Death in Kashmir (18 page)

‘Forbes? You don't mean
Meril?
'

‘The same. No Helen of Troy, as you will be the first to admit. But doubtless oozing with efficiency.'

‘I shouldn't have thought she'd be in the least efficient. However, she was a pretty good skier.'

‘Was she, indeed? I can't say I ever noticed her performance in particular. It's those spectacles I suppose. I must admit I am sorry for the wench.'

‘Why? Because “girls who are spectacled never get their necks tickled”?'

‘That, of course,' admitted Hugo. ‘But the girl is also gravely handicapped by an aunt who holds the All-India Gold-Plated Cheese Biscuit, open to all comers, for sheer undiluted louse power.'

‘Hugo!'
expostulated Fudge indignantly.

‘I apologize, m'dear. An ill-chosen simile, but doubtless Sarah gets the idea.'

‘I have heard rumours,' admitted Sarah, recalling certain forcible remarks of Janet's on the subject of Meril's aunt. ‘What's the matter with her?'

Hugo said: ‘You will undoubtedly meet the lady at this binge tomorrow, and be able to judge for yourself. Speaking for myself, she fascinates me, and I cannot help regretting that upon her demise it will not be practicable to have her stuffed and placed in some public museum.'

‘And they say that women are cats,' commented Fudge, selecting a banana from the fruit dish. ‘For sheer concentrated cattiness, you can't beat the male!'

‘Nonsense!' said Hugo. ‘I speak but the limpid truth. Lady Candera is the Original Boll Weevil. She has an eye that can bore holes through six feet of armour-plating, and a tongue that could skin an elephant. Take it from me—a tough baby! Strong men blench before her and women take cover.'

‘Is she quite as formidable as Hugo makes out?' inquired Sarah of Fudge.

‘Well, almost,' admitted Fudge, dipping her banana thoughtfully in the coffee sugar and ignoring Hugo's outspoken criticism of the action. ‘I'm scared of her myself; but then I take jolly good care to avoid her.'

‘Worm!'
observed Hugo, removing the coffee sugar.

‘Worm yourself! You're terrified of her. She prides herself on always saying exactly what she likes as rudely as possible. And that's always pretty unnerving to the general public.'

‘Tell me about her,' said Sarah, interested. ‘She sounds full of entertainment value.'

‘She is, in a way,' admitted Fudge with a laugh. ‘I've often thought that life would be a lot duller if it were not for these highly coloured characters. If everyone were all a nice pink, like the Hoply girl or Mrs Ritchie, how bored we should all be! I appreciate the addition of a few nice splashy reds and purples myself. They add a dash of paprika to the mixture, if nothing else.'

‘Lady Candera,' pronounced Hugo, ‘is a type that is, or was, fairly common all over the world. But we grew a special brand of them in the Indian Empire. Next year there will be no Indian Empire, and so that brand will become extinct—along with the Johnnies and Helens and their ilk. They won't go to ground in England, because it will not be able to give them what they want; so the Lady Canderas will retire to infest places like Cyprus and Madeira, while the Johnnies and Helens will probably get themselves dug into Kenya.
Ehu fugaces!
And if you shove that slimy chunk of fruit into the coffee sugar once more Fudge, I shall arise and assault you.'

‘You still haven't told me much about this Lady Whatsiz,' complained Sarah. ‘What's she like?'

‘Nothing on earth,' said Hugo promptly.

Fudge threw him a withering look. ‘She is tall and thin and, as Hugo says, she's got an eye like a gimlet. I believe she's half French or Afghan, or something of that sort. They say she used to be a raving beauty when she was a girl. She must be about ninety by now—well anyway pushing eighty—and she looks like something that has been dug up from the ruins of Byzantium.'

‘Miaow!'
said Hugo, handing over the cream jug. Fudge ignored him.

‘Her husband was something or other in the I C S—the Indian Civil Service. Or am I thinking of the F and P?'

‘Foreign and Political Department,' translated Hugo kindly, ‘the chaps who only had to keep breathing in order to end up with a four-figure pension and a handle to their names.'

‘Well anyhow, he was something big in some Indian State,' said Fudge. ‘But he's dead now, and she lives in a houseboat near Gagribal with Meril and a sort of dim companion-woman called Pond.'

