Death in Kashmir

by M. M. Kaye

  ‘Not so frosty, really,’ commented Fudge consolingly, powdering her nose with care: ‘After all, he has come on to the dance, hasn’t he?—despite all those outspoken comments by your well-meaning but muddle-headed aunt. And that, let me tell you, is no mean concession on his part. He isn’t often seen around at dances. Oh well—good luck darling, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!’

  ‘And if you warn me just once more,’ retorted Sarah, ‘I shall begin to suspect your motives; so stop fussing about with your face and let’s go off and dance.’

  Being a popular girl, the queue of would-be partners was a long one, and it was almost halfway through the evening before Charles Mallory was able to dance with his hostess’s niece. He proved to be a surprisingly good dancer, which for some reason she had not expected him to be, and Sarah clapped enthusiastically for an encore.

  The band, which had been playing a gay and rather noisy quickstep, obliged with a waltz, and when the verse ended its leader crooned the refrain in an adenoidal whisper:…

  ‘The moonlight and the moon,

  And every gay and lovely tune that’s played for you,

  Were made for you.

  The Summer and the Spring,

  And that golden wedding ring,

  Were only made for you…’

  Sarah’s silver-shod feet stumbled and checked and Charles Mallory felt her go rigid in his arms, and glancing down at her saw that her face had suddenly lost every vestige of colour.

  ‘Shall we sit out the rest of this one?’ he suggested. ‘I’m not very good at waltzes.’

  Sarah said: ‘Please,’ in a small, breathless voice, and Charles led her out of the hot, crowded ballroom into the cool night air of the Club garden, and once there propelled her firmly across the lawn and put her into a wicker chair.

  He stood looking down at her for a moment with a slight frown between his eyes: she certainly did look oddly shaken, and he said curtly: ‘Wait here and I’ll get you a drink.’

  He left her sitting in the starlight, and returned a few minutes later carrying a frosted glass in each hand. Sarah thanked him, still in a small voice, and drank in silence while Charles pulled up a second chair, and sitting down, watched her over the rim of his glass without appearing to do so; his own face in shadow.

  In the ballroom behind them the band, evidently pleased with their choice of an encore, embarked on a repetition of the song, and Sarah shivered so uncontrollably that her teeth chattered against the edge of her glass.

  For the past few weeks life had been so gay that she had thought herself free of the nightmare of Gulmarg. But for some reason it seemed to have returned that evening to haunt her, and though she had tried to push it away it had followed her. Now it was here too—born of a trite, haunting melody—and suddenly she was back once more in the eerie moonlight outside the snow-shrouded hut on Khilanmarg, and Janet was fastening on her skis for her last run and humming that soft, catchy tune …

  ‘The Winter and the Fall, and the sweetest words of all, were simply made for you,’ crooned the leader of the band.

  Sarah said: ‘Why must they go on and on playing that thing!’ There was a sharp edge of hysteria to her voice, and Charles Mallory leaned forward and removed the glass from between her unsteady fingers. ‘You’ll spill that, and spoil your dress,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘It isn’t much of a tune, is it? But they’ll stop in a minute.’

  He offered Sarah a cigarette, and when she refused it, lit one himself and embarked casually on a surprising story about an impoverished dance-band leader in a Budapest café, who had been born a Prince of an Imperial House: talking to give her time to recover herself and to take her mind off the music that drifted through the opened windows of the ballroom behind them.

  Presently the band stopped and as the dancers came streaming out into the cooler air of the lantern-lit garden Sarah said: ‘I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to behave like that. I don’t know what’s got into me tonight. But that tune reminded me of something unpleasant, and…’

  ‘What are you two gossiping about?’ cut in Helen Warrender brightly. ‘I’m sure it must be something terribly interesting. Can we listen?’

  Charles stood up and she plumped herself firmly into his vacated chair, ordered her partner to fetch her a brandy and soda, and turning her back upon Sarah said: ‘Isn’t it hot, Charles! I’m simply sticking to my frock. That’s the worst of taffeta; even though one pays an absolute fortune for a model, it behaves like flypaper in the heat. Thank goodness we shall be leaving for Kashmir the week after next. I really couldn’t stand this heat much longer. We’re staying with the Douglases at Murree, on the way. I expect you know him, don’t you? He’s Lord Seeber’s son. Such a darling. Do fetch another chair, Charles. And one for Tim.’

