‘Be careful,’ said Joe, ‘he may yet be armed.’
They moved silently on.
The Mogul garden house was now in plain sight and, in spite of his foreboding, Joe paused for a moment, struck by its beauty. Pale and serene in the moonlight it seemed deliberately to set itself apart from the bloody doings of that night. Its Islamic dome rose to the starlit sky; fretted shutters closed its windows and a cascade of small fragrant red roses trailed and climbed. Joe pointed silently at the open door.
Andrew took out his gun and one on either side of the door they stood and listened for any sounds. There were none. Joe nodded and they entered. At first they could see nothing but after a while they became aware of Prentice, who seemed to be kneeling across the foot of a charpoy, his head buried in his arms.
Joe dropped on one knee beside him, parted his drapery and felt for his heart. Holding up a bloodstained hand he said, ‘Dead. At last.’
‘What was he doing?’ said Andrew in wonderment. ‘Why did he come here?’
Joe took a match from his pocket and struck it. Seeing a small lamp on a table, he lit it and held it up. The room was lined with patterned cupboards, each painted in glowing colours in the manner of the Mogul empire with lovingly depicted, and no less lovingly restored, scenes from Mogul mythology. On a table there were set out paints and brushes. The room had something of the quality of a shrine.
With surprising tenderness, Andrew reached forward and took Prentice by the shoulder, turning him over on his back. The dead hands clutched – of all incongruous things – a pressed flower which might once have been red and a battered school exercise book from which, as Andrew disturbed him, a sheaf of papers and photographs fell to the floor. Joe picked one up and saw a strikingly beautiful young man. Smiling, he stood by a river naked to the waist in a pair of cotton drawers. The next photograph showed the same figure a few years earlier mounted on a pony. The third Joe recognised. He had seen the same photograph in the Prentice family album, a laughing, handsome man in whose glossy dark hair was twined a spray of roses. The photographs told the story of Chedi Khan’s youth and young manhood. Happy to the last. Beautiful to the last.
‘Who’s this?’ said Andrew. ‘Who could this possibly be?’
‘It’s Chedi Khan,’ said Joe. ‘Eternally the love of Prentice’s life.’ And he explained.
They turned from the photographs to the exercise book across the front of which was stamped ‘st luke’s mission and school, armzan khel.’ The pages were stained with Prentice’s blood and they opened them one by one.
‘A child’s exercise book,’ said Andrew. ‘A child learning to write in English, it seems.’
‘Chedi Khan,’ said Joe. ‘Prentice sent him to school. St Luke’s Mission. Anglican Fathers but he ran away twice and each time went back to him.’
They turned the pages over and searched on, coming at last to a page of clear writing – evidently an exercise.
‘How’s your Hindustani?’ asked Joe. ‘Can you read this?’
‘Ought to be able to,’ said Andrew, tracing the writing with his forefinger. ‘Let me see… Well, it says, “To G.P. from C.K.” No puzzle about that. Now, what’s this? Er… “Don’t stop me following you”… I think that’s right… “because wherever you are… I will follow you…” Here, wait a minute,’ said Andrew. ‘I know this! Dammit, this is a translation from the Bible! Just the sort of thing, I suppose, the Fathers would have set as a writing exercise or a translation into Hindustani.’
He half closed his eyes in an effort to remember the text and slowly recited:
‘ “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for wherever thou goest, I will go, and wherever thou lodgest, I will lodge: my people shall be thy people and thy God my God.
‘ “Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so unto me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.” ’
They looked at each other.
‘From the Book of Ruth,’ said Andrew, marvelling.
‘It’s a love letter,’ said Joe. ‘It’s Chedi Khan’s declaration to Prentice when he sent him away to school. “… if aught but death part thee and me…” That’s it. That’s what it was all about. And Prentice saw it as the most beautiful thing in his life. The only thing in his life. Andrew, we can only touch the fringe of this!’
Joe sat back on his heels and Andrew sat on the floor.
‘Well,’ said Andrew, ‘as you say, that says it all.’
‘Not quite all,’ Joe said. He held up the bloodstained exercise book and opened it at the last page. ‘This does say it all though.’
The writing was Prentice’s, cursive and carelessly sloping.
‘ “And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept and as he went thus he said, ‘Oh, Absalom, my son, my son. Would God I had died for thee.’ G.P. 1910” ’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Andrew closed his eyes in exhaustion and pity. He leant back against the charpoy and after a while reached out and took Joe’s hand. ‘Well done!’ he said. ‘You did it.’
‘Did it?’ said Joe bitterly. ‘God! What a mess!’
‘No one could have done more. I can think of no one who could have done as much.’
‘Prentice?’ said Joe. ‘What about Prentice? What can I think of him?’
‘Think this – that he was an evil man, a cruel and a deadly man and he’s gone to his reward. And as for Nancy – my wife! – well, by God, Joe, I’m proud of her! And think of something else – Midge is alive in this bloodstained house and that was where it was all tending.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Joe. ‘Nothing whatever. I just let events unroll. And Prentice’s death – that was no doing of mine. And Midge is alive and that was no doing of mine either.’
‘Rubbish, man,’ said Andrew firmly. ‘You did everything! You got to her just in time. You worked it out. I saw that room – the bonfire. A few more minutes and he’d have applied the match.’
‘But what the hell do we do now? How can we find words to explain all this to Midge?’
‘We can’t leave Prentice here,’ said Andrew with sudden decision, attempting to get to his feet. Joe hauled him up and balanced him. Once he was steady on his feet Andrew took command. ‘Get hold of Naurung. We’ll carry the body back up to the house.’ He added with embarrassment, ‘I’ll make that an order, Joe. Carry him up to the house!’
‘We’re disturbing the evidence,’ said Joe. ‘He should lie where he was killed.’
‘For whose inspection, Joe? Yours and mine. You are the police representative appointed by the Governor to handle this and you are immediately responsible to me. I am the Collector of Panikhat. I am the Law Officer. Do I have to tell the world that the commander of a famous and distinguished cavalry regiment heartlessly killed four women – wives of his fellow officers – over a period, that he attempted to murder his own daughter and that he was shot to death by the Collector’s wife? How does it sound?’
‘Not the world,’ said Joe. ‘No, the world, perhaps, need not know but there is one person at least who must hear the truth.’
Leaving Andrew to watch over the body, Joe made his way back up the track to the bungalow and called Naurung. They set off down the garden together. With difficulty they carried Prentice and laid him on his bed. They looked down on him, on that bitter, vengeful face softened in death.
‘It’s a noble face,’ said Joe consideringly.