Murder on a Summer's Day (28 page)

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Authors: Frances Brody

Tags: #Cozy Mystery, #Historical

BOOK: Murder on a Summer's Day
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‘You stay here, your highness. When I return, I will take you back to Bolton Hall and Rajendra and the ayah will have a trusty bodyguard.’

The confidence in my voice belied fears that I might not wake Sykes from his slumber, or that the maharani would already have been missed. My reputation would hit the India Office dust if it became known that I had whisked the princess and her son away at dead of night and brought her to this hovel.

Smiling reassurances I did not feel, I left them with the lantern and walked back along the road to the hotel, glad of the moonlight now that the clouds had parted.

I walked, quickening my pace. The enormity of this folly hit me like a falling tree. Indira was crazed with grief and fear. I should have calmed her, called for Sir Richard.

No. I did not trust Sir Richard as far as Indira was concerned. But could I trust her, or myself?

What an idiot, to take important guests from the protection of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, leave them and a young servant alone and unprotected.

A sound startled me. I dared not stop to listen. Moments later, another sound, a whistle. I paused. Should I turn back? Too late.

If Indira and Rajendra were slaughtered before I could return, there would be only one person to blame. Kate Shackleton.

 

It was almost midnight when I tiptoed to Sykes’s room and tapped on the door. Fortunately, he had stayed awake, alert and fully dressed. Feeling a huge sense of relief at the sight of him, I half collapsed into the bucket chair, feeling suddenly exhausted.

Briefly, I explained the predicament.

He perched on the bed. ‘Mrs Sugden is in the hotel. She is in a ground-floor room, opposite yours.’

‘I hate to disturb her at this time.’

‘I notice you don’t hate to disturb me.’

He listened to my account of taking the princess, her child and his ayah to the Withers’s cottage.

‘How much of a hovel is it?’

‘A tramp would think it heaven. Once the little boy wakes, he will either be delighted at the adventure, or horrified at the discomfort. We need to take bedding, and food.’

‘Right.’ Sykes untucked the sheets of his bed, placed the pillows on top and began to make a roll of the eiderdown, blankets and sheets.

‘I’ll do the same in my room. We’ll need food.’

‘I’ll raid the kitchen.’

‘Meet you by my motor.’

A few moments later, I tapped on Mrs Sugden’s door. Unlike Sykes, she had decided that sleep was her preferred choice of passing the night. Fortunately she is a light sleeper. I explained the task, leaving out the state of the cottage. With a bit of luck and a dim lamp, she would not be too appalled until morning light.

In the time it took me to follow Sykes’s example and roll my bedding, ready to be taken to the motor, Mrs Sugden was dressed and waiting.

Like three conspirators, we met by my motor and stared at it, considering the logistics. The motor was too small for the three of us to sit comfortably.

Sykes came up with the solution. The bedding and food would go in the dickey seat; Mrs Sugden in the passenger seat. He would ride on the running board.

It was a great relief to find my charges still alive.

Within half an hour, I had deposited Sykes and Mrs Sugden in the cottage with the ayah and Rajendra, who had woken and now looked surprisingly chipper at the prospect of spending a night in a dank cottage near a dark wood. In English, he told Mrs Sugden he was hungry, and spoke to the ayah about making his bed. Or at least, I assume that is what he said because she took most of the bedding and arranged it comfortably for him on the planks that served as the Withers’s sleeping quarters.

Part one of my mission accomplished, I drove Indira back to Bolton Hall. One small snag was to find the side door closed.

Indira walked to the front and rang the door bell. I waited, out of sight, until the butler eventually came to let her in.

 

Of course, there is always something one forgets. Back in my now familiar hotel room, I donned pyjamas, and looked at the stripped bed. A feeling of chill came over me. There was a simple solution: take the bedding from Mrs Sugden’s room.

I crossed the hall. Unfortunately, Mrs Sugden, being a woman of foresight, had locked the door and taken her key with her.

