Ragtime in Simla

by Barbara Cleverly

  The moonlight filtering through the moving branches lit up and concealed her features by turns, reflecting her uncertainty. Joe looked with pity at the lovely, defenceless face. Who was she able truly to trust? he wondered. Who had she ever been able to trust? Used, deceived, passed from man to man and ending up literally in the arms of the law. In the sheltering arms of a man who was far from being her protector, a man who threatened her liberty and perhaps her life. And yet he recognized that he was feeling a deep urge to protect her, to keep her safe from her enemy. Time to move on.

  He rose and pulled her to her feet, tucking her revolver into his pocket. ‘It’s getting late. I’ll escort you back to the Mall and you can pick up your rickshaw. If we stay away together any longer there’ll be much worse rumours circulating in Simla tomorrow.’ He steered her towards the staircase. ‘And as we go, I’ll tell you how you can help us with this next bit.’

  Joe extended a hand to steady Alice as she stepped into her rickshaw and, swept by an impulse, stood, her hand in his, and by a further impulse stooped and raised it to his lips and kissed it. They stood for a moment looking at each other in silence.

  ‘Joe,’ Alice breathed, ‘I wish I knew a bit more about you. You know everything there is to know about me and I know nothing, nothing whatever about you. That’s strange.’

  ‘There’s nothing to know really,’ said Joe. ‘I’m very pedestrian.’

  Alice looked at him, considering, for a moment. ‘That’s the impression you try to give but I think there’s more to it than that.’ And then in a low voice she called to the rickshaw men to proceed.

  Creaking, with the patter of running feet and the tinkle of warning bells, the rickshaw set off down the curving road, leaving Joe watching it and her disappear. ‘You know all there is to know about me,’ she had said. Not true, thought Joe. The rest of my life wouldn’t be long enough to find out all there is to know about that very remarkable, very complex and, let me admit it to myself, that very seductive girl. What’s that charge that’s sometimes levied? ‘Interfering with a witness’? That’s one witness with whom I would so happily interfere!

  He turned to go on his way but out of the shadow there came a gently mocking voice. ‘ “Oh, what can ail thee, Knight at Arms, alone and palely loitering?” ’

  Charlie Carter stepped into the dim street light. ‘Loitering, Commander? Loitering with intent to commit a felony?’

  Joe was quite extraordinarily pleased to see him and said so. ‘Though how the hell you knew where I was I don’t suppose you’ll ever tell me!’

  ‘Oh, it’s not difficult! I picked up your trail after the seance. So did Alice’s rickshaw men, a couple of pi-dogs joined in the chase, “and after them, the parson ran, the sexton and the squire”. The whole of Simla’s agog by now, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Well, whatever,’ said Joe, ‘I’m devilish pleased to see you! And I’ll tell you – I could really do with a drink. It’s been quite an evening one way and another!’

  ‘Funny you should say that – that is exactly what Sir George said to me. Indeed, I’m under orders to bring you to him and if it’s a drink you want I can think of nowhere you’ll get a better one. We’ll walk, shall we? Clear the brain and you can run through some of the highlights of your tête-à-tête with Alice.’

  When they reached the Residence lights were burning and servants moving about.

  ‘Sir George has had a dinner party this evening and it’s only just dispersing,’ said Charlie. ‘There, look, that’s the last carriage moving off now. Step in here with me.’

  They turned together and went in through a side door. They were greeted by Sir George in white tie and decorations. It had evidently been a formal occasion.

  ‘Flawless timing!’ came his booming voice. ‘Trust Scotland Yard! Been waiting for you. Didn’t know quite where you were or what you were up to. Come in here – we’ll go into the library. Now, what can I offer you? Coffee? Of course. Brandy? Brandy for heroes, you know and here we are, three heroes in a row.’

  He clapped his hands and shouted, and almost before he had done so glasses and a decanter appeared and a tall silver coffee pot.