  Charles collected two more chairs and a small green-painted table as Helen’s partner returned across the lawn bearing drinks.

  ‘Thank you, Tim. Oh damn! They’ve put ice in it! Why can’t they keep the sodas cold instead of drowning them with ice cubes? Never mind—it’s not really your fault. Give me a cigarette will you, Tim?’

  The obedient Tim obliged and took the vacant chair, and Helen hitched her chair round to face Captain Mallory: ‘Tell me, Charles, what did you think of the polo this afternoon? As a whole, I mean? Do you think we shall ever be able to raise enough people to play at all regularly? Of course if Johnnie had really been playing up to his handicap this afternoon, we’d have beaten you by much more. But then it’s not really worth trying against these scratch teams.’

  Charles said solemnly: ‘Thank you, Helen.’

  ‘What for? Oh! but I didn’t mean you, Charles. I’ve seen you play at Delhi and Meerut, and I think it’s so sporting of you to play with this ragtag and bobtail. But I suppose we should be grateful even to them. After all, they do give us some practice games. Oh really, Tim! You know I never smoke gaspers! Thank you, Charles. As I was saying——’

  Sarah yawned, and opening her evening-bag pulled out a slim enamelled vanity-case, and with it something that fell on to the grass at her feet. It was the uninteresting looking envelope that she had not had time to open with the rest of her mail, and had pushed into her bag to read later. Picking it up she glanced at her companions, but as Mrs Warrender’s taffeta-draped back obscured Charles Mallory and determinedly excluded her from the conversation, and the unsatisfactory Tim had removed himself and his rejected gaspers into the night, she shrugged her shoulders and opened the envelope; holding it so that it caught the light of the lanterns that hung in the trees behind them.

  There was a second envelope inside the first one, together with a covering note from a firm of lawyers in Rawalpindi, dated two days previously, which—when translated out of the complicated jargon so beloved of the legal profession into plain English—informed Miss Parrish that the enclosed letter had been included in a packet placed for safe keeping in the office safe of the Manager of Nedou’s Hotel in Srinagar, Kashmir, in January, by the late Miss Janet Elizabeth Rushton. The Manager had handed this packet ‘upon her demise’ to her bank, to be forwarded to her lawyers who had retained the contents until her will had been proved and probate obtained. Which fully explained the long delay, since lawyers and solicitors, like the mills of God, grind slowly …

  Sarah turned her attention to the sealed envelope which bore her name and address in her own handwriting, and which Janet must have given, unobserved, to Mr Croal, the Manager of Nedou’s Hotel, on the day that she had gone down to Srinagar to attend the funeral of Mrs Matthews. And holding it once again in her hand it was as though a cold breath from the snows and the shadows of black pine forests crept across the crowded lawn.

  This, then, was the cause of the queer feeling of uneasiness and foreboding that had awaited her on her return to the big house among the pepper trees: the reason why the wraith of Janet had seemed to stand so close behind her that evening.

  Sarah could see her with an uncomfortable vividness, standing in
the small firelit room and weighing this same letter in her hand. She had said something about ‘taking it down with her’… To Srinagar of course, where she and Mrs Matthews had taken rooms at Nedou’s Hotel for the winter, and where Mrs Matthews had been buried because the snow lay too deep and the ground was too hard up in Gulmarg …

  The wax of the seal broke under Sarah’s cold fingers and fell upon the soft filmy layers of her skirt like small splashes of blood, and she brushed them away with a shiver of horror and drew out the two sheets of paper that the envelope contained: ‘I left a record,’ wrote Janet in a firm schoolgirl hand and without preamble or explanation, ‘on the houseboat Water-witch owned by Abdul Gaffoor, in Srinagar. Go there as soon as possible and look for it if anything happens to me. I paid in advance for the boat up to the end of June this year, and arranged that if I did not occupy it myself, any friend of mine who held the enclosed receipt could do so in my stead.’ Then, in a wavering scribble, as though her nerve and her hand had suddenly failed her: ‘I know I ought not to have done this, but I felt I had to. I can’t say anything more. I can’t. But it’s there.’

