In the irritating way of a conjuror who is determined to hang on to his surprise until the last dramatic moment, Edgar would say no more but hurried along the corridors until they arrived at a door Joe recognized. The armoury.
They slipped inside, having checked that they were unobserved, and Edgar switched on the lights. ‘Now, Sandilands, remember turning down my invitation to view the gladiatorial exhibits, the other night? This time you can’t refuse. George’s orders.’
‘Stop being so bloody mysterious and get on with it!’ Joe snapped.
Edgar approached a glass case and lifted the lid. ‘Ah. Both still in there, I see. Probably nothing in it but you can see what George was getting at. Hideous, hideous things! Baghnakhs! Sorry but there’s no word for them in English. Wouldn’t want one. The sound of the Hindi says it all, I think.’
Joe was looking at twin objects. Two huge paws of a tiger had been mounted on short thick handles. Joe shuddered. ‘What the hell are they for, Edgar?’
‘Well, they’re not back-scratchers. They’re for killing. What else? They were used as weapons in gladiatorial combats. There’s a rather lurid account by a Western traveller, top-brass, staying as the guest of a maharaja who staged some fights for his entertainment, boxing, wrestling and so on. For the grand finale, a couple of stout chaps appeared armed with these things and started hacking chunks out of each other. The guest was so sickened by the performance, especially when he was hit in the face by a gobbet of flying flesh, that he called a halt.’
Joe was not deceived by Edgar’s insensitive delivery. He thought it masked a horror he would not have been capable of articulating. He took one of the weapons from its place and turned it over. They looked at it carefully. ‘Good Lord — it’s the size of a dessert plate but nothing untoward there, I think,’ said Joe. ‘Seems to have all its claws. Try the other one.’
‘Ah. One claw missing.’
‘We’ve got to get this to the doctor. He’s got a microscope in his room, perhaps he could compare these claws with the one we found in Bahadur. . yes, I kept it. And who knows what he might find traces of, unless it’s been thoroughly cleaned and there hasn’t been a great deal of time for that, I’d say. But how in hell do you transport something like this to the hunt? And back? Without someone noticing. Servants packing and unpacking. .’
‘Same way we’re going to take it out of here,’ said Edgar with a grin. ‘See that gun case over there? Empty it, will you, and we’ll stuff it in there. Nobody looks twice at anyone carrying sporting equipment about in this place!’
As they passed the ranks of ceremonial daggers, jewelled hilts twinkling, they both stopped, turned and looked.
‘Something here for every taste and purpose,’ said Edgar. ‘From castrating an elephant to paring your toenails. Take your pick. What about this?’ he said, pointing to an evil-looking Afghani punch dagger. ‘Easy to hide about the person.’
‘No, too broad in the blade,’ said Joe, looking carefully at it, ‘and the blade’s triangular. Wouldn’t match the wound profile. But, yes! Look! Over there.’
Six slender knives with plain undecorated steel hilts were mounted in a row.
‘Never noticed those before,’ said Edgar. ‘No winking jewels set in the hilts to catch the eye, I suppose. Medieval? European, would you say?’
Joe sighed. ‘This is where I click my finger and summon up a sergeant who arranges for the whole lot to be wrapped in a handkerchief and taken away to the laboratory. And an hour later they ring me on the telephone and say suspect item number five has traces of human blood recently deposited and a complete set of fingerprints on the hilt. But — for now, for here. . let’s just note, shall we, that number two from the right is shinier than the rest so it’s probably been recently cleaned,’ muttered Joe. ‘Pop it in the box, would you, Edgar?’
They walked on nonchalantly through the palace, Edgar carrying the gun case, until they reached the rooms of Sir Hector Munro. He was supervising the unpacking of his effects but sent his servant away immediately he caught the expression on the faces of his two callers. It was enough to open the case and show him the contents. With an intake of breath and a shudder of revulsion, he understood what he was looking at and what was required of him. He carried the weapons to a bench, checked and adjusted his microscope and set to work.
‘I hardly need to inspect the dagger,’ he said. ‘An exact match with the wound, I’d say. Been cleaned and polished. Can’t say I can see a trace of anything but smears of Brasso on it.’
Tweezers and swabs took samples from the paw and these went under the microscope. Joe offered the claw he had preserved wrapped in a handkerchief and they set to wait for Sir Hector’s findings. Several times he called them over to look down the eyepiece and verify a conclusion and finally he said, ‘That was well done, both of you! However did you manage to come up with this? I’d never seen or even heard of such a thing. But it’s certainly the tool that was used in the killing of the Yuvaraj. The missing claw is a match for colour and general state of wear.
‘The object has obviously been preserved for many years and been put to active, er, martial use which has resulted in the claws being less solidly attached than those of a live tiger. Not surprising that one of them worked loose and became embedded in the wound.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Of course, it could have been deliberately extracted from the foot and placed in the wound as a clinching factor. You yourself referred to it as a “calling card”, I think, Joe.’
‘Over-egging the pudding, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I would. Colin certainly would. Any expert would. You did — with hindsight and a hefty nudge. I think our perpetrator wasn’t expecting to have a scientific searchlight shone on his handiwork. Just as interestingly, the matter I’ve found between the claws and on the pads is flesh and hair and, I’d say, not animal but human. And it’s not been there all that long. I wouldn’t say it’s been left over from the last combat even if that were last week which it wasn’t. It’s relatively fresh. Someone’s given the thing a good brush or comb down, a thorough job, and one which would deceive the human eye — unaided. You couldn’t identify it without a microscope.
‘I say — would you like to take that thing away with you?’ he finished, distaste in his tone.
The baghnakh had safely been stowed away in the gun case when a servant appeared at the door. Trembling and anxious, he delivered his message. The doctor’s presence was urgently required at the ruler’s suite. The Maharaja Udai Singh was dying. He wanted to see also the two sahibs, Troop and Sandilands.
Chapter Twenty-Four
They were escorted with urgency through the New Palace to a north-facing wing projecting out into parkland, the lake a distant gleam between crowding trees. Two rows of the Royal Guard were lined up along the corridor leading to the prince’s apartment, and although the men made not the slightest movement Joe passed between them with a shudder.
As they arrived, the carved sandalwood doors opened and an Indian woman came out. A young girl dressed in blood-red Rajputana silks, her black hair was parted in the centre and a jewelled ornament hung very precisely in the centre of her forehead. Her arms were covered in ivory bangles from shoulder to elbow and gold anklets gleamed as she walked. Head erect, a smile on her face, she came on towards them. She glowed. She pushed ahead of her an almost palpable bow-wave of triumph.
Joe, Edgar and the doctor stood aside, gazing.
‘Shubhada?’ Edgar finally managed to ask.
Her glance flicked from one to the other. They were hardly worth her attention; she did not attempt to greet them.
An anger beginning quietly to burn in him pushed Joe to stand in front of her, blocking her path. Two of the guards took a step forward, hands on sword hilts. At a gesture from Shubhada they stood back. She waited for him to move aside, tapping her foot, the chink of anklets expressing her irritation. Her eyes remained fixed on the top button of his jacket.