But there would be a linen cupboard somewhere along the corridor. This entailed going back into my room for the flashlight, to ensure that I did not open doors with a room number and startle some unwary sleeper.

Cautiously, I walked the corridor, shining my torch left and right. There was no linen room, only a cupboard containing brushes and mops.

Then I remembered that on the floor above, there must be at least two linen cupboards because Ijahar had commandeered one as a laundry and storage room.

I tiptoed up the creaking stairs to the next floor.

To my surprise, Ijahar had not emptied his little room of his master’s shirts, undergarments and his array of irons. I looked along the shelves anyway, in hopes of spotting some heavy drapery I might purloin. There were more undergarments, socks, shirts, soap, laundry materials including starch in a jar and two blue paper bags of powder, presumably washing powder. The poor man did not have a rich taste in snacks, only a few charcoal biscuits and a piece of root ginger. One of my older colleagues in the VAD, Marion Calder, had sworn by charcoal biscuits, saying they did wonders for her indigestion. A bunch of nettles lay on the slatted shelf. Perhaps Ijahar drank nettle tea. I could conjure up a solemn conversation between him and Marion Calder regarding an efficacious diet for the healthy digestive tract.

I sniffed at the ginger. It protected against colds. On the rare occasions when we VAD nurses could procure a piece of ginger, we used it as an anti-emetic, the one sure way of keeping a patient from vomiting.

Ijahar had wanted flowers for his master’s body and I found it touching that he had also placed flowers and leaves by a stack of starched shirts.

I left the little room, and walked along the corridor. To my disappointment the next cupboard contained the same array of brushes and mops as the cupboard on my own floor.

Facing a chilly night, I returned to my room, donned coat and socks and lay down to catch whatever sleep might come my way.

After a long while, I fell into a shallow sleep. It was one of those nights not just of disturbed dreams, but of voices. This happened to me sometimes. I would be spoken to in my sleep very clearly and yet entirely nonsensically.

This time the voice that woke me said, ‘He is too young.’

These messages from nowhere are always somewhat terse.

I half woke, thinking that yes, Rajendra was too young to be dragged from his bed in the middle of the night. I fell back to sleep and saw Rajendra lying on the rough bed in the cottage. As is the way with dreams, I was also in the cottage, unseen. When a sudden noise startled Sykes and he ran to the cottage door, there was nothing I could do. He called Mrs Sugden’s name.

I woke shivering, and not just from the cold. A sense of foreboding swept over me, as if the dream might be a warning. I was tempted to give up on sleep altogether and go out to my car. Had I given all the motoring blankets to Sykes and Mrs Sugden? I couldn’t remember.

Wandering about in the middle of the night would be no good for me or anyone else. Putting on an extra cardigan, I forced myself to lie down again. Eventually, I slept, until light filtered into the room through the gap in the curtains. I woke thinking of that terse little phrase, ‘He is too young.’

There were several interpretations for this piece of useless information, the most obvious being that Maharajah Narayan was too young to die.

I opened my eyes, and looked at the clock.

As I did so, something reared up from beside the bed, a writhing, twisting snake as tall as a tree, with hooded head, tiny eyes, open jaws, and a forked tongue pointing at me.

I froze. So did the snake, poised, elegant, offended, and then it swayed.

Stay still, I willed it, keeping my eyes on the dots of hatred that it wore for eyeballs.

I have not made a will. My library book is overdue.

 

Once in the corridor, I leaned against the wall, shaking with fear. Only the alarm clock had come between me and the snake, as I grabbed the clock, flung it, leapt from the bed and raced from the room, shutting the door behind me.

I looked at the bottom of the door, at the smallest of gaps. Did reptiles have the ability to flatten themselves and slither free? It might wend its way from room to room, first taking its revenge on me, then carefully poisoning guest after guest.

I do not know how long I stood there, barefoot, wearing only pyjamas, trembling. But they were moments of stunning clarity.

It is a cobra.

