‘And all that jovial bonhomie on the cricket ground was so much eyewash!’ Joe said bitterly. ‘All that chatter and joking was a blind. They were fixing the sentries using whatever pressure or inducements came to hand – I don’t know what – family ties, favours called in, gratitude of the Amir… And the sentries turned a blind eye or even helped with bundling poor old Rathmore out of the fort through the back gate. They had horses enough. Four spares, was it?’
They hurried along to Rathmore’s room on the ground floor of the guest wing and looked about them. ‘Bed hasn’t been slept in,’ said James. ‘Apart from that, nothing untoward, would you say, Joe?’
‘All his personal effects are still here,’ said Joe, checking the wardrobe and the shelves in the bathroom. ‘Slippers under the bed so he was wearing his outdoor shoes. I don’t have Rathmore’s wardrobe by heart so I can’t say for certain what he’d got on but I can’t see here the outfit he was wearing when he arrived – wasn’t it a sort of highly tailored colonial traveller’s outfit? Khaki drill with lots of pockets and leather patches on the shoulders?’
‘It was. So you’re saying that after supper he comes along to his room and chooses to put on not his dressing gown but a substantial suit and his walking shoes? Odd. Almost as though he knew he was going to be snatched!’
‘Well, expecting to go out for a night-time walk, anyway. That’s as far as we can go on the evidence,’ said Joe carefully. He walked over to the dressing table and examined the effects laid neatly and innocently out on the top. A pair of ivory-backed hairbrushes, silver comb, a shoe horn, a flask of Trumper’s ‘Eucris’ and a leather writing case. Joe opened the writing case and looked carefully at the contents. A few letters from England and copies of outgoing letters, a small diary with nothing of importance to Joe. An entry made for seven days hence told them that Rathmore was confidently expecting to be back in Simla. Unused envelopes, a writing pad, a fountain pen and two HB pencils made up the contents. Joe examined the pen. ‘Out of ink,’ he commented. Lastly, he took out the writing pad and held it at an angle to the light.
‘Well, sometimes you have a bit of luck! Look, there’s something here, James,’ he said. ‘Give me your torch.’
He shone the light at a narrow angle against the page.
‘What does it say – “Dear John, Pig gone. Soldier on.”?’ James managed a weak smile. ‘I see it. Indentations. Letters. From the page above. Must have been writing with one of those hard pencils for it to show through like this. Can’t make it out though. I say, is this all right? I mean, peeking at a chap’s correspondence? What’s he going to say if he ever finds out?’
Joe ignored him and took out his magnifying glass. ‘Got it! Well, one word at least and perhaps the most important. The first one, not surprisingly, while the pencil was at its sharpest. Look, you can just make out the heavier down strokes. And, if I’ve got it right, this word’s nearly all down strokes. And Rathmore would appear to be heavy-handed in this as in everything! Looks like LILY. He’s writing to Lily Coblenz! But why would he do that? He was sitting opposite her at supper, he could have said anything he wanted to say to her face.’
‘Not if it were clandestine in any way,’ said James.
‘Something he wouldn’t want any of us to overhear. Love letter? Oh, Lord, that’s all we need!’
‘Well, whatever it was, it must remain Rathmore’s secret,’ said Joe, ‘I can’t make out anything more. I wonder if the recipient of this billet doux will feel able to inform us? Let’s go and have a word with the lucky lady, shall we?’
He was remembering the scene at the door of the dining room the previous evening, the last time he had set eyes on Rathmore. Joe tried urgently to conjure up the expression on Rathmore’s face as he spoke to Lily. He had only had time to get out a few words before Iskander placed himself between them but his face had spoken volumes. Joe had not been able to interpret the emotion in that context but, looking back, he felt it had been one of triumphant complicity directed at Lily. Complicity. Joe, with a flash of insight, began to see how Iskander might have managed his conjuring trick – the disappearance of Rathmore. But did the conjuror have an assistant? Grimly, Joe decided he had a hundred hard questions to put to Miss Coblenz.
Their deliberations were cut short by the entry of Betty. Tense and pale, she stood for a moment, silent in the doorway. ‘Lily,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for Lily. Anyone seen her this morning? Anyone know where she is?’
‘Oh, she’ll be around,’ said James, ‘somewhere. With Grace maybe? Having a bath? I don’t know. You, Joe?’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ said Joe suddenly alert, ‘but I do know where she isn’t and that’s under my care. Oh, dammit! Bloody little nuisance! I’m getting a bad tremor out of this. Little earthquake about to happen? But – for a start – have you looked in her room?’
They ran upstairs to find Grace standing by the open door of Lily’s room.
‘She’s gone, James! Lily’s not there!’
Chapter Ten
With dreadful predictability a third pristine, unslept-in bed greeted them. James called for a havildar and ordered a complete search of the fort. Miss Coblenz was to be brought to him directly no matter where she was found or what she was doing. Betty and Grace went off to help in the search and, left alone in Lily’s empty room, Joe and James looked at each other in silent despair. They could no longer do other than accept the truth – that Lily too had disappeared at some unknown hour the previous night.
Looking yet again at Iskander’s letter although he knew every word by heart, James said, ‘He mentions one hostage. Rathmore. He doesn’t say he’s taking Lily and, as you know, Joe, that’s not the Pathan way. He wouldn’t harm or inconvenience Lily or any woman. Oh, hell! The trackers are out. Eddy’s gasht left ten minutes ago. I’ll run another one in an hour and another an hour after that. I’ll shake these hills until Iskander and his bandits fall out! For the moment, that’s all we can do, I think.’
‘Not quite all we can do, James, surely?’ said a confident voice from the doorway behind them and Fred Moore-Simpson stepped into the room. ‘I understand from Betty that our Afghan friends have bunked off in the night and you want them found? If there’s some urgency about it I can probably help.’
Joe and James looked at each other and Joe nodded. Briefly James laid out the problem for Fred and handed him Iskander’s letter, adding as Fred finished reading, ‘And as well as Rathmore they seem to have carried off Lily Coblenz, so all in all we have the makings of a situation with which these hills will still be resounding in a hundred years’ time.’
‘And, in the meantime, I expect you’re planning to fall on your sword, James?’ said Fred shrewdly. ‘I can see why you would. But look, we’ve got some days to play with and it seems to me – oh, tell me to shut up if you like – that we can attack this problem on two fronts. Firstly, we have to try to contact these brigands and that means locating them. You’re obviously doing all that you can on the ground but isn’t it time you moved into the twentieth century? What about a little air support? There are some spotter planes based at Miram Shah down in Waziristan. We could telegraph them via Peshawar and have a plane sent up. One pair of eyes can cover many square miles from a thousand feet, see things you can’t see at ground level. These planes are so small they could land on the football pitch here if you clear the goalposts – or the road, even the road would do.’
James turned an anguished face to them. ‘Now why the hell didn’t I think of that?’
‘Medieval thinking, my boy,’ said Fred. ‘Not surprising in this bloody medieval country!’