finally got wise to you, did they, and put you in custody?’ She stared at Joe with undisguised appreciation, her expression now warm and playful. ‘Well, lucky old you!. . My! If I weren’t already spoken for I’d put my cap right back on and set it at you, mister!’

‘Hello, Madeleine,’ said Edgar stiffly. ‘May I present my friend and colleague, Commander Joseph Sandilands? Joe is in India on secondment from Scotland Yard. Joe, this is Madeleine Mercer — as was — now the first wife of Udai’s second son, Prithvi. What the hell are you up to, Madeleine? Still trying to astonish, unnerve and upset? Udai won’t like this display, you know!’ He waved a hand theatrically at the onlookers beginning to gather round the Rolls. ‘Quite a decent crowd you’ve drummed up. . thinking of going round with the hat?’ The sarcastic edge to his voice made Joe uneasy and he waited for Madeleine to reply in kind, but she ignored the gibe, smiled sweetly and put out a hot, sticky hand to shake Joe’s.

‘Hello, Joe, and welcome to Ranipur. I’m Maddy. Oh, and I’m not the first wife — I’m the only wife.’

Clearly there was little respect or liking between these two and Joe thought he could understand this. Loyal as he was to the ruler, Edgar would share his disappointment with the heir to the throne’s odd choice of bride. And Joe suspected that Edgar had an innate mistrust of any woman who did not conform to his idea of her role in society, Indian or British.

And this was a nonconformist, Joe decided, liking her at once. She was pretty, even beautiful. The first impression of youth and innocence given by the shining blonde hair and widely spaced brown eyes was belied at second glance by the thick straight brows, knowing expression and determined chin. He would have guessed her age as mid-twenties, a year or two younger than himself.

‘I’ve never driven a Rolls,’ Joe offered in an effort to distract them from pursuing their show of mutual dislike.

‘Have a go on the way back if you like,’ said Madeleine easily.

‘Thank you, but I’d hate to wrap it round a peepul tree,’ said Joe. ‘Not had much practice with motor cars. I do rather better with horses.’

‘It wouldn’t matter much if you crashed it. My father-inlaw’s got nine more like it back home.’ Was there disapproval in her flat American drawl? ‘I’ll give you lessons if you like. I’m pretty good, you’ll find.’

‘Madeleine’s father was a racing driver,’ Edgar explained. ‘And he passed on his skills — along with his modesty — to his daughter.’

The disapproval was unmistakable.

While they talked the chauffeur had taken their hand luggage and stowed it away in the car. He was now standing hopefully by the driver’s door.

‘Oh, go on then, Gopal! You’ve had enough excitement for one day, I guess! You can drive us back to the palace,’ said Madeleine. ‘Edgar, you sit in front. I’m going to cosy up with your friend and colleague in the back and tell him about Ranipur.’ She grinned at Joe. ‘All about Ranipur. The lid off Rajputana! Though I’ll have to work hard to counter some of the impressions Edgar’s given you, I expect. A woman’s-eye view of the principality is never going to be the same as a man’s.’

They settled down into the leather upholstery and the sleek car moved off at a sedate pace into the interior.

‘Just irritating Edgar,’ Joe guessed as Madeleine fell silent, allowing him to register his own impressions of the countryside uninterrupted by commentary. He looked about him eagerly. Desert scenery gave way to orchards and cultivated fields; strips of corn and millet and other crops Joe didn’t recognize filed past. Here and there patches of jangal, which Edgar explained meant uncultivated land, intruded into the tame landscape, small thatched villages sheltered under ancient fig trees, plough oxen plodded their desultory way under the relentless sun. In this dry countryside Joe was pleased to notice sleeping tanks of jade green water and here and there a turning water wheel and evidence of irrigation. And everywhere there were people working, the men standing out against the dun background in white dhotis and richly coloured turbans of saffron and magenta.

Their way was blocked for a moment or two in a village by a flock of girls as bright as birds of paradise in their saris of pink and acid green and yellow. Chattering and laughing and, Joe was quite certain, making rude remarks about the white faces in the white car, they moved off the road, heavy copper pots of milk balanced on their heads, backs straight and swinging along with a lithe grace.

Joe was enthralled. ‘What beauties!’ he remarked.

‘Village women,’ said Madeleine dismissively. She gave Joe a look full of speculation and amusement and added, ‘If it’s female beauty you’re interested in you’ll find a fine sample at the palace. Well, at least, the ones you’re allowed to see. . the respectable ones are still in purdah.’

‘I had understood that the ruler wasn’t in favour of purdah? It’s a Moghul tradition, isn’t it? Not Rajput?’