‘And a very suitable name too, if I may say so,' interpolated Hugo: ‘I have seldom encountered anyone so damp as that female. If there is a breeze about, she ripples.'

Fudge ostentatiously returned the cream jug: ‘Where was I? Oh yes. They live somewhere near Gagribal in a huge houseboat.'

‘Chiefly noticeable,' said Hugo rapidly, ‘for the outsize telescope erected on the roof, by which means they are enabled to keep an indefatigable eye upon the misdeeds of the unwary.'

Fudge giggled. ‘They used to spend a lot of time peering through it, and years ago Lady Candera tried to start a “Purity League” in Srinagar. She said that the goings-on she observed in other houseboats and passing
shikaras
were flagrantly immoral and should be stopped. She even tackled the Resident about it, and he apparently replied that he would consider taking action provided he could have a good look at the “goings-on” through the telescope first. She never spoke to him again.'

‘Poor Meril!' said Sarah. ‘No wonder she looks so harried.'

‘Let's go and sit up on the roof,' suggested Fudge, rising. ‘There's a moon tonight.'

‘Not me,' said Hugo firmly. ‘I have no desire to waste my last leave in Kashmir scratching mosquito bites.'

‘Is it really that? Our last leave in Kashmir?' sighed Fudge. ‘Oh dear! Somehow I can't believe it. We've spent so many leaves up here. Do you suppose we shall ever come here again?'

‘No,' said Hugo. ‘Unless, of course, the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Mangle Manufacturers, of whom you will by then be an unwilling member, come here for their Communal Workers-of-the-World Jamboree and Butlin Binge one day. Then, standing by the rows of cosy, communal, Comrades Dormitories, and gazing out at the Concrete Lido that will have blossomed by the lake, you will drop a tear into its medicated waters and murmur, “Ah me! How lovely it used to be when it was merely sewage!”'

‘Disgusting brute!' said Fudge. ‘There was a time when you used to spend hours holding my hand in the moonlight.'

‘Undoubtedly. But that was in the days when I was merely betrothed to you, or endeavouring to become so, and that was all I could do about it. However, having successfully pressed my suit, should I now be overcome by the romantic yearnings that once drove me to moongaze, there are other things I can do about it.'

‘Hugo!'

‘Not before the child!' said Hugo. ‘Shove off and shiver on the roof and leave me and the port in peace.'

‘I think I shall go to bed, if you don't mind Fudge,' said Sarah. ‘It's been a long day, and I feel sleepy.'

‘Very sensible of you,' said Hugo, yawning. ‘We will see you onto your yacht.'

They escorted Sarah down the gangplank and along the few yards of turf that separated the two boats, Lager frolicking and barking in the moonlight and chasing imaginary cats in the shadows.

‘Are you sure you'll be all right?' asked Fudge anxiously. ‘Shout if there's anything you want.'

‘Quite sure. I will. Good-night Fudge. Good-night Hugo. Come in Lager, you little pest.'

Sarah turned and walked up her own gangway, and the little
Waterwitch
rocked and creaked to her footsteps. At least, she thought, it would be impossible for anyone to come on board without instantly advertising their presence, since even the lightest step on a houseboat could be both heard and felt. The floorboards creaked and the boat vibrated slightly to every movement of those on board.

She closed and latched the sliding-doors behind her and snapped off the lights in the living-room, dining-room and the small pantry as she passed through them on her way to her bedroom. After which she undressed and got into bed, suppressing, with an effort, a strong desire to look over her shoulder and jump at every slight sound aboard.

Lager leapt onto the foot of her bed and curled himself up into a small velvet ball, and Sarah turned out the light and lay for a while staring into the darkness, until, moved by a sudden impulse, she reached out a hand and pulled back the curtain from the window beside her bed.

The glassed frames had been pushed back into the thickness of the wall leaving a wide square, screened by wire gauze against flies, mosquitoes and night-flying insects, that looked out across the moonlit lake to the shadowy mountains beyond.

Gulmarg lay somewhere over there—an unseen hollow below the white levels of Khilanmarg and the long ridge of Apharwat.

The moonlight would be shining on the little ski-hut, as it had shone that night when she had talked to Janet in the snow. It would be lying cold and clear along the verandah of the silent hotel, as it had lain on the night that she had stood and stared down at a line of betraying footprints on a thin film of snowflakes; and it would peer into the garden of a deserted house near the Gap, where the wind swung a gate idly to and fro on a broken hinge …

Sarah shivered, and closing the curtains against the white night, fell into an uneasy sleep.

