Act of Darkness

by Francis King

  The ayah did not move.

  Helen pointed at the door. ‘Out.’

  The ayah hesitated. Then, her spine rigid and her head high, as though she were carrying a pitcher of water in her village, she passed out through the door and began to descend the stairs.

  Helen opened the drawer again and, with agitated fingers, began carefully to fold the underclothes which the ayah had disturbed. Then, all at once conscious of the icy feel of her shirt against her skin, she abandoned that task. She pulled off the shirt, unbuttoned her jodhpurs, kicked off her shoes. Though it was so sultry, she began to shudder uncontrollably as she reached over to the towel-horse for a towel.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘I think it might be a good idea if you were to pop over to take another dekko,’ the Governor told his Inspector-General of Police. ‘It’s a damned nuisance that Hunt should be on leave. I’m not all that happy about the way Singh seems to be handling the case. There have been far too many rumours and innuendoes in the press. He must have been talking. That’s always the trouble with Indians, even the most educated. Blab, blab, blab. Can’t keep their mouths shut.’

  The Inspector-General, Ross, had a high opinion of Singh, whom he thought a far abler officer than his white superior Hunt, but he had no intention of voicing any disagreement with the Governor, who could so easily become pettish and spiteful. ‘I’ll go over tomorrow,’ he said. ‘ I’ve been in constant touch on the blower, of course – and Singh’s been sending over his reports. But I’ve been meaning to take another look at things myself.’

  The Governor drew in his lips and sucked on his bristly grey moustache. When his subordinates imitated him, it was always doing this. ‘It’s an important case, an extremely important case. I’d like to see the man – or men – caught as quickly as possible. Not only for the sake of the family but as a deterrent to any madman planning something similar in future.’

  When he had left the Governor’s office, Ross telephoned to Singh.

  ‘Would you like to meet me up at the house?’ Singh suggested.

  ‘Good God, no. The case is yours. I don’t want Thompson to think I’m involved in any way. No, I’ll call at the station. About ten-thirty. I’ll be riding over.’

  Putting down the receiver, Singh experienced an all too familiar disgust with his English superiors. Why the hell shouldn’t Thompson be allowed to think that the Inspector-General was involved? Presumably because it might make their next game of golf, bridge or billiards embarrassing.

  On his arrival, Ross at once began to light his pipe, without asking Singh’s permission. Singh loathed the smell of the shag, imported in huge tins from England. He could still detect it in his office days after Ross had gone. ‘The Governor would like to see things brought to some conclusion.’

  ‘So should I. But the conclusion has to be the right one. Hasn’t it?’

  ‘More than a week has passed.’ Ross shifted his massive bulk in a leather armchair too narrow for it. ‘What’s holding up the inquest?’

  ‘Inquiries,’ Singh answered coolly.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t get it. You may or may not catch the brute or the brutes. The Governor very much hopes you will. I very much fear you won’t. But why can’t the inquest go ahead? Murder by person or persons unknown. That’s the only verdict possible.’

  ‘Is it?’ Singh got up and went to the open window, to escape the pipe smoke billowing towards him. ‘It seems to me increasingly likely that what we have here is an inside job.’

  ‘One of the servants?’

  ‘Possibly. Though I doubt it.’ The Indian put a delicate hand over his mouth and coughed behind it. ‘My almost immediate assumption was that the boy had been killed by the governess and her boyfriend.’

  Ross raised his bushy eyebrows, biting on his pipe stem.

  ‘Let’s suppose that he was visiting her in secret. And let’s suppose that the child woke up and began to scream. They had to silence him. One or other of them stuffed that brassière – the first thing to hand – over his mouth and suffocated him without meaning to do so. Then they had to make it look as if someone from outside – a dacoit, some old enemy of Thompson’s paying off a score – had committed the crime. So they mutilated the child, left that window open and dumped him in the privy.’ Singh walked back towards his chair. ‘Unfortunately, however, that doesn’t work. The boyfriend was in his ward at the convalescent home throughout the night. I have eleven witnesses.’ He smiled: ‘Though I suppose that eleven people could be lying. It’s happened before.’ He reseated himself and leant forward, elbows on desk and hands clasped before him. He stared at Ross. Then: ‘The father?’

