Death in Kashmir (5 page)

Mrs Matthews, to whom this had been addressed, glanced through it and left it open on the writing-table in her room for the remainder of the day, where the room bearer and any hotel servant whose duties brought him there—not to mention the odd resident who dropped in for a drink and a chat—had ample opportunity to see it, and to leaf through it if they wished. But later that night, when the majority of guests were safely in bed and the curtains were close drawn, she had removed from her small paperback library of favourite books that accompanied her everywhere, Stella Gibbons'
Cold Comfort Farm;
and with its help decoded the message that the Christmas catalogue contained——

‘She told me about it next morning while we were skiing on the Takht,' said Janet. ‘The man who had fallen from the Frontier Express
had
been on his way up to see us. But it didn't necessarily mean that the opposition had connected him with us, so we were not to worry. Someone else would be arriving as soon as possible and would identify himself in the usual manner. Cousin Hilda said he'd be arriving that day, because if the mail bus had got through it meant that the Murree-Baramulla road was passable, and that judging from the date on the envelope, the catalogue had been posted in Rawalpindi just over a week ago. He must obviously have been snowed up in some Dâk bungalow on the road.'

She stopped and fell silent for a space; staring bleakly into the leaping flames, until at last Sarah said in an uncertain whisper: ‘Didn't he come?'

Janet dragged her thoughts back from whatever unpleasant paths they had been wandering along, and said: ‘Yes. He came. His name was Ajit Dulab and he was one of the best game shots in the country. And one of the best polo players, too. He was supposed to be up here to see if he could bag a snow-leopard—they get driven down to the lower hills by bad weather. The State put him up in one of the Maharajah's Guest Houses, and a senior official gave a cocktail party for him to which we were all asked. To cut a long story short, he managed to arrange a meeting with Cousin Hilda—she was going to give him a skiing lesson—and she told him everything. And the next day he said the weather was too bad for shooting, so he bought a couple of snow-leopard skins at a shop on the Bund, and left.'

‘Then what are you worrying about?' asked Sarah. ‘It's his headache now, not yours!'

‘He never got back,' said Janet in a hoarse whisper.

‘You mean … you mean he was
murdered?
' gasped Sarah.

‘I don't know! I suppose it could have been an accident. Just–just bad luck. That road can be very dangerous; cars and buses and lorries are always going over the edge. There are so many places where the mountainside drops straight down below it for several hundred feet into the gorge where the river runs—and no one gets out of that alive. Apparently his car was swept over by an avalanche.'

Sarah released her breath in an audible sigh of relief and said: ‘Then it
must
have been an accident!'

‘Perhaps. But avalanches can be started by people, and someone could have been waiting … it could have been done on purpose. If only we could have been sure that it was an accident we'd have felt … well, better, I suppose. But we weren't sure. We didn't even know, afterwards, if someone else had been sent up here or not. Perhaps someone was, and didn't make it either … like–like the other two.'

‘Do you mean you had to sit here and wait and do nothing?' demanded Sarah, astounded. ‘Haven't you got a radio transmitter, or a receiving set, or anything like that? I should have thought——'

‘Small, portable transmitters,' interrupted Janet shortly, ‘not only don't work well among mountains, but transmissions can be picked up by people they're not intended for. And worse still, traced! It would have taken no time at all for word to get around that someone was transmitting in code from the valley, and then the hunt would have been up—and the game with it!'

‘Oh. Yes, I see. But surely you could have telephoned?' said Sarah—intrigued by this glimpse of the mechanics of spying, but puzzled by the slowness and elaboration. ‘The lines must have been mended by then. Or why not just send off a telegram?'

‘In
India?
' said Janet scornfully. ‘Just how long have you been out here?'

‘Only a month and a bit,' admitted Sarah. ‘Why?'

