Death in Kashmir (35 page)

‘Cold?'

‘No,' said Sarah. ‘I–I was thinking. Did they—was it because we were late? If we hadn't been late——'

Charles shook his head. ‘We were bound to be late. If one thing hadn't delayed us, another would. I've been too sure that they weren't onto me.'

Sarah drew a sharp breath and jerked round to face him: ‘You mean, you think they know about you?'

Charles laughed; but without amusement. ‘Of course. But I'd like to know how they spotted me. I've walked on eggshells for years, waiting for this to happen.'

‘What difference will it make?'

‘Don't be silly, Sarah,' said Charles impatiently. ‘It's the chap who isn't suspect who is useful. The others are about as much use as a sick headache.' He struck his knees with his clenched fists: ‘I should have been on the island before moonrise if necessary, and stuck there until Ahamdoo arrived. Instead of which I go putting up a lot of unnecessary smoke-screens and providing myself with completely redundant alibis at the Club, and allow myself to be neatly delayed there while someone else keeps my appointment and rubs out Ahamdoo under my nose.'

‘But you couldn't know—' began Sarah.

‘Couldn't know what?' demanded Charles bitterly. ‘I knew Ahamdoo would arrive at the island at the exact time he said he would. Our people don't arrive late or early on a job I assure you: it isn't considered healthy. I had taken the trouble to find out exactly how long it would take me to get to the island from the Nagim Club, and I should have taken my time by my own watch. But I didn't. Instinct made me keep an eye on the Club clock, because I happen to know that it is checked daily by the wireless; and it was easier to keep an eye on it rather than be continually looking at my own watch. And because I was too sure of myself I fell into a trap that shouldn't have caught a baby!'

‘What do you mean?' asked Sarah. ‘What trap?'

‘The clock, of course. Tonight, for some unaccountable reason, that clock which was right by mine and the wireless at five this afternoon, was nearly twelve minutes slow. To have made it any slower would have been to run too great a risk of having it spotted—but a lot can happen in twelve minutes. It probably didn't take more than twelve seconds to kill Ahamdoo! All the same, twelve minutes is cutting it a bit fine, so they take another chance … Nearer a dead certainty than a chance, when you come to think of it!'

‘How do you mean?'

‘I mean that as soon as you and I arrive together at the Club, obviously intending to dine and dance, they realize what I mean to do. And they bet on your paying a fleeting visit to the Ladies Room before setting off for an hour or so on the lake! All things considered, it was a dead cert that you would, and someone was probably alerted hours ago to keep an eye on you and the moment we looked like making a move to leave to delay you—using that particular ploy for starters! There would have been other ones in reserve, in case that one failed. But it didn't. It worked like a charm, and as a result another eight or ten minutes are wasted, so that even by making up what time we could by paddling flat out whenever possible, we arrive at the island a good twenty minutes beyond time.'

Sarah said desperately, remembering the green sequin: ‘But how can you be sure that it wasn't a coincidence? The clock I mean? And locking me in
might
have been only a joke? You
can't
be sure!'

‘I'm not much of a believer in coincidences of that type,' said Charles. ‘Especially when I arrive at a rendezvous to find that someone has beaten me to it. It's all too convenient.'

‘But—but surely it was far too risky? You could have looked at your watch and not at the clock—there could have been other women in the cloakroom who would have heard me and let me out, and stopped them from trying anything else.'

‘In that case,' said Charles grimly, ‘you can be quite certain that something equally innocent to the eye would have delayed us. And even if all the innocent-seeming devices had failed, I still do not believe that we should have been allowed to reach the island in time. Some nasty accident would have occurred.'

‘What sort of accident?' asked Sarah in a small voice.

‘God knows. But … Well just think how easy it would have been for instance, for someone who had seen us leave on time, to get into a car or onto a bicycle—or even to leave pretty briskly on foot!—and reach the Nagim Bridge, or better still that neck of land just beyond it, ahead of our
shikara?
We'd have been a sitting haystack in the moonlight at that range. They couldn't miss!'