It is the dancing cobra belonging to the snake charmer.

Someone knows I sleep with the window open and has sent a dancing cobra to kill me. Someone has watched me, followed me; knows where I took the child. But there is only one snake. The child will be safe with Sykes and Sugden.

Never have I been so glad to see someone as when Rachel appeared at the end of the corridor, holding a tray.

She walked as far as Mrs Sugden’s door, opposite mine. Good old Mrs Sugden, early riser.

Rachel stared at me.

‘What’s the matter, madam?’

‘There’s a snake in my room. It came in through the window.’

‘We don’t have snakes.’

‘It’s a cobra.’

‘Was it a dream?’

I shook my head. ‘Lock this door. Put something thick and heavy against the bottom, in case it tries to wriggle under.’

She put down the tray. ‘I’ll just…’ She tapped on Mrs Sugden’s door.

I did not tell her that Mrs Sugden would not be there to receive her early morning tea.

Next, Rachel tried to insert her key into my lock. I could tell she was humouring me.

‘It won’t go in. Your own key is on the other side. Shall I…’

I stopped her from opening the door. ‘Go find Mr Sergeant. Tell him to close my window from the outside, and then to come here straight away.’

She tapped on Mrs Sugden’s door again.

‘Never mind that. She’s not there! Just go! Do as I say.’

As she turned and hurried along the corridor, I slid down, and sat with my back to the wall.

Be rational. Snakes cannot open doors. A cobra could not crawl through such a small gap. Think of something else.

I felt so very cold, so cold that my bones moaned a foretelling of old age. Think of something else. Try and recall the dream I had before waking. A voice had spoken so clearly. But that was not a real person. It was a dream voice, saying, ‘He is too young.’

Poor Osbert Hannon was too young to drown; his baby son too young to lose his father.

‘He is too young.’

Ijahar was too young to have worked as Maharajah Narayan’s valet since Narayan was a child, which was what he told me when I first spoke to him. It can be difficult to tell a person’s age if something else about them attracts your attention. With Ijahar, it had been the livid scar where his eyebrow should have been, and his over-anxious manner. Had he lied to me, or been confused by my questions?

Narayan must have been at least a dozen years older than Ijahar and would have had a valet before Ijahar was born. Perhaps I had misunderstood.

I recalled my first meeting with Ijahar, when he bowed, propped open the door of his little room and cut a pathetic figure, racked with anxiety about his master. Yet last night, he had strutted arrogantly, berating some poor young devil about not polishing his master’s shoes.

Ijahar no longer had a master, or had he?

In and out like a jack-in-the-box, Sergeant had said of him. In and out of the hotel so often that no one would pay heed if he wandered hither, thither and yon, disappeared for long enough to kill, and to hide a body. The prince had been shot at close range. Ijahar could come within close range of his master. That was part of his job. Yet the idea was preposterous. Sir Richard was right. The man’s servitude was too deeply ingrained for him to break a taboo and murder a prince. The notion went against all conventions, all sense, against the natural order. It simply could not be.

Yet why, when Prince Narayan’s belongings had been cleared from the room, had so many bits and pieces been left behind in the linen closet? Not simply left, but adorned with flowers.

Mr Sergeant quick-marched along the corridor towards me. Rachel trotted after him. Without a word, he opened the door to my room, took the key from the lock, shut it again and locked the door.

‘You believe me then?’

‘I closed your window. The cobra has curled up in the wash basin. It must have been thirsty.’

‘I suppose frightening someone half to death is thirsty work.’

‘I’ve sent for the snake charmer. He should keep his creature under tighter control. Are you all right?’

‘Mr Sergeant, Rachel, I need clothes and shoes, and I need them now.’

 

Twenty minutes passed before Rachel returned.