‘Well for your information, there is no such thing as a secure telephone in all India—let alone in Kashmir! The Viceroy and the C-in-C and the Director of Central Intelligence, and one or two other bigwigs, probably have a scrambler apiece; but no one else would be able to get their hands on one. Certainly not in a Native State! The lines go through endless telephone exchanges and can be tapped almost anywhere by a child of two. As for telegrams, they get passed from hand to hand and everyone reads them—see
Kim!
'

‘But if they were in code?'

‘Codes,' retorted Janet impatiently, ‘are the worst give-aways of all, because except for very brief ones that sound like sense—and boring sense at that!—a message in code instantly focuses attention and curiosity, and plenty of suspicion, on both the sender and the receiver. In our business no one writes down anything. Unless…' she hesitated, and for a brief interval her gaze seemed to leave Sarah and turn inward again to some disturbing mental picture that her words had conjured up; and when she finished the sentence it was in a completely different tone, and almost inaudible: ‘… unless we
have
to—if there's time.'

Another icy little prickle ran down Sarah's spine, and goaded by it, she said with a trace of tartness: ‘But the message Mrs Matthews got in Srinagar must have been in code. The Christmas catalogue.'

‘Yes, that's true. But since it came through the post, it got held up for a good many days by the storm—like that man who came up to see us. And no one could have read anything different into it, or even realized that there was anything else to read, except the person it was addressed to. Because only that person would have the key. A different key each time! It's almost the only code in the world that's impossible to crack, because nothing's written down, and you go by numbers—and the words are in another book. But unfortunately it doesn't work except for fairly short messages, because it isn't just
any
numbers. And what we had to say needed a lot of words and explanation.'

‘It all sounds appallingly complicated to me,' observed Sarah disapprovingly.

‘So is learning to walk a tightrope over Niagara, I imagine! Or finding one's way across the Gobi Desert. And this is worse than either. In the end we got another message, in much the same way as the other one. It told us to move up to Gulmarg for the Ski Club Meeting, and that the agent who would contact us here would be a skier. And also how we could meet him without anyone knowing.'

It had sounded a pretty good idea, said Janet. Skiing in Gulmarg, in her opinion, being an infinitely better reason for coming to Kashmir in winter than trying to bag a snow-leopard. But the brief message had concluded with a single, dreaded word that in their tabloid dictionary stood for ‘Watch out—you have obviously been spotted!' It had shaken Janet badly, for despite the suspicions that had been raised by the deaths of those two agents, she had persuaded herself that the second was almost certainly due to a genuine accident, and that if the first was not, there was no need to suppose that the killers had any suspicion as to who the victim was travelling to meet. But now one small word had destroyed all that …

‘I was so sure we were safe,' whispered Janet. ‘I didn't believe that anyone could possibly suspect a middle-aged, gossipy widow who liked to paint and knit and go to coffee parties and whist drives, or a girl who played golf and tennis and went out sketching, and danced and picnicked with subalterns up on leave. But I suppose we must have made a slip somewhere … Or else someone has turned traitor: that–that does happen…'

Her voice broke and died out, and she swallowed convulsively as though her mouth had suddenly become dry. Once again her hunted gaze travelled swiftly and furtively about the little room—to the crackling radio, the closed, blank doors and the windows where the faded curtains hung still and undisturbed. And when she spoke again it was still in a whisper.

‘After that message came, I was afraid … terribly afraid. Mrs Matthews wasn't. She was wonderful. But she took extra care. She carried a gun everywhere, and she made me carry one. She saw to it that our doors and windows were locked and barred at night, and that we didn't eat or drink out of any dish or jug that someone else hadn't helped themselves from first. I'd have given anything, then, to leave. But we had to wait for the one who was to meet us here. We
had
to. But he still hasn't come, and now Cousin Hilda is dead; and I'm afraid …
I'm afraid!
'

Sarah reached out a steadying hand and said with an attempt at calm good sense that she was far from feeling: ‘Now you know you don't mean that. That's just hysteria.'

