The Last Kashmiri Rose

by Barbara Cleverly

  Joe made two slashes across his wrists.

  ‘That’s right. Outside edge to inside on each. With Peggy’s wounds it was outside to inside on the left and inside to outside on the right. Try that. Impossible, isn’t it? Well, not impossible perhaps but bloody unlikely if you’re killing yourself. A bit of fancy knife-work is going to be the last thing on your mind if you’re doing away with yourself, I would have thought.’

  ‘And the third thing?’ asked Joe.

  ‘The force used. Now Peggy was a strapping lass but I have strong doubts that she could have exerted the degree of strength that was shown. Her wrists weren’t just slashed – her hands were damn nearly severed.’

  ‘Thank you, Halloran,’ said Joe, scribbling in his notebook. ‘And lastly, can you tell me anything about the marks on her neck? They were even visible on the photographs Mrs Drummond took.’

  ‘Finger and thumb marks. I did manage to get a reference to that into the report, you’ll see. When I insisted that it couldn’t be suicide, Bulstrode interpreted the marks as evidence that Somersham had tried to strangle her before cutting her wrists.’

  ‘Are they consistent with a strangulation attempt in your estimation?’

  Halloran shrugged. ‘Not unless Somersham is deformed and has his hands on back to front. Look here,’ he said, getting to his feet and walking behind Joe. ‘There were thumb marks (pre-mortem) here on the back of the shoulders and finger marks here at the front at the base of her throat.’ He demonstrated the hold used. ‘That’s not how you’d go about strangling your wife.’

  ‘But it is exactly how you’d hold a wriggling woman down in a bath of water until she bled to death.’

  ‘Quite. Tell you something else, Sandilands. If you’ve seen the room you’ll have noticed the stains?’

  Joe nodded.

  ‘You should have seen them before they were cleaned! Sprayed all over the walls. She’d obviously thrashed around and waved her arms about in agony. You don’t do that if you’re killing yourself according to the Roman tradition. You sit quietly and wait for the end, thinking noble thoughts.’

  ‘But if you’re being killed surely you scream? If the murderer has both his hands on your shoulders, you are free to scream? And your servants and husband come running.’

  ‘Not if the person unknown has already gagged you,’ said Halloran. ‘Not something you could have made out on the photographs, however sharp Mrs Drummond’s Kodak lens! There were abrasions at the corners of her mouth, abrasions consistent with the application of a gag. Removed after the act because it was never found.’

  ‘One last question,’ said Joe. ‘You didn’t do a full postmortem investigation, I see – I wonder whether you were aware that Peggy Somersham was pregnant?’

  Halloran sat back in his chair, his surprise evident. ‘Good Lord, no!’ he said. ‘Oh, no! How bloody! No, she hadn’t been to consult me. Not unusual … they normally wait until they’re absolutely certain. This is terrible news, Sandilands! Bulstrode was pushing for burial – we don’t get the thirty hours before decomposition you get in London and the cause was very obvious …’ His voice trailed away and he looked uncomfortably through the window, lost in thought.

  ‘I think she had told no one but her husband, so no surprise,’ said Joe equably. ‘And I think it might be a good idea to keep it between ourselves at this stage.’

  ‘Certainly. Quite see why,’ agreed Halloran quickly. ‘And look here, Sandilands, off the record and stepping outside my job – the poor girl was murdered, we both know that – and I’m overjoyed that, belatedly, someone has picked this up. Rumour has it that we owe this to Nancy Drummond. Am I right? Determined girl! She’s got the ear of the Governor and now she’s got your ear too. And come to that, she’s got mine, begod!’

  Thanking him for his time and mutually expressing the hope that ‘we should meet at the Club one of these evenings … always glad to pick up the gossip from London …’ Joe resumed his ride.

