Death in Kashmir (15 page)

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…?

She saw in her mind's eye the long, winding hill road that climbed and twisted and dipped and turned for close on two hundred miles from the heat and dust of the cantonment town of Rawalpindi to Srinagar, the capital of the cool green valley of Kashmir. But the thought of returning to that valley, with its cold rim of watching mountains and black deodar forests, filled her with shuddering panic. She could not go back—she could not …

Charles Mallory's quiet voice broke into the tumult of her thoughts and brought her back to the present: ‘What's the matter, Sarah? You're looking like a ghost.'

He had risen and was standing over her, and Sarah rose abruptly: ‘I'm sorry. I'm a bit upset this evening. You go on in and dance with Helen. I'm better by myself.'

Her voice, even to her own ears, sounded thin and unsteady, and Charles said: ‘Don't talk nonsense. You're shivering like a wet kitten. What's it all about, Sarah? You've been behaving for the last half hour as if you'd just been told where the body was buried. What's the matter? Bad news?'

‘No,' said Sarah shakily, fighting a sudden desire to burst into tears. ‘It's nothing, really. I–I'm…'

‘Feeling ill? Would you like me to take you home?'

‘No. No. I'm all right. I mean, it's nothing.'

‘Well in that case,' said Charles crisply, ‘I suggest you take a pull on yourself and come in and dance. You can't sit here looking at ghosts all evening.'

‘Oh, go away!' said Sarah, her voice trembling on the edge of hysteria. ‘Can't you see I want to be left alone?'

‘So that you can work yourself up into an even worse state of nerves, I suppose? But that won't help you, you know. Come on, Sarah. You don't look like the sort of girl who has hysterics. Show some guts.'

‘You,' said Sarah furiously, ‘would know about that of course.'

‘About what?' Charles's voice was softly dangerous.

‘Guts,' said Sarah distinctly. ‘I understand your regiment's been ordered to Palestine?'

For one frozen second she thought Charles was going to hit her and, instinctively, she took a swift step backwards. But the chair was behind her and she stopped.

Charles looked down at her and laughed; though not pleasantly. And then, she did not quite know how, his arms were about her, sure and hard, and he bent back her head across his arm and kissed her competently.

‘You have been asking for that,' said Charles, bored, ‘for weeks.' He put her away from him and picked up his unfinished drink.

Sarah stood staring at him for a long moment. Then she snatched up her bag, whirled about and ran across the lawn to the lighted ballroom, leaving him standing alone in the starlight.