Death in Kashmir (33 page)

‘The moonlight and the moon,

And every gay and lovely tune

That's played for you…'

‘Why?' asked Charles gently.

‘Janet sang it outside the ski-hut on Khilanmarg; while she was strapping on her skis. And–and it seems to have kept cropping up ever since. They played it that night in Peshawar. The night I read her letter——'

‘Yes,' said Charles, ‘I remember.'

‘And now here it is again!'

‘Perhaps it's an omen. A good one this time, let's hope.'

The big clock on the wall struck the quarter hour. ‘Come on,' said Charles. ‘This is where we make a move.' He glanced down at his watch and gave a sudden exclamation of dismay.
‘Damn and blast!'
said Charles furiously, under his breath. He seized Sarah by the arm and hurried her off the floor.

‘Why? What's the matter?'

‘It's my own bloody fault,' said Charles savagely. ‘I shouldn't have taken my time by that clock. It's almost fifteen minutes slow. Come on, Sarah. Step on it!'

‘I'm sorry,' said Sarah firmly, ‘but as I gather this is going to be a longish trip, I'm going to dive into the Ladies Room first.'

‘Must you? Oh all right, only make it snappy! I'll go and get my
shikara.
Meet you at the top of the water steps. Turn right at the end of this building.
Hurry!
'

He disappeared into the night and Sarah whisked into the Ladies cloakroom.

The Ladies Room at the Nagim Club was entered through a small vestibule leading off the entrance hall, and Sarah closed the door behind her, and putting her bag down upon a dressing-table took a swift look at her face in the mirror. Light, running footsteps sounded on the path outside the window, followed a moment later by a slight sound from the end of the passage that led out of the dressing-room to the left, where the lavatories were, as though someone had either quietly opened or closed a door.

Sarah flicked her nose with a powder-puff and ran across to the passage. She tried the door of the first lavatory and found it locked, but the next in the line was open, and as she closed the door behind her there was a faint scuffling sound from the passage outside followed by a smothered laugh. Sarah paid no attention, but when she turned the handle again to leave, the door would not open. Oh bother the thing! thought Sarah frantically. It
would
take this opportunity to stick! She tugged at the handle, but the door remained obdurate.

A system of oriental sanitation prevailed at the Club, as in most of Kashmir, and therefore each lavatory had two doors: the back one opening into a narrow passage reserved for the use of lavatory attendants. Sarah hastily unbolted it, only to find that this door too was fastened from outside. Fastened … That was it of course! The doors had not jammed. Someone had locked her in. Some silly fool of a practical joker, thought Sarah, remembering that smothered laugh. But Charles had said ‘Hurry!' and he was waiting for her at the foot of the water stairs: she
must
get out.

She hammered at the door with her fists and shouted at the top of her voice until the noise echoing loudly round the little whitewashed cell almost deafened her. But when she stopped to listen she could hear no sound from outside except, very faintly, the strains of the radio-gramophone in the ballroom, and she realized with a stab of dismay that until some other woman entered the Ladies Room, she could shout herself hoarse without a chance of anyone hearing her above the noise of voices and music in the ballroom. There was nothing for it but wait until someone else entered the cloakroom.

Locked in a lavatory, of all places! thought Sarah furiously. Of all undignified, silly, stupid situations!

The words of a ribald song of her earlier schooldays rose unbidden to her mind:

‘Oh dear, what can the matter be?

Three old ladies locked in the lavatory!

They were there from Monday to Saturday.

Nobody knew they were there…'

Sarah giggled hysterically and immediately afterwards was seized by another stab of panic.
‘Nobody knew they were there.'
That was the trouble. Charles knew where she was, but he could hardly come charging into the sanctity of the Ladies Cloakroom in search of her. However urgent his desire for speed, she was sure that a proper Anglo-Saxon respect for decorum would forbid such an impossible breach of etiquette.

But it appeared that she had over-estimated Charles's respect for the conventions.

She heard the door into the dressing-room open violently, and shouted again, and Charles's voice called: ‘Where the hell are you?'

