“You!” he shouted at the orderly, cringing in the passage.
“Get in here! Juldi!”
A European would have made for the door and raised the alarm.
But Indian hospital orderlies suffered a double dose of authoritarianism: a medical hierarchy headed by representatives of the master race. The peon stepped into the living-room.
“Put your guns on the floor, then place your hands on your heads,” Christopher instructed the two remaining policemen.
“Slowly, now!”
They did as he told them. He spoke to the orderly again.
“Go to the bedroom. Find something to tie these men up:
neckties, strips of bedding, anything. But hurry up!”
The orderly nodded and did as instructed. Christopher heard him retching when he got inside the room. A minute later he reemerged with a sheet.
“Tear it into strips,” Christopher ordered.
“Then tie them up.”
The orderly’s hands were shaking and he looked as though he might be on the verge of fainting. But he managed somehow to make his fumbling fingers do what was demanded of them. The policemen were told to sit in straight-backed chairs while they were trussed up. All the time, the English captain fixed his eyes on Christopher, as though committing his face to memory.
“Now this one,” Christopher ordered. The orderly tied the third man to another chair.
“Please, sahib,” he pleaded when he had finished.
“You don’t have to tie me up. I am staying here as long as you want. I am keeping quiet. Not interfering.”
Christopher ignored his pleas and tied him to the desk chair. He turned to the captain.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’ll be a good deal sorrier when you’re pulled in. You won’t get away, you know. Better to give yourself up now. Save yourself a lot of trouble. Save yourself getting hurt.”
“Yes,” said Christopher.
“I’d like to do that. But I didn’t kill Martin Cormac and I don’t have time to waste proving it. This isn’t a police matter. Tell your people to keep their noses out of it.
Speak to somebody at DBI. Ask to talk to Winterpole. He’ll explain.
He’ll explain everything.”
He turned and made for the door. Behind him, the flies had started moving into the living-room.
Two large cars were parked outside the Knox Homes. Christopher recognized them as Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts: they were popular cars with some of the local potentates. Evidently, Carpenter had visitors. Important visitors.
He saw the confusion on the girl’s face as soon as she opened the door:
she simply did not know what to do with him. Christopher was no longer persona non grata he had taken dinner with the Carpenters the night before and been introduced to the assembled orphans as a man of sorrows. But something held her back from granting him immediate admission. He resolved her dilemma by pushing past into the hallway. Ignoring her cries of protest, he made his way directly to Carpenter’s study and flung open the door. It was empty. The vacant eyes of dead animals stared at him from the walls. He closed the door on them and headed for the Carpenters’ drawing-room. He did not bother to knock.
Moira Carpenter was receiving visitors: a wealthy Indian lady dressed in the indoor garb of a Muslim nobleman’s wife and a spinsterish European woman in serviceable clothes, who sat and held her teacup with the bored self-deprecation of a governess in the throes of middle age. When the door opened and Christopher burst in, the governess spilled tea into her ample lap and Moira Carpenter almost scalded the cat. Only the be gum held her ground, as though rude interruptions were part of the daily round for her.
Christopher was the first to speak.
“Where’s your husband, Mrs. Carpenter?” he snapped. His nerves were on edge.
“Mr. Wylam, I .. .” Moira Carpenter began, carefully replacing her blue and white china teapot on the doily-topped table by her elbow.
“I want to speak with him. Where is he?”
“Really, this is most improper.” Mrs. Carpenter was recovering quickly from her shock “Just what do you mean bursting in here like this? You “Martin Cormac is dead. Murdered. I think your husband knows something about it. Where is he?”
Moira Carpenter had been half-way to her feet when Christopher broke the news. Her legs seemed to give way under her and she sank back into the chair. The colour that had started to rise in her face deserted it instantly and was replaced by a ghastly pallor.
Christopher thought for a moment that she would faint, but within seconds her true nature had reasserted itself. Cormac had been right: beneath the skin, she was cast iron cast iron of the highest quality.
“Explain,” she said. Her lips were taut and pale.
“Martin Cormac dead explain.”
“I found him at his bungalow less than half an hour ago. In bed.
Someone had cut his throat. That’s all I know.”
“And you think my husband knows something you do not.
Explain.”
“I’ll explain that to your husband, Mrs. Carpenter, if you’ll kindly tell me where he is.”
All this time neither of the other two women had spoken. The pale governess was plainly distressed and kept rubbing mindlessly with a small lace handkerchief at the tea stains on her lap. The be gum watched unperturbed, as though the cutting of throats, like rude interruptions, was a commonplace of her unruffled existence.
“You will explain it to me, Mr. Wylam, or not at all,” Moira Carpenter riposted. She was still pale, but the blood that had fled her face was doing its work elsewhere.
“Martin Cormac knew something about your husband, something the Reverend Carpenter may have wanted to remain hidden.
I went to Cormac’s place this morning to find out what it was. I found him dead and his desk broken into. That is your explanation.
Now, will you tell me where your husband is?”
“The Reverend Carpenter is with my husband.” It was the be gum voice. She was a plumpish woman in her forties, clearly a senior wife whose power in the harem owed less to personal beauty than political acumen. Christopher thought she would, in truth, be no stranger to sudden and unexplained death.
“I regret,” she continued, ‘that they cannot be disturbed under any circumstances. Perhaps Mrs. Carpenter will arrange an appointment for this afternoon. In the meantime, you will be good enough to show yourself out.”
“And who exactly is your husband, madam?” Christopher demanded. He was not in a mood to be cowed by a woman who took her governess for morning tea in a Silver Ghost.
“The Nawab of Hasanabad,” Moira Carpenter explained, as if in deference to some obscure point of Muslim etiquette that did not allow the be gum to utter her husband’s name.
“And what the Begum says is correct they are not to be disturbed. Go home, Mr. Wylam. Collect yourself. Think about what you have been saying.
And if you still feel you should speak to my husband, return later this afternoon as the Begum suggests and he will be pleased to entertain you. Would you like me to send a boy to notify the police of your gruesome discovery?”
With an effort, she was casting a veil of normality over the scene.
The governess had begun to breathe more easily. The tea stains would wash out.
“His throat was cut from side to side,” Christopher barked at her.
“With a scalpel. Would you like me to show you? Why don’t you all drive up to the hospital with me in one of those shiny cars outside and see for yourselves? We could bring tea and sandwiches.