by M. M. Kaye
Charles had seen it too, for he gave a curt order to the rowers and they checked their paddles. For a moment or two their boat moved ahead on its own momentum, the water whispering along its sides; then it slowed and drifted quietly to a stop.
Sarah moved, her dress rustling on the cushions, and Charles made a brief imperative gesture of the hand, demanding silence. He was staring out into the moonlight, his head a little on one side, and Sarah too sat still, listening. In the silence she could hear the quick breathing of the rowers behind her and the drip, drip, of water from a paddle. A fish jumped and a frog croaked from a patch of floating weed. Then, very faintly, she heard the sound of paddles and realized what it was that Charles was listening for.
The sound of those other paddles was not growing louder, but softer; which meant that the boat beyond the island was moving away: and there was yet another sound from somewhere far away out on the lake. So faint that it was little more than a vibration in the stillness. The pht–pht–pht of a motorboat …
Charles turned his head and gave a brief order, and the shikara moved forward again; softly now, as though the need for haste were gone; and almost before the prow grated against the bank he had gone forward and leapt ashore. Sarah followed more gingerly, her boldly patterned frock nearly invisible against the chequered black and silver of moonlight and chenar shadows.
The little island could not have been more than thirty yards square. The four great chenar trees were rooted on the level turf, while in the centre the ground rose in a series of artificial terraces banked with Persian lilac, to a small summer-house. It did not take more than a couple of minutes to walk round the entire island. But there was no one there.
Charles looked at his watch again and stared out across the water to where a faint white dot showed against the reflections of the mountains. It was the shikara that they had seen beyond the island and it was moving in the direction of Srinagar.
A bird rustled among the lilac bushes, but no other sound broke the stillness, for the faint beat of paddles and the throb of the motorboat had both died away: and watching Charles’s tense profile, white against the inky shadows of the chenar trees, Sarah was seized with a sudden shiver of fear and unease that made her glance quickly over her shoulder, as though she half expected to see someone standing behind her among the shadows.
‘Why isn’t he here?’ she asked, forming the words with an effort. She had meant to speak them aloud, but somehow they had been spoken in a whisper. And it was in a whisper that Charles answered: ‘I don’t know. Either he never came, or else…’
He did not finish the sentence and after a moment Sarah said uneasily: ‘Or else what?’
Charles turned slowly, and his face in the clear moonlight showed drawn and rigid, the face of a stranger. It was as though he had aged ten years in as many minutes. He said under his breath and as though he had forgotten Sarah and was thinking aloud: ‘… or else—he’s still here.’
Sarah took a swift step backwards, her hands at her throat. ‘Still here? You mean—on the island?’ Her voice cracked oddly: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charles! There’s no one here but ourselves and the boatmen.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Charles curtly. ‘Anyway, we can make sure.’
He turned away abruptly and began to search among the lilac bushes, and it was a moment or two before the full significance of that dawned upon Sarah. Her brain felt cold and numb and stupid and she did not seem able to move. She stood as though frozen, staring unseeingly ahead of her into the dense shadows, while the bushes about the little summer-house rustled as Charles searched among them.
Directly in front of her, outlined blackly against the expanse of moonlit lake, stood one of the four huge chenar trees that gave the island its name. Its massive trunk was hollow with age, and as Sarah’s eyes became accustomed to its darkness, detail after detail emerged from the shadows as though it were a photograph in a developing tray.
Charles had made the circuit of the lilac bushes. ‘He’s not there,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Sarah. Her voice sounded husky and strange and as if it did not belong to her—as though it belonged to some other girl who stood there in a black and white patterned frock among the black and white patterns of shadow and moonlight. She lifted one arm and pointed stiffly, like a jointed doll: ‘He’s over there. In the tree…’
And suddenly, as though her legs would no longer bear her, she sat down abruptly on the dew-damp grass and began to laugh.
Charles leant down and quite deliberately struck her across the cheek with the back of his hand.
