Death in Kashmir

by M. M. Kaye

  ‘I found him at the Club,’ said Hugo, waving an explanatory hand at Charles. ‘I hadn’t realized he was staying there. He wishes to take you poodlefaking in the moonlight, Sarah.’

  ‘Hugo!’ said Fudge. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t use that disgusting expression.’

  Charles laughed. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said mildly, ‘I wondered if you would all dine with me tonight? There is apparently a gramophone dance on at the Club, and though I don’t imagine the attendance will be large, it might be quite fun. The Secretary has put out a plaintive appeal for support.’

  Fudge smiled and shook her head. ‘That’s sweet of you, Charles. But I don’t think I could face a gramophone dance tonight. I’ve got a bit of a headache and I feel like a peaceful home evening and early bed. You take Sarah. I’m sure her Kashmir education will not be complete without a dance at Nagim on a moonlight night.’ Fudge turned her head and looked out across the lake to where the setting sun was transforming the Gulmarg range into a flat lilac silhouette against a saffron sky: ‘It’s going to be a lovely night,’ she said.

  Charles turned to Sarah. ‘What about it, Sarah? Would you like to come? I’m afraid I can’t promise you a very amusing evening: we shall be lucky if half a dozen couples show up at the Club.’

  Sarah hesitated a moment, looking from Fudge to Charles and back again, and Charles, turning a little so that his back was to the Creeds, lowered one eyelid for a fraction of a second. ‘Yes, I’d love to,’ said Sarah promptly. ‘Are you sure you and Hugo won’t come, Fudge?’

  ‘Quite sure!’ said Fudge firmly. ‘Thanks all the same, Charles.’ She smiled across at him, and Hugo said sadly: ‘I, you notice, get no say in the matter.’

  ‘Oh, darling!’ said Fudge remorsefully, ‘do you really want to go? All right then, I’ll go if you’d like. I can easily take an aspirin.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Hugo. ‘I was only pulling your leg. I could do with early bed myself after the ghastly schemozzle of that storm last night. I hardly got a wink of sleep. Besides, I am reaching the sere and yellow leaf. My dancing days are done. It is now up to young and sprightly creatures like Charles and Sarah here to carry on the good work of making the nights hideous with revelry. All that I shall now contribute to the racket will be a snore.’

  Subhana and Ayaz Mohammed appeared upon the roof with an assortment of drinks and glasses, and Hugo having dispensed sherry and whisky with a liberal hand, the four of them sat on into the green twilight, talking and laughing, while a huge, apricot-coloured moon lifted above the mountains beyond Shalimar and laid a shimmering silver pathway across the lake.

  Eventually, glancing at her watch, Fudge inquired of Charles what time he was thinking of dining?

  ‘Round about eight, I suppose. The dance won’t begin until after nine.’

  ‘Well it’s nearly eight now,’ said Fudge. ‘I don’t want to hurry you, Sarah, but if you intend to change you’d better think about moving.’

  Sarah jumped up, and Charles said: ‘I’ll wait for you. Then we can go along to the Club together. That is, if you won’t mind looking at the papers while I change? Or would you rather I came back and fetched you in about half an hour’s time?’

  ‘No. Wait for me here. I won’t be more than ten minutes,’ said Sarah; and vanished down the hatchway staircase, calling to Lager to follow.

  Abdul Gaffoor, her mānji, was switching on the lights in the Waterwitch when she reached the boat, and pausing only to tell him that she would not be in for dinner, she made for her bedroom—conscious of a little shiver of distaste as she passed through the silent rooms, and grateful for the scuttering patter of Lager’s feet and the sound of his small excited snufflings and whimperings as he sniffed at the floorboards, beneath which lurked an entrancing smell of rats.

  Strewn all over her bed was the untidy heap of paper-wrapped parcels that she had bought that morning and which Abdul Gaffoor and the Creeds’ bearer had carried in from the car; and Sarah was annoyed to see that every parcel had been opened, the string round each one cut and the paper roughly replaced. Abdul had evidently been curious as to her purchases and had peered at them all with the inquisitiveness of a squirrel. ‘He might at least have had the decency to do them up again tidily!’ said Sarah aloud and crossly.