‘That’s so. The Rajputs adopted it from their conquerors — the Moghuls. It was the fashionable way to live your life. The women got used to it, I guess, and most of them at court would refuse to give it up if you gave them the choice. . and, to be fair to Udai, I think he has. His first two wives both stay firmly behind the slatted screens of the zenana. They haven’t been seen by a man apart from their husband since they were married. And before that — only their brothers. Can you imagine! They spend their whole lives guarded by eunuchs, in the company of other women, most of whom they can’t stand, squabbling and intriguing all day long. Their chief topics of conversation are who’s been given the most valuable necklace and how many times has the ruler slept with them that month. What a life!’ Madeleine shuddered in a showy way. ‘I have nothing to do with them. As far as I’m concerned, they’re dead. Dead to the world!’

‘A very short-sighted and ill-informed view, if I may say so,’ drawled Edgar. ‘First Her Highness and Second Her Highness are very intelligent women who not only rule the zenana with a rod of iron but manipulate events on the outside as well. First Her Highness, in particular, is very influential. Anyone affecting to be ignorant of that would be foolish indeed.’

Madeleine rolled her eyes and sighed.

‘And how do you rate the Third Her Highness as I suppose she’s called?’ Joe asked hurriedly before Madeleine could snap back a reply.

‘The Princess Shubhada?’ Madeleine fell silent for a moment, considering her response. ‘I hardly know her. We’re not exactly bosom pals. I’m American and what I do is flying. She’s Indian and what she does is hunting. She was educated in England and hobnobs with the aristocracy and the royal family. You should have seen her showing off when the Prince of Wales visited last winter! “Oh, Eddie darling! Do you remember that soirée at the Buffington-Codswallops in Henley Week? Pogo was so smashed I thought he’d drown when we chucked him in the Thames!”’

Her imitation of upper-class flappers’ slang was unnervingly good.

Joe nodded seriously and replied in the same accent. ‘What a perfectly ghastly stunt! Poor Pogo! Too many pink gins aboard?’

Madeleine laughed and squeezed his arm. ‘You’ve got it! But you can imagine that we haven’t got much in common. Her natural milieu — as she would put it — is the polo field and mine’s the flying field. Hurlingham meets Kitty Hawk? Never!’

Their road led onwards and upwards and they caught occasional glimpses of the little train as it chugged along in their wake.

‘What are those hills ahead?’ Joe asked.

‘Outrunners of the Aravallis,’ said Edgar, turning and pointing. ‘And the reason for Udai’s wealth. Those unimpressive — and if we’re being honest we’d say downright ugly — bleak hills are a gold mine. Well, better than that — they’re a precious gems mine. They’re full of minerals from onyx up to the finest emeralds. Millions of pounds’ worth of gems have found their way into the Ranipur treasure house for generations. The city’s up there. It’s not at a great height but enough to lower the temperature a few degrees. Now prepare yourself for a surprise when we round the next bend!’

What Joe saw in the distance was the fabulous palace of Ranipur. A cliff of fretted, carved and decorated pink stone seemed to extend for a hundred and fifty yards on either side of a grand central entrance and to rise upwards and backwards in a cascade of balconies and pavilions, of garden, dome and temple and, over all, pencil-slim cypress stood on guard on every hand. At its feet frothed and surged a small town, the houses painted white or pale blue. Joe was enchanted. Without an instruction given, the car drew to a halt and the chauffeur put on the brake.

‘A thousand rooms!’ declared Edgar. ‘Udai says he’s been in every one of them but I bet he hasn’t.’

‘Who lives here?’ Joe asked.

‘Well, the state rooms are kept for use only on special occasions. Udai has more sense than to live here himself. You’ll see the New Palace in a minute. He’s got a large family. Aunts, uncles, sons and daughters, his wives if it comes to that. They all have their apartments. Each apartment has its servants and I could go further and say that each servant has his servant. The last time the Ranipur army went into action each fighting man was accompanied by two armed retainers. You need a big house if you’re going to accommodate that size of entourage, and pension them and feed them. There must be upwards of three thousand people living within the palace walls, each as careful of his or her dignity as it is possible to be, quarrelling, tale-bearing, eating, stealing I shouldn’t wonder, plotting and planning. . Sounds awful, doesn’t it, but really, on the whole, I think they have a pretty good time. But I don’t think it would suit me.’

‘I don’t think it would suit me either,’ said Joe.

‘Damn sure it doesn’t suit me!’ said Madeleine with feeling.

Edgar ignored her. ‘Doesn’t always suit Udai. I’ll show you the state apartments tomorrow. In the meantime, the idea of a bath is beginning to appeal to me.’ He turned to Madeleine. ‘Shall we continue?’

‘Sure. But first, prepare yourself for another surprise!’ said Madeleine. ‘You’re about to get a welcome, Texas style!’