Sarah gasped, choked, and caught her lower lip between her teeth, and for a long moment she stared up into Charles’s quiet, unwavering eyes, and seemed to draw strength from them.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a subdued voice. ‘I’m–I’m behaving very badly.’
Charles said: ‘I shouldn’t have let you come. Go and sit in the boat, darling.’
‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m all right now. Let me stay, please.’
‘It won’t be pleasant.’
‘I know,’ said Sarah: ‘Janet wasn’t pleasant … or–or Mrs Matthews, either.’ Charles did not argue further, but turned and walked over to the tree.
Sarah had been right. The sprawled fingers of a plump, clutching hand that showed so still among the dead leaves and grasses at the foot of the old chenar tree were Ahamdoo’s. The rest of him lay huddled inside the hollow tree-trunk with the haft of a Khyber knife protruding from his breast.
Charles and the tall rower who had stood at the bottom of the water steps by the Club lifted him out and laid him on the grass in the bright moonlight. The round, pockmarked face that had been ugly in life was uglier in death: the dark eyes wide and staring, ringed with white, the lips drawn back from uneven teeth in a grimace of agony or fear.
Charles knelt and searched through the voluminous brown robe, and pulling off the curled-toed leather slippers, felt inside them and examined the soles. But if Ahamdoo had carried any tangible message, it was not there. Only … only … about the folds of those robes there lingered, faint in the fresh night air but quite distinct, that same curious odour that both Sarah and Charles had met with twice already: first in the deserted hut by the Gap, and then again, that very morning, in the dusty showroom of Ghulam Kadir’s shop at the Fourth Bridge.
Now it was here too; on a little island in the middle of the moonlit Dāl, clinging about the robes of a murdered man.
Charles lifted a fold of the robe and sniffed at it, frowning. Letting it drop again, he rose to his feet and spoke to the tall rower, who fetched a torch from the boat, and together the two men searched the island inch by inch: the grass verge, the terraces and the steps up to the little summer-house, the bushes of Persian lilac and the hollow trunks and twisted roots of the old chenar trees. But they found nothing there but dead leaves and the debris of old picnics. And though there were footmarks in plenty, it was impossible to tell who had made them or when, because too many country boats stopped at the island on their way across the lake.
Charles returned to the shikara, and lying prone along the shallow prow, peered into the water around the shore with the aid of the torch while one of the rowers paddled the boat in a slow circuit of the island. He had obviously forgotten Sarah, who stood backed against the lilac bushes in a patch of bright moonlight, her hands gripped tightly together. Now and again she shivered, but she did not move.
The shikara completed its circuit of the island and Charles returned to the body of Ahamdoo. There was no other boat, and nothing to show how Ahamdoo had come to the island. Charles stood for a while in silence, staring down at the huddled figure with an intense, frowning concentration, as though he could wrench the secrets from that dead brain by an effort of will. Then abruptly he went down on his knees again.
Ahamdoo’s right hand, which Sarah had seen protruding from the hollow trunk of the chenar tree, was lying with clawing, outspread fingers on the grass. But the other on
e was clenched, and Charles knelt again and lifting the closed fist, forced it open. Rigor had not yet set in and the body was still warm, but the fingers had been so tightly clenched that it was only with difficulty he opened them.
There was something in the palm of Ahamdoo’s hand on which, at the moment of death, he had clenched those podgy, brown fingers; something that gleamed dully in the moonlight. A single blue china bead.
Charles picked it up and turned it over between his fingers, smelt it, shook it, looked through it and touched it gingerly with his tongue. Finally, with a faint shrug of the shoulders, he produced a handkerchief in which he wrapped the bead carefully, and having replaced it in his pocket, rose to his feet, dusted his knees and spoke to the tall rower in the vernacular.