10

The late evening sunlight shone warmly upon the smooth lawns and towering chenar trees of the Residency garden where peonies, roses and canterbury bells bloomed in gorgeous profusion in the long flower-beds, and wafts of scent from the direction of the kitchen gardens spoke of sweetpeas already in bloom.

In an ordinary year the British Residency in Srinagar gave many parties during the course of the season, but this year was not as others. It marked the end of an epoch—of an era—and something of this feeling seemed to pervade the present party. A tinge of restlessness; of farewell to familiar things. Next year there would be no time for parties. Only for packing and goodbyes. So let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall be scattered as chaff before the wind and the familiar places will know us not …

Their hostess greeted Sarah and the Creeds in the dim hall of the Residency, and directed them into a spacious green and white drawing-room full of guests and flowers.

‘Hello, Meril!' said Sarah, turning to accost a hurrying figure.

‘Oh, it's you Sarah! I heard you were up here with the Creeds. I thought you said you weren't coming to Kashmir again.'

‘I wasn't,' admitted Sarah, ‘but it seemed a pity to miss what may be my last chance of seeing this place. It was rather a spur-of-the-moment idea.'

‘Well, I hope you'll like it. It isn't going to be very gay this year, what with everyone trying to get home. Still, you'll like being out at Nagim. The bathing's quite decent.'

‘What's quite decent?' inquired an all-too-familiar voice behind them. ‘Personally, I've yet to find anything decent about this place.'

‘Oh hello, Mrs Warrender. May I introduce Miss Parrish? Mrs—oh of course, how stupid of me! You've met before. You were both at the Ski Club Meeting, weren't you.'

‘Yes. Sarah and I know each other well.
Do
tell me, how is Charles? And what do you think of Srinagar?
Quite
deadly of course. No life in it. Gulmarg is the only place worth going to in Kashmir, but even that is simply finished this year. Anyway, it was becoming too shatteringly provincial. Isn't that George McKay? What on earth's he wearing that frightful blazer for? It looks exactly like a striped awning! Some ghastly Cricket Club or other I suppose … Hello, George. I thought you were busy doctoring people in Sialkot?'

‘I was until yesterday. At present I am on embarkation leave.' Major McKay shook hands with Meril and bowed to Sarah. He was a solidly built man of medium height and in his early thirties, with a pleasant but rather humourless face and a certain primness of manner that made him seem older than his years.

‘Yes, I'm really off,' he said in answer to inquiries. ‘I thought I'd give Kashmir a last look before I left. There are more people up here than I thought there'd be. All doing the same thing I suppose. Saying goodbye.'

‘Well I hope for your sake that Srinagar will leave a better taste in your mouth than Gulmarg,' said Helen with a laugh. ‘All those post-mortems must have made it rather a busman's holiday, and I hear our hardworking Secretary, Reggie, didn't see eye to eye with you about one of them. Was that true?'

‘I'm sure I don't know,' said Major McKay stiffly. ‘It's a subject I cannot really discuss.'

‘Oh dear! Have I said something I shouldn't? How awful of me! Where are you staying?'

‘At the Nagim Bagh Club, for the moment; but I hope to get some fishing later on. Is your husband up here?'

‘Yes, Johnnie's somewhere around. Heavens! Here's that Candera woman. Why on earth Gwen asks her I don't know. Oh sorry, Meril. I forgot she was your aunt.'

Meril smiled wanly and glanced over her shoulder with a somewhat hunted expression at the latest arrival: a tall, elderly woman clad in impeccable tweeds, who stood in the doorway surveying the assembled company through a pair of jewelled lorgnettes. No; not elderly, corrected Sarah mentally–old. But despite her age she was holding herself with that erect carriage so admired by the Victorians.

‘If she's coming over here, I'm off,' said Helen Warrender, and removed herself swiftly.

Meril looked as if she were about to follow her example, but a harshly imperious voice arrested her.

‘Ah, Meril,' said Lady Candera bearing down on the shrinking Miss Forbes: ‘Gossiping, I see? I understood you had certain official responsibilities connected with these functions. Obviously, I was mistaken.'