“You tell me that Foot mentioned Heath as one of the other conspirators?” he demanded. I nodded. Stanhope smiled bleakly. “Well, that’s of some value. Even the India Office can’t spy intensively on the Home Secretary. But we’ve known for years that Heath used to take money from the Germans—they photographed his antics in one of their spa towns in about 1941, and only stopped waving the pictures under his nose when Chamberlain and Goering settled everything in Pressburg. It’s news to us that he’s now in up to his neck in some other act of treason.
“But there are dozens of others in on the plot. Some of them we think we know about. Most are hidden. Macmillan’s got a whole bloody conspiracy going. Even if only Heath, one of his co-conspirators is in the Cabinet. The others are studded through the middle reaches of our national life. The purpose of all that’s been going on in the past week was to flush them out. Thanks to you, it’s all gone tits bloody up!”
He had to break off his lecture as the door opened again, and waiters began wheeling in trolleys loaded with food. He stared appreciatively at the dishes placed on the table before him. Still bubbling from the spirit burners on the trolley, they looked and smelled as if they’d come from both ends of an overfed cat. Stanhope tucked a napkin into his collar and tore off a chunk of unleavened bread. He dipped it into one of the pots and pushed it into his mouth. He grunted out something approving in Hindi. Pakeshi smiled nervously, and gave a little seated bow.
I turned my attention to the beans on toast I’d ordered, and we all ate in a silence that was variously angry and miserable. Afterwards, I reached for another wine bottle and lit a cigarette. I was getting ready for a speech on angry defiance when Stanhope pulled out his napkin and wiped his hands clean.
“I’ve decided,” he said. “You’ve got to go back.” He flattened my horrified objections and pointed at the door. “There’s a telephone in your room,” he went on. “You can call Macmillan from there. You’ll tell him that you escaped from our Indian National Party man.” He scowled at Pakeshi, who looked silently away. “Yes, you’ll tell him that you had an argument with the good Dr Pakeshi, and that you’re now alone in this hotel, where you’ve had time to consider all you were told and to agree with it.”
“And you suppose he’ll believe that?” I cried. I got up from the table, knocking a bottle of red all over the carpet. “If I go back there, I’ll be murdered.”
“That’s possible,” Stanhope conceded. “But, if that boy—who wasn’t even British—was willing to give his life to stop them, you can’t ask less of yourself. Besides,” he added, now with a reassuring smile, “from what we know, and from what you say, they’ll want to believe you. Believing you gets their conspiracy back on course. What time was it you say Pakeshi dug that radio from your arse?” He looked at his watch and counted under his breath. “There’s still time,” he grunted. “You just travel obediently back down to Macmillan’s house, and you do whatever he and Foot ask of you.”
“And if I don’t?” I shouted—“if I don’t do you think it’ll be any worse if I give myself up to the police?” I took a step towards the door. Stanhope smiled wolfishly.
“If you don’t do exactly as your Queen and Country ask of you,” he gloated straight back at me, “Inspector O’Brien is waiting downstairs with two plainclothes officers. If you try leaving this hotel, he’ll arrest you for murder. We can sort out whom you’ve murdered in due course. But we’ll certainly make sure you hang for whatever charges we do make. And every day, during your trial, the evidence will be read out to a crowded press gallery of your sodomitical propensities, and of the vicious sadism with which you satisfied them. The jurymen will faint as the Crown produces your whips and dildoes, samples of the hideous pornography recovered from your flat—Japanese pornography, you’ll be pleased to know, specially imported by me and involving raped and murdered children. Don’t suppose anyone will believe a word of some cock and bull story about me or about conspiracies involving the Foreign Secretary. Oh, we’ll have to content ourselves with giving Macmillan a warning. He’ll look suitably annoyed as he gets up before the cameras and dismisses you as a fantasist as well as a murderer.
“You’ll hang for sure, and the mob outside your prison will cheer as the bell strikes eight. You’ll hang, and every respectable man and woman in the Empire will breathe a sigh of relief that the world has been thereby made a safer place. Oh, Dr Markham, by the time we’ve finished with you, your own mother would spit on you if she were still alive.”
Stanhope grinned and sat back in his chair. Vicky lit another cigarette and wrinkled her nose. I hovered a moment between the table and the door. Then I sat down.
“Since I’m to be hung for three murders,” I sneered, “I suppose that means curtains for Pakeshi. You wouldn’t want one of my victims turning up in future, alive and well.” Stanhope shrugged and looked at Pakeshi.
“My dear, young fellow,” he said back, very smooth, “I don’t think we need any more bodies on our hands than is absolutely necessary.” He looked across the table at Pakeshi, who was now very still and silent. “We’ll have no trouble here from Srindomar—will we?” Pakeshi looked down at the dessert menu. “No trouble at all,” Stanhope went on, “from the good ‘Dr Pakeshi’ here.” He gave a sniff of disgust and relit his pipe.
“Be aware, Anthony,” he continued, “that, ever since the big famine, the Indian struggle for independence has been divided between a few local nutters, who can raise a mob and little more, and the Indian National Party, based in London. This Party, with Labour support, has so far managed to get a single Member elected to Parliament. For the most part, it works through propaganda campaigns. Its funding comes overwhelmingly from the Indian masses. Think of them—millions of the poor buggers—all getting by on a handful of rice a day. Yet, when the collection box goes round the villages, they can still pull out a few annas here, a rupee there. It builds up to a tidy sum, and they go dinnerless to bed, warm in the knowledge that their self-sacrifice is being put to use in bringing reason to bear on the sahibs in London.
“And so it was until, one day, a worthless charmer turned up and managed to embezzle an inconceivable sum of money out of the INP. Knowing what I do of the trusting fools who manage the Party’s business, it’s more of a surprise that it took so long to part them from their money. But it was done. And, the person who now calls himself Srindomar Pakeshi must consider how most efficiently to disappear with the proceeds of his crime. Such a shame that he seems to have forgotten his passport when he bundled you out of his flat. Not such a shame for you, though, Anthony. Since it became part of his interest to keep you alive, you didn’t share the fate of those others who tried to get in his way.” Still hugging the dessert menu, Pakeshi smiled feebly back at me.