Death in Kashmir (10 page)

Sarah turned restlessly in the darkness. If only it were possible to know exactly when Mrs Matthews had died. But no one would ever be sure of that. The intense cold could play tricks with bodies, and even the doctors would not give an opinion on it. They had said that they thought she must have died roughly four or five hours before her body was brought back to the hotel, which had been at 7 o'clock. But Janet had found her about four, and her body had been stiff already, because Janet had said——Sarah's thoughts shuddered away from the remembrance of that frozen, contorted corpse.

The Coply twins
could
not be responsible. They were so young. And yet—and yet? Sarah remembered photographs she had seen of German prisoners shortly after the fall of France. Batches of fair-haired boys in their teens and twenties, who only a short time before had been machine-gunning women and children in the streets of small market towns, and dropping high explosives upon roads packed with helpless civilian refugees. No. Youth by itself was no alibi in these days. Youth could be hard and ruthless and intolerant, and without pity for old age and weakness.

What of the women?—for it had been a woman who had made those footsteps, though Sarah was convinced that the faceless creature who had sawn through the latch of Janet's window was a man. Fudge could be written off at once. Meril wouldn't have the guts, and allergic as she was to Helen Warrender, Sarah could not believe that that determinedly elegant and feline woman, with her constant references to the ‘Right People', would involve herself with anything so socially damning as murder.

Reggie Craddock, Ian Kelly, Johnnie Warrender, Mir Khan, the Coply twins, Fudge, Meril Forbes and Helen.
One of those people. Sarah's aching brain reviewed them all, over and over again in an endless procession, until the muffled whirring of Reggie's alarm clock broke the evil spell of the night, and she fell asleep at last: to dream of Janet, helpless and panic-stricken, pursued down endless dark verandahs by faceless figures.

She awoke tired and unrefreshed to the smell of burning bacon fat and the welcome sound of a boiling kettle, to find that the rest of the party were already out taking advantage of the early morning snow, with the exception of Meril Forbes, who was preparing breakfast with a vast amount of energy and ineptitude. There was no sign of Janet.

‘Mrs Creed said to let you sleep,' said Meril, flapping helplessly at the reeking smoke that filled the living-room from the neglected frying-pan. ‘She did try and wake you once, but you seemed so fast asleep that she said we'd better leave you. They're skiing in the Gully; all except Reggie. And Mir, I suppose.'

‘Who's they?' asked Sarah, wrinkling her nose at the fumes.

‘Oh, all the rest of them,' said Meril vaguely.

In the face of Janet's parting request Sarah did not like to inquire after her, but since Meril had not mentioned her the chances were that she really had got back in time, and without her absence being noticed. She was probably out skiing with the others.

Sarah dressed, shivering in the cold hut, and went outside.

The sun was still hidden behind the rim of Apharwat, but its reflected glow made a glory of the snowfields. The sky was a pale wash of turquoise against which the mountain peaks cut violet patterns, and from somewhere among the pine woods below the
marg
a thin line of smoke from a woodcutter's fire rose unwavering into the still, morning air. But despite the clear radiance of the dawn there was something curiously threatening and oppressive about the breathless chill of the morning; a vibration of unease. And Sarah, looking away across the distant valley, saw that the great rampart of the Nanga Parbat range was hidden by a pall of dark, grey-brown cloud that spanned the horizon from east to west and tinged the sky above it with a foreboding yellow stain. As she watched, lightning flickered in the belly of the cloud and she could hear, faintly, from across the cold mountain ranges, the mutter of a far-distant storm.

Meril Forbes' voice, harried and anxious, exclaiming: ‘Oh
bother!
I've burnt the bacon again!' recalled Sarah to a sense of duty, and she offered herself as assistant cook and was gratefully accepted. There was nothing much to be done about the bacon, so she turned instead to the task of preparing large quantities of coffee and toast. But the thought of Janet worried her, and presently, deciding on the indirect approach, she said carelessly: ‘Who's looking after Bonzo and Alec? I imagine Reggie didn't take them with him?'

