Death in Kashmir (29 page)

Hugo, Reggie and Mir drifted away to the bar in search of liqueurs, while Fudge and Sarah sat on, sipping their coffee and making desultory conversation to Major McKay, who appeared to have lost his party, and presently Charles came across the hall and sat down on the arm of Fudge's chair.

‘Cigarette, Fudge? You don't, do you Sarah? Well St George, what have you done with the dragon?'

Major McKay was betrayed into a smile. ‘If you are referring to Lady Candera, she went to sleep over the coffee. We had luncheon in the private dining-room upstairs to avoid having to mix with the
hoi polloi
—that's you, Charles.'

‘Touché,'
said Charles with a laugh. ‘Well good luck to you. I hope you pull it off. If you do, you'll deserve the Albert Medal with bars.'

Major McKay turned a rich shade of beetroot and Sarah said: ‘Pull what off?'

‘George knows,' said Charles with a grin.

‘On the contrary, I have not the least idea what you are referring to,' said Major McKay frigidly. He consulted his watch, and rose. ‘Well—er—time's getting on. I suppose I'd better go and see if Lady Candera's car is back. I shall be seeing you all at the Nagim Club this evening, I expect.'

He made his escape, and Fudge turned reproachfully to Charles: ‘You really shouldn't pull his leg like that, Charles! It's too bad of you. It upsets him. Besides, it may only put him off.'

‘I find it irresistible,' said Charles. ‘George is a good old stick, if only he'd stop taking himself so seriously. And if that sort of thing is going to put him off, he's not worth any woman's time.'

‘What
are
you two talking about?' demanded Sarah, bewildered. ‘Put him off what?'

‘Meril, of course,' said Fudge impatiently. ‘You don't suppose George McKay is dancing attendance on that old dragon for fun, do you? We're all madly hoping that he'll run off with Meril.'

Sarah laughed. ‘What an old matchmaker you are, Fudge! But why run off with her? I'm quite sure that Major McKay would never do anything so unconventional.'

‘Well he'll never get her if he doesn't,' predicted Fudge. ‘The minute Lady Candera realizes that it is not her witty and stimulating conversation that the gallant Major is interested in, but her despised niece, she will show him the door in no uncertain manner. And Meril, poor child, will never have the courage to do anything about it.'

‘I don't believe it!' said Sarah flatly. ‘Not in this day and age. That sort of thing went out with Victorian novels and the vapours. Meril isn't a minor. She doesn't need anyone's consent. Besides, you're wrong when you say she hasn't any courage. I've seen her take a slope, skiing, that
I
wouldn't dare face.'

‘Ah, but that's quite a different sort of courage,' said Fudge wisely. ‘Lots of people with plenty of physical courage haven't an ounce of moral courage to go with it. Meril's one of that kind, and where her aunt is concerned she behaves like a hypnotized rabbit.'

‘Sounds as if she'll make the Major a perfect wife!' commented Sarah caustically. ‘But what makes you think he's interested in her, anyway? Lady Candera seems to hypnotize a lot of people. Maybe he's one of them too?'

‘Well, he was up here last year and he went around quite a bit with them. But it certainly wasn't Lady Candera who drew him up to Gulmarg. Meril used to give him skiing lessons every day. Now here he is again, in spite of the fact that he could have taken his leave in England instead. Of
course
it's Meril! Besides, didn't you see the beautiful shade of puce he went when Charles pulled his leg about it?'

‘Personally,' said Charles, ‘I can imagine nothing duller than having to go through life tied to such a model of rectitude and propriety as George McKay. No woman of spirit could bear up under the strain.'

‘Nonsense,' said Fudge firmly. ‘He's a good man. He's kind and he's reliable. Besides Meril isn't a woman of spirit. She'll make him a perfect wife, and they will stodge along together and be as happy as … as … well, I can't quite visualize George as a lark, I must admit. Anyway, it's too late in the afternoon to think up suitable similes. Where on earth has Hugo got to? It's time we were making tracks for home.'

Fudge got up, and accompanied by Charles, crossed the hall and disappeared in the direction of the bar, and Sarah, left alone, turned to look across the gloomy spaces of the deserted ballroom.

