‘You must have felt you were coming back through time being sent to Bengal?’

‘I’ve loved working with the Bengal Police. They’re clever, eager and effective. There’s nothing I’d like more than a squad of Sikh officers to take back to London with me! Give me twenty Naurungs! That would shake up Whitehall!’

‘So your time hasn’t entirely been wasted here?’

‘No. I suddenly found myself locked in the arms of a dusky charmer and minded never to return. I mean – you don’t pick up a timeless houri on every corner in life’s road. Make the most of your opportunities, I say,’ said Joe lightly. ‘Is there anything else I can tell you about Sandilands of Drumaulbin?’

Nancy gave him a searching look, smiled and shook her head in uncharacteristic confusion. She kicked her pony and drew ahead, leaving Joe to watch her slender figure through narrowed and speculative eyes.

Chapter Seventeen

As they rode into Panikhat in the late afternoon the air grew still, the glow of the sky deepened as the sun burned its way westward and wreaths of smoke from cooking fires coiled and flattened over the native town.

Joe looked at Nancy, flushed, sunburned and dishevelled. ‘Shall I,’ he wondered, ‘tell her that she’s got two buttons undone and the label of her blouse is sticking out? This is a little bit embarrassing, I think. Andrew might well be the nicest man I know and I sometimes think he is but – unless-he’s a fool, which I think he isn’t…’

He needn’t have worried. As they drew into the Drummond compound, a syce ran up to take the horses and a bearer hurried to Nancy with a note on a silver tray. She read it quickly and said, ‘Oh, what a shame. Andrew’s been called away to Goshapur. There’s a row brewing apparently between a landlord and some of his tenants. He won’t be back before sunset. Can I offer you a drink, Joe?’

Joe courteously refused, limp with relief that he would not yet have to look Andrew Drummond in the eye, and started to make his way back to his bungalow. Carefully keeping to the shady side of the street, he walked on, leading Bamboo. His thoughts were interrupted by swiftly trotting hooves coming up behind him and by an authoritative female voice.

‘Good afternoon, Commander. Or – as formality seems to have been thrown to the winds – good afternoon, Joe.’

Joe turned about to meet the calculating eye of Mrs Kitson-Masters. The last thing he wanted to do, having narrowly avoided an inspection by Andrew, was to find himself the subject of scrutiny by Kitty. He smiled and bowed.

‘Kitty!’ he said. ‘Exactly the person I most wanted to see!’

‘You look as though you’ve had an exhausting day,’ she said.

‘I have. Are you on your way home, Kitty? Good. If I may, I’ll come with you.’

‘Informality on informality! I will look forward to receiving you.’

She drove on and Joe followed her round the corner, into Curzon Street and down her front drive.

‘Now, tell me how I can help with the investigation. At least I assume that this has to do with the investigation, though I would prefer to think you were seeking me out for the charm of my company.’

‘Both,’ said Joe, settling on the verandah while a jug of lemonade appeared on the table between them. ‘It seems rather an odd question but – as far as you know – did Alicia Simms-Warburton suffer from a fear of water, a fear of drowning? I mean a deep-seated, out of the ordinary fear?’

Kitty looked at him in astonishment for a moment then replied slowly, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, she did. A week or so before she died it was Panikhat Week… the station puts on lots of entertainments to celebrate the end of the working year before people start to go off to the hills, visitors come from other stations – you’ve just missed it this year – and that year someone had organised a regatta on the river just beyond Giles’ place. “Henley on the Hooghly ” or something like that, they’d called it. The local villagers are superb boatmen. They’d provided the boats and decorated them with flowers and everyone had a wonderful time – apart from Alicia! She refused to have anything to do with it. Made rather a silly fuss, I remember. Wouldn’t put a foot in a boat. Yes, you’re right, Joe. A phobia, I think you’d call it.’

‘That’s exactly what I’d call it. And did Dolly Prentice suffer from a phobia and, in particular, did she have a phobia about fire? Was she frightened of fire? I mean to an unusual degree? It might be significant if she was.’

Kitty considered for a while.

‘No. Sorry, Joe. She never spoke of it,’ she said at last. ‘Fire is a hazard of course and if you’ve got a thatched roof as many of us have it’s a perpetual worry. We’re all afraid of fire and nothing abnormal about that. But you’re looking for more, aren’t you? Something unreasonable? I don’t remember Dolly ever mentioning… Let me think back… Oh! Of course! Yes! The buckets! We never spoke of it though some of us did think it rather strange at the time… The corridors in Dolly’s bungalow were lined with buckets full of water, fire brooms and all that sort of thing. They even kept one behind the door in tha drawing-room. Yes, that was surely extraordinary behaviour? I had thought it must have been one of Giles’ eccentricities – he has enough of those, heaven knows! – and didn’t comment. But, you know, he doesn’t have buckets of water in his new home so perhaps you’re right. Joe, why do you ask?’

‘Five out of five,’ said Joe grimly. Rather lamely he explained, thinking as he did so that his theories sounded somewhat absurd. But Kitty didn’t think so.

Reflecting on this, she said, ‘That is a sinister aspect. That does argue a bad mind behind this. A sick mind. An evil mind.’ She hesitated. ‘But whose mind? Joe, the whole of Panikhat must have known at the time – about the buckets, I mean. If I can remember it twelve years on, many people would have been aware of it at the time. I haven’t been much help, have I?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ said Joe. ‘Dolly’s phobia places her firmly in the group of victims. Now I know that every one of the murdered memsahibs was killed, perhaps not because of, but according to, her own personal fear. It’s a common factor but it’s not the common factor I’ve been looking for. There’s something more – something appalling lurking on the fringes…’ The dark and dimly perceived jungle shapes of the morning, pacing along with the horses but remaining hidden, watchful, came back to him and he shuddered.

‘Joe, it’s time to go and have your bath,’ said Kitty with a softer note in her voice. ‘Then perhaps a good meal at the Club, a sound night’s sleep and you may well wake up with the answer in your head.’

This had been the most mysterious day Joe could remember. Firstly, the magic of the ride through the forest and the indelible image of Nancy in a sea of laughing and expectant brown faces, and the unhesitating gift of herself, so sweet, so yielding, so ingenuous and fired by a primitive longing of such force that it was outside Joe’s experience. As sleep descended on him he was aroused by a thought. A thought of such complexity that, encumbered by the folds of his mosquito net, he sat up with a jerk, suddenly wide awake.

There was something here that he didn’t quite understand. Something, perhaps, that he had understood all along but had not been able to put into words or even into logical thoughts, but he remembered the care with which Uncle George had absented himself from their night in Calcutta; he remembered the grace with which Andrew had sent them off into the forest together, his convenient absence from home on their return, and he began to think, for the first time, of the equivocal role of Andrew in the love affair which was taking place under his eyes.

Andrew. Something struggled in his memory, trying to come to the surface. The Deputy Collector – what was the wretched man’s name? – on the night of the dance – Harry Featherstone! – he had bumped into Joe, standing with Nancy, and had said, ‘Sorry Andrew!’ He had mistaken Joe for Andrew for the good reason that, from behind, they must look very alike. No one could confuse them when seen side by side but there was, he had to admit, a superficial resemblance. Both men were tall, broad-shouldered and of spare build. Both men had dark hair, though Andrew’s was now more grey than black. Had Nancy and her uncle seen this similarity when they had set eyes on him in the lecture theatre in Calcutta? Had they discussed it? Had they decided that he would be the perfect man to complete Nancy ’s schemes? Joe decided that they would not have needed to exchange a word. But both, if his wild idea had any foundation, would have taken precisely the action they had taken.