Far Pavilions (72 page)

Ash touched it as gently as though it were a sentient thing, and saw it through a haze of tears. And it was only when his sight cleared that he realized that Juli had not sent him back the piece that he had originally possessed, but her own. The half that she had worn for so many years above her heart in the warm hollow between her breasts, and that still held the scent of her skin: a faint, faint fragrance of dried rose-petals. It was an additional message from her, as loving and as intimate as a kiss, and he held it to his cheek and was immeasurably comforted.

A discreet cough announced the return of Gul Baz and a
khidmatgar
with his evening meal, and Ash put the broken luck-charm in his pocket, hurriedly replaced the oranges, and went out to eat with a better appetite than he had shown for some time past.

Unless wind or weather prohibited it, he preferred to eat out of doors rather than in his tent, and this evening the table had been laid under a
kikar
tree whose yellow, mimosa-like blossoms diffused a dusty incense on the warm air and a film of pollen over table-cloth and dishes and Ash's dark head. The sky was still tinged with the sunset, but by the time the meal had been cleared away and the coffee drunk, it was full of stars; and Ash sat out under them, smoking a cigarette and thinking of Juli, and making a promise to her – and to himself. That he would never marry anyone else, and that even if he never saw her again he would always think of her as his wife, and in the words of the marriage service, ‘Cleave only unto her as long as ye both shall live’.

A lamp glowed in the tent behind him and he could hear Gul Baz moving about, laying out his night shirt; and struck by a sudden thought, he called out to him to ask Mahdoo for the small japanned tin box that ever since the theft of his rifle had been in the old man's charge. Mahdoo himself brought it and stayed awhile to smoke and talk, and when he had gone Ash carried it into the tent and put it on the table, and took the luck-charm out of his pocket.

The strand of silk that it had hung from had been removed in order to insert it into the orange, and he would have to find another, as even the finest chain would probably end by breaking the shell. There was nothing in the tent that would serve and he would ask Gul Baz to find him something tomorrow, and in the meantime lock away Juli's half of the charm in the same place where his own had stayed, safe and out of mind, for so many years.

He removed the cheap brass key from his watch-chain and unlocked the box, and was surprised when the lid flew up as though it had been held by a spring. But there had not really been enough room for that piece of blood-stained material that he had crammed into it days ago; and he remembered now that he had had to force the lid to shut – though until this moment he had not spared another thought for the torn strip of cloth that he had hidden away from prying eyes and had meant to destroy.

At the time, the tin box had been the nearest thing to hand that was safe from inspection by Gul Baz, who had charge of all the other keys, so he had stuffed that ill-omened bandage into it and locked it, intending to take the thing out again at the first opportunity and burn it or bury it, or merely throw it away in open country. But then he had given the box to Mahdoo, together with his money and firearms and the spare ammunition, and forgotten all about it.

He took it out now and looked at it with a grimace of distaste, wondering again whom it had belonged to and what to do with it. He still could not burn it without the risk of bringing one of his servants at a run, imagining that his tent had caught fire. Nor could he drop it on the floor to be thrown away, for the sight of it would only remind Gul Baz of an episode that had best be forgotten. Probably the best course would be to take a short walk and discard it somewhere in the darkness beyond the range of the camp fires.

He crumpled it into a ball and was about to push it into his pocket, when he became aware of something that he remembered noticing, subconsciously, before. Something small and hard was attached to it, presumably a button or possibly a lead weight such as Indian tailors sometimes use to make a seam fall straight.

Apart from a cursory inspection Ash had never really examined that bit of torn material, for once having decided that it was a piece of evidence that he did not wish anyone else to see, he had been in too great a hurry to hide it before one of his servants, or Mulraj, should realize what it was and start asking questions that he did not want answered. Now for the first time he spread it out and looked at it more carefully.