  Naurung took him first along the dangerous mountain pass on which Sheila Forbes’ horse had shied. He dismounted at the place where the accident had happened and, lying down, peered over the edge into the void below. A dizzying drop, he noted, with no cushioning scree slope down which a well-clad memsahib might bounce between the precipice rim and the river bank many yards below. The river curled on its way between its dusty banks like a fat brown adder and Joe shivered as he conjured up the scene ten years ago when Mrs Forbes had fallen screaming into this abyss. He pictured her wearing a cumbersome pre-war riding habit, being suddenly ejected from her side-saddle and falling head first to her death.

  The place itself was full of ancient terror. Hard-nosed policeman he might be but Joe admitted to himself that he was sweating with fear. He wriggled carefully backwards on to the path and rose to his feet.

  Naurung eyed him for a moment and said, ‘This is a bad, bad place. The horses do not like it.’

  ‘Can’t say I’d stop for a picnic here myself. Let’s look about, shall we?’

  He turned and looked back the way they had come from the station. ‘Well-used track apparently but here, about fifty yards back, it narrows and a group of riders would have to split up and ride along in file.’ He looked in the northern direction. ‘And after this bend where the path runs right along the precipice between the edge and that large rock is another hundred yards – would you say a hundred? – before there’s a chance of bunching up again with your friends. Naurung, pass me the records, would you? It would be interesting to see where exactly in the file of horses Sheila Forbes was riding. Did Bulstrode record that?’

  ‘No, sahib, but I believe one of the witnesses mentions it.’

  Joe found the place and sat in the shelter of the rock to read the accounts of the accident given by the friends she had been riding with.

  ‘This is interesting, Naurung. Mrs Major Richardson – Emma – has this to say: “Sheila was riding her own pony, Rowan – she never rode any other – and began to fall behind almost at once. She called to us that Rowan was going short on his near hind and she was going to dismount to look at it. She signalled to us to go on without her. It must have been a stone or something lodged in the hoof because she got back into the saddle and carried on. By this time she was about a quarter of a mile behind. We waved to her and rode on, expecting her to catch us up. We were getting to the slow bit anyway, the bit where the path narrows and you have to go single file, and we lost sight of her when we wound around the rocks. We’d all passed the tight place and gathered together to wait for Sheila to come round the bend. She never did. The next thing was the most appalling scream. The horse was neighing and we realised something dreadful must have happened. We rode back and there was just the horse, Rowan, by the side of the path, shivering. No sign of Sheila. Cathy Brownlow looked over the edge and shouted, ‘There she is! I can see her!’

  ‘“Two of the party rode back to the station for help while the other three looked for a way down to the river bank. While we were casting about we came upon a saddhu by the road side …” A saddhu?’ Joe queried.

  ‘Yes. They are wandering holy men and I will say that I do not like them. For all their ritual washings they are dirty people. Some, I suppose, truly seek enlightenment and many stand on one leg for hours, perhaps days, on end. But I and others like me see them as dirty scoundrels who get what they can from foolish people – mostly from women – and what they get they spend on opium or on bhang. They daub their faces with wood ash and saffron. They wear a little pouch on a string and nothing else. They are really a naked people – very disgusting. I would chase them away and my father often did. They cover their bodies with ash and yellow paint and they are not polite to women. Oh, there are bad stories but they are holy people and must be allowed to behave as they have always behaved.’

  Joe resumed his reading. ‘“He told us how we could get down to the river. He didn’t speak any English but luckily Cathy can manage a bit of Hindustani and that seemed to work. We g
ave him a four anna piece and asked him if he’d seen anything. He said he’d seen the whole thing. The horse had shied at something in the path – a snake possibly – and had unseated Sheila.

  ‘“At the time it never occurred to us that he could have been responsible. He made no attempt to hide which he could easily have done in that terrain – I mean, you could hide a whole division in those rocks – and was really very helpful. For a saddhu. We offered him another four annas and he agreed to come back with us to the station and make a statement.”

