‘No. I agree,’ said Nancy. ‘Colonel Prentice, as witnesses claim, was horrified by his wife’s death and out of his mind for a fortnight. There are rumours that all was not well with that pair but, according to Kitty, he took it very badly.’
‘And yesterday I interviewed a wreck of a man. The husband of Joan Carmichael. You’d say he never smiled again after her death. He had some money from Joan but, as her husband, he could probably have had access to it at any time and he didn’t make use of it until two years after her death.’
‘And Dr Forbes whom I saw at the hospital yesterday. He’s thrown himself totally into his work which is his whole life now. His distress at Sheila’s death was still evident.’
‘Simms-Warburton, well, we’ll never know. He went straight into the war and never came home again but certainly there was no whirlwind remarriage, no instant elopement with the daughter of a subhadur-major!’
‘And lastly Billy Somersham. You’ve met him. I know him. He gained nothing but heartache from Peggy’s death. No, he had absolutely no reason to “eliminate” her. So that leaves only two motives – revenge and conviction, whatever you mean by that!’
‘Revenge? Would anyone, seriously, have cause to be revenged on these women?’ Joe asked. ‘What had they done? All perfectly innocent creatures who had annoyed nobody, not even their husbands. I really can’t see this as a convincing motive.’
‘So – you’re going to have to explain what you mean by your last motive, conviction.’
‘Conviction.’ Joe sighed. ‘This could take us into the realms of madness. If a person is convinced, for example, that he has a God-given right to kill for religious motives, I would call that a conviction killing.’
Naurung could not wait for the end of Joe’s explanation. ‘Suttee!’ he said. ‘As in suttee! The disgusting Hindu custom of burning alive a man’s widow on his funeral pyre! The British have tried to stamp it out but it goes on, oh, yes, it still goes on in the villages! Sometimes the lady goes willingly to her death as it brings great honour to her family but often her relatives force her. There was a case, in my father’s memory, where the widow escaped from the fire and ran away. She was found hiding by her own son who dragged her back and threw her once more into the flames.’
‘Yes, that would be, as far as an Eastern mind could encompass it, an example of killing for religious conviction.’
Nancy said angrily, ‘Not necessarily religious! I think that’s too convenient an excuse for such a revolting custom. Social, perhaps. A strong social reason – after all, who in a family wants to be saddled with a useless widow to support for the rest of her unproductive life? She cannot remarry and is bound to be a burden to her family if the problem isn’t solved by means of the funeral pyre and excused by the notion of religious observance!’
‘Which brings us to the second strand of “conviction”. The social strand. If our killer had an unshakeable belief that he was ridding society of an undesirable element – a belief so strong that he felt his actions were above all laws – he might kill off a series of similar victims. Prostitutes? Priests?’
‘Money-lenders?’ suggested Naurung.
‘Certainly money-lenders! But officers’ wives?’ Nancy exclaimed with derision. ‘We’ve all been irritated or bored out of our minds by them but hardly to the point of taking a knife or a cobra to finish them off!’
Joe smiled. ‘I agree. And this is where it all begins to get a little unreal. They are not just a series of officers’ wives. They are a very particular group of officers’ wives, chosen according to some obscure pattern. There are things they had in common, there are things they did not have in common. There are things a proportion of the group had in common – both Dolly Prentice and Peggy Somersham were pregnant. Is this significant or is it misleading? But there is one thing which I think is very significant. Naurung – Mrs Drummond and I have discovered that the ladies all had this in common – they had a phobia.’
Translations of the word rattled back and forward over Joe’s head until the satisfied nods of the two Naurungs encouraged him to go on. Nancy supplied the details of each victim’s special horror, linking it with the means of her death and the faces of father and son grew grim.
Finally, Naurung said seriously, “This is the work of a devil, sahib. I fear we have worked our way back to our first conversation if the sahib remembers?’
‘The Churel? Kali the Destroyer? I still do not accept this. But you and your father have added today another element to the motive of conviction killing and that is – political. To murder, not soldiers but soldiers’ wives and by subtle and repulsive means might be a calculated way of sowing terror and suspicion in the ranks of the British army. A way which would lead to the reprisals and overreaction we have discussed. But I don’t think the answer lies here either. For two apparently insignificant reasons. The murders have all occurred in March. On the grave of each victim has been placed a bunch of Kashmiri roses – all in March. This is a ritual aspect which rules out every one of the motives we have so far examined.’
Joe frowned. ‘And so I am reduced to working out this whole problem from what any decent policeman would consider the wrong end. I have built up a picture of the person who must have committed these crimes…’
‘Very well, Sandilands,’ said Nancy with a hint of challenge in her voice, ‘prove that you’re not a defective! Tell us who’s responsible.’
‘He is male. He is European. He is middle-aged, strong and agile in body and mind. He is very close to Indians and either has employed them to do these killings or is sufficiently confident to have tricked himself out as an Indian to get close enough to do the murders himself without arousing suspicion. He lives on the station at Panikhat. If you passed him walking on the maidan you would greet him by name.’
There was a deep silence as names crowded into everyone’s mind. Nancy shook her head and muttered, ‘No. That’s not possible.’
The young Naurung was more positive and Joe even wondered whether he had arrived at this point before he had himself. ‘Sandilands Sahib, I think you know and I too can guess who has done these dreadful things,’ he said, ‘but why? My father,’ with a short bow to Naurung senior, ‘will always say, “Know how and why and you will know who,” but what you are saying is quite the reverse.’
‘I know,’ said Joe, ‘and to fill in the picture I must go back to Panikhat. That’s where it started and that’s where the answers lie.’
‘One thing, Sandilands Sahib,’ said Naurung’s father diffidently. ‘I worked with Bulstrode Sahib on the case of Memsahib Simms-Warburton who was drowned. It was I who interviewed the ferryman who nearly drowned with her. I suspected him. He could, unseen by the bystanders, have secreted a knife about the raft and slit the hides when they were in the middle of the river. He dived under water to help the poor lady but they were both under the surface for a long time. It occurred to me that he could have been holding her down until he was sure she was dead. I spoke to him afterwards and took a statement which unfortunately did not attract the interest of Bulstrode Sahib but I remember it well.
‘Commander, Englishmen are brown down to their neck and pink below that. This man was naked apart from his turban and loin cloth. I saw his body. And he was Indian-skinned from head to soles of his feet.’
Chapter Fifteen
Joe and Nancy rose to take their leave of the Naurungs, who accompanied them to the foot of the stairs with what Joe supposed to be an exchange of formal compliments.
‘Well, Naurung senior rather exploded your theory, didn’t he?’