Together they lifted the small, plump body of Ahamdoo and placed it in the shadow of the chenar tree, and a second man came over from the boat carrying a coarse blanket with which he covered the body. Charles spoke to them in a low voice and they nodded without speaking. The tall man thrust his hand into the bosom of his robe and for a moment Sarah thought she saw the glint of a revolver. Then Charles touched him on the shoulder, and turned towards her: ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said curtly. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here.’
He took Sarah’s cold arm and led her back to the boat, while the tall man and the man who had brought the blanket squatted down, India-fashion, in the shadows near the shapeless dark heap that had been Ahamdoo. And presently the shikara, now with only two rowers, drew away from the island.
Sarah found that her teeth were chattering, though whether from cold or shock she could not be sure, and Charles picked up her fur cape from where it lay on the floor of the boat and fastened it round her unresisting shoulders. There was a folded travelling rug on the forward cushion, and he shook it out and drew it up over her knees.
Sarah said, trying to keep her voice steady: ‘What are those two going to do?’
‘Wait here until I send the boat back for them.’
‘Aren’t you going to send for the police?’
‘No,’ said Charles curtly. ‘The less the local police, or anyone else for that matter, knows about this, the better.’
‘But—the body. You can’t just leave it there. What are they going to do with it?’
‘Dispose of it,’ said Charles bluntly.
‘How?’
Charles shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh there are ways. It’s better for everyone concerned that Ahamdoo should just disappear. I assure you it isn’t an unusual occurrence in this country.’
He relapsed into silence; frowning down at the tasselled shadow of the canopy fringe that jerked in time to every thrust of the paddles; his hands clasped about his knees.
Sarah drew the fur cape closer about her throat and shivered again, and Charles evidently felt the slight movement, for he glanced round at her.
‘Cold?’
‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘I–I was thinking. Did they—was it because we were late? If we hadn’t been late——’
Charles shook his head. ‘We were bound to be late. If one thing hadn’t delayed us, another would. I’ve been too sure that they weren’t onto me.’
Sarah drew a sharp breath and jerked round to face him: ‘You mean, you think they know about you?’
Charles laughed; but without amusement. ‘Of course. But I’d like to know how they spotted me. I’ve walked on eggshells for years, waiting for this to happen.’
‘What difference will it make?’
‘Don’t be silly, Sarah,’ said Charles impatiently. ‘It’s the chap who isn’t suspect who is useful. The others are about as much use as a sick headache.’ He struck his knees with his clenched fists: ‘I should have been on the island before moonrise if necessary, and stuck there until Ahamdoo arrived. Instead of which I go putting up a lot of unnecessary smoke-screens and providing myself with completely redundant alibis at the Club, and allow myself to be neatly delayed there while someone else keeps my appointment and rubs out Ahamdoo under my nose.’
‘But you couldn’t know—’ began Sarah.
‘Couldn’t know what?’ demanded Charles bitterly. ‘I knew Ahamdoo would arrive at the island at the exact time he said he would. Our people don’t arrive late or early on a job I assure you: it isn’t considered healthy. I had taken the trouble to find out exactly how long it would take me to get to the island from the Nagim Club, and I should have taken my time by my own watch. But I didn’t. Instinct made me keep an eye on the Club clock, because I happen to know that it is checked daily by the wireless; and it was easier to keep an eye on it rather than be continually looking at my own watch. And because I was too sure of myself I fell into a trap that shouldn’t have caught a baby!’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Sarah. ‘What trap?’
‘The clock, of course. Tonight, for some unaccountable reason, that clock which was right by mine and the wireless at five this afternoon, was nearly twelve minutes slow. To have made it any slower would have been to run too great a risk of having it spotted—but a lot can happen in twelve minutes. It probably didn’t take more than twelve seconds to kill Ahamdoo! All the same, twelve minutes is cutting it a bit fine, so they take another chance … Nearer a dead certainty than a chance, when you come to think of it!’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean that as soon as you and I arrive together at the Club, obviously intending to dine and dance, they realize what I mean to do. And they bet on your paying a fleeting visit to the Ladies Room before setting off for an hour or so on the lake! All things considered, it was a dead cert that you would, and someone was probably alerted hours ago to keep an eye on you and the moment we looked like making a move to leave to delay you—using that particular ploy for starters! There would have been other ones in reserve, in case that one failed. But it didn’t. It worked like a charm, and as a result another eight or ten minutes are wasted, so that even by making up what time we could by paddling flat out whenever possible, we arrive at the island a good twenty minutes beyond time.’
