‘I’m sure her death was arranged,’ said Joe firmly. ‘And that it was planned for some time before. Someone who had access to the stables and who knew her horse, knew even that she was about to ride out with her new friends, deliberately caused it. I think this someone put a stone under the frog in her horse’s hoof at some time before they set out. You remember that she began to fall back almost at once and waved to the others to carry on without her and that she would catch them up. That delay was just enough to ensure that she was out of sight of the rest of the party at the time she was passing the precipice. I think that someone hiding in the rocks, perhaps the saddhu, leapt out and pushed her over. And her worst fears became a reality and her last thoughts were sheer panic.’
They sat together for a moment in silence. ‘This,’ said Joe, ‘is a pretty bloody sad investigation, you know. Everywhere we turn there’s sorrow and grief.’ And he recounted what Carmichael had told him about Joan.
‘Ah, yes, Joan,’ said Nancy. ‘I’ll tell you something else – Philip Forbes was treating her for cystitis.’
‘Cystitis?’ said Joe. ‘What’s cystitis?’
‘Can there be such ignorance? It’s a bladder complaint. Makes you want to pee all the time. It all hangs together, doesn’t it? Poor Joan, “squatting”, as Naurung would say, in the brushwood and out leaps her very worst nightmare…’
Nancy gasped and dropped her teaspoon in shock and as a waiter hurried to replace it she stared at Joe, white-faced.
‘Her nightmare?’ she said again softly.
‘Thought you’d get there in the end!’ said Joe.
Nancy glared at him. ‘I would guess I was precisely two minutes behind you and that’s not bad for an amateur! But, Joe, if what I’m thinking is what you’re thinking and we’re both thinking correctly, this is pretty bloody disgusting, isn’t it?’ She shuddered and looked at him searchingly, appealing to him to contradict her awful suspicions.
‘We said we were looking for a coincidence, something all these killings had in common, and then we would begin to be able to tease out a thread between them. And this is shaping up to be a pattern, wouldn’t you say? Let’s look at it backwards from here. Peggy: her husband said – volunteered the information – something like, “It was exactly the way she would not have wished to go… Peggy couldn’t stand the sight of blood.”’
‘Oh, my God!’ breathed Nancy. ‘That’s true. She used often to ask me how on earth I could have coped in the war with the blood and the wounds.’
‘And Joan – her husband tells me she had an intense fear of snakes. Now you’re saying that Sheila who fell to her death had an unreasoning fear of heights. Alicia – we can’t check with her husband but – wasn’t there something in her letter to her sister…?’
‘ “… I shall have to cross the river and you know how I feel about rivers!’” Nancy supplied. ‘I wondered about that when we read it! I bet she was afraid of drowning! Don’t you think? Can we check? Who would remember? Kitty probably.’
‘And that takes us back to the first – to Dolly. Death by fire? Lots of people have a fear of fire. It won’t be difficult to check on that. But we’re looking at three definite phobias out of a possible five.’
‘Joe, what sort of a man kills women in the way that holds most terror for them?’
‘It would be all too easy to say a disciple of le Marquis de Sade but no, actually, I don’t think that’s what we’ve got here. You see, there’s no sexual aspect to any of these killings, is there? Unless the doctor had other revelations?’
‘No. And I don’t think he was keeping any sordid details from the mem. I told him I’d been a nurse and he paid me the compliment of talking to me in medical terms and very openly. I was very sad to hear from him though, and this was not generally known at the time, that Dolly Prentice was pregnant when she died. Did you know that?’
‘Good Lord! No. There was no autopsy report with the papers I was given.’
‘Sounds as though someone suppressed it because Dr Forbes definitely did one. It must have been kept quiet out of respect for Prentice. He finds sympathy hard to take, Forbes said. All the same – one does feel sympathy and one begins to understand the ferocious revenge you say he took on the dacoits. Losing your wife and your unborn child in one fell swoop – it’s unimaginably distressing! But apart from that piece of information, nothing at all salacious. I’m sure he would have told me if anything – er – sexually driven had occurred.’
‘Would that the doctor who examined your friend Peggy had been as thorough!’
Immediately Joe wished the words unsaid. Nancy stared at him in horror.
‘Peggy? You don’t mean… Oh, Joe what are you trying to say?’
‘No, no – there was no sexual attack. I mean that the doctor failed to discover that she was pregnant. Not obviously so – I think she had only just found out for certain herself. She had been writing to her parents to tell them the good news. I found the letter. I gather she had not shared the news with you?’
Nancy was silent for a very long time, staring at her teacup. Tears began to flow down her cheeks and Joe, cursing himself out loud for his poor timing, passed her his handkerchief with a muttered apology.
‘It’s all right, Joe,’ she said finally. ‘There really isn’t a good or a right time to give someone news like that, is there? I was going to be shattered by it whenever you chose to tell me. And at least I’m sitting down with a cup of hot sweet tea in front of me! Carry on. I’m ready. I’ll mourn for Peggy and her child in my own good time… Now it’s more important to find out who’s responsible. What else does this tell us about him? Are you beginning to see further connections here?’
‘Two of the women were pregnant,’ Joe went on, taking her at her word. ‘But I don’t think we can count that as something in common because we have no evidence that the rest were. Unlikely, I should have thought. And just think – if you, her best friend, didn’t know, and her doctor didn’t know – there’s no mention of it in his records – her killer would not have known of it either. Unless she was killed by Somersham himself. But there is something in common with all the victims. They were well known to the killer.’
‘He knew them? Well? How well? How can you be sure?’
‘He is close enough to them to know their phobias. Think for a moment, Nancy. Everybody has a phobia of some sort. I have a phobia which I am certainly not going to disclose to anybody in India so please don’t ask me! Have you a phobia? And who in your circle would know that you had it?’
‘Yes, I have. And – yes, you’re right – everybody, I’m afraid.’ Nancy sighed. ‘But, really, I can’t see Bill Bulstrode or Harry Featherstone creeping up behind me with a spider to make me jump out of my skin! But I understand what you’re saying. If I were standing on the top of a ladder at the time it might be a different story. Anybody on the station with ears to hear that sort of gossip will hear it. The servants know everything and they talk amongst themselves. They talk to their sahibs and memsahibs. How do you suppose Kitty knows everything that goes on? That chaprassi of hers is a one man information bureau!’
‘So anyone, Indian or British, could have known about the phobias.’
‘Certainly. But why? If we knew why, we’d know who, wouldn’t we? There could be no reason why anyone would want to kill these women at all, let alone in this cruel way! We’re dealing with insanity!’
‘I think so too. But insanity on our terms. Not in the murderer’s mind. There is a pattern and a purpose to his crimes. These are not random killings for lust or robbery. They are cleverly planned and for quite some time ahead. They are planned by the kind of man who, on a Friday, selects the Friday razor to slit the wrists of his victim. A stranger or a native or someone hired to do the killing would have taken up the nearest. This man is European, I’m sure of that. I’m sure he knows his victims. I think he’s playing some kind of game we haven’t even guessed at and though he doesn’t want to be caught, he wants something else – acknowledgement perhaps? I don’t know. I’m still fumbling about in the dark! What I do know is that these killings are not the work of an Indian Jack the Ripper, an opportunist who prowls outdoors in a defined area and leaps on whatever prey comes to his knife. They are not the sequential killings for gain of a “Brides in the Bath ” Smith. So two of the strongest motives for killing can be ruled out.’