  She bundled the entire collection hastily into an empty suitcase, and had removed her shoes and dress when a sudden and unpleasant thought slid into her mind and she stood still, staring down at the bed where the parcels had lain. A moment later she whirled round to open the cupboard and have her suspicion instantly confirmed; for it needed no second look to see that someone had been going through her belongings.

  Neat piles of underclothing were not quite as neat as she had left them. A nest of carefully rolled stockings had been disarranged, and the order of the line of shoes on the bottom of the hanging cupboard had been changed—Sarah invariably put walking shoes at one end of the line, followed by house shoes and then evening slippers; but now a pair of gold evening sandals stood between blue suede house shoes and brown brogues …

  There were other indications too; small in themselves, but enough to show that someone had been taking an exceedingly thorough look at all her possessions. Was it only curiosity on the part of Abdul Gaffoor, or was there some other less pleasant explanation? Sarah was suddenly intensely thankful that she had taken the precaution of carrying Charles’s gun with her in her bag which had not been out of her sight, except——

  She snatched up her bag in a panic and opened it, but the gun was still there, wrapped about with a chiffon scarf, and she drew a deep breath of relief and regarded it thoughtfully. She really could not carry a gun to a dance! Besides, she would be with Charles, and since her room had already been searched it was highly unlikely that anyone would search it again for some time. On that decision, she took out the gun and stuffed it under her pillow, and straightening up, saw with dismay that according to the little travelling clock that stood on her bedside table she had already overstepped the ten minutes she had promised to be away.

  Heavens! thought Sarah, I’m going to be appallingly late, and Charles will think I’m one of those deadly women who say ten minutes and mean thirty! She turned hurriedly back to the cupboard, selected a deceptively simple evening dress of white linen boldly patterned in black leaves, and slipped her feet into a pair of white sandals. That should do for a gramophone dance, thought Sarah—and for Charles.

  A few minutes later she was dressed and ready. She gave a final glance at herself in the inadequate mirror and looked in the cupboard for an evening-bag. But the assortment that presented itself to her proved unsatisfactory, and with another look at the clock and an exclamation of annoyance, she snatched up the white suede one from which she had removed the little automatic, and having reached for a brief fur cape, switched off the lights, and with Lager frisking at her heels, returned to the Creeds’ boat.

  Charles must have been watching for her, for he came down the gangplank as she arrived opposite the boat. ‘Are you intending to bring that pup?’ he inquired, ‘because he won’t be allowed inside the Club rooms you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to ask Hugo to keep an eye on him: Lager dotes on him, and he’ll stay quiet as long as Hugo is around. It’s only when I leave him alone that he behaves abominably and yelps non-stop like a lost soul. We left him behind this morning in the charge of the mānji, but I’m afraid he’s a snob. He doesn’t consider that mānjis are “company”, and I gather he hardly paused for breath. He started yelping when we left and we could hear him still at it from the Nagim road when we got back at half past three. But he behaves like an angel with Hugo, don’t you Lager, you little horror?’

  ‘Who is taking my name in vain?’ inquired Hugo appearing in the open doorway at the top of the gangplank.

  ‘Me,’ said Sarah ungrammatically. ‘Hugo, be a darling and look after Lager for me. He’s had his supper, and if I leave him alone on my boat he’ll only howl until I come back
.’

  ‘OK,’ sighed Hugo. ‘Sling him along. Here, Lager boy—no, there is no need to chew holes in me to show your appreciation of my person. Goodnight, Charles. Have a good time, Sarah.’

  ‘I intend to,’ promised Sarah. ‘Good-night, Hugo.’ She raised her voice and called up through the willow boughs: ‘Good-night Fudge,’ but there was no reply from the roof of the boat and Hugo said: ‘She’s gone to bed—it’s that headache, I’m afraid. I’ll say good-night for you.’ He waved a cheerful hand, and they turned away along the bank to pass round the shadowy trunk of the big chenar tree and come out onto the moonlit path that ran across the fields towards the Nagim road.

  ‘Nice work,’ said Charles, taking Sarah’s arm and hurrying her down the path between the young corn. ‘I need an alibi tonight Sarah, and you’re it. Damn that thing!’… he had trodden on a piece of rusty tin, laid down by one of the mānjis to cover a depression in the path that the last night’s rain had filled with muddy water, and it had creaked loudly and protestingly under his feet as though a nightjar had screamed in the fields.