‘In here!' called Sarah. ‘I've been locked in!'

There was a sound of quick footsteps and of a bolt being jerked back, and the door swung open suddenly and precipitated her into Charles's arms.

‘Are you all right?' demanded Charles sharply. ‘What happened?'

But Sarah was unable to answer, for she was suddenly overcome by a gale of unseemly mirth.

‘For God's sake stop giggling!' snapped Charles.

“I c–c–can't help it,' choked Sarah. ‘It's so s–s–silly! Three old ladies I–locked in a lavatory. Oh gosh——!'

Charles gripped her shoulders and shook her until her hair resembled a red-gold Japanese chrysanthemum. ‘Pull yourself together, Sarah!' he said urgently. ‘How did it happen?'

‘I don't know,' said Sarah, dabbing her eyes. ‘When I went in there I heard a slight sound and someone laughed, and when I wanted to come out again I found that some idiotic humorist had locked me in, so I banged and yelled for a bit and then you came. That's all.'

‘Who was it?'

‘I tell you, I don't know! I only heard someone laugh. I suppose they thought it was frightfully funny. It must have been a practical joke.'

‘Let's hope so,' said Charles grimly. ‘Come on, we've got to get out of here. Where's the back door?'

He caught her by the elbow and hurried her down the passage past the bathing cubicles and out at the far door, but once in the open he was forced to slow his steps, and they walked decorously down the path.

Something glinted and sparkled with a flash of green fire on the moonlit gravel near the dressing-room window, and almost without thinking, Sarah stooped and picked it up. It was a small green sequin.

18

Charles led the way along the path and round the end of the Club building to a flight of wide stone steps that descended to the water's edge where a number of
shikaras,
their crews sleeping soundly and small oil riding-lights blinking smokily in each prow, lay moored in the shadow of a big chenar tree.

A single
shikara
was drawn up at the bottom step, and a shadowy figure in Kashmiri robes stood with one foot on the prow and one on the stairs, steadying the boat. Charles handed Sarah in, murmured a few words to the man and followed, and the man pushed the boat off from the shore, and leaping aboard, passed them and swung himself into the stern where the rowers sat.

They drew away from the shadows of the bank and out into the brilliant moonlight on the lake, and Sarah, leaning out to peer around the high padded partition that served as a backrest for the passengers and screened them from the crew, saw that there were four men paddling the boat. She turned to Charles who was sitting beside her, his shoulder touching hers, and said in an undertone: ‘Is is safe?'

‘Is what safe?'

‘Going off on this sort of trip in a public
shikara.
'

‘It isn't a public
shikara.
It's a private one—and they're all picked men.'

‘You mean they're British? In disguise?'

Charles gave a short laugh. ‘Don't be such a little owl! Of course not. There are all creeds and classes in our job. Hindus, Mussulmans, Sikhs, Dogras, Pathans, Parsees, Punjabis, Bengalis—any amount of 'em. One of our best men is a quiet little
bunnia
*
who keeps a shop in a Delhi bazaar. Another drives a
tonga
†
in Peshawar City.'

‘Um,'
said Sarah, and was silent for a space.

‘What's worrying you?' inquired Charles in an undervoice; aware that she was troubled.

‘All these people,' whispered Sarah, ‘and the man who was watching out for you last night—Habib. And there was the one you met at some place near Gulmarg, and the pockmarked man in the shop, who we're going to meet…'

‘What about them?'

‘Well, weren't they here when Janet and Mrs Matthews were alive?'

‘They certainly were—except for Habib, of course.'

‘Then—then why weren't they able to help them? Why didn't one of them leave Kashmir and carry a message to someone in British India?'