  ‘Now,’ said George when they were seated, ‘I’ve heard about the seance. Quite fascinating! Most irregular! Can’t imagine how you got Charlie Carter to co-operate in your nefarious scheme but it seems to have produced a result. And now I want to know – what happened next? It is known that you disappeared into the night with the attractive Mrs Conyers-Sharpe but more than that is not known beyond the fact that you spent an unconscionable length of time hiding, I might almost say canoodling, in an unfrequented garden. And I dare say you exchanged more than words! Set your mind at rest, however – I’m only interested in the words! Whatever else passed — ’

  ‘George!’ said Joe. ‘For God’s sake! Don’t let your imagination run away with you! But it is true – I have a lot to tell you.’

  ‘Well,’ said George, ‘I won’t say “the night is young” because it isn’t very, but here we are and we are at your service.’

  Joe sipped from the proffered glass, lit the proffered cigar, crossed his legs, lay back in the cushioned armchair and collected his thoughts. ‘Firstly,’ he began, ‘it is admitted to me, though not necessarily or even probably to anybody else, that, incredible as it may seem, there was a switch. She whom we have known as Alice Conyers, whom I shall always think of as Alice Conyers, is in fact Isobel Newton otherwise known as Isabelle de Neuville.’ And he explained the events of the Beaune rail crash. His audience listened spellbound.

  ‘That,’ said George, ‘is the most incredible story I have ever heard!’ And to Charlie, ‘Did you have even the remotest suspicion?’

  ‘Never,’ said Charlie. ‘Never in a thousand years. In fact, were it not from her own lips I wouldn’t believe it now. Not sure I do believe it.’

  ‘Secondly,’ Joe continued, ‘Alice is being blackmailed. By someone or some people, male or female, Indian or English, who know and have known for three years her true identity. And she has paid. The blackmailers are desperate to keep her in place and will do anything including murder to do so. It’s absolutely true – find the blackmailer and we’ve found our murderer.’

  Joe explained the system whereby payments were passed through Robertson. ‘And all we have to do is intercept the next payment. I’ve told Alice to carry on as though nothing has happened. If we all do this, the blackmailer will assume we are unaware of the switch. Now could be our moment to close in. It’s likely if he or they conform to pattern, and so far the behaviour has been very consistent, that a demand will soon be made for the removal of Korsovsky. We must lean heavily on Robertson, extract everything he knows and make him cooperate.’

  ‘You make it sound so easy,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I’m not deceived,’ said George. ‘I understand the problems. If we could prove it – and that’s not as straightforward as it might seem at first sight – we could bring an action for fraud against Alice but as far as the further investigations are concerned, what would be the advantage of that? None, as I believe. If the blackmailer realizes his game is up then he’ll disappear.’

  ‘So you’re intending no move against Alice?’ said Charlie, a note of indignation creeping into his voice.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said George. ‘But I’m certainly not going to act precipitately. But I particularly ask you, Joe, Carter, to treat Alice’s revelations in confidence between the three of us for the moment. This is a situation which bristles with complexity – criminal complexity, legal complexity. Indeed, just to start the ball rolling, answer me this – who has Alice (I’ll go on calling her Alice) defrauded?’

  ‘Well,’ said Joe, who had been asking himself the same question, ‘I conclude that she has defrauded real Alice, little Alice. Little Alice is dead so she has defrauded little Alice’s heirs at law whoever they might be and little Alice’s heir at law would, I suppose, be her brother Lionel and Lionel is dead so who do we
come down to? Well, you may be surprised to learn that as far as I can work it out we come down to Reggie. No longer her husband of course but the joint inheritor from real Alice’s grandfather’s will. She fraudulently made off with fifty-one per cent of ICTC which would otherwise have reverted to him. At least I suppose that’s right?’ he concluded dubiously.

  ‘Reggie!’ said George explosively. ‘Bloody fellow! Can’t stand him!’

  ‘Didn’t think much of him,’ said Joe.

  ‘Can’t stand him,’ echoed Charlie.