  ‘I had to ask the Creeds to come along for the look of the thing,’ said Charles, ‘but that providential headache of Fudge’s has saved me a lot of trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean? “want me for an alibi”?’ asked Sarah.

  Charles glanced over his shoulder before replying, but the moonlit expanse of field offered little or no cover, and they were out of earshot of the boats and the trees. Nevertheless he dropped his voice to an undertone: ‘I have an assignation for tonight,’ said Charles, ‘on an island in the lake. Not the sort of place I should have chosen for it myself, but I suppose it has its points. However, under the circumstances I do not want to go floating about the lake by myself. It’s not the sort of thing I’d be likely to go in for, and might well give rise to comment and curiosity. On the other hand, if there is one thing that chaps go in for more than another in Kashmir, it is floating round the lake in a shikara with a girl. So no one is likely to consider it in the least odd if I take the beautiful Miss Parrish for a moonlight ride. Even if Fudge and Hugo had decided to join the party, it would still have raised no more than a tolerant eyebrow and an indulgent laugh if I had gone off with you in a boat for an hour or two.’

  ‘What is this assignation?’ asked Sarah, her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘Who is it with?’

  ‘One of our men. You saw him today—twice, if I am not mistaken. In fact you scared him considerably the second time!’

  Sarah checked to stare up at him, her brows wrinkling: ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen anyone I don’t know today except——’ She drew her breath in on a sudden gasp and stood still. ‘Not–not the man from that shop?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Charles. ‘The assistant with the pockmarked face. You saw him again at the hotel I think.’

  ‘But–but I don’t understand,’ said Sarah again. ‘What was he doing at the hotel?’

  ‘Trying to see me,’ said Charles, hurrying her onwards. ‘He’s one of our best men. We planted him there two years back. A pretty neat bit of work it was too. He had hoped to get an opportunity to speak to me this morning during the time that we were all at the shop, but due to the mob of customers who turned up he was kept too busy and didn’t dare risk it. The most he could manage was to make me a sign to that effect, which he did when he handed me the cigarettes.’

  ‘What was it?’ asked Sarah in a whisper.

  ‘Nothing in the least exciting, I’m afraid,’ said Charles with a grin. ‘He merely scratched his chin with the little finger of his left hand, in a gesture that is shorthand for N B G, or “sorry, no can do—over to you.” So I immediately mentioned Nedou’s Hotel and that I was lunching there, and talked of the stage.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah slowly. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Ahamdoo is pretty quick, and that was quite enough for him. But the meeting at Nedou’s was a frost—largely due to you, I may say! You walked in on us before he had time to say a word. We heard you coming, and he whisked round and was halfway up those stairs to the gallery when you appeared on the scene positively radiating suspicion. By the time I was able to catch up with him he’d got the wind up good and proper—either he thought he’d been followed or he’d spotted someone he was scared to death of, because he was in a blind panic and couldn’t wait to get away. He merely hissed at me that he’d be on the Char-Chenar island at eleven tonight, and was off like a scalded cat: I wasn’t given time to draw breath, let alone argue the toss; and I have to admit that when you bust up that initial meeting I could cheerfully have strangled you!’

  ‘You ought to have warned me,’ retorted Sarah, employing the popular tactic of attack being the best form of defence. ‘And anyway, where were you?’

  ‘Sitting in one of the armchairs that had its back to you. The back was a high one, but I don’t mind telling you, Sarah, that you gave me a few very nasty moments. You couldn’t see me unless you started peering round among the furniture; but I couldn’t see you either, and I didn’t know who the hell it was. I didn’t dare move until I heard you walk away towards the staircase, and believe me it was a weight off my mind when I realized it was you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me at once?’ demanded Sarah indignantly. ‘I was scared stiff. You might have explained!’

  ‘With the place simply teeming with people? Not much!’ said Charles firmly.

  ‘What people in particular?’ asked Sarah curiously.

  Charles looked down at her and shook his head, for by now they were near a small village, and a few yards further on the path left the field to wind between a handful of tall, ramshackle Kashmiri houses before joining the main road that stretched away on either hand, white and deserted in the moonlight.

