‘I shall be delighted.’ Joe rose to his feet, bowed, resumed his cap, saluted and turned on his heel.
‘Oh, Commander, there is just one more thing…’ Kitty called after him. ‘It probably is not of the slightest interest or importance but there is one rather odd thing I’ve noticed…’
Joe smiled encouragingly and waited for her to go on.
‘It’s the roses. They’ve appeared again. Oh, I know, you’ll tell me that every garden in the station is ablaze with roses and so they are but I’m talking about the ones in the graveyard. The crimson Kashmiri roses – well, that’s what I call them. I believe they’re actually a wild China rose that’s made its way through Nepal and Kashmir and down here to Bengal, Rosa indica minima, but I first saw them in Kashmir and that’s what they’ll always be for me – Kashmiri roses. They aren’t all that common. Dolly used to have one growing over her bungalow but, of course, that’s gone. There’s a good specimen in the Clubhouse gardens and I know Nancy has one or two but that’s about all. Most people are keener on growing the bigger, showier blooms, you know. Well, a bunch of them appeared on Joan’s grave and has done every year since her death. Nothing strange there but – can I be the only one who’s noticed this? – a bunch appears regularly, every March, on Joan’s grave, on Sheila’s, and on Alicia’s although there’s no longer anyone on the station who would remember them in that way. And, this morning at church, I saw that someone had put some on Peggy’s grave too. Now what do you make of that, Commander?’
The Bengal Greys’ idea of an appropriate Sunday lunch in summer was, inevitably, mulligatawny soup followed by jam roly-poly. Joe found this anaesthetic in the extreme although he had refused the jug of claret which appeared at his elbow, contenting himself with a glass of India Pale Ale. He feared that if he gave way and slept for the afternoon as every instinct prompted him he would never wake in time for Kitty’s tea party at five. He supposed that, conscientiously, he should be there. On an impulse he decided briefly to get away from the station and, calling for his pony, he went back to his bungalow and changed into jodhpurs and a shirt. He would take a distant view of the station in the hope that it might clear his mind.
He set off to follow again the mountain path that had been so fatal to Sheila Forbes. The sure-footed Bamboo made light of the crooked track, cantering easily upwards to follow the turns and finally arriving, as Joe thought of it, at the fatal corner. ‘How would I manage,’ he wondered, ‘if a naked saddhu bounced out from amongst the rocks?’ He was riding with a bitless bridle and would not have had much control but decided on the whole that Bamboo would be undaunted. And Joe had the advantage of two strong legs one on either side of the horse, perfect balance and years of riding experience. He glowered at the concealing rocks and fingered his crop, passionately wishing his enemy would make an appearance.
The path wound on and finally debouched in a little enclosure amongst the rocks, shaded by trees and watered by a stream. He could quite see why this was a favourite picnic place and made up in his mind an alternative ending to that unfortunate ride. In his mind he saw Sheila Forbes arrive breathless and triumphant, catching up the others and dismounting to join them on the grass in a sandwich and cool drink. Something to put in her next letter home.
Joe found himself consumed with rage, with a healthy hatred of the man who had persecuted and decimated this innocent group, who had plotted and planned and set up an ingenious series of cover stories and remorselessly watched while each of his victims had died before his eyes. He dismounted and looped his reins round a hitching-post obviously set there for the convenience of picnic parties and walked to the edge of the cliff looking down on Panikhat. ‘There’s my problem. Somewhere down there is my problem. Down there is a problem man. Perhaps he’s even looking up and wondering what I’m doing. Perhaps he’s afraid of me. I’d like to think he’s afraid of me.
‘ “ ‘I am Nag,’ said the cobra, but at the bottom of his black heart he was afraid.”
‘Oh, for God’s sake, let me be the bloody mongoose! Be afraid, whoever you are, you bastard! Make a mistake! Show your hand! Bring me some evidence, for Christ’s sake! Any little scrap will do. Something to hang an accusation on.’
He found that he had come to identify his adversary as a cobra. Not the common Indian cobra but a King Cobra, a Hamadryad, sometimes twelve feet long and who could strike from the bushes and kill unseen. He made for a rock and, feeling foolish as he did so, he thrashed the ground around it, not wishing to be the second to be bitten by a snake basking in the sun, and sat down, lit a cigarette and began to search the distant rooftops below, trying to identify Nancy’s house. His eye moved on to the large expanse of Kitty’s roof and he wondered what on earth he was going to say to Kitty’s assembled flock of nervous ladies. His task, it seemed, was to reassure but, far from reassured himself, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how this was to be done.
A seasoned lecturer, he was accustomed to leading committees, forming opinion, getting his own way and, above all, moving things forward. People of all ranks listened to him, liked him and generally did what he asked them to do or believed what he was telling them. But he had to admit that he was at a loss as to what he was to say to this small group of women. Well-bred, polite and struggling to force down their panic, they would be only too ready to absorb any word of wisdom or comfort he had to offer. Joe sighed. He would far rather face a hundred sceptical and bloody-minded bobbies! But he had a part to play and though it was not one he had chosen he would give it his best attention and make sure he was prepared.
He sat on for a long while, rehearsing phrases, deciding the line he was going to take. ‘Naurung!’ he thought. ‘I’m going to need his help.’
As the tinkling sounds of Kitty’s clock chiming five faded, Joe was ushered on to the verandah by the khitmutgar. Cool from his second bath that day and comfortably dressed in a pair of box cloth trousers, white shirt and riding jacket, he strode forward to kiss Kitty’s hand.
‘My dear Commander,’ she said laughing at him, ‘how fresh you look! And how charmingly informal. Now, do I regret the passing of the wing collar, the lavender gloves, the pearl tie pin? Perhaps not. But you must come and meet the lady wives of the officers – the “Bengal Mares” as my father used to call them.’
Joe turned to face the rest of the company. Nancy and six other women had been standing chattering in a tight group when he entered and now they broke up and approached in order of seniority to be introduced to him.
‘ Nancy of course you know,’ said Kitty proceeding down the line. ‘Now, Mary, may I present Commander Joseph Sandilands of the Metropolitan Police? Commander, this is Mary Crawford, the wife of Major Crawford…’
There followed Biddy Kemp, Jane Fortescue, Lucy Meadows, Phoebe Carter the MO’s wife and the wife of the veterinary officer, Joyce Wainwright. He tried to form an impression of each as she passed in front of him but ended with a blurred vision of bright colours, floating fabrics, scented hands, shy smiles, teasing smiles and, above all, of clever and calculating eyes. What he did not see a trace of was panic.
Colonial wives had a reputation for being dowdy but the selection before him brought to mind an English herbaceous border at its midsummer best. Kitty and Mary Crawford were dressed with the utmost correctness in ankle-length crepe tea gowns. Hemlines rose, he noted, in inverse proportion to age and the youngest, little Lucy Meadows, was wearing a rose pink day frock which barely covered her knees. The youngest three wives all, like Nancy, wore their hair short, their figures uncorseted and their expression direct.