The Last Kashmiri Rose

by Barbara Cleverly

  Joe kicked the Luger to the far side of the room, drew his own pistol covering Prentice and began, ‘Giles Prentice, I arrest …’

  His words were cut short by a cry of impatience and another shot from Nancy’s gun. She hit Prentice a second time in the chest and began to move carefully into the room, covering him every inch of the way.

  Pale and haggard, Nancy gazed unwinkingly into Prentice’s eyes. Harshly she spoke to him, ‘Look at me, Prentice! Look! What are you seeing? You know so much about fear, don’t you! Are you face to face at last with your worst fear? A white-faced, sharp-tongued Englishwoman? A memsahib who hates you? A memsahib who’s just put three bullets into you and who’s about to put a fourth one in your neck?’

  She raised her pistol to his neck.

  Prentice rocked on his heels and seemed about to collapse. A dribble of blood flowed from each corner of his mouth. He lurched forward and groped at the desk for support, his eyes never leaving Nancy’s face. But he did not fall. With sudden convulsive strength, he reeled towards the open door. Half staggering, half running, he fled clumsily down the passage and towards the back door and the servants’ quarters, leaving bloody hand prints on the wall, leaving a trail of blood on the floor.

  With a curse, Nancy fired at his back and made to run after him.

  Joe put out a restraining hand. ‘No! Leave him, Nancy! Care for the living. Midge! She’s in her room. Go and look after her. She’s drugged, unconscious, in danger!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Nancy. ‘We found her. Dickie’s with her. She’s unconscious but she’s alive. When you didn’t turn up to do your shift I checked your bungalow. Naurung had had the same thought and we guessed you’d have come here.’

  ‘Dickie’s here? Then – between you – get her out of here, for God’s sake! She mustn’t see this. She mustn’t wake to this!’

  There was a confusion of voices and hurried footsteps in the hall. Dickie emerged from the shattered bedroom with Midge in his arms while Andrew, leaning on Naurung’s arm, limped awkwardly into the house. He stopped and looked aghast at the bloodstains, sniffing the smell of cordite, the sound of the shots still ringing in his ears.

  ‘Nancy!’ he said. His voice was almost a groan. ‘Nancy! Say you’re all right!’

  Clumsily he took her in his arms while tears ran down his face.

  ‘I heard shooting. Oh, God! I thought you were another victim! That devil! Where is Prentice?’

  ‘Come with me,’ said Joe. ‘We’re going to find out. He’s gone off with four of Nancy’s bullets in him. And Nancy – go with Dickie.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Naurung with sudden informality, ‘do, Bibi-ji, as the Commander says.’

  ‘And you, Naurung – you’re in charge here now. Let no one in. Do what you have to do.’

  ‘Sahib,’ said Naurung, ‘be careful. The cobra has slid into his hole.’

  In a voice of cold resolution Andrew replied to him. ‘I’m armed.’

  They set off down the passage following the trail of blood.

  ‘I can guess where he’s going.’ said Andrew. ‘At the bottom of this garden there’s the river and he usually has a boat moored down there. A few hundred yards away and you’re into the Indian town. If he gets as far as that we’ve lost him for good.’

  ‘He’s not going to the Indian town,’ said Joe.

  They walked carefully out into the moonlit garden, through the hedge and into the unkempt garden of Prentice’s old house. Here, perpetually torn by trailing rose briars and picking their way with difficulty through the undergrowth, they found at last a little path and followed it together. In his clumsy haste, Andrew cannoned into a mohwa tree bringing down a cascade of heavily scented waxy blossoms.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Joe, ‘he may yet be armed.’

  They moved silently on.

  The Mogul garden house was now in plain sight and, in spite of his foreboding, Joe paused for a moment, struck by its beauty. Pale and serene in the moonlight it seemed deliberately to set itself apart from the bloody doings of that night. Its Islamic dome rose to the starlit sky; fretted shutters closed its windows and a cascade of small fragrant red roses trailed and climbed. Joe pointed silently at the open door.

  Andrew took out his gun and one on either side of the door they stood and listened for any sounds. There were none. Joe nodded and they entered. At first they could see nothing but after a while they became aware of Prentice, who seemed to be kneeling across the foot of a charpoy, his head buried in his arms.