The whole thing was blotched and stiff with blood, for that cut on his forehead had bled freely. But here and there between the stains it was possible to see that the grey, shadow-patterned material was a hand-woven mixture of silk and cotton that must have been expensive. The stuff was thin and unlined (the weather had been very hot) and it was the stitching and not the cloth that had parted; the entire left-hand front of the coat having come away along the seams, leaving collar and sleeve behind. There was a line of gaping button-holes and a single small breast-pocket on the inner side, rather oddly placed in that it was low down and below the armhole. The pocket had a double flap that prevented anything placed in it from falling out, and Ash, investigating, found that it had also been sewn up: presumably to ensure the safety of the small, hard object it contained.

Probably a jewel, thought Ash – a valuable one, if its owner had gone to the trouble of having his coats made with a special pocket in order to carry it about with him.

The stitches were caked with dried blood and as he picked at the thread he grinned to himself, picturing the would-be murderer's consternation on discovering his loss. All in all, an expensive evening for the gentleman in the grey coat, and it was to be hoped that it had taught him a salutary lesson. This, of course, explained that curious burglary and the meticulous manner in which his tent had been searched. He had been puzzled by that at the time, for it was obvious that the thief had been looking for something much smaller than a shot-gun or a box of cartridges, or even a bag of rupees. And but for the fact that only a few hours earlier the japanned tin box had been one of the things handed to Mahdoo for safe keeping, he would have found it.

‘What I should have done,’ thought Ash, giving up the attempt to break the stitches and looking around for a pair of nail-scissors, ‘was to go back as soon as it was light and hide in the grass where I was ambushed. I bet that bastard went scuttling back as soon as he realized what he'd lost, and crawled over every inch of it – and serve him right: a nice piece of poetic justice if ever there was one.’ But then at the time it had not occurred to him to go back for he did not know that his assailant had lost anything of value; and even if he had known, he would have been too late, because he had not woken until well into the afternoon. So much for hindsight.

Ash found the scissors, and without bothering to unpick the stitches, cut through the centre of the pocket. The trinket that it had contained fell out and rolled over the edge of the table onto the floor, where it lay in a pool of light thrown by the hurricane lamp that hung from a hook on the tent pole. A single pear-shaped jewel with the subtle, smoky iridescence of a pigeon's feather…

It was Hira Lal's earring.

Ash's body emptied itself of breath and he stood rigid, staring down at it for a full three minutes before he bent stiffly and picked it up.

It was incredible that after all these years he should actually have thought of this thing only an hour or so ago, and seen it clearly in his mind's eye. The fabulous black pearl that had so infuriated Biju Ram, who suspected rightly – that it was worn in deliberate parody of the single earring that he himself wore, and that its rarity made his own diamond look flashy and meretricious by contrast.

The pearl glowed in the lamp-light as though it was alive, and looking at it Ash knew beyond any shadow of doubt who had killed Hira Lal. And who had ordered it.

Biju Ram would certainly have accompanied Lalji on that fateful visit to Calcutta, and Biju Ram had hated Hira Lal and envied his possession of the black pearl. The murder itself would have been the brain-child of Janoo-Rani, who had probably planned it down to the last detail before the travellers even set out, so that Biju Ram would only have had to wait until they were in tiger country – preferably in an area where there was known to be a man-eater – before putting it into operation. But Janoo should have known that he would never be able to resist keeping that priceless bauble, even though its retention would brand him a murderer and he would never dare wear it. Its beauty, as well as its rarity and value, had obviously overweighed those considerations and made it seem worth any risk, and Biju Ram must have carried it about with him ever since.

There must still be any number of people who even now would recognize that pearl on sight, as Ash had done, because no one who had seen it was likely to have seen another. It was doubtful if a pair to it could have been found in all India, and only greed – or hate? – could have made Biju Ram keep such a damning piece of evidence against himself. No wonder he had torn Ash's tent apart trying to find it. The thing was as dangerous as a
krait
, the little brown snake whose bite is swift death.