‘I thought I'd already told you why,' said Charles with a trace of asperity. ‘The fact that we have a certain number of people, such as these men tonight, whom we can call upon to help us, doesn't mean that they know more than a fraction of what is going on. Any more than a junior employee in some big Multi-National Corporation knows what is going on in the mind of the Chairman of the Board of Directors! Unfortunately, whatever those two women stumbled upon was too hot to be handled by any of the resident helpers in this State. And even more unfortunately, neither of them realized—according to what you told me about your conversation with Janet—that they themselves had been spotted, until it was too late to call up a squad of watchers to keep an eye on them. Or perhaps Mrs Matthews considered it wiser at that juncture to refrain from hedging her bets? That's something else we shall never know.'

‘I suppose so,' said Sarah, and relapsed into silence.

The paddles fell softly, rhythmically, with a soothing monotony of sound as the boat slipped smoothly through the water. There was no wind on the lake that night, and the breeze of their passage was barely enough to do more than stir the faded cotton curtains that hung from the decorated canopy overhead.

Charles shifted restlessly and though he was lying back against the cushions in apparent relaxation, Sarah was aware that his body was tense and strained.

‘What's the matter? Why don't you tell them to hurry?'

‘I daren't,' said Charles briefly, shifting his shoulders again in a small jerky gesture of anxiety. ‘There may be people watching and we mustn't look as if we're in a hurry until we're well out of range of the Club. We're supposed to be out for a sentimental moonlight row, not a boat-race. The trouble is that we're badly behind time.'

‘But surely he'd wait?' asked Sarah anxiously.

‘Ahamdoo? Of course. But it could be dangerous for him to hang around for too long. I suppose he chose the island because it would be a comparatively easy place for me to reach. And a much safer spot to get to because I'd have to come by water, instead of by land through all those bazaars and mean streets. But it still seems a pretty dicey choice to me.'

‘Then why did you agree?' whispered Sarah.

‘I told you. I hadn't any choice!'

‘I'm sorry. I–I forgot.' Sarah fell silent again, and Charles turned and looked back to where the lights of the Club were mirrored in the lake behind them. A minute or so later he said: ‘OK I think we can safely step on it now.'

He gave a low-spoken order to the rowers, and immediately the tempo of the paddles quickened. Sarah would not have believed that the shallow wooden boat could move at such speed. The four heart-shaped paddles dipped and rose as one, driving the pointed prow through the water with a sound of tearing silk, while the curtains fluttered and flapped in the draught of their passage.

As they neared the end of Lake Nagim, where the wide expanse of water breaks up into the narrower channels that lead towards Srinagar or to the main stretch of the Dal Lake at Nasim, Charles gave another order. And once more the pace slowed, and swinging left, they passed under the shadowy arch of the Nagim Bridge in a leisurely manner.

There was a figure upon Nagim Bridge. Some night idler who leant against the wooden rail at that end of the bridge where a tree threw a patch of shadow, and whose cigarette-end made a spark of orange light against the darkness.

Beyond the bridge and away to the left stretched the backwater of Chota Nagim, and Sarah could see the outlines of the Creeds' boat and, behind it, the solitary riding-light that marked the
Waterwitch.
Then they were paddling past reed beds and dark patches of lotus leaves, and presently the
shikara
entered a willow-bordered channel between banks that were not more than a dozen yards apart, so that the thin boughs arched over the water, interlacing above it and breaking the moonlight into a thousand silver fragments that powdered the black water below. But even here the paddles still did not change their rhythm.

Charles jerked back his cuff and peered at his watch, and the greenish, luminous circle of the watch face, glowing faintly in the shadows, reminded Sarah that she was still clutching the small green sequin she had picked up on the gravel path outside the window of the Ladies Room at the Nagim Club.

As the
shikara
left the gloom of the short willow-shadowed channel and came out again into open water, she examined her find. The small green sequin lay on the palm of her hand winking and glittering in the clear moonlight, and she was just about to drop it overboard when something seemed to click like a shutter in her brain.

A green sequin. Helen Warrender had worn a dress embroidered with green sequins. Then sometime that evening Helen Warrender must have passed along the path that led to the back door of the Ladies Cloakroom at the Club. Why? Only someone wearing a bathing costume would be likely to make use of the back door. Anyone else would naturally enter it by the main entrance in the hall.