  The acacia trees that bordered it patched the dusty road with shadows and filled the air with fragrance, and the few shops—rickety buildings hurriedly constructed of unseasoned deodar-planks during the brief boom years of Nagim Bagh—were for the most part shuttered and silent. Once safely past these and walking in the direction of the Club, Sarah repeated her question.

  ‘Well,’ said Charles meditatively, ‘there’s Reggie Craddock for one.’

  ‘But he couldn’t be mixed up in a thing like this?’ gasped Sarah, horrified. ‘Yes I know he tried to get me off the boat, but——Oh no! He couldn’t. Not really. Besides, he’s an Englishman!’

  Charles said dryly: ‘My dear Sarah, money talks in all languages. And there has been big money spent here.’

  ‘Then you think that Reggie…?’ began Sarah.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charles curtly. ‘He might be in debt. When chaps get into the hands of Indian money-lenders they can end up in some ghastly tangles. I don’t say he is; but I’m curious about Reginald Craddock. He knew Janet Rushton, and for all I know he may have been genuinely fond of her; though somehow that doesn’t strike me as sufficient reason for wanting to get you off Janet’s boat. Craddock was a member of the party at the ski-hut, and he was at Ghulam Kadir’s shop this morning at a time when a very important message was due to be passed to someone there.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Sarah stopped for a moment on the moonlit road. ‘Oh, you mean the one that pockmarked man meant to give you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. That shop is used as a cover for a lot of things. Not active things: strictly passive ones. I think you would find that its aged and respectable proprietor is careful to know nothing of plots or plans. He merely allows his premises to be used, in return for a nice fat sum, as a sort of post office and receiving centre that collects and passes on information for the opposition. Something was due to be passed today: Ahamdoo was onto that much. I have my own ideas as to how it was done, but I can’t be sure. We’ve had a check on everyone who entered or left that shop today, and Reggie, of course, was one of them.’

  ‘So was I, for that matter. And so were lots of other people—including you,’ retorted Sarah.

  ‘I know.
But all the same I am distinctly interested in Major Reggie Craddock … Left turn here—this is the Club.’

  They turned in through an open gate, to walk down a long, tree-shaded drive that wound through an orchard and ended in lawns, neat flowerbeds, and a low Club building on the extreme edge of the Nagim Bagh lake. As they neared it Sarah, who had been silent for a few minutes, said thoughtfully: ‘I wonder if you could work up a case against everyone who was in that shop this morning?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Charles cheerfully. ‘I can produce a different theory to fit each one of you; and yours is still the best of the bunch.’

  ‘In that case, I’m surprised that you trust me with all this information,’ said Sarah with a laugh.

  ‘How do you know I do?’ asked Charles softly. Sarah stared at him blankly, but before she had time to frame an indignant reply Charles had steered her inside the Club and seated her in a chair on the edge of the ballroom floor, and having ordered tomato juice and promised not to keep her waiting long, vanished in the direction of the Club’s residential block, leaving her alone with a pile of illustrated papers and two bored Club khidmatgars who were whispering together by the bar at the end of the room.

  On the far side of the ballroom floor a row of french windows faced the lake and gave onto a long, roofless verandah, supported by wooden piles and set with chairs and tables. Sarah left her chair and went out onto it, to find herself looking across a sheet of moonlit water bounded on the far bank by a row of dimly seen houseboats, from which an occasional square of light threw a thin quivering line of yellow across the lake. The majority of them, unlike the many boats that were moored to the near bank, appeared to be unoccupied, and behind them, above the dark, distant treetops, rose the crouching bulk of fort-crowned Hari Parbat; silhouetted blackly against the moonwashed plain and the long line of glittering snow peaks that fringed the far wall of the valley.

  Sarah leaned her arms on the verandah rail and gazed out across the water to where, shimmering in the moonlight, the snowy slopes of Apharwat lifted above the dark tree-line that marked Khilanmarg. Somewhere over there, a dot in the waste of whiteness, was the little ski-hut, and somewhere below it, among the miles of trees, lay the rambling hotel buildings and the small hotel room where, for her, this fantastic adventure had begun. And once again, as she looked at those far mountain ranges she wondered why she stayed on in Kashmir, where so many frightening things had happened to her since the night that she had been awakened by the moonlight on her face.