  ‘Well, that’s fine,’ said Sir George. ‘We “unmask” – I apologize for the word – Alice, she is disgraced, her marriage is null and void, her position in ICTC probably completely compromised, the work she does in Simla and Bombay will fall apart and we elevate that drunken oaf Reggie to a position of trust and influence. Sounds like a jolly good evening’s work, don’t you think, chaps?’

  ‘George,’ said Joe, ‘what on earth are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying, would you like to take shares in a company I’m thinking of founding? A little private company? I’m going to call it Fraudsters Anonymous or The Alice Conyers-Sharpe Protection Society. Any takers?’

  With the warmest memories of his last minutes with Alice at the foot of the garden steps, Joe was tempted. With no such memories Charlie Carter was profoundly shocked. ‘You can’t be serious, sir!’ he said indignantly. ‘You can’t be preparing to compound a felony! Fraud is a felony and leaving aside the moral implications I don’t believe you’d ever get away with it.’

  ‘All right then,’ said Sir George, ‘if you won’t go all the way with me, and I acknowledge that there is a problem, let us at least agree on a stay of execution. Let us leave matters as they are. Let this complex situation roll on its way and let us exercise every sort of vigilance to follow it through until it leads us to our killer. I’m not issuing an order – I’m not quite sure if I’d be in a position to issue an order of that sort – I’m doing no more than invite your co-operation.’

  He looked briskly from one to the other. ‘Do I have it?’

  ‘Yes, Sir George,’ said Carter.

  ‘Yes, Sir George,’ said Joe.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  « ^ »

  Joe and Charlie Carter set out to walk through the streets of Simla, heading together for the establishment of Mr Robertson, the jeweller.

  ‘You’ve read Kim, I think you said?’ said Charlie as they went along the Mall.

  ‘Yes, indeed. And it did occur to me that perhaps Cecil Robertson has too! For a moment, stepping into his shop on Wednesday morning I thought I was entering the world of Lurgan Sahib!’

  ‘One of the best descriptions Kipling ever wrote! But I don’t think Robertson does it to play to the tourists. As far as his shop is concerned time has stood still. It’s been there for as long as I can remember and Robertson is not the first owner by any means. He continues a tradition. He performs an essential service. Lots of Indian families treat him as if he were a bank. Only the most informal records are kept but a satisfactory service is offered, it would seem. Many people prefer to deal personally with someone they know and can trust their money to rather than a faceless European bank with head offices in Leadenhall Street, EC1. No, he’s a man of many parts, is our Mr Robertson.’

  ‘Not above a little smuggling?’

  ‘Certainly not above a little smuggling. But then, almost nobody who lives in these parts is above a little smuggling. Jewellery, gold, opium, hashish… their passage back and forth over the frontiers is as old as the Himalayas. The government of India doesn’t worry too much. A little jewel smuggling this way and that doesn’t do any harm, but gold – now that’s a different matter. We wouldn’t want to see large quantities of that disappearing north over the border into Asia. Cecil Robertson has always been totally co-operative with us. In fact he’s given us two or three valuable tips over the years. We don’t interfere with the movement of gemstones – mostly on their way to China – and in exchange he lets us know… about other things.’

  ‘Other things?’

  ‘Yes, boys and girls. Jewels going into China, pretty boys and girls coming back again on their way to Kashmir through Chandigarh and on eventually to the Gulf. Poor little devils! We got a tip from Robertson last year. We stopped a bullock cart… shots were exchanged if you can believe… and there they were – drugged, like a lot of dormice. So, you might say, I owe Robertson a good turn. I don’t suppose that the trade troubles his conscience much, it’s as good a way as any of keeping in with me – slipping a bit of information from time to time. I suppose that’s the way to run an Empire. A little bit of accommodation, if you know what I mean.’

  They paused outside Robertson’s shop. Robertson himself emerged in his shirt-sleeves taking an elaborate farewell of a Bengali customer.