  The letter was unsigned and there was no clue as to the person or persons for whom Janet had originally intended it. In all likelihood it had only been written after Mrs Matthews’ death. Probably an hour or two before Sarah herself had run to Janet’s door in the moonlight, to warn her of that faceless figure in the snow.

  The second piece of paper was a receipt for the rent, paid in advance up to the end of June 1947, for the houseboat, Waterwitch; and written on the back of it, signed by the houseboat’s agents, were the terms of lease.

  Sarah re-read the short note with its brief, incredible instructions and final agonized cry three times before the words had any meaning for her. It was impossible, fantastic, that she, Sarah Parrish, should be sitting in the Indian starlight, in the ancient city of Peshawar, holding in her hand a clue to international mysteries involving, perhaps, the lives and destinies of countless people. A few lines written by a murdered girl …

  She read it once again, slowly and deliberately, as though she could drag from the paper the hidden thing that lay behind the bald words; the knowledge that had been Janet’s when she wrote it, and which, but for this scrap of paper, would have died with her. And yet it told so little. Who had she meant it for when she wrote it? What had she meant to do with it? Why had she written it at all?

  To that last question, at least, there appeared to be an obvious answer: because she had been afraid of death. Not so much on her own account, as for the knowledge she possessed. She had been terrified that the knowledge might be lost, and for that reason had been driven to take a desperate risk. Two risks! The chance of written information falling into the wrong hands, and the possibly greater one that her sudden decision to trust Sarah Parrish could prove to be a disastrous mistake …

  Mrs Warrender, who had produced a large vanity-case adorned with a regimental crest, and had been powdering her nose as she discussed the old days at Ranelagh and Hurlingham, snapped the case shut and turned to Sarah: ‘You’ll be going up to Kashmir for the summer I suppose, Sarah? We’re going up the week after next. Not that it’s any fun now. But I suppose this is the last season we shall ever have, what with the handover set for next year, so … Oh hello—is that the notice about the races?’

  She leant forward and calmly twitched the sheet of paper from between Sarah’s fingers.

  Sarah did not stop to think. She reached out and struck the letter out of Mrs Warrender’s hand, and with the same movement managed to knock her scarcely touched glass off the table, splashing its contents over the scarlet folds of Mrs Warrender’s taffeta dress and filling her lap with fragments of half-melted ice. Mrs Warrender screamed and sprang to her feet, and Sarah, standing up, placed a small silver shoe on the forgotten sheet of paper, swished her billowing skirts over both and apologized in a flurry of carefully simulated concern and embarrassment.

  Mrs Warrender glared at her like an angry cat and said, in the same breath, that it didn’t matter at all and that the frock was ruined; and allowed Charles Mallory to mop off the surplus with his handkerchief.

  Sarah said: ‘I can’t think how it happened. I must have knocked against the table. Perhaps if you went straight home and put the dress into water it won’t stain?’

  ‘Nonsense! It’s quite impossible to wash taffeta. I shall have to send it to the cleaners. Thank you, Charles. That’s enough. It’ll dry in a minute or two. No, of course not! I wouldn’t dream of taking it off. Look, it’s drying already. Tim can—Tim! Where has that damn’ boy got to? Really, one’s junior officers these days are worse than useless! There’s the band starting again. Come and dance this one with me, Charles. I was supposed to be dancing it with Johnnie, but you know what husbands are like. Anyway, he’s sure to be tight by now and he always cuts my dances.’

  Charles said: ‘I’m sorry Helen, but I’m afraid I’ve got this dance with Miss Parrish.’ His voice was pleasant but very definite, and he did not look at Sarah. He looked instead at Mrs Warrender, meeting her eyes with a bland gaze.