She pointed up to the sky above the flat foothills separating them from the town and palace where a small aeroplane appeared to be lazily circling. Catching sight of them, the pilot turned and made towards them at speed. He swooped low and everyone in the car ducked as the plane sheered the dusty air only feet above their heads. Joe squinted into the sun as it passed over to the west behind them. In the two-seater plane the front passenger seat was empty, the clearly silhouetted figure in the rear position raising an arm in salute.

‘Who the hell’s that?’ Joe shouted, startled.

‘Best pilot in India or America or anywhere,’ said Madeleine with pride. ‘That’s Captain Stuart Mercer, ex-Escadrille Américaine. My brother.’

‘Your brother? What’s he doing in Ranipur?’

Madeleine’s eyes never left the small Curtiss Jenny as it began a series of stunts. ‘Well, I’ll never know for sure whether it was me or Stuart that Prithvi fell for!’ she said with a smile. ‘He met us on an airfield. . well, it was more of a cow pasture. . in the States where we were performing. Came backstage at the end of the performance, you might say. We have — we had — a family business. We’re barnstormers. Ever heard of the “Airdevils”?’

Joe nodded. So that was what she was — a wing dancer in an aerial circus! Had Sir George got it wrong deliberately? He’d heard of many flying circus acts, even seen some of those that made the trip to Europe. Their suicidally daring exploits left him breathless. The young pilots, many of whom had survived service in the war, had been turned adrift in a dull and unrewarding world which had no appreciation of their talent. What they craved was some way of earning a living using their flying skills and they soon caught on to the entertainment value of those skills. People would pay to see them perform, even pay to go up for a flight themselves. Joe shuddered at the idea. But, inevitably, as the public grew used to the spectacle, they became jaded and pilots had to devise ever more daring stunts to keep their attention. Death drops, flights into the heart of Niagara Falls, leaps from racing car to low flying-plane, even leaps from one plane to another in mid-air, they were all attempted with the aim of making money from their audience. Some of the daredevils got rich but most had trouble raising meal money and some died.

‘Planes were going for six hundred dollars when Stuart got back home. No shortage. They were stockpiled all over the States. The military were glad to get rid of them. Spares were no problem either. So he bought a couple and cannibalized one of them to get the plane he wanted and we set up in business. Dad helped with the mechanical side and I soon learned that too — I can fly and maintain an aircraft as well as dance on the wings.’ Madeleine spoke with pride and a touch of challenge.

Joe guessed she had probably run into much male criticism for involving herself in such unladylike pursuits. She would hear none from him; he was fascinated. Madeleine Mercer was a very unusual and attractive girl, he acknowledged, and it was no wonder to him that she should have caught and kept the undivided attention of a maharaja’s son. He tore his own attention from the smiling, chattering girl at his side and looked up again at the pilot, who was performing a manoeuvre which Joe had never seen before. ‘I thought being a policeman was dangerous,’ said Joe, ‘but it’s nothing compared with this!’

‘It’s dangerous but it’s safer than flying the mail routes,’ said Madeleine laconically. ‘And it beats liquor smuggling over the Mexican border which is what we were doing as a sideline before we left the States.’

Joe smiled. ‘Do I gather you and your brother were one step ahead of the law when you skipped off to India?’

‘Something like that. . Some would say, “Captain Mercer, dashing young air-ace with twenty kills chalked up on his fuselage, accepted the job of personal flying coach to his brother-in-law and accompanied him home to Ranipur. The maharaja’s second son, international socialite Prithvi Singh, is said to have in his stable a collection of no fewer than ten aeroplanes all of which he is able to fly.”’ Madeleine was obviously quoting from a society magazine. ‘See what he’s doing now!’

Joe hardly dared look. The plane was flying over their heads, upside down, the pilot waving a cheery hand. No — two hands.

‘Oh, my God!’ breathed Joe.

‘Now that is dangerous!’ Madeleine said with pride. ‘These Jennys — you can’t trust ’em! The engine cuts out sometimes when they’re upside down and then you’ve got trouble! They were never intended to be stunt planes but Stuart’s a fabulous mechanic as well as pilot and he’s worked on his planes until they do what he wants when he wants it. Now look at this!’

The plane was spiralling upwards, gaining height. As he climbed, the pilot threw out a shower of shiny tinsel that fell, sparkling against the sun, drifting lazily down over the plain.

‘This is the Eastern bit of the welcome,’ said Madeleine.

Edgar caught a piece of tinsel and looked at it closely. ‘Gold?’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said Madeleine.

‘Um. . how high is he proposing to climb?’ asked Joe nervously as the pilot continued his upward spiral, releasing more tinsel as he went.