  Joe dropped on one knee beside him, parted his drapery and felt for his heart. Holding up a bloodstained hand he said, ‘Dead. At last.’

  ‘What was he doing?’ said Andrew in wonderment. ‘Why did he come here?’

  Joe took a match from his pocket and struck it. Seeing a small lamp on a table, he lit it and held it up. The room was lined with patterned cupboards, each painted in glowing colours in the manner of the Mogul empire with lovingly depicted, and no less lovingly restored, scenes from Mogul mythology. On a table there were set out paints and brushes. The room had something of the quality of a shrine.

  With surprising tenderness, Andrew reached forward and took Prentice by the shoulder, turning him over on his back. The dead hands clutched – of all incongruous things – a pressed flower which might once have been red and a battered school exercise book from which, as Andrew disturbed him, a sheaf of papers and photographs fell to the floor. Joe picked one up and saw a strikingly beautiful young man. Smiling, he stood by a river naked to the waist in a pair of cotton drawers. The next photograph showed the same figure a few years earlier mounted on a pony. The third Joe recognised. He had seen the same photograph in the Prentice family album, a laughing, handsome man in whose glossy dark hair was twined a spray of roses. The photographs told the story of Chedi Khan’s youth and young manhood. Happy to the last. Beautiful to the last.

  ‘Who’s this?’ said Andrew. ‘Who could this possibly be?’

  ‘It’s Chedi Khan,’ said Joe. ‘Eternally the love of Prentice’s life.’ And he explained.

  They turned from the photographs to the exercise book across the front of which was stamped ‘ST LUKE’S MISSION AND SCHOOL. ARMZAN KHEL.’ The pages were stained with Prentice’s blood and they opened them one by one.

  ‘A child’s exercise book,’ said Andrew. ‘A child learning to write in English, it seems.’

  ‘Chedi Khan,’ said Joe. ‘Prentice sent him to school. St Luke’s Mission. Anglican Fathers but he ran away twice and each time went back to him.’

  They turned the pages over and searched on, coming at last to a page of clear writing – evidently an exercise. ‘How’s your Hindustani?’ asked Joe. ‘Can you read this?’

  ‘Ought to be able to,’ said Andrew, tracing the writing with his forefinger. ‘Let me see … Well, it says, “To G.P. from C.K.” No puzzle about that. Now, what’s this? Er … “Don’t stop me following you” … I think that’s right … “because wherever you are … I will follow you …” Here, wait a minute,’ said Andrew. ‘I know this! Dammit, this is a translation from the Bible! Just the sort of thing, I suppose, the Fathers would have set as a writing exercise or a translation into Hindustani.’

  He half closed his eyes in an effort to remember the text and slowly recited:

  ‘“Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for wherever thou goest, I will go, and wherever thou lodgest, I will lodge: my people shall be thy people and thy God my God.

  ‘“Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so unto me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘From the Book of Ruth,’ said Andrew, marvelling.

  ‘It’s a love letter,’ said Joe. ‘It’s Chedi Khan’s declaration to Prentice when he sent him away to school. “… if aught but death part thee and me …” That’s it. That’s what it was all about. And Prentice saw it as the most beautiful th
ing in his life. The only thing in his life. Andrew, we can only touch the fringe of this!’

  Joe sat back on his heels and Andrew sat on the floor.

  ‘Well,’ said Andrew, ‘as you say, that says it all.’

  ‘Not quite all,’ Joe said. He held up the bloodstained exercise book and opened it at the last page. ‘This does say it all though.’

  The writing was Prentice’s, cursive and carelessly sloping.

  ‘“And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept and as he went thus he said, ‘Oh, Absalom, my son, my son. Would God I had died for thee.’ G.P. 1910”’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ANDREW CLOSED HIS eyes in exhaustion and pity. He leant back against the charpoy and after a while reached out and took Joe’s hand. ‘Well done!’ he said. ‘You did it.’

  ‘Did it?’ said Joe bitterly. ‘God! What a mess!’

  ‘No one could have done more. I can think of no one who could have done as much.’

