‘Bloody hell!’ said Joe, exasperated. ‘I’d give a lot to interview him!’
‘It would be difficult. Bulstrode Sahib did not detain him. He did not appear to be lying, according to the Superintendent. If he had anything to hide he would have lied about the time he was in the alley. He called at the kitchens at the time he says he did and the cook confirms that he placed an order with him for spices. He could be anywhere in India by now. These box-wallahs travel many miles in a week. Sometimes by train.’ He shrugged his shoulders.
Joe was aware of a sense of helplessness. He was not short of evidence. In many ways there was too much evidence, too many witnesses. He would need to settle down for a quiet half-hour and go through Bulstrode’s notes, however imperfect, and dredge out the important material.
He walked with Naurung back into Somersham’s study, unconsciously choosing to be as far away from the murder room as possible. Joe turned to Naurung. ‘Here are five deaths spread over twelve years. Were there other deaths of Englishwomen during the same period? It must be a matter of record. Can you find out?’
‘Sahib,’ said Naurung, ‘I have a list here. It was perhaps the first thing I thought of.’
From the back of the packet of papers he extracted a handwritten list which he put on the desk in front of Joe. It was headed ‘The Demise of English Ladies. Panikhat 1910- 1922.’
There were thirteen. Of these, two had died of cholera in the hot weather season, two had died together in a car smash in Calcutta in January 1918, one had died in childbirth and one of pneumonia whilst on leave and attempting to climb a peak in the Himalayas. These were all married to officers in the infantry regiments stationed at Panikhat. The second group were all wives of cavalry officers of Bateman’s Horse. Two had died of fever and the remaining five had all died unnaturally and in the month of March.
Joe sighed. Nancy Drummond and the chattering memsahibs had it right, he feared. Dolly, Joan, Sheila, Alicia and Peggy. Five ladies violently done to death.
Naurung took a fat gunmetal watch from the breast pocket of his tunic. ‘It is now a quarter to one, sahib. It is about ten minutes’ walk to the mess where you are expected for tiffin. I think we should start out now.’
They set off to walk together. Although Joe declared himself quite capable of finding the way Naurung obviously thought it would be inappropriate if he was left to do so by himself.
‘Tell me,’ said Joe as they walked, ‘Bulstrode – he said to me, and I think I quote his words correctly, “I was out myself in the native town when it happened.” I don’t suppose it’s relevant but it was some time before he could be located. I would be interested to know what took him to the native town at that exact time of day. Is it known? Was he on police work?’
‘Bulstrode Sahib is always on police work, I do believe… but he was not in the old town officially as far as I know. Although he spends much time there, it is said.’
There was a very long pause and Naurung seemed to be wrestling with himself. To say more or to let Joe’s question go unanswered?
Joe prompted him. ‘I know very little about Bulstrode. I don’t know where he lives. I don’t even know if he’s married. Is he married?’
‘He is married but the memsahib is in England. I know this because my father was havildar before me. It is no secret. This happened when I was nine years old and beginning to be a help to my father. The Memsahib Bulstrode came out from England to marry him. I think it was not a happy marriage, sahib. She discovered that he had already an Indian woman though she had been sent away as was the custom. One day the memsahib took her little boy who was no more than a baby at the time and went back to England. She said it was not healthy for a child to be brought up in India and that is the last anyone saw of her or the boy. Bulstrode Sahib was very upset by such an act of betrayal and everyone was very sorry for him.’
‘So Bulstrode’s all alone, then?’
Again Naurung looked acutely embarrassed saying finally, ‘Not exactly alone and not exactly all the time.’
‘So, would you like to make a guess as to why he was down in the old town?’
“There are ladies. Not ladies it is good to be with, you will understand.’
Joe pondered this piece of oblique information.
‘Can’t blame the poor bastard,’ he thought. ‘Lonely work at the best of times being a policeman, but I really have to pursue this.’
‘Many men do the same,’ he said consolingly, ‘but tell me, Naurung, if you think you can, does it weaken his position? There must be people who know things he would rather the world at large did not know.’
‘If there are such things I do not know them, sahib, but it is said that he has been seen in the company of very small girls… This is India and even in Panikhat such things can be arranged. For a fee. Or an exchange.’
‘An exchange?’
‘I do not want to say any more, sahib. It is all, at the best, speculation.’
It occurred to Joe that a Police Superintendent who had arranged at times to be supplied with underage girls was a vulnerable man. A colleague not to be entirely relied on. And then, he himself had an ethical problem. Should he be discussing these things with Bulstrode’s inferior officer? For the time being he decided to let it go and they resumed their walk.
A few yards from the mess Naurung stopped.
‘I will wait for you here and we will continue our work afterwards. But the sahib need not lose any time. He can go on working even over tiffin.’
‘Working?’
‘You may meet one or two bereaved husbands there. As one officer to another, they may confide things which they would not reveal to an Indian Police Sergeant, sahib.’
Joe paused for a moment in front of the mess and looked at it without much favour. To all outward appearances the Officers’ Mess was bleak and functional, its walls painted a public works department grey and its corrugated iron roof painted public works department red. Window boxes with flower pots were meticulously cared for but the general impression was one of utility. Externally that is. Internally, the visitor stepped back in time to the nineties or beyond. Here was the extreme of opulence that mahogany, turkey carpeting and regimental silver could provide. A host of whiskered officers looked down from the walls from posed Victorian portraits and stiff Victorian groups. Their disapproving faces were interspersed with the no less disapproving and no less whiskered faces of tiger, leopard and wild pig. A ferociously moustached and stiffly posed figure stared out from a dark portrait. Presumably Bateman himself, the founding father of the Bengal Greys. There was a spirited oil painting occupying the whole of one wall showing Bateman’s Horse charging with Havelock to the first relief of Lucknow. Loyal, turbaned troopers, their dripping lances at rest, led a battalion of kilted Highlanders. It kept the memory of that celebrated episode alive and well since the regiment had hardly been in action between the Mutiny and the bloodbath of Flanders.
Joe was unsure of his welcome with the Bengal Greys. A London policeman, appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor to investigate and possibly uncover a scandal in the closed ranks of a fashionable regiment, was likely to be given a frosty reception. Anglo-India was caste-conscious. There was a rigid order of precedence. The Indian Civil Service were at the top of the pile, the British army below and the Indian army below that, cavalry regiments taking precedence over infantry regiments and, as Joe rather suspected, all taking precedence over visiting policemen. There was even a condescension for which he was sure he ought to be grateful in his invitation to lunch in this exclusive cavalry mess.