‘You mean you think—you can't really think that someone would have tried to
shoot
us?'

‘Not us; one of us. It wouldn't really have mattered which one, if the object was either our late arrival or non-arrival at the island.'

‘I don't believe it!' said Sarah breathlessly. ‘I won't believe that anyone would——'

‘Oh, possibly not,' interrupted Charles impatiently. ‘I'm merely telling you that some way would have been found to stop us getting to the island in time, and that if the simpler ways of preventing it had failed, something damned unpleasant would have been substituted!'

He paused to stare out across the moonlit lake, and after a moment spoke as though he were thinking aloud.

‘Whoever did it must have been waiting on the island. The motorboat of course. That would cover the time problem. A motorboat could drop a man on the island and be away again in a matter of minutes, and Ahamdoo would never have landed if there had been another boat there already. He would have made certain there wasn't one before he went on shore. And the murderer, of course, would have used Ahamdoo's boat to get away in. The only thing that doesn't make sense is why didn't they remove the body?'

‘Why should they?'

‘Oh, just to confuse the issue a bit. If there had been no sign of him I couldn't have been a hundred-per-cent certain that he hadn't developed cold feet at the eleventh hour. And they can't really have supposed that they'd scare me off by demonstrating what they were capable of. Sarah, somehow I've got a hunch that leaving him there was a mistake on the part of the murderer, and I trust it's going to prove a pretty costly one.'

‘What doesn't make sense to me,' said Sarah, ‘is why they didn't wait a bit longer.'

‘You mean until I turned up, and then dispose of me too? Well for one thing, they would have known that I wouldn't have arrived there alone, and that I and anyone with me would certainly be armed. And for another, that a gun battle at this hour, on a night as quiet as this one, would create a hell of a racket—not to mention the resulting blaze of publicity! You notice that to date nothing noisy has been used. A blow on the head for Mrs Matthews and Miss Rushton, and a knife for Ahamdoo——'

‘But you've just said that someone on the bridge or that neck of land, could have shot us!'

‘If they had, they'd have used something like an air-gun—it would have been enough, at that range! Or a silencer. But they couldn't bank on us doing the same. They had to stop Ahamdoo's mouth, and the moment they'd done so they knew they had to leave pretty smartly—and did!'

Charles relapsed into silence, occupied by his own thoughts, while Sarah stared ahead of her seeing not the beauty of the moonlit lake, but a small glittering green sequin, winking up at her like a little evil eye from the gravel of the path outside the Club.

If Charles was right and locking her in had all been part of a plan, then Helen … No! it wasn't possible! It couldn't have been Helen. It must have been someone else. Then what had Helen Warrender been doing on that path this evening? How long had the sequin lain there? Or was there anyone else who had worn a dress with green sequins on it? People one knew did not do these things—plot and spy and lend themselves to murder. It could not possibly have been Mrs Warrender. And yet …

Sarah's mind went back to the story that Johnnie Warrender was badly in debt. It was no secret, for Helen was eternally referring to the extent of his overdraft, and she also made no attempt to disguise her preference for the society of those who were socially and financially better off than herself. All the same would any amount of money tempt her to involve herself in murder? It did not seem credible …

Sarah's thoughts ran round and round in a helpless circle of suspicion and denial, like a squirrel in a cage, as the
shikara
turned out of the Dāl and crossed a small open stretch of water, heading for the dark, willow-bordered channel that led into Chota Nagim where the
Waterwitch
and the Creeds' houseboat were anchored.

The moon was sinking towards the mountains beyond the bulk of Hari Parbat Fort, and the
shikara'
s canopy no longer threw a shadow down upon its passengers. The cold clear moonlight illuminated every corner of the boat, and Sarah turned her head and looked at Charles. He was frowning thoughtfully down on something that he turned over and over between his fingers, and she saw that it was the cheap, blue china bead that he had taken from Ahamdoo's clenched hand.

For some reason the sight of it filled Sarah with shuddering repulsion: a renewal of the horror she had experienced as she made out the outlines of those plump, rigid fingers among the dead leaves at the bottom of the hollow chenar trunk. She said suddenly and violently: ‘Throw it away Charles! How can you touch it?'