‘Oh, he’s barely started,’ said Madeleine comfortably. ‘Stuart tried for the altitude record a couple of years ago. Just kept on going until he ran out of gas then freewheeled back down. He made over twenty-five thousand feet but he was still a hundred feet off the record. He’ll do it one day.’

They watched in silence, mouths open, increasingly tense.

‘Okay, Stu, that’s good enough. . We’ve got the picture,’ Joe heard Madeleine mutter.

As though hearing her, the pilot stopped his ascent, levelled out and began an abrupt dive.

‘What’s he doing now?’ said Edgar uneasily.

‘He’s going into a loop,’ said Madeleine. ‘Never seen a loop before?’

The plane’s nose pulled up and the frail fuselage fought its way upwards, the engine screaming a protest.

It was her gasp that alerted him. At the moment of maximum effort, half-way into the loop, the plane had suddenly stopped rising. Its nose dropped and the plane flattened out. At the same moment, the engine appeared to stop.

‘Now why the hell would he do that?’ she said to herself. ‘That’s not in the script!’

To Joe’s horror the plane began to drop out of the sky. This was no lazy, calculated, gliding descent.

‘He’s going to crash!’ he blurted out and wished he’d kept silent.

Madeleine’s face was anxious but she replied confidently enough. ‘Not this plane. Not this pilot. This’ll be some new stunt he’s been working on for our benefit. He’s supposed to scare us! That’s what he does! Oh, come on, Stu! Pull out now!’

‘But the engine’s cut out,’ said Edgar. ‘How can he pull out? Idiot’s leaving it too late!’

Madeleine rounded on him. ‘Well, you sure know a lot about planes! These crates can have the whole engine drop off and you can still land them. Done it myself!’

But Joe noticed that she was climbing out of the car and beginning to run towards her brother’s plane. In a few strides he had caught up with her and grasped her by the shoulders. ‘It won’t help to have us cluttering up his landing space!’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Maddy, let’s get back!’ But they stayed, frozen together, unable to run in any direction as, inexorably, the plane continued its uncontrolled descent. Joe thought he saw the pilot struggling with the controls a second or two before it crashed on to its belly in the dust about fifty yards ahead of them.

The fuselage fell apart, the wings crumpled in on themselves, the tail section broke off and dropped away, trailing steel cables. The machine Joe had admired dancing like a dragonfly only minutes before was a pile of matchwood.

Edgar lumbered past them. ‘God’s sake, Joe! Shift your arse, man! He may be alive still! Madeleine — stay back!’

They set off to sprint the short distance to the plane, one thought in both their minds. ‘Fuel tank! Can we get him out before it blows?’

Joe reached the plane first. He went straight for the pilot, who was slumped sideways in the open cockpit, blood pouring from him and down the side of the fuselage. Joe grasped him under the armpits and pulled. He was aware that manhandling of this kind was likely to do further damage to a battered and broken body but every pilot he had ever known had had the same fear of being trapped in a burning plane. Any man would rather be hauled away from a wreck at the risk of leaving limbs behind, Joe reasoned, and he gave another desperate tug.

The body moved an inch or two. Good, there were no obstructions in the cockpit. But a splintered wing had come to rest just above the pilot’s head and there was no way Joe could complete the manoeuvre. Just as Joe emitted a curse, the wing creaked up into the air and he turned briefly to see Edgar, purple in the face and muscles cracking, heaving the heavy wooden wing out of the way. Joe eased the body out, avoiding loose cables and torn fabric covering, and with Edgar grasping the feet, they scrambled to what they judged to be a safe distance from the wreckage.

‘Is he dead?’ Edgar asked.

‘Hard to know with all this gear on him,’ muttered Joe. ‘Let’s get his helmet and goggles off.’ He looked keenly at the young face, dust-covered, blood streaming from his nose and mouth but apparently lifeless.

They were hurled aside by the arrival of Madeleine, screaming her brother’s name. Gasping and distraught, she elbowed them out of the way and began with expert fingers to unbuckle the helmet and goggles.

‘Gently! Gently!’ Joe warned. ‘He could have head injuries.’

She threw down the leather gear and stared at the body in silence. Rigid with shock, she sank to her knees, gazing down at the dirty face. Gently she stroked his cheek. Joe watched, aghast, as the eyes fluttered open slightly and he did not imagine that one hand reached out and moved an inch towards Madeleine before flopping back lifeless. Still Madeleine did not move or speak. Joe sensed that, even in these horrific circumstances, there was something off-key about her behaviour. Had she gone into shock? What should he do? He looked at her uncertainly, waiting for a lead.

Finally, Madeleine said one word. ‘Prithvi.’ Then she threw back her head and howled in grief and rage.