  ‘Prentice?’ said Joe. ‘What about Prentice? What can I think of him?’

  ‘Think this – that he was an evil man, a cruel and a deadly man and he’s gone to his reward. And as for Nancy – my wife! – well, by God, Joe, I’m proud of her! And think of something else – Midge is alive in this bloodstained house and that was where it was all tending.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Joe. ‘Nothing whatever. I just let events unroll. And Prentice’s death – that was no doing of mine. And Midge is alive and that was no doing of mine either.’

  ‘Rubbish, man,’ said Andrew firmly. ‘You did everything! You got to her just in time. You worked it out. I saw that room – the bonfire. A few more minutes and he’d have applied the match.’

  ‘But what the hell do we do now? How can we find words to explain all this to Midge?’

  ‘We can’t leave Prentice here,’ said Andrew with sudden decision, attempting to get to his feet. Joe hauled him up and balanced him. Once he was steady on his feet Andrew took command. ‘Get hold of Naurung. We’ll carry the body back up to the house.’ He added with embarrassment, ‘I’ll make that an order, Joe. Carry him up to the house!’

  ‘We’re disturbing the evidence,’ said Joe. ‘He should lie where he was killed.’

  ‘For whose inspection, Joe? Yours and mine. You are the police representative appointed by the Governor to handle this and you are immediately responsible to me. I am the Collector of Panikhat. I am the Law Officer. Do I have to tell the world that the commander of a famous and distinguished cavalry regiment heartlessly killed four women – wives of his fellow officers – over a period, that he attempted to murder his own daughter and that he was shot to death by the Collector’s wife? How does it sound?’

  ‘Not the world,’ said Joe. ‘No, the world, perhaps, need not know but there is one person at least who must hear the truth.’

  Leaving Andrew to watch over the body, Joe made his way back up the track to the bungalow and called Naurung. They set off down the garden together. With difficulty they carried Prentice and laid him on his bed. They looked down on him, on that bitter, vengeful face softened in death.

  ‘It’s a noble face,’ said Joe consideringly.

  ‘It’s the face of a devil!’ said Naurung hotly. ‘He deserved to die. Over and over again. Would that I could make him suffer as he made others suffer! God will not forgive him and I, Naurung Singh, will never forgive him! But now I understand what must be done.’

  He took a box of matches from his pocket and lit a small lamp, setting it on the table beside Prentice’s head. By its flickering light, it seemed for a moment that, in death, that violent man was smiling.

  Naurung turned with surprising authority to Andrew.

  ‘Now, sahib, I beg – go back to the memsahib and to Missy Sahib and take the Commander with you. Leave me here. I am in charge of the crime scene. I will go and sit on the verandah and wait for the morning. Perhaps I may go to sleep. People are notoriously careless when they are asleep. Especially after what has happened.’

  ‘Andrew!’ said Joe urgently. ‘Just reflect what you’re doing! The suppression of evidence …’

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ said Andrew with affection, ‘you’re eternally the Good Centurion! You know I’m right. Naurung – am I right?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, sahib.’ He turned to Joe. ‘Think of Missy. She will wake to a tragic accident. She will not wake to the bonfire, the bloodstains, the knowledge that her father is many times a murderer. I think for her, I think not for police procedures.’

  Kitty’s prophetic remark replayed in his head: ‘There are the living to consider and to me they are more important than the dead. Perhaps even more important than the truth.’ A view so opposed to his own, so at variance with his training and beliefs he could not accept it. What could be more important than the truth? But perhaps he was asking the wrong question. Shouldn’t he be asking who could be more important than the truth? And the answer was clear and immediate. Midge was. Nancy was. Andrew was.

  Without further question, Joe offered Andrew his arm and they set off up the dark street together.

  ‘Getting a bit old for this sort of thing! Long past my bedtime. Shan’t be sorry when we can get back to normal life,’ Andrew murmured between clenched teeth as he laboured on beside Joe. ‘See Bulstrode in the morning. Not now. Give Naurung a chance to tidy up.’

  ‘Things as they are at the moment, I think even Bulstrode might notice something out of the ordinary had happened!’ said Joe.