‘Sorry, Mrs Shackleton. It’s the best I could do.’ Had there been time for dismay, the outfit Rachel produced would have brought it on by the bucket load. The tweed skirt would need two safety pins to stay up. The neat white blouse was, at least, beautifully ironed. A beige cardigan sported decorative bobbles which must have set the knitter something of a challenge. At least the bloomers were so well washed as to be threadbare.

‘We could wait until the snake has gone,’ she said helpfully, handing me a pair of lisle stockings.

We were in a vacant room, two doors from mine. ‘No time.’ As I dressed, I said, ‘Tell me something about Prince Narayan’s manservant.’

‘Oh him. Nice as pie.’

Which translated from the Yorkshire means you would not trust him to carry a glass of water across the room.

‘I notice he has left some stuff in the linen cupboard.’

‘He has. He’d no inhibitions about taking over the place. It’s supposed to be our Empire, but if you ask me, they’re the ones who rule the roost. Look at the way they’ve taken over Bolton Hall, with all them tents outside. If I was to pitch a tent there, I’d be shifted along quick as you could say tug that forelock.’

The lisle stockings were on the baggy side.

‘Rachel, there are irons in that little linen room, and starch, but it’s a bit cramped for him to have done his laundry work there.’

‘Oh he didn’t do his laundry in there. We had bets on that he’d go to the river and wash the royal shirts on the rocks, like you see them doing in picture books. He came down to the cellar and took over the biggest sink, using his own scrubbing brush. He’s not a laundry man, he says. If he was in India, he wouldn’t do any laundry. He’d be too good for it.’

‘And what about starching and ironing?’

‘He helped himself to our starch didn’t he? And the same with the irons, if he got to them first. He took up space on the table as if he owned the place.’

‘You didn’t like him,’ I said, in my best mistress of understatement manner.

‘He’s shifty, that’s what I think.’

My heart was starting to thump. Not because of Rachel’s mistrust of Ijahar, but at the thought of the flowers, ginger, charcoal biscuits and bunches of nettles. Whatever Ijahar got up to in that little room, valeting must have been far down on his list.

‘Are you any good at identifying flowers?’

‘I’m not bad. And I know the meanings, the language of flowers.’

‘Come with me to the laundry room.’

As we left the room, I caught sight of myself in the glass and wished I hadn’t.

Rachel turned her key in the lock. She led the way along the corridor. ‘You’re a detective aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Metcalfe told me. You went to London.’

‘I did.’

‘Did you see Lydia? Her mam would like to know if she’s all right.’

I felt a stab of guilt. ‘Yes, she’s very well.’

She must have been very well to climb out of a second-floor window and make a run for Paris. I would call and tell Mrs Metcalfe that Lydia had gone because it struck me that Lydia’s first thought would not be to send her mother a postcard. “Climbed the Eiffel Tower today from the outside. Wish you were here.”

We walked into the linen cupboard. Picking up one of Narayan’s shirts, I shook it out and spread it on the shelf. Lifting the charcoal biscuits, ginger, nettles, blossoms and leaves, I placed them on the shirt.

‘What a funny feller. Takes all sorts doesn’t it, madam?’

‘It does. Do you recognise those flowers?’

She did.

I tied the shirt into the kind of bundle a picture book tramp would carry over his shoulder on a stick.

‘Rachel, the first minute you have, please bundle up the prince’s linen. Lock it away somewhere, and if you are asked say…’

‘By Ijahar?’

‘Or anyone, say you haven’t time just now but will find it later.’

That way, Ijahar would not suspect me of emptying his lair.

I hurried from the hotel and carried the items taken from the laundry room to my car.

Before I had time to start the engine, a voice practically shrieked at me.

‘Mrs Shackleton!’

I turned to see Mr Sergeant, grim and shocked. ‘What is it? Has the snake escaped?’

‘The snake is still in your wash basin. Its owner is on his way, full of protestations that he believed it to be safely in its basket.’

‘Then what is the matter?’

‘All hell has broken out at the Hall. Maharajah Shivram Halkwaer is dead. He was found in his room by his servant this morning. Poisoned.’

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