  ‘Thompson!’ Ross’s square face, under close-cropped hair, grew congested with annoyance. ‘No man kills his own child.’

  ‘Doesn’t he? Men have killed their own children. I don’t have to tell you that. And perhaps he didn’t mean to kill him.… I should guess that he and the governess are carrying on together.’

  ‘Old women’s gossip!’

  Singh gave that small, supercilious smile which always irritated his English colleagues. ‘Then there must be a lot of old women of both sexes around here at present. You know his reputation. Everyone says that he was carrying on with the present Mrs Thompson while the first Mrs Thompson was dying on him. So he falls for Miss O’Connor, who used to work as a clerk in one of his hotels. He offers her the job of governess. They start an affair – after all, his wife is pregnant. That night he goes to her, slipping out of his dressing room without his wife hearing. Or if she does hear, she thinks nothing of it. He’s gone to the lavatory, she decides. Or he’s set off on his nightly round of checking all the windows and doors. The child wakes, screams. There’s a panic – which results in one of them stuffing the brassière over or into his mouth.’

  Ross shook his head: ‘I don’t buy that one.’

  ‘Isn’t there a likelihood of Thompson being appointed to the Viceroy’s Council? Well, there you are! Another reason for panic. If there were to be an open scandal on top of all the hints and rumours … We all know what a prude the Viceroy is.’

  ‘I still don’t buy it. What does seem to me possible is that some Indian, cuckolded by Thompson, may have decided on revenge. Now what about that?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course, that’s something I’ve considered.’ Singh’s eyes had begun to water from the smoke. He took out a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and began to dab at them. ‘I’ve considered everything. However unlikely.’ The arrogance of the claim annoyed Ross, even though he had to accept that, yes, Singh was the kind of officer, patient and pertinacious, who would examine every possibility before reaching a decision. ‘But now … there’s one suspect I favour above all others.’ Singh paused, as though in a deliberate attempt to prolong the suspense of the revelation to follow.

  ‘Well?’

  Singh turned his head sideways, to gaze out of the window, as though to avoid Ross’s gaze. ‘The girl.’

  ‘The governess?’

  ‘No. The other girl.’

  ‘The daughter?’ Ross was astounded.

  Singh nodded. ‘Helen,’ he murmured, savouring the name on his tongue as though it were something exotically pungent.

  ‘Why the hell should you pick on her?’

  ‘Well, for one thing – motive.’

  ‘Motive.’

  Singh once more leaned across the desk, hands clasped before him. ‘It wouldn’t be true to say that she and her stepmother had open rows. But it does seem to be generally agreed in the station that they have little use or affection for each other.’ Singh twisted the outsize signet ring on his little finger. ‘A number of people have told me that Mrs Thompson was, well, not exactly enthusiastic about the prospect of her stepdaughter arriving in the household. And the stepdaughter, when she did get here, seemed to go out of her way to avoid Mrs Thompson.’ He picked up a pen from the tray before him. ‘ Don’t forget that the present Mrs Thompson had already entered Thompson’
s life as so-called housekeeper when the first Mrs Thompson was still living,’ he said in a didactic tone, using the pen to emphasize each word. ‘Helen would then have been – what? – eight or nine.’

  Ross pulled a face, half closing his eyes and drawing down the corners of his mouth, the pipe jutting upwards. Clearly, he was not much impressed.

  Singh continued patiently: ‘The boy – Peter – was fond of his half-sister. There’s no doubt of that. But was she fond of him? The ayah doesn’t think so. Visitors to the house don’t think so. She’s a girl who’s fond of children in general – a successful and popular leader of the Bluebells – but with this particular child everyone noticed how cold and even harsh she could be. A neighbour, Mrs Anderson, told me how, when she was playing bridge there one afternoon, the child tried to climb up into Helen’s lap but she at once pushed him off. Mrs Anderson told me that some time ago – before the murder – but it stuck in my mind. Mrs Anderson said it was as if the girl could not bear him to be near her. I’ve heard the same thing from other people … The boy made a bead bookmarker for his half-sister – rather touching – but since then no one’s seen it, she’s not used it, not once. The ayah told me that.’