  ‘Spare us a couple of moments, Robertson?’ said Charlie. ‘I think you’ve met my friend Joe Sandilands? Fact is, we could do with a little help. May we come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Robertson unctuously with something between a salute and a salaam. Joe remembered that he was said to have a Scottish father and a Persian mother and looking at that mysterious face he was very ready to believe this, supported as it was by the accent. Strange! Very much the English of a man of whom it was not the first language and yet, on the other hand, a perceptible flavour of upper class English as spoken in the Raj.

  His eye slid over Charlie Carter without much interest but dwelt on Joe. ‘Come in,’ he said again. ‘Come right through.’ He said a few words to an assistant and, calling into the back premises, addressed a few more to an unseen presence who answered deferentially.

  The shop, Joe recalled from his earlier brief visit, operated on two levels. Outwardly there was the stock in trade of any well-equipped jeweller’s shop but behind this was an accumulation that it would be impossible to classify. Objects Tibetan, Chinese, Indian and even European. Objects doubtless from the collapse of the Russian Empire, icons and pectoral crosses and a few items of classical antiquity. Joe remembered that Alexander the Great had passed this way. He tried to suppress the unprofessional fascination which these things had awakened. His hand went out to a small carved ivory figure and he held it to the light. A large-eyed, full-breasted woman held in her hand a knot of golden snakes.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Robertson surprisingly. ‘From Crete, I suspect. Minoan culture. The snake goddess. Question – how on earth did it get here? I can’t tell you anything about the provenance. Probably stolen from the excavations. It’s not expensive. Are you interested?’

  ‘Yes. Very,’ said Joe. ‘Some other time.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. I had assumed that this was an official visit.’

  He led them into an airless little room and turned on a feeble electric light. He turned some cushions aside to reveal three chairs which he indicated with a hospitable gesture. ‘And now, how may I help the police?’

  ‘What I have to say is in confidence, Robertson,’ said Charlie in a bland official tone.

  Robertson nodded and waited.

  ‘It concerns Alice Conyers-Sharpe.’

  ‘Really?’ Robertson’s eye flicked for a second to Joe.

  ‘We are worried,’ said Charlie confidentially. ‘You may say that it has nothing to do with us but she is a prominent citizen – a good client of yours, I believe – and many people in Simla depend on her. It has been revealed to us that this lady we all so admire is being cheated. Has any idea of this sort occurred to you?’

  Joe decided that Robertson was making only a show of considering this question. He replied with confidence, ‘Yes. But it is not my place to question or advise or comment on Mrs Sharpe’s arrangements. All acknowledge her to be a splendid businesswoman, successful, decisive and well advised. Who am I to speculate on the soundness of her transactions? So long as her requirements of me are within the law, Superintendent, there is nothing I am called upon to do but ful
fil them.’

  ‘It is known,’ said Joe, ‘that Mrs Sharpe deals consistently in jewels. We are making enquiries, with her knowledge and consent I should say, into specifically the purchases she makes twice yearly in April and October. Tell us how the exchange is managed from your end, will you?’

  After a moment’s consideration, Robertson got up and took down a file from a high shelf. He extracted a single sheet of paper and handed it to Carter. As he and Joe eagerly pored over it he explained. ‘I received that in October 1920.’

  On a plain sheet of white writing paper a short message had been written in English in neat capitals. Robertson recited the message as they read. ‘Mrs Sharpe will bring you a cheque for four thousand rupees biannually in April and October. When she arrives you will sell her jewels to the value of two thousand rupees. Select other jewels to the same value and place them in a blue box under the counter. Choose gems or pieces that are easily transportable and unremarkable. When a messenger asks for the blue box hand it over.’

  ‘And this has gone on as described. I performed the fourth regular transaction at the beginning of April.’

  ‘The regular transaction?’ asked Joe.

  Robertson paused. ‘There was a further one, out of pattern, you might say.’

  ‘And can you say precisely when this one occurred?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He selected another leaf from the file and handed it over. ‘You will see that the value varies. This one mentions the sum of three thousand rupees. And it is dated 1st May 1921. It was shortly after Mrs Sharpe’s brother was killed. I remember she was wearing black and she chose a diamond and jet mourning piece.’