Ash weighed it thoughtfully in his hand and wondered why on earth he had not instantly known the identity of the man he had grappled with in the dark. Looking back on it there were so many things that should have told him, little things that should have made it perfectly clear, like size and shape – and smell. Biju Ram had always used scent, and the man who had ambushed him had smelled of orris-root. But at that time he had been far too angry to be conscious of anything except the desire to kill, and it was only now that he recalled the reek of orris-root, and realized, too, that Biju Ram no longer wore the vivid colours that he had been addicted to in the old days, but in conscious (or unconscious?) imitation of his dead rival, had taken to wearing grey. And only grey.

The blood-stained rag on the table smelt unpleasantly – though not of orris-root – and Ash tossed it out of the tent door and did not care who saw it or how many questions it evoked, because he knew now that it had nothing whatever to do with Juli. She had never come into it at all, and if he had not had a guilty conscience on her behalf he would have seen the real reason for that murderous attack long ago, and not wasted time concealing clues from his friends and hiding his own head in the sand for fear that any investigation must involve her.

The motive had been a very simple one. He had merely been looking at things the wrong way round, and it had taken the sight of Hira Lal's earring to set his brain working clearly. Now, suddenly, it was as though he had been presented with a mirror, and facing it, could make sense at last of something that had hitherto confused him because it had been written backwards…

Biju Ram had no interest at all in Anjuli-Bai, nor had he recognized, in Pelham-Sahib, the little boy who had once been the butt of his cruel jokes. He had meant to kill Ash for precisely the same reason that Janoo-Rani had meant to kill Ashok – because he had interfered, and was interfering, with a plot to assassinate the heir. It was as simple as that – and he had not seen it because he had been blinded by a preconceived idea.

Knowing that Biju Ram had been in the late Rani's pay for many years, and that it was she herself who had appointed him a member of Jhoti's personal suite, Ash had persisted in thinking of him as the
Nautch
-girl's creature – and Jhoti was the
Nautch
-girl's son. So, if it came to that, was Nandu. But then, if rumour was true, Nandu had murdered his mother and later (this at least was true, for there were a number of witnesses to prove it) he had quarrelled violently with Biju Ram. The enmity between them had reached such proportions that when Nandu had refused to allow his young brother to accompany the bridal party to Bhithor, Biju Ram had taken it upon himself to incite Jhoti to defy the order and escape, and had then metaphorically burned his boats by personally accompanying the runaway.

Taking all these events into consideration (and bearing in mind that Biju Ram was, in truth, about as trustworthy as a scorpion) Ash had decided that his old enemy was involved in a plot to have Nandu either murdered or deposed and replaced by Jhoti – who on account of his age would for some years be only a puppet ruler, and therefore could be used by the plotters to further their own ends and feather their own nests. It had seemed a reasonable assumption, since it fitted in with all the known facts – except one that Ash, from his knowledge of Biju Ram, should not have missed: that Biju Ram had always known on which side his bread was buttered, and that the moment – it became clear that Nandu, and not the
Nautch-girl,
was going to be the real power in the state, he would have lost no time in changing his allegiance.

Looked at in this light, the pattern altered like the design in a kaleidoscope when the tube is twisted. The same pieces were there, but in a different order, and Ash saw now why there had had to be a loud and public quarrel, and why Jhoti had been refused permission to leave Karidkote and then allowed to escape. And why no one had been sent after him to fetch him back.

‘I should have seen it before,’ thought Ash bitterly, which was true enough, for the reasons were perfectly clear and would have been all along if only he had taken the trouble to question the evidence instead of accepting it at its face value. It was no consolation to realize that others had been equally gulled, for he, of all people, should have known better – and if this was what falling in love did to one, then perhaps there was something to be said after all for the official view, so infuriatingly expressed by his Commanding Officer and Major Harlowe when he had wanted to marry Belinda, that any junior officer who allowed himself to ‘lose his head over a petticoat’ was no use to the army and had better retire from active service and grow turnips.

Ash sat down on the end of his camp bed and looked at the evidence from another angle – something he should have done long ago…