  ‘Oh, the ayah!’

  ‘There’s another Bluebell leader of the same age – Colonel Simpson’s daughter. You know her, I’m sure.’

  Ross nodded. ‘Betty.’

  ‘Well, Betty told me – when I was making what I hope were discreet inquiries – that Helen once spoke of her half-brother as a ‘‘ beastly little brat’’.’

  Ross shook his head, smiling indulgently. ‘I’ve often referred to my own children as beastly little brats – or worse. But that doesn’t mean I’d kill them. Though I may have wanted to do so on a number of occasions.’

  ‘She’s an odd girl.’ Singh did not add that, from the start, this oddness had had an almost erotic fascination for him. ‘A tragedy takes place, all the other members of the family, even the grandmother, are in a state of numb shock. But she goes on with her daily pursuits – her Bluebell meetings, her visits to the bazaar, her morning rides – as though nothing had taken place.’

  ‘I’d have thought that to be a sign of innocence, not of guilt. If a young girl committed a murder as horrible as that, surely she’d go to pieces.’

  ‘Not that young girl. She has an amazing strength.’

  Helen reminded Singh of a deodar in his garden. A branch of the slim, graceful tree, with its pendant racemes, as though of pale green lace dripping from it, had begun to rub against his bedroom window. When the wind blew strong, as it often did up here, he would give way first to irritation and then to fury at an insistent scratch, scratch, scratch on the window-pane as he tried to go to sleep. One night he jumped out of bed, fetched a saw, opened the window, and leaning far out, attempted to sever the slender, elegant branch. But, so pliable and delicate in his hand, it resisted with an amazing persistence. He pushed the saw back and forth and then, when he looked to see what he had achieved, in the moonlight he could make out no more than a slight indentation, black on grey, where the bark had been fretted. Sweating and grunting and in constant danger of overbalancing, he had eventually managed to sever the branch. By the time that he had done so, he had conceived for the tree a murderous animosity, as for some living creature bent on thwarting his will.

  Ross once again shifted his huge bulk – he had once been a Rugby football player and even now refereed games for the army. Then, massaging his broken nose with the tip of his forefinger as though in a vain attempt to coax it back into shape, he said: ‘All right. There’s a motive, let’s accept that. But a motive is not enough by itself. Is it? We all have motives for committing a variety of crimes but the fact is that most of us do not commit them.’ He stared challengingly at Singh. ‘What evidence have you got, hard evidence?’

  ‘Some. Admittedly not much.’

  Singh began to relate what he had learned from the ayah.

  One morning, when he had been climbing, with many pauses for breath, up the steep hillside path to the house – next time, he had decided, he must really come on horseback, much though he hated it – a white-robed figure had suddenly and silently emerged from behind some bushes. It was the ayah. She had bowed to him over hands pressed together, palm against palm, and had then said: ‘Sahib, may I talk to you?’

  ‘Here?’

  Without replying, she had turned away from him and begun to walk off down a narrow footpath zigzagging into the woods. Singh, exasperated but curious, had followed her.

  In a clearing, the folds of her cotton sari white against the pale grey boles of the trees, she had turned.

  ‘Well?’ His tone had been peremptory; but the ayah, used to people addressing her in that manner, had not flinched. ‘I wish to tell you two things, sahib. But you must not tell anyone that I have told you.’

  ‘You need not worry. What you tell me will be secret.’

  The ayah had been satisfied. Calmly, in a low, measured voice, she had first told him about the nightdress. Helen had a nightdress, a pink chiffon nightdress, with embroidery here – the ayah had touched her wrinkled neck with a hand – beautiful embroidery. There was only one such nightdress. She had often folded it up when making Helen’s bed, she had often laid it out when turning down the same bed. After the night when the child had been killed, the nightdress had vanished. She had laid it out but the following morning she had found another nightdress, a cream-coloured nightdress with no embroidery, in its place.

