‘So what are you suggesting, Commander?’ piped up Lucy Meadows. ‘That we should all sleep with a hockey stick under our bed and avoid all brown faces? Pretty jolly difficult in India, you know!’
‘I think the Commander is trying to tell us,’ drawled Phoebe Carter, ‘that we should give up and go home to England next March. Can you guarantee that the streets of London are any safer, Mr Sandilands? Have you caught Jack the Ripper yet?’
Her jibe earned a ripple of laughter.
‘Mrs Carter,’ said Joe seriously, ‘you would, I can tell you, be at far less risk of your life in Whitechapel where the murder rate is less than one per year among a population of many thousands, than here in Panikhat where one out of six of you could well die next March. And the drawing-rooms of the home counties, I believe, are still reckoned to be entirely safe… though there is the ever present danger of an attack of terminal boredom… and, seriously, this is an option, should our man still be at large next year.
‘But I wanted to say, in conclusion, this: I believe no one here is in danger before next March. The man I’m looking for is not a deranged killer. He is following a plan – I am tempted to say, a sacrificial ritual. I’m going to work out what scheme or compulsion lies behind the killings and bring the man to justice. It’s my opinion that there is some religious or quasi-religious motive at the bottom of all this, a motive which as Westerners we may be hard pushed to understand. We have all heard of the religion and despicable (to us) habits of the Thugs who infested this part of India until quite recent times…’
Again the girls nodded in understanding. Thuggee. The word still had the power to terrify. The thousands of innocent travellers, garotted and buried in mass graves in the last century and all in the name of sacrifice to the blood-thirsty goddess Kali, were not forgotten.
‘… it is quite possible that our man is acting under the same kind of compulsion.’
‘So what can you do, Commander, to get hold of this man before he strikes at another one of us? You’re only here for a short while and you say Bulstrode’s let him go!’ said Jane indignantly. ‘How can you get him back? He could be anywhere in India by now!’
With a confidence he didn’t feel, Joe set out to reassure them. ‘These are the days of the telegraph and the telephone and the train. If he can move about the country easily, how much more easily can the forces of Law and Order! I am going to Calcutta to check on this man’s story and I’ll inform the Governor. Wherever he’s fled, we’ll follow and we’ll stay on his trail until we’ve caught him.’
He looked around his audience, catching each woman’s eye and said quietly, as though making a promise to each individually, ‘And I’m going to get him. If it takes another week, another month or another year!’
Chapter Ten
After breakfast on Monday Joe put on his topee and set off to catch Bulstrode before he started out on his rounds. Presenting himself at his office building he was politely asked by a young Sikh officer to wait for a few moments. The few moments turned into several minutes of waiting time, carefully calculated to annoy, Joe guessed. He sighed and set himself to wait patiently, using the time to leaf though his notes. Eventually the door to Bulstrode’s office opened.
‘Sandilands!’ said Bulstrode with bonhomie. ‘Glad you could spare the time. Come in. Take a seat? Had coffee, have you? You’ve been turning the Somersham bungalow over, I hear. Up-to-date forensic methods hot from the press in Scotland Yard. Manage to turn up anything?’
The tone was friendly in the extreme but the eyes were suspicious.
Joe felt his professional detachment slipping. He desperately wanted to punch Bulstrode on his arrogant nose. Instead he said easily, ‘Nothing of any great consequence… Only perhaps two facts you might like to consider. One, that Peggy Somersham was certainly murdered and secondly that she was expecting a baby.’
Bulstrode stopped dead and turned to face him.
‘Good Lord! You don’t say! But that is certainly of consequence. That could well supply a motive!’
‘A motive?’
‘Yes. Certainly. A motive for suicide. I mean if the poor girl was preggers, maybe perhaps not Somersham’s – he was after all much older than she was… not exactly love’s young dream, you know, and the station’s not short of good-looking young fellers. It happens. The women are at it all the time. Can’t turn your back! In some marriages there’s a pregnancy not easily explained. Think about it. Don’t judge India by the standards of – well, what shall I say? – Wimbledon!’
‘Peggy Somersham did not kill herself,’ said Joe mildly.
‘Then Somersham killed her,’ went on Bulstrode unabashed. ‘Stands to reason. He found out she was playing away from home, doesn’t want to bring up a child that’s not his and takes the quick way out. Snip, snip!’
‘I will bear what you say in mind,’ said Joe without emphasis.
Bulstrode fell silent for a moment, confounded perhaps by Joe’s calm replies. He began to arrange and rearrange the piles of papers on his desk.
‘So where are you now, Sandilands? You demolish the suicide theory and overset the conclusion of the coroner. You declare that this is a murder investigation and yet as far as I can see you dismiss the prime and obvious suspect – Somersham – without any examination. So where are you left? Murder by person or persons unknown? A person who insinuated himself – or, if we are exploring all avenues, herself – through a high window about seven feet above street level. Doesn’t look too good to me! Who could have got in that way? An acrobat?’
After a moment’s hesitation Joe decided to go all the way and treat him as a colleague and without hostility.
‘I’m not,’ he said carefully, ‘looking for someone who came in through that window. I’m looking for someone who went out through that window. From inside the bungalow the sill level is only five feet above the floor and there was a stool to hand…’
‘But really, Sandilands, your murderer – what does he do? Ring the front doorbell and say, “Is Mrs Somersham at home?” ’
‘We’re dealing with a clever man, Bulstrode. As clever as you, as clever as me. Someone, I suspect, familiar with the habits of the house. Someone, it would seem, who knew that the Somershams were going out for the evening: it wouldn’t take a tour de force of deduction to assume that Peggy Somersham would have preceded such an occasion by having a bath. The man I’m looking for entered the house perhaps hours before the murder was committed and concealed himself in the bathroom cupboard. It wouldn’t be difficult and there is evidence that someone was lurking in there.’
There was a snort of derision from Bulstrode but Joe resumed, ‘This would not be difficult. There are always people coming and going – in the kitchen, buying and selling at the door, delivering and collecting. You know this better than I do. And such a one, I say, entered the house, concealed himself, perpetrated the murder and escaped through the window, choosing a moment when no one was passing in the alley. It would need a level head and it would need a measure of calculation that really freezes the blood. But you know that such things happen.’
‘Sometimes. Not often. Hardly ever. And your attacker would need a surprisingly intimate knowledge of European habits.’
‘If he were a European himself he would have that knowledge,’ said Joe.