The sun was shining brightly outside the line of tall windows that ran down one side of the room, but between the windows and the dance floor stood a row of pillars that supported a long gallery overhead, and formed an open corridor between the windows and the ballroom below: a corridor that was furnished with sofas, chairs, tables and writing-desks, but which owing to that line of pillars, kept much of the daylight from the ballroom floor.

It was a gaunt and not very attractive room, and in the afternoon light, gloomy and bare and unfriendly. But Sarah was peopling it with the gay dancers of other years and picturing it ablaze with lights and full of noise and music and laughter; and presently she moved out onto the polished floor, humming softly to herself and took a few dancing steps across the shining surface.

Except for her own tuneful humming, it was very quiet in the big ballroom. And indeed the whole hotel seemed to be taking a siesta, for she could hear no sound from the hall or the passages beyond the ballroom. Even the subdued murmur of voices from the bar had ceased, and beyond the tall windows the garden drowsed in the afternoon sunlight, empty and silent.

The sprung floor vibrated under Sarah's feet as she swayed and turned to the strains of an imaginary band:
‘The moonlight, and the moon, and every lovely lilting tune…'
hummed Sarah, and stopped. That tune again! Janet's tune. Perhaps this ballroom
was
haunted. Perhaps Janet had danced to that tune here last year—and other years …

Sarah stood still in the middle of the dim, deserted floor, trying to visualize Janet in a ball dress, and thinking of all the young men up on leave who had danced here during the war years, and gone away to die in Burma and Malaya, North Africa and Italy; in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and on the infamous Death Railway …

As she stood there, her eye was caught by a faint movement. The curtains that hung in front of the stage rippled very slightly as though someone had drawn them an inch or two apart in order to peer out between them, and then dropped them softly back into place.

Sarah stayed very still, listening. Yes. There was someone on the stage behind the curtains, for in the stillness she could hear, very faintly, the pad of quiet feet moving across bare boards. A dog or a cat? But the curtains had moved at the height of a man's head. A hotel servant, then?—snatching a brief siesta in the shelter of the curtains.

A hundred to one it's only a servant! Sarah told herself firmly. It was silly to start imagining things even in innocent places like this, and she would go and see for herself.

She ran lightly across the floor and up the short flight of steps that led to the stage, and taking a deep breath, pulled aside the folds of the curtains and went through onto the stage behind them.

It was much larger than she had expected, but nothing moved upon it save the lazily drifting dust motes in a shaft of sunlight. The wide stretch of uncarpeted boards sloped slightly upwards towards the back wall in which there was a single tall window, and after the gloom of the ballroom the stage, on this side of the curtains, seemed full of light.

The sunbeams streaming in through the high window made symmetrical patterns on the bare boards and slanted across the piles of chairs and tables that stood against the walls of the stage, one upon the other. On one side a small flight of concrete steps led down to what were probably dressing-rooms, while on the opposite side, where the sunbeams did not penetrate, a steep, enclosed staircase wound up into the shadows of a gallery above. A gallery that was the continuation of the one that ran overhead along one side of the ballroom.

There was someone or something on that staircase; though Sarah did not know why she should be sure of this. Perhaps a board had creaked, or something had flickered among the dusty shadows … The empty stage stretched silent and still in the drowsy afternoon light and the heavy folds of the curtains hung dark and unmoving; and no sound came from the ballroom behind her. The furniture against the walls, the neatly stacked tables, the wicker chairs turned one upon the other, the smug outlines of cretonne-covered sofas and armchairs and the red plush curtains seemed to hem Sarah in, and she straightened her shoulders and walked steadily across the stage to the foot of the spiral staircase and looked up into the dusty dimness overhead.

Something moved sharply above her on the stairway and for the flash of a second she glimpsed a face that peered down at her from the shadows overhead. Then its owner turned and she heard a scurry of bare feet on the staircase, followed by the swift pad of retreating footsteps in the gallery overhead.

Sarah whirled about and running across the stage, slipped back between the curtains. From the front of the stage she could see up into the ballroom gallery and she was just in time to see a figure whisk out through its far door: a figure wearing the brown voluminous robes and white turban of a Kashmiri, and that she might have taken to be a member of the hotel staff if it had not been for the brief glimpse of its owner's face that she had received from the dark stairway.