  Then there was the knife. In the gloom of the trees, with a shrill cacophony of birds all around and above him, clamorously insistent, Singh had felt that quickening of the pulse, constriction of the temples and slight breathlessness familiar to him from all those occasions in the past when he had known, known with total certainty, that he was on to something. A knife? Deliberately he had suppressed any appearance of excitement. What knife did she mean? The girl had had a knife in a sheath, the ayah had answered. For her work with the Bluebells. A big knife, sharp, sharp. The ayah’s eyes had widened. She always took it with her, on her belt, when she went down the hill to the Bluebell meetings. The knife was gone. Gone? Singh had again suppressed any appearance of excitement. The ayah had nodded vigorously. Gone! She had searched the room, not once, not twice, but three times. Usually the knife lay in the second drawer down of Helen’s dressing-table, under a pile of underclothes. It was no longer there, no longer anywhere. Vanished.

  ‘I see. Yes. Yes.’ Singh had nodded, smiled, nodded again. He had not wished the ayah to know how important he had considered this information. ‘Well, thank you. That may be useful to me. I don’t know.’

  Suddenly, under the fold of the sari over her head, there had been a dangerously glittering look in the ayah’s eyes. ‘I think she killed my baba,’ she had hissed. ‘I think so.’

  Singh had stared at her for a moment and she had boldly stared back. Then he had begun to return along the woodland path, expecting her to follow him. But when, after two or three bends, he had glanced over his shoulder, she was nowhere to be seen. Was that the white of her sari between the tree trunks over there? He had peered, halting in his tracks. No, it was only a sheet of newspaper, probably used at some time by someone who had been obliged to come here, off the road, to defecate. He had hurried on, thankful when he had at last left the shrill gloom of the woods for the sunlit calm of the open road.

  When he had arrived at the house, he had been amazed to see the ayah shaking a blanket out of an upstairs window. Clearly, she had taken some short cut. She had paused and, very still, had looked down at him, the blanket billowing outwards from the hands that had tethered it. Then she had given it a jerk, drawn back both it and her head, and vanished from sight.

  … Ross shrugged. ‘Well, yes, that’s something. If not very much. I suppose you followed it up?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Did the fat slob, sucking away at his pipe like a baby at a teat, imagine that he had merely ignored a lead so important?


  Once already Singh had interrogated Helen. No, she had heard nothing in the night. Yes, she had been along to the lavatory at about twelve-fifteen before switching off her light. Yes, before that, while she was reading in bed, she had heard her father going round the house, as he always did, to make sure that all the latches and bolts were fastened. Yes, she tended to sleep heavily. No, she had known nothing of Peter’s disappearance until her grandmother had knocked on her bedroom door. Her manner had been possessed, her voice clear and steady. ‘I wish I could think of something else to tell you that might be of help. But I can’t.’

  He had then gone over the whole story of the discovery of the body in the pit. Helen had remained composed, even matter-of-fact, as he had elicited one gruesome detail after another. ‘I shouted to Clare to fetch the torch … We always keep it on a table in the hall – in case of a power failure … Unfortunately, the battery was all but worn out, so that it gave only this feeble glow … But I was able to make out …’

  Now, after what the ayah had told him, Singh had asked to see Helen again.

  One leg crossed over the other, her hands resting lightly on the arms of her chair, she had sat opposite him in the small downstairs room, used as an extra guest room, which Toby had suggested that the police should make into their office as long as their investigations continued at the house.

  ‘I’ve one or two more questions,’ Singh had begun.

  She had inclined her shingled head, smiling. ‘No objection.’

  ‘Firstly, I want to ask you about a nightdress.’

  ‘A nightdress? You mean, a nightdress of mine?’ He had been watching her reaction closely; she had given no sign of shock or alarm.

  ‘One nightdress had been put out for you by the ayah on the night of the killing. But it seems that that night you wore another one. Or, at least, the ayah found another one on your bed in the morning.’