‘Not much!' said Meril, clattering cups and saucers at the far end of the room. ‘They're as much use on skis as a couple of porpoises. Worse! No, they've gone off to Christmas Gully with the others, to practise breaking their necks. They went off about an hour ago, and if they're not back soon I think we might start breakfast without them, don't you? The others won't be back for hours if they've gone to the Frozen Lakes.'

There was a crisp swish of snow outside and a cheerful voice announced: ‘Home is the skier, home from ski, and the hungry home from the hill! Sarah, my beautiful, you are a lazy little grub and a disgrace to your nation. Why didn't you come with us instead of hogging it in your bunk?'

‘I am allergic to early rising,' said Sarah firmly. ‘What are you doing around here, Ian? We didn't expect you back for hours. Where have you left the others?'

‘To their own devices. We decided to go our separate ways. I expect old Reggie's still messing about somewhere at the back of Apharwat, and Mir went off to Mary's Shoulder: said he wanted to practise jump-turns or something. I thought I'd had about enough, after mucking about for a couple of hours admiring the sunrise, so I decided to come back and admire you and the bacon instead.'

‘Oh dear!—I'm afraid the bacon's burnt,' said Meril guiltily. ‘But you can have a boiled egg.' She went to the door and peered out. ‘Here are the others coming now. Where's Janet, Ian? Has she gone to the Lakes with Reggie, or did she go with Mir?'

‘Neither,' said Ian. ‘She didn't come with us. You forgot we were torn from our snug bunks at the ghastly hour of five ack emma. She'll have gone with the others.'

Meril looked puzzled. ‘But she didn't. I mean, she'd gone already when they went, and we thought she must have decided to go with you.'

‘Well she didn't,' said Ian firmly, ‘and if I may be permitted to bring the conversation back to food, if you think one egg is enough for me, Meril dear, you have committed an error of judgement. I require at least six.'

Meril said anxiously: ‘But then if Janet didn't go with you——'

Sarah interrupted hurriedly: ‘She must have gone off early on her own, I think. She said something last night about fetching up at the hotel for breakfast; probably wanted to see the beginners' race this morning.'

The arrival of the Coply twins, smothered in the snow of frequent falls, together with Fudge and the Warrenders, put a stop to the conversation; and half an hour later, as they were washing up the breakfast things, Reggie Craddock put in an appearance, having abandoned his proposed trip to the Frozen Lakes owing to doubts as to the weather. There was no sign of Mir Khan, who was apparently still engrossed in the practice of jump-turns on the snow ridge known as Mary's Shoulder.

Reggie ate a hurried breakfast and looked at his watch. ‘It's fairly early yet,' he announced, ‘so I suggest we slide down and head off the people who are coming up here for the day. I don't like the look of those clouds at all. There's a nasty storm coming up, and I've a feeling it'll be here a lot sooner than we think. I'm not for having a packet of people caught up here by bad weather. What do you say, Johnnie?'

Johnnie Warrender lounged to the door and looked out above Gulmarg to the far side of the valley, where the sky was darkening above the cloud bank that concealed the Nanga Parbat range. The sun still shone serenely, but the curious, dirty yellow stain above the black bar of cloud was spreading rapidly over the cool blue of the sky, and there was an uneasy mutter in the air.

‘Perhaps you're right,' conceded Johnnie, who was looking tired and cross in the morning sunlight. There were dark pouches under his eyes and he had cut himself shaving. ‘Personally I shouldn't say it'll be here for hours yet—if at all. It may go down the valley and miss us altogether. However, it certainly looks as though something sticky was brewing over there, so I suppose we'd better play safe.'

They had rolled up their bedding and the various items that would be carried down by coolies, packed their rucksacks and strapped on their skis, when Reggie Craddock asked: ‘Where's Janet?'

‘Gone down ahead,' said Ian Kelly. ‘What about Mir?'

‘Oh, Mir's quite capable of looking after himself. I couldn't spot him anywhere when I came back, so he's probably gone down too. But in case he hasn't I'll leave a note on the door to tell him we've gone on ahead.' Reggie scribbled a few words on a page of his pocket diary, ripped it out, wrote Mir's name across the front in block capitals, and tucked it under the latch where he could not miss seeing it. ‘Come on, we'd better get going if we want to stop the rest of them coming up. We'll go down by Red Run. You two'—he addressed the Coply twins—‘had better stick to the path. I won't have you risking your necks on the top half of the run. We'll give you a quarter of an hour's start. Shove off.'