  They paused at the end of the drive to the Drummond bungalow to give Andrew time to get his breath and both men looked up at the sky. It was the still moment before dawn.

  ‘Good Lord, we’ll be hearing Reveille soon,’ said Andrew. ‘There’s a lot to arrange. Funeral for a start. I’ll talk to Neddy about it. The Greys are very good at that sort of thing. Have to notify George Jardine, I suppose … Press announcement … I take it Midge is his next of kin. This is all up to me as her trustee and Giles’ executor …’

  His voice muttered on. Already his official personality was taking over from the desperate participant in the bloody doings of the night. But Joe could not yet fight his way clear. He turned and looked back down towards Curzon Street. A white mist from the river was rising, curling its way through the garden wilderness and reaching out to the bungalow. ‘The Churel,’ thought Joe. ‘She’s come to gather him in. She will have her revenge for those innocent souls. God, I’m tired!’

  They stood together for a moment, lost in thought. Finally Andrew said, ‘Come on, only a few more steps! Let’s get off the street. Too embarrassing to be seen out here together, covered in blood and gaping at the moon.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  SAFFRON SKY TO the east was announcing dawn as Joe reached the stables. Running a hand over his face, he realised that he was both bloodstained and unshaven and to any passer-by would look disreputable and suspicious. He did the best he could; quickly plunging his head into a stable bucket and taking a towel from a nail nearby, he cleaned himself up and revived himself. He had not misjudged his man. Walking rapidly, William Somersham, punctual to the minute, came in view.

  He stopped dead at the sight of Joe.

  ‘Sandilands!’ he said. ‘You get earlier and earlier! What brings you here? I’m riding out. Won’t you join me?’ And, looking more carefully at Joe and taking in the bloodstains, ‘What’s happened? What’s happened to you?’

  ‘Somersham,’ said Joe, taking him by the elbow, ‘William, there’s something you have to know.’

  At once the horses began to stir uneasily and sniff the air. A moment later the smell of smoke borne on the wind off the river reached Joe’s nostrils. ‘Come with me,’ he said and led Somersham to the door. The stars were dimming, the moon hung on the horizon ahead of them. Joe pointed down towards Curzon Street.

  ‘Look there!’

  The river mist was now swirling, shroudlike, about the bungalow. As they watched, silenced b
y the eeriness of the scene, a denser whiteness began to flow from the open doors and windows.

  ‘Good God!’ said Somersham. ‘What is this? What are you showing me? It’s fire! Is that Prentice’s house? On fire? Again? What the hell’s happening, Sandilands? I can’t believe this!’

  Transfixed, they gazed on as sparks began to shoot from the roof and a yellow flame began to lick its way along the edge of the thatch. The yellow flames turned to shooting sheets of orange leaping upwards and, with an exclamation of dismay, they watched as a blood red fireball burst out from the roof and hung momentarily over the house.

  ‘Christ! You know I’ve seen this before, twelve years ago,’ said Somersham. ‘Surely not again!’

  The rapid clamour of a bugle shattered the silence of the morning.

  ‘We must go down there,’ said Somersham urgently. ‘We must run!’

  ‘No! No, William, please listen to me. I know there’s no one alive in there. There’s something you have to know.’

  As they watched, with commendable speed a horse-drawn fire engine galloped up from the infantry lines, furiously driven by a bearded Sikh and followed by the Shropshire fire picket at the double.

  ‘Stay, William,’ said Joe, ‘and listen to me. The last time we spoke you asked if I was getting any nearer a solution.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ said Somersham. ‘You gave me hope.’

  ‘I can give you more than hope now. I have the murderer.’

  ‘Peg’s murderer?’

  ‘Not only your wife – Joan Carmichael, Sheila Forbes, Alicia Simms-Warburton and – but for the mercy of God – his own daughter. It was Giles Prentice.’

  ‘Prentice, you say? Prentice did these foul things? And he’s still alive?’

  ‘No,’ said Joe. ‘Dead. He’s dead. He admitted his crimes. He would have murdered his daughter. He was shot in the act.’

  Dazed, Somersham turned around and went to sit down heavily on the straw bale.