  ‘And so on … I notice that there’s no statement from the beggar! Not surprised. He must have taken his annas and run.’ Joe shook his head and smiled at the credulity of women. ‘Still – good witness, Emma. Brave girl too. She managed to scramble down to the river with her friends and they found Sheila or rather Sheila’s body. It seems she had died instantly from a broken neck. I think this tells us almost everything we need to know. I would just like to have a talk with Sheila’s husband to round things off.’

  ‘Do you agree, sahib, that this was an unfortunate accident? Now that you have seen the dangers of the place …’

  ‘No, Naurung. Nor do I believe that an evil spirit exacted a sacrifice, though it’s tempting in this place to imagine it. No – Mrs Forbes was murdered. With deliberation, with calculation and in very cold blood!’

  They remounted and followed the trail for a further five miles until it arrived at the junction with one of the main roads to the station, a road which stopped abruptly at the river bank and continued across the other side north towards Calcutta.

  ‘This can’t be the main road north, can it?’ Joe asked, taking in the single small boat which made up the ferry service and which was just casting off on the further bank to make the crossing.

  ‘Oh no. Ten miles downstream there is a bigger road and there is a bridge. This is the road used by people going to the village of Jhalpani, two miles beyond the river.’

  Joe watched as the boat came steadily towards them, rowed along by one Indian pulling on the pair of oars. His back was towards them but they could easily make out the two faces of the Indian ladies he was ferrying. Joe’s gaze intensified as the boat reached the middle of the river.

  ‘Now that’s about where the ox-hide ferry was when it went under?’

  ‘Yes, sahib. At the centre. About forty yards from where we are standing.’

  ‘Do Englishwomen from the station often use this crossing?’

  ‘No. Very rarely. They would normally have no reason to cross the river here. They would have no business in Jhalpani. If they came out riding they would have broken off at the place I showed you five miles south where there is a road branching back to the station, sahib.’

  ‘Then what on earth was Mrs Captain Simms-Warburton doing risking her neck on an ox-hide raft?’

  Joe sighed. The heat was beginning to tire him and so much concentrated death was becoming unnerving. The slaughter on the Western Front which he had never expected to survive had disgusted and degraded him like every other man who had been involved but this digging up of dead memsahibs affected him quite differently. These were not soldiers expecting death at any moment; these were perfectly ordinary ladies, some happy, some dull, none outstanding apparently, and all being snuffed out in bizarre ways. Were they no more than random victims of their surroundings? People kept telling him, ‘Of course, India is a dangerous place, Joe. Watch out for …’

  But no one had mentioned ox-hide ferries.

  ‘There’s a cool spot under that tree over there, Naurung. Let’s have another look at the notes on Alicia Simms-Warburton, shall we? Here we are – coroner’s verdict: accidental death by drowning.

  ‘Now first things first, why was she going over? Here’s an account from her husband, written to the coroner whom he apparently seems to know as he addresses him as “Dear Wilfred”. This seems to be leading up to it:

  ‘“I curse the day when somebody told her there was a hatch of Camberwell Beauty butterflies over there. ‘The Mourning Cloak’ they call it. Ironic, don’t you think?

  ‘“As you know, Alicia was a keen lepidopterist. But – for the record – I mean really keen. She had thousands of butterflies in her collection. And she didn’t do it like most of the mems – just a way of passing the time by finding something pretty and sticking it in an album. No, she really knew about them. Have a look at her collection! All carefully pinned out and labelled. Good God, she even collected samples of their eggs, chrysalides and caterpillars – what have you – and stuck them in alongside. A really professional job. Up to museum standards. The servants were always bringing her samples of butterflies and insects but what she really liked to do was to go herself to examine what she called their habitat. There was one specimen that had long eluded her. This Camberwell Beauty thing. ‘Can’t you get one in England?’ I asked her. Apparently not. They’re even rarer back home than they are in India. And anyway I think it was the thrill of the chase that appealed, you know.

