Madeleine joined him, white-faced and staring but gaining a measure of control. With a supreme effort to keep her voice calm she said, ‘Examine this with me, will you, Commander?’
It was the use of his rank which confirmed Joe’s suspicions that the scene they had just witnessed was not an accident. He had little experience of aeroplanes but had listened for hours with interest and pleasure to the stories of Squadron Leader Fred Moore-Simpson in the time they spent together as guests of the fort at Gor Khatri on the North-West Frontier, had even gone up with him once or twice, and he remembered his terror when Fred had demonstrated with mischievous relish a stall at five thousand feet over the Khyber Pass.
He thought he knew what to look for. Kneeling in the sand he hauled in the lengths of twisted steel cable that had linked the controls in the cockpit with the elevators. He picked up the two ends, brushed away the sand and looked at them closely.
In a formal tone he replied to Madeleine’s request. ‘I observe that the control cables are both broken. To the naked eye – and I will need to have a magnification of this, of course, to verify my observation – it appears that several strands of the wire have been cut through. The cut is clean and straight, the section recently severed. Two . . . no, three, strands were left intact. These subsequently snapped, I presume, when placed under the stress of the final manoeuvre – a loop – before the plane crashed. These strands are stretched and ragged at the break point.’
Tight-lipped, Madeleine listened and looked carefully at the cable ends.
‘What are the chances of damage like this happening accidentally?’ asked Joe.
‘Accidentally?’ said Madeleine. ‘No chance! No chance at all!’
She fixed him with desperate brown eyes, ‘Commander, my husband was murdered.’
Left alone at the scene of the crash, Joe looked down at the broken body in speculation. He had sent Edgar and Madeleine off in the Rolls along with the tail section and had settled to wait for help to be sent from the palace. Udai, sick unto death himself, if George had it right, had lost his two oldest sons in the space of a few weeks. Edgar’s fears were being realized. Joe had just witnessed the second act of a murderous tragedy and his policeman’s mind was asking the usual questions beginning with the glaringly obvious ‘Who stands to gain from these deaths?’ He tried to remember what Sir George had told him about the other possible heirs to the throne and number three in particular.
With relief, he noticed that a rider was making his way at a gallop from the town. He paused briefly to exchange a word or two with Edgar and Madeleine as he passed the Rolls and then came on down the road. The man approaching rode well but with none of the stiffness of a military man. He was wearing a solar topee, khaki drill jacket and trousers, and his horse was a fine, tall sorrel. Looking about him with a keen eye he dismounted and, leading his horse, came on towards Joe, hand outstretched.
‘How do you do? Claude Vyvyan. British Resident at Ranipur.’
Joe extended a blackened hand and tried not to flinch as Vyvyan grasped it firmly. ‘Joe Sandilands. Commander, Scotland Yard.’
So formal and ridiculous was the exchange, Joe almost expected Vyvyan’s next utterance to be ‘I see you’ve been having a spot of bother?’
What he did say was, ‘What a bloody awful mess! Thank God you were here. Though I’m sorry you ran into this shower of shit.’ He batted away a straying strand of tinsel and grimaced apologetically.
Joe smiled and looked with interest at the man who was the power behind or, more probably, beside the throne in Ranipur. Vyvyan moved with an athletic grace unspoiled by the parade ground. In his early thirties, he was as tall as Joe and, as the portly Edgar had not failed enviously to notice, had a slim and elegant figure. Seeing that Joe was bareheaded, Vyvyan swept off his topee and the two men stood for a moment assessing each other. Cold blue eyes, Joe remembered, had featured in Edgar’s description. Not cold, he thought, not cold to him at least, but intelligent and penetrating. The nose was commanding; he’d seen its like on a portrait of the young Duke of Wellington. The lips, at the moment slanting in a rueful and discreet smile, were thin but well defined under a neat brown moustache. His hair was well barbered, dark brown and plentiful.
Under the other’s gaze, Joe felt suddenly aware of his dishevelled appearance and unconsciously ran a dirt-caked hand through his own thick black hair. Vyvyan smiled again. ‘What a welcome to the state! Pity it had to be like this! I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you, Sandilands.’
‘What would I say if I’d just been told this man was my new commanding officer?’ Joe asked himself, applying his usual test when meeting someone in authority for the first time, and he decided that he would be reassured, even pleased.
They went to stand on either side of the corpse, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Finally Vyvyan said, ‘Two sons in six weeks! Coincidence? I think not. Is there any chance, Commander, that . . .’ His voice trailed away.
‘Every chance,’ said Joe. ‘We witnessed the crash and have inspected a key part of the wreckage which luckily was undamaged. I’ve sent it back to the palace where you can inspect it yourself. Are you familiar with aeroplanes, sir?’
Vyvyan shook his head.
‘Well, I haven’t much experience but – look, I’ll speak plainly: I suspect the plane was sabotaged. Someone meant to kill the pilot.’
‘Yes. The pilot,’ said Vyvyan slowly. ‘But, Sandilands, you should know that it was generally understood that Captain Mercer was to undertake the flight. You should put that in your notebook if you’re going to investigate this . . . this . . .’ He waved a hand over the body. ‘. . . occurrence. But I leap ahead. Are you aware of Captain Mercer?’
‘I only know what I heard from Madeleine on the way here. Don’t assume I’ve had any briefing or have any professional interest in events past or present in Ranipur, sir,’ he lied. ‘I’m down here for a tiger hunt.’
‘Is that what he told you? Scheming old bastard! George Jardine can smell trouble coming across a continent! There was a time when he would have appeared himself to sort out a crisis like this but now I hear he’s found himself a young and active alter ego to do his dirty work while he gets on with running India.’ He smiled to lighten the comment and added, ‘Am I right? Still, I think I can promise you’ll get your tiger hunt.’
A thin crowd of onlookers had begun to leave the road and fields and gather round, staring from a distance at the scene of disaster, chattering volubly and scuffing in the dust to pick up handfuls of gold tinsel. Claude turned to them, gesticulating and shouting in Hindi. ‘Get back, you buggers! Nothing to see! Ah, at last! There we are. Reinforcements on their way.’
Several motor vehicles and men on horseback were coming down the road towards them. ‘We’ll get you back to the palace and then perhaps you can give a formal written witness statement? Not often the investigating officer is invited to do that, I’d guess!’
‘Is that what I am?’ said Joe lugubriously.
‘Oh yes. Certainly.’ Vyvyan allowed himself a broad smile. ‘I’m appointing you.’
Joe looked back with guarded friendship at his new commanding officer.
Chapter Six
The late afternoon sun was slanting down on the sculpted and fretted façade of the Old Palace, creating a complex shadow play on the pink sandstone, an effect which would, in other circumstances, have held Joe’s delighted attention as they entered a vast courtyard and paused in front of the ceremonial entrance. Once again he was in the back seat of the Rolls, accompanied this time by Claude who had handed his horse to a syce and joined him. He turned to Joe as they came to a halt.