Sarah said desperately, remembering the green sequin: ‘But how can you be sure that it wasn’t a coincidence? The clock I mean? And locking me in might have been only a joke? You can’t be sure!’
‘I’m not much of a believer in coincidences of that type,’ said Charles. ‘Especially when I arrive at a rendezvous to find that someone has beaten me to it. It’s all too convenient.’
‘But—but surely it was far too risky? You could have looked at your watch and not at the clock—there could have been other women in the cloakroom who would have heard me and let me out, and stopped them from trying anything else.’
‘In that case,’ said Charles grimly, ‘you can be quite certain that something equally innocent to the eye would have delayed us. And even if all the innocent-seeming devices had failed, I still do not believe that we should have been allowed to reach the island in time. Some nasty accident would have occurred.’
‘What sort of accident?’ asked Sarah in a small voice.
‘God knows. But … Well just think how easy it would have been for instance, for someone who had seen us leave on time, to get into a car or onto a bicycle—or even to leave pretty briskly on foot!—and reach the Nagim Bridge, or better still that neck of land just beyond it, ahead of our shikara? We’d have been a sitting haystack in the moonlight at that range. They couldn’t miss!’
‘You mean you think—you can’t really think that someone would have tried to shoot us?’
‘Not us; one of us. It wouldn’t really have mattered which one, if the object was either our late arrival or non-arrival at the island.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ said Sarah breathlessly. ‘I won’t believe that anyone would——’
‘Oh, possibly not,’ interrupted Charles impatiently. ‘I’m merely telling you that some way would have been found to stop us getting to the island in time, and that if the simpler ways of preventing it had failed, something damned unpleasant
would have been substituted!’
He paused to stare out across the moonlit lake, and after a moment spoke as though he were thinking aloud.
‘Whoever did it must have been waiting on the island. The motorboat of course. That would cover the time problem. A motorboat could drop a man on the island and be away again in a matter of minutes, and Ahamdoo would never have landed if there had been another boat there already. He would have made certain there wasn’t one before he went on shore. And the murderer, of course, would have used Ahamdoo’s boat to get away in. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is why didn’t they remove the body?’
‘Why should they?’
‘Oh, just to confuse the issue a bit. If there had been no sign of him I couldn’t have been a hundred-per-cent certain that he hadn’t developed cold feet at the eleventh hour. And they can’t really have supposed that they’d scare me off by demonstrating what they were capable of. Sarah, somehow I’ve got a hunch that leaving him there was a mistake on the part of the murderer, and I trust it’s going to prove a pretty costly one.’
‘What doesn’t make sense to me,’ said Sarah, ‘is why they didn’t wait a bit longer.’
‘You mean until I turned up, and then dispose of me too? Well for one thing, they would have known that I wouldn’t have arrived there alone, and that I and anyone with me would certainly be armed. And for another, that a gun battle at this hour, on a night as quiet as this one, would create a hell of a racket—not to mention the resulting blaze of publicity! You notice that to date nothing noisy has been used. A blow on the head for Mrs Matthews and Miss Rushton, and a knife for Ahamdoo——’
‘But you’ve just said that someone on the bridge or that neck of land, could have shot us!’
‘If they had, they’d have used something like an air-gun—it would have been enough, at that range! Or a silencer. But they couldn’t bank on us doing the same. They had to stop Ahamdoo’s mouth, and the moment they’d done so they knew they had to leave pretty smartly—and did!’
