‘Iskander was right next door and his door’s pretty close to Minto’s kennel. Look, Lily, there’s no one about, they’re all still at breakfast and Iskander said he was going to talk with his men. I’ll slip into his room if you keep watch. Oh, and stir up the beast again, would you?’
Joe went into Iskander’s room, closing the door behind him. He took the opportunity of having a quick look around but there was nothing at all of note: the standard issue bed and furniture. There were no personal possessions other than his evening clothes hanging in a cupboard, and the damp floor and made-up bed told Joe that the staff had been busy and thorough in their daily cleaning. Almost at once he heard the din. Muted, thanks to the thickness of the door, but audible nevertheless. And certainly audible to a sharp pair of Pathan ears.
He emerged and ordered Minto back into his kennel. ‘No doubt about that,’ he said. ‘If my war-ravaged ears could make it out I’m sure Iskander’s keen senses could. And remember what the proverb says – “A Pathan never sleeps.” They’re famous for their vigilance – no one has ever taken a Pathan by surprise as far as I know. So, Lily, tell me – why didn’t Iskander pop his head out to see what was going on? He ought to have taken a dog’s growl as a message that something was not right and I would have expected him to investigate.’
‘Unless he was already a part of what was going on,’ said Lily. ‘None of this makes sense, Joe. What are we saying? That Zeman didn’t die at one o’clock, or he didn’t die here, or Grace is deliberately lying, James is part of a cover-up and Iskander probably knows the truth and may even have killed Zeman himself. Is any of this likely?’
‘Iskander would be my number one suspect, I think, if it weren’t for the second victim. Keep an eye on Betty!’ said Joe.
‘Of course. The second victim. Was that unintentional, do you suppose? I mean I can’t imagine that anyone, especially Iskander, would want to harm Betty.’
‘No, you’re right.’ Joe sighed. ‘It would be completely out of character. Pathans treat women with great care and respect, apart from their own adulterous wives, I understand. It would be contrary to their culture and their religion to attempt to murder even a British woman. As far as I know there’s only been one case of an Englishwoman being killed deliberately out here on the frontier. It was two years ago. Colonel Foulkes and his wife were killed by a gang from the Bosti-Khel Valley. But they were outlaws and the local tribesmen were as outraged as the British authorities. And then again, thousands of English women and children were trapped in these passes on the road from Afghanistan seventy years ago. They all perished, shot with jezails or hacked to pieces with talwars. But that was war. How can you ever predict how men will behave in war or in peace?’ he finished hopelessly. ‘I wonder if Betty could just have been having a recurrence of the sickness she’s been suffering for the last month? That was certainly what Grace supposed when she went off in the night to treat her.’
‘And where does that leave us? This is a can of worms, Joe, isn’t it? Can we get the lid back on, do you think?’
‘Would you want to?’
She shook her head dubiously. ‘No. We’ve got to follow this through. And I’ll tell you something else – I don’t think it’s all over yet.’
‘Well, I think there’s one thing we can be relatively certain of and that’s that if he was killed, he was most likely killed by one of seven people, if I exclude you and me, Lily. The people who were sitting around the dinner table and sleeping in this guest block. Look, they’ll start straying back from the mess any moment now – let’s go up on to the wall to discuss this further. It’s about as quiet as you can get in a fort of a thousand men!’
To his surprise, in Lily he was finding a bright intelligence, an ingenious colleague, quick to understand what he was saying, asking the minimum of questions and quite prepared to put forward her own sensible suggestions. But, underlying the mask of efficient colleague, he sensed a paralysing uncertainty. Lily was struggling with an emotion he could not quite identify. She’d cheered up, however, when he’d staged his mock interview with Minto. ‘I must keep it light,’ he thought, ‘to get the best out of Lily Coblenz.’
‘Good back-up in there, Coblenz!’ he said cheerfully as they climbed up and settled to look over the parapet. ‘If ever you want a job with the Met. let me know!’
‘You really are a policeman, aren’t you?’
‘Whatever else did you think I was?’
‘I thought you were Military Intelligence, you know – one of Sir George’s bright young men.’
Joe was very surprised. He’d been in India six months, working with Sir George, before he’d guessed at Sir George’s ambivalent role in the government of India, a guess never articulated and certainly never confirmed.
‘Are you suggesting that good old Sir George is a… what shall I say?… a grey eminence? An unseen mastermind?’
‘Are you suggesting that you didn’t know?’
‘I’m not saying that,’ said Joe with irritation. He could not resist asking, ‘But tell me – who put such an idea into your head?’
‘Oh, come off it, Joe! No one puts ideas into my head! I figure things out for myself. Wasn’t difficult! “You want anything done, ” my father always says, “you go straight to the top.” Well, in India, if you want anything done – forget the Governors, forget the Army Top Brass, even the guy in the feathered hat.’
‘The Viceroy?’
‘Yes, him. You go straight to the top of the pile and that’s where you find Sir George. He huffs and puffs. He tried to make me see him as a woofly old sheep dog but us Yankee girls – we ain’t so easy to fool! He pretends there’s someone above him he has to consult but there isn’t, you know. He’s not that easy to handle but he’s a straight arrow, I do believe. Good dancer too.’
In a flash Joe understood exactly why George had despatched Lily to the frontier. He could almost hear the words – ‘Ship the damn girl up to the Hills and set Sandilands to look after her!’ Buying himself a week’s peace and quiet in Simla. At Joe’s expense!
It was ten o’clock and the guard was just changing. Joe borrowed a pair of binoculars from a Scout standing down and handed them to Lily. She turned the glasses to the Afghanis encamped below on the football field. ‘They’re having a pow-wow,’ she reported. ‘There’s Iskander in the middle. He’s doing all the talking. They seem to like what he’s saying… there’s an awful lot of agreeing going on.’ She was silent for a moment then added, ‘There’s thirty men plus Iskander and they’re all armed. They’ve got… thirty-five horses with them… good-looking animals… and a couple of pack mules. None of them are saddled up so I guess they’re not thinking of going anywhere in a hurry.’
She handed the binoculars back to Joe and said thoughtfully, ‘You know, Joe, there is a reason why Zeman was trying to get up those stairs. He could quite simply have been trying to put some distance between himself and Iskander. He was going up to James or Grace for help in the knowledge that his friend had poisoned him and all that stuff about vomiting being unmanly was just moonshine. Needn’t have been arsenic. Could have been something quick to react that we in the West don’t know about. I expect they all know about poisons.’
‘It makes sense. And you say they were quarrelling in the garden. But what about a motive? Now there we’re stuck, I’m afraid. Who knows what’s going on in the ranks of the Afghani aristocracy? God knows what power struggles they’re involved in! “Inheritance powder” – there might be a clue in that but it’s a bit tenuous and how would we ever find out? I can hardly go down to the encampment and say, “I say, lads, what’re the odds on the succession now? Iskander shortened a bit in the night, did he? Where’s the stable money?”’