  ‘“Anyhow, word got to her that a Camberwell Beauty had been spotted on the other side of the river south of Jhalpani and that was it. She was off the very next day. Couldn’t wait for me to come home and escort her. I was away on tour in the mofussil and didn’t find out what had happened for a week. I hear it was through Prentice that she found out about the wretched thing. One of his bearers or somebody had spotted one. You’d better ask him. I know about all this because she’d rushed off and left an unfinished letter to her sister who’s as mad as she is … was … on her desk. I think you should probably see this but I’d like to have it back when you’ve finished with it.”’

  It was signed ‘John Simms-Warburton’.

  ‘And where, I wonder, is Captain Simms-Warburton now? Is he still on the station? Would you know, Naurung?’

  ‘Alas, sahib, he is dead. He was killed in the war.’

  ‘Pity. Well, let’s hear what the lady herself has to say.’

  The attached copy of an unfinished letter confirmed all that Captain Simms-Warburton had to say about his wife. Joe winced at the innocent enthusiasm with which Alicia communicated her coming coup to her sister Anne in Surrey.

  ‘“… news to make you turn positively green with envy, Anne! I have in my sights no less than – a Camber-well Beauty!! I heard just this morning from Colonel Prentice that they are to be found in a clump of willows on the river bank near a small native village just a few miles north of the station. What luck! His mali – that’s his gardener (see how I’m picking up the phrases!) – came to him and asked him to tell the memsahib who loves butterflies that there was a rare one near his own village. He described it and Colonel Prentice looked it up and there it was! And there shall I be very soon. The only problem will be crossing the river. You know how I feel about rivers! And John is not here to go with me – he’s off gashting round the countryside with ten other like-minded, pig-sticking shikari …”’

  Here the letter had broken off.

  ‘Well, this gets her to the scene. She came here, presumably on horseback, tethered it where we have left ours and climbed aboard the ferry. And look, over there, that’s where she was going – those willow trees! So she wouldn’t have needed transport on the other side, not even her horse. Now I think we have an account by an eyewitness here … yes … here it is. Signed by Gopal who was the ferryman involved on that day. Translated from the local native language by …’

  ‘By my father, sahib. He too was a sergeant in the police force at that time,’ said Naurung with pride.

  ‘He says, “I was the ferryman working on Friday the 12th of March 1913. Before noon an English lady arrived on horseback and asked me to take her across the river. She was alone. The ferry would only carry one lady in English skirts so the three people who arrived shortly after seeking to cross to the village waited on the bank for our return. Yes, sahib, there were also people waiting on the opposite bank. I started to paddle across when suddenly the two hides on the downstream side collapsed. The
air came out of them with a rush and the ferry capsized. The lady screamed and fell into the river. I think she could not swim. She struggled and sank under. I dived under to help her but the water is so dark I could not at first see her. I found her and pulled her to the surface but by then she was no longer conscious. I tried to swim with her to the bank but she was too heavy. Two of the men who had been waiting to cross jumped in to help me and between us we managed to get her to shore.”

  ‘And here is what one of the bystanders had to say: “The memsahib did not look at ease as she climbed on to the ferry. She was shouting a lot of instructions to the ferryman and took a long time to settle down. When they reached the middle of the river the left side of the raft sank under the water and the platform on which the memsahib was sitting tilted over, throwing her into the water. She was screaming and thrashing around in the water and then she sank under. The ferryman swam after the memsahib and dived under to find her. They were both under water for a very long time and we were watching, wondering what to do. Then they came to the surface again and my brother and I jumped in and swam out to help them. She was weighed down by water in her skirts and it was a struggle to get her back to land although we are both good swimmers. The ferryman was exhausted but the lady was dead.”

  ‘Mmm … Anything known about the hide boat, I wonder? Was it even examined?’

  Joe riffled through the documents relating to the drowning with disappointment. ‘Doesn’t seem to be anything here.’

  ‘It was never found,’ said Naurung confidently.