She had a good memory for faces, but even if she had not, there would have been little excuse for forgetting this one, since she had seen it only an hour or so ago. It was the pockmarked face of the fat little assistant in Ghulam Kadir's papier mâché shop at the Fourth Bridge in Srinagar City.

As she stood there, staring up across the ballroom to the half-seen door of the gallery, the curtains at her back moved again and Sarah whirled round, her heart in her mouth.

‘Charles!'

‘Hello, Sarah.'

‘Gosh!' said Sarah in a gasp. ‘You gave me one hell of a fright. What were you doing back there?'

‘Watching you,' said Charles. He lit a cigarette and his eyes regarded her thoughtfully over the small yellow flame of his lighter. ‘You know Sarah,' said Charles softly, blowing out the flame, ‘you are too curious by half. Too curious and too courageous. And in the present circumstances, that is an unfortunate combination. I would feel a lot happier about you if you'd allow discretion to be the better part of valour for a change.'

‘Do you know who was behind that curtain?' demanded Sarah. ‘Well I'll tell you——'

But she was unable to, because Charles had taken a swift stride forward and the palm of his left hand was over her mouth.

‘Ssh!'
said Charles softly. ‘There are too many eyes in this place, Sarah, and too many ears.' He raised his voice, and said as though continuing a conversation, ‘—it was a pretty good band too. Run by a man in the Police called Chapman, who played a darned good game of golf and——'

But it was only Meril Forbes who came hurriedly through the doorway below the stage that led out of the ballroom into the long, whitewashed cloakroom passage.

She was wearing her usual air of distressed uncertainty and she checked at the sight of Charles and Sarah: ‘Oh!… Have–have either of you seen Aunt Ena? She sent me to get some cigarettes, and I've got them. But goodness knows where she's gone to: I've looked everywhere. She does so hate to be kept waiting. Oh dear, anyone would almost think she did this sort of thing on purpose!'

‘Of course she does,' observed Hugo, strolling in through the doorway, hat in hand: ‘Didn't you know?
“She only does it to annoy because she knows it teases.”
You should refuse to rise, Meril dear. As a matter of fact your elderly relative is outside in her car, sizzling slightly.'

‘Oh dear!'
repeated Meril helplessly, and hurried away across the ballroom.

‘Poor kid,' observed Hugo kindly, watching the retreating figure. ‘Pity someone can't make her a present of some backbone. Ah, there you are, Sarah. I've been sent to hunt you up. My spouse has been demanding your immediate apprehension. She is thinking of making a beeline for home. Coming?'

‘Yes,' said Sarah gratefully. She turned and ran down the steps from the stage and joined Hugo on the ballroom floor.

‘Charles been taking you on a Cook's Tour?'

‘Yes,' said Charles, coming down from the stage: ‘I've been telling Sarah all about the Gay Days.'

‘Believe it or not,' mused Hugo, ‘there was even a historic occasion when I myself performed upon that bally stage. If memory serves, I sang a duet with a girl called Mollie someone. A tasteful ditty about a bench in a park—or was it something about tiptoeing through tulips? I can't remember. I do recall, however, that my braces lifted the occasion to the heights of immortality. They gave under the strain of a high C and my trousers descended. It went well with the audience. In fact, I think I may say without vanity that I was a riot. The customers rolled in the aisles, and had anyone been able to supply a piece of string, or a safety-pin of suitable dimensions, I could have taken a dozen encores. As it was, our prudent stage-manager blacked us out and hurried on with the show. Ah me! Those were the days!'

From somewhere in front of the hotel came the sound of a car horn blown in a series of impatient toots.

‘That is undoubtedly my better half beginning to simmer at the edges,' said Hugo. ‘Come on, Sarah. Let us leg it with all speed.'

17

Sarah had tea that day on the flat roof of the Creeds' houseboat, looking out across the lake to the mountains behind Shalimar. Willow boughs made a swaying curtain of green lace above the tea table, and a trio of perky little bulbuls flirted their crests among the leaves and twittered for crumbs.