Janet Rushton jerked back in her chair and said angrily: ‘You don't believe me! You think I'm either mad or imaginative, don't you?
Don't you?
'

‘Actually,' said Sarah slowly, ‘I don't. Though heaven alone knows why I don't! But I do think you are exaggerating the situation a little. Major McKay is an Army Doctor and both he and Dr Leonard say that Mrs Matthews' death was an accident. So for all you know it
may
have been just that. An unlucky accident.'

Janet Rushton's laugh was not a pleasant sound as she brushed Sarah's hand off her knee: ‘Listen, my poor innocent, I may be frightened, but I'm not a fool. My nerve may have cracked a bit, but my brain hasn't—yet! I've already told you that Mrs Matthews carried a gun. Well it wasn't on her when she was found, and there could only be one reason for removing it. The murder had to look like an accident, and if there had been a loaded automatic on her it would have raised doubts in even the woolliest of minds; not to mention giving rise to a lot of awkward questions. People, even middle-aged widows, do not usually carry loaded weapons unless they are afraid of something.'

Sarah said: ‘Couldn't it have dropped out into the snow when she fell? Or perhaps the coolie who found her may have stolen it?'

‘She wore it in a little holster under her arm—like I do in the daytime—and someone must have searched her body to find it. No coolie would have touched a corpse found under these circumstances, because he would have been too afraid of being accused of having something to do with her death. And even supposing a coolie
had
tried to rob the body, do you suppose for one moment that he would have gone to the trouble of removing the holster as well? It would have been easy enough to slip out the gun, but it can't have been so easy to remove the holster and the sling. It must either have been cut away or her ski-coat taken off and replaced, which could only have been done while her body was still warm, because afterwards she—it——'

‘I know,' said Sarah hastily, ‘I saw them bring her in. But how do you know the gun wasn't there when they found her? Major McKay may have taken charge of it.'

‘Because,' Janet's voice was once more barely audible, and she shivered uncontrollably, ‘I found her at about four o'clock. Before the coolie did.'

‘You!'

‘Yes. I–I was worried. I hadn't seen her since dinner-time the night before, because when I went to her room after breakfast she'd already left and the room servant said she'd gone off with the Khilanmarg party. So it wasn't until you and Reggie Craddock and the Coply twins came back early from Khilan, and said you hadn't seen her, that I began to get really worried. I went out to look for her myself. I don't know why I went straight to the gully … except that Reggie had warned us that the snow there was dangerous, and I was afraid that——' Janet left the sentence open, and then finished abruptly: ‘Anyway, I found her.'

‘But—' whispered Sarah breathlessly, ‘but that must have been long before the coolie found her! Why didn't you fetch somebody?'

‘What was the use? She was dead. She had been dead for hours. Even I could see that. Besides, I couldn't afford to have my name brought into it, so I came back to the hotel by a different route and said nothing—it had begun to snow again by then, so I knew that my tracks would be covered.'

Sarah said sharply: ‘What are you going to do now? Why don't you go to the police?'

‘The
police?
' said Janet scornfully. ‘Of course I can't go to the police! What would I tell them? Give away the results of months of work and planning, and ruin everything at the eleventh hour? Or say I “just had a feeling” that it wasn't an accident—and be told that I'm a hysterical female for my pains? No. There isn't anything I can do but wait.'

‘Wait?'
repeated Sarah incredulously. ‘Wait for what, for heaven's sake?'

‘I've told you. We have to meet someone here. I can't go until he comes. Mrs Matthews is dead, but I know all that she knew. And I have to pass it on to the right person. After that, like you said, it's somebody else's pigeon and not ours—mine—any longer.'

Sarah wanted to say ‘suppose he doesn't come?' but stopped herself in time: it seemed an unnecessarily cruel remark in the face of the girl's desperate fear. She said instead:

‘Why don't you take a chance and write it down for once—the important part—and risk posting it? Yes, I
know
you said that agents in your department don't put anything in writing because letters can go astray or be stolen and cyphers can be decoded. But it also seems,' she finished crisply, ‘that agents can be killed!'