Charles tossed it lightly into the air and caught it again. ‘Throw it away? Not much! This means a great deal Sarah, if only we can work it out.'

‘Why should it mean anything? It's only a china bead.'

‘You're forgetting something,' said Charles, rolling the bead in the palm of his hand.

‘What?'

‘The writing on that bit of paper in the matchbox.'

Sarah caught her breath. ‘Of course! I'd forgotten. It was something about beads——'

‘“The teller of tales threads his bright words as beads upon a string”,'
quoted Charles. ‘Quite a coincidence, isn't it?' He tossed the bead in the palm of his hand, throwing it and catching it again.

‘I thought you didn't believe in coincidences,' said Sarah.

‘I don't. That's why I'm interested in this bead. Very interested. That line out of a poem would obviously have meant quite a lot to the person for whom it was intended. And I don't believe Ahamdoo was carrying this for fun. There's a link between the two, and I mean to find it. This may not be much to go on, but it's something.'

Sarah looked at the small blue oblong as it glinted in the moonlight. It was about half an inch in length, made of coarsely glazed china, and the hole through it was large enough to take a fairly thick piece of twine. One saw strings of these beads in shops in the native bazaars and round the necks of
tonga
ponies: they were said to bring good luck and avert the evil eye, and even the wiry little pack-ponies who had ploughed through the snow on the Gulmarg road had worn ropes of them slung round their necks.

‘Could there be anything inside it?' she asked.

‘No,' said Charles, squinting through it at the moon. ‘Not a thing. However I will crack it up when I get back, just to be on the safe side. Hello, here we are in the home stretch. I hope Fudge and Hugo haven't been waiting up for you. I promised Fudge I wouldn't keep you out too late. Do they take their chaperoning duties at all seriously?'

‘Lager's the only one who is likely to be awake,' said Sarah. ‘I only hope he doesn't bark and wake everyone up.'

The
shikara
had turned out of the main stream and was now being paddled softly up the backwater of Chota Nagim, and Sarah peered ahead to where the
Waterwitch
lay moored in the shadows of the willow trees beyond the Creeds' boat. She had turned out all the lights in the boat before she left, with the exception of one over the front door that lit the prow and the top of the forward gangplank. But the
mānji
had evidently considered this insufficient, for now a welcoming orange glow lit up the drawing-room windows, adding a warm note of colour to the waning moonlight and the black shadows as the
shikara
nosed its way gently through a patch of lily-pads and bumped alongside.

There was no one on board except Lager, warm from sleep and whimpering an enthusiastic welcome, and Charles looked about the narrow crowded drawing-room, and having tried the lock on the door, said: ‘Did you get those bolts I told you to put on your doors and windows?'

‘Not yet,' confessed Sarah. ‘But the
mānji
said he'd have them fixed by tomorrow. I'll be all right. Lager will protect me, and this time I'm going to lock myself into my bedroom as well, and anyone who likes can come on board and burgle the boat—I shall put my head under the bedclothes and refuse to move.'

Charles frowned and jerked his shoulders uneasily. ‘Can I count on that?' he asked, unsmiling.

‘I promise,' said Sarah. ‘I've had enough of rushing in where angels fear to tread. And quite enough “alarums and excursions” for one night. Don't worry. Look at Lager. He's simply bursting with beans and bounce, and if anyone puts a foot in the boat tonight he'll bark his head off and wake up everyone for miles. There's no storm tonight, and you could hear a mouse move in this quiet. Listen.'

She held up a finger and the silence seemed like a wall about them.

‘You see? It was different last night. The storm was making such a racket that a troop of elephants could have boarded the boat without my hearing them; and Lager had been drugged. But you could hear a pin drop tonight, and if I yelled, Hugo and Fudge and the
mānjis
and Hugo's bearer would all be buzzing round like bees. Besides, I shall turn all the lights on and no snooper is likely to come sneaking up on a brilliantly illuminated boat in the small hours of a night like this.'