  Helen Warrender, as Fudge had pointed out, was a stupid woman. But there was that in Charles’s lazy gaze which even a stupid woman could read, and she flushed a dark and unbecoming red, looked from him to Sarah and back again, and spoke in a voice that was suddenly strident.

  “I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize I’d broken up a tête-à-tête. In that case I’ll go and hunt up Johnnie.’ She turned to Sarah and said with a metallic laugh: ‘Don’t take him too seriously, will you? In case you didn’t know it, he’s heavily engaged. Aren’t you, Charles darling?’

  Charles’s expression did not alter, but he drew back a chair as though clearing a path for her, and with a toss of her head she swept away across the lawn, her taffeta skirts hissing angrily over the dry grass.

  Sarah stooped down and picked up the sheet of paper, surprised to find that her hands were shaking and her knees trembling with reaction from rage. She sat down abruptly, and reaching for her unfinished drink, drank it thirstily, and putting down the empty glass looked up at Charles.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with the ghost of a smile. ‘That was very good of you. Could you—would you add to your kindness by lending me your lighter for a moment? No, I don’t want a cigarette thank you.’

  Charles handed over a small silver cigarette lighter and Sarah snapped back the catch and held Janet’s letter to the flame. The thin paper, having fortunately escaped being splashed with Helen’s brandy and soda, caught alight easily and flared up, burning quickly until at last there were only three words left visible in the bottom corner–‘But it’s there!’. Sarah watched them fade with tears prickling behind her lashes, and thought: Oh! poor Janet! and dropping the blackened fragments onto the lawn she ground them into the parched grass with her heel.

  ‘And now,’ said Charles, ‘perhaps you’ll tell me why you flung that brandy and soda over Helen Warrender? Not, of course, that she hadn’t been asking for some such demonstration. Still you must admit it was a little drastic.’

  Sarah flushed. ‘I didn’t—I mean—it was really a sort of accident.’

  Charles raised a sceptical eyebrow: ‘Yes?’

  ‘You mean “oh yeah?”,’ corrected Sarah crossly.

  Charles’s voice held a hint of laughter. ‘My mistake; I thought you’d done it on purpose.’

  ‘All right, then. I did do it on purpose and she had asked for it. So what?’

  ‘Nothing. I was merely interested. It seemed a rather forceful way of expressing your displeasure.’

  ‘I’m afraid I did it on the spur of the moment,’ admitted Sarah defensively. ‘You see, it was rather a private letter and I was afraid she might have had time to see a few words of it. But if she did I’ll bet she forgot them the next second, because there is nothing like a really nasty shock for putting things out of your mind.’

  ‘I’ll remember that for future use,’ said Charles gravely
. He lit a cigarette and leant back in his chair watching her through the faint grey curl of smoke, while behind them in the ballroom the band played a slow foxtrot; a dreamy lilting tune that had been popular in the early years of the war.

  Somewhere out in the darkness beyond the Club grounds a jackal howled eerily, and as other jackals took up the cry and blended it into a yelling, shrilling chorus as of souls in torment, Sarah shivered, and a sudden horror swept over her. A horror of the enormous, sunbaked land around her and the barren Khyber hills that lay just beyond Peshawar, menacing and mysterious in the starlight. Beyond those hills lay Afghanistan and the fierce and lawless tribes, while away and away to the northeast stretched the long line of the Himalayas, with somewhere among them the snow slopes of Khilanmarg.

  A little breeze, rustling across the lawn, brought with it the smell of dust and flowering trees, and scattering the blackened fragments of Janet’s letter, blew them away across the deserted terrace … It’s no good, thought Sarah desperately: I know I promised, but I can’t go back to Kashmir! I won’t go. It’s nothing whatever to do with me, and I never want to see those mountains again …

  It was as though she were addressing the pale, accusing ghost of Janet. Telling her that as the letter had already been written and the envelope sealed down when she, Sarah, had come to Janet’s room that night, it could not possibly have been intended for her, and that but for the chance that had brought her there, Janet would have given it to someone else. To Reggie Craddock, or Meril, or Ian Kelly … Anyway, it was burnt now so she could forget it. Surely she could forget it…?