The twins broke into injured protests, but Reggie was adamant. Fudge volunteered to accompany them to see that they got down without mishap, and after a moment's hesitation Helen Warrender decided to go with them too. She was not a particularly good skier, and disliked fast running except on open snow.

Fifteen minutes after their departure Reggie Craddock gave a hitch to his rucksack and set off down the slope with Sarah, Ian, Johnnie Warrender and Meril behind him. They fanned out on the crest of Slalom Hill and each took their own line, swooping down over the crisp shimmering surface like a flight of swallows; dipping, swaying, turning in a swish of flung crystals, and leaving behind them clear curving tracks on the sparkling snow. The icy air, whipping past them, sang a shrill crooning song in their ears as they swung round the Brooklands curve and shot over Hill 60, and presently they were among the tall tree trunks; swerving and swinging down the track under the dark snow-laden boughs of pine and deodar.

It is not far short of the first houses that Red Run is crossed by Blue; the junction of the two runs bearing the appellation ‘Dirty Corner' for reasons not unconnected with the frequent and simultaneous arrival at this point of both Blue and Red runners moving at speed and arriving from opposite directions.

Sarah shot down the curving track, jump-turned with expert precision, and emerged into the straight stretch above the junction of the two runs a bare yard ahead of Ian Kelly—only to check violently, in a flurry of snow.

She saw Ian, swerving wildly to avoid her, shoot past and cannon off a tree trunk to fall with a whirl of skis, sticks, snow and startled swearwords into a piled drift, and heard Reggie shout behind her as he came to an indignant standstill a yard or so to her left, the others stemming behind him on the slope. But she did not move. Her eyes, fixed and dilated, were on the two figures immediately ahead of her. The Coply twins, who were standing at the junction of the two runs.

Alec was bending down, dragging frenziedly at the straps of his skis, while Bonzo, his hands cupped about his mouth, alternately shouted something unintelligible up the slope, and pointed down it.

‘What the hell—!'
said Reggie Craddock violently. He thrust strongly with his ski-sticks and shot away down the track; the others following behind him, except for Sarah, who stayed where she was, held in the grip of a sudden, sickening premonition of disaster. It was only when she heard Ian swearing in the undergrowth and saw Reggie and the others reach the twins that she forced herself to follow them.

Alec had rid himself of his second ski by the time she reached them, and was running down the Blue Run slipping and stumbling on the treacherous surface, while Meril was saying in a high, cracked voice that sounded as if it came from a gramophone: ‘But they took Mrs Matthews away—I know they took her away! She can't still be here. They took her away!'

Sarah took one look at the sprawled figure that lay at the foot of the icy slope below them, a dark smudge against the whiteness, and took the slope at a run. She heard Reggie's warning shout and Meril's scream, and then Alec had caught her, and they had fallen together among the snow-covered boulders beside that other figure that lay so still.

It was Janet of course. Sarah had known that it would be. Perhaps she had known it, subconsciously, from the moment when she had awakened in the ski-hut, heavy-eyed and sick with apprehension, to find that Janet had not returned. The Coply twins, gesticulating in the snow, had only supplied the dreadful confirmation of what she already feared to be true.

Sarah reached out and touched her. Janet lay on her side in the snow in a curiously confiding attitude, almost as though she were asleep. Her knees were bent, and her arms lay stretched at her side, her hands still gripping her ski-sticks. There was a little scarlet stain on the snow under her head, and her blue eyes were open. There was no trace of either surprise or horror on her dead face, but rather a faint, definite impression of scorn: as though she had expected death and derided it.

Sarah became aware of Reggie Craddock swearing violently under his breath, of Meril's hysterical sobbing, and of Fudge's arms about her, pulling her away.

‘Come away, Sarah. Don't look dear. We can't do anything; she's dead.'

Sarah jerked herself free and stood up. She had seen all she wanted to see in those first few minutes, and verified it when she had reached out to lay her hand on a pocket of Janet's snow-powdered ski-suit.