The Damascened Blade (34 page)

Joe continued while she put her recollections in order. ‘Iskander has told us that what appeared to Lily to be an argument in the garden was most certainly at least a difference of opinion. Iskander was trying to dissuade Zeman from carrying out his long-held plan of assassinating James.’

Joe paused to allow everyone to react to this in their own way. For once Sir George seemed to show the greatest surprise. He went on, ‘Badal. This was revenge for the deaths at James’s hand of his two older brothers twelve years ago. The ideal moment had come and Zeman was not going to let it pass. He had made his plans for escaping from the fort with his men, Iskander was unwillingly standing by and Zeman had changed into uniform ready for the long ride back to Afghanistan. At three o’clock he left his room and set off up the stairs to James’s room.’

Betty began to shake and James put an arm around her. ‘I’ll tell you what happened next,’ he said sharply, ‘because this part concerns me and, quite honestly, I wish for Betty’s sake it could have been left to lie!’ He gave George a sour look and continued in the clear-cut, unemphatic tones of a soldier. ‘I woke at whatever time you say it was with a knife at my throat. Zeman had a hand over my mouth and the point of his dagger pricking my jugular vein. He didn’t want to kill me while I was unconscious – he woke me deliberately because he wanted me to understand
why
I was about to die. He hissed the names of his brothers and said he’d been there in the hills watching when I killed them all those years ago.’ He paused for a moment and shook his head. ‘He could only have been a child of ten. He was the one who fired a jezail at me. A jezail! Must have been as big as he was! He’d tracked me down and made a point of getting to know me when we met in Peshawar. I thought he liked me. As a matter of perverse fact, I think he did. But whether he liked me or not would be neither here nor there against the compulsion of badal: the dismal
danse macabre
of vengeance and counter vengeance. I’ve seen it before and I know how implacable, how destructive, it can be,’ said James slowly. ‘But that’s the Pathan way. How we forget! They’ll plot and plan and take years if necessary to get something right.

‘But there was something even Zeman couldn’t have calculated for! Frightful little Minto! He woke up and just went for him! Launched himself across the space between the beds and went for his arm. The arm holding the dagger. Took Zeman completely by surprise. He started to pull his arm away but not fast enough and the dog got his teeth into Zeman’s sleeve. He missed his flesh but it was enough. He swung his weight on Zeman’s sleeve and fell between the beds, hanging on. That was deflection enough for me! While Zeman was trying to shake him off I picked up the candlestick by my bed – it’s Benares brass, heavy and with a square base as I’m sure you’ve already checked, Joe – and I hit him on the head with it. A lucky blow, I think, because he slumped down without a murmur and I’m pretty sure he died very quickly after that.’

This was the account Joe had expected from James. He waited a moment to see if James had anything to add but his friend remained silent and, as it seemed to Joe, weary.

‘Three o’clock and you and Betty were left with quite a problem!’ said Joe. ‘A guest, a military guest of some standing and influence, lying dead from a blow to the skull in the bedroom of the commanding officer of Gor Khatri. I wouldn’t like to have to unravel all the implications of the code of melmastia! But you saw that it was a situation which could so readily be exploited by anyone with a fancy to do so, and they are thick on the ground in this part of the world! Afghan and Afridi would both have been at your throat next. As Grace pointed out to me, wars have started with much, much more trivial pretexts.’

‘For the good of everybody, we had to pass it off as a death from natural causes,’ Betty said. ‘But we couldn’t do that without Grace’s help.’

‘So I went along to Grace’s room and asked her to attend Betty who’d been sick and that’s what she thought she was being called to do when
you
opened your door and saw us in the corridor,’ said James.

‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘The last person you would want to find sticking an oar in – Sandilands of the Yard!’

‘Honest Joe who can’t be doing with cover-ups and the diversion of the truth!’ James said, remembering. ‘Bit awkward that, I have to admit! But we did what we had to do. Grace came into the room and checked Zeman. He was dead by then . . .’

‘Yes, nothing anyone could have done for him,’ said Grace. ‘And, while I’m in the witness box, so to speak, I’ll just say that the real cause of death, the one I should have given at the autopsy was – a blow to the head resulting in subdural haemorrhage. The sharp edge of the candlestick had been to some extent blunted by a fold of Zeman’s turban but the blow had been delivered with force enough to crack the skull and rupture blood vessels under the bone and bleeding had occurred internally into the space between the skull and the brain membrane. His thick hair also to a large extent concealed the wound which was not in itself very dramatic in appearance. You can imagine for yourselves the imperatives which led me to decide there and then to conceal the violent nature of this death.’

She paused and looked round, saying at last, ‘Look here! I’ve worked for peace on the frontier all my grown-up life. I’ve worked to bring what James so truly called a
danse macabre
to an end at last. I’d have done or said anything to cut the cycle of death and revenge!’

‘It was my idea to pass it off as poisoning, Joe,’ Betty said. ‘We thought first we’d just carry his body to the stairs and position the straight line of the wound along the edge of one of the stone steps to make it look as though he’d fallen but then we thought, “That’s not going to deceive anybody!” Pathans move like cats – they don’t go falling over their feet, not even in the dark. And, anyway, what would he have been doing on the stairs in the night? Too many questions raised! We had to think of some more natural reason for his death and then I remembered that, by chance, Zeman and I had both eaten the pheasant dish – no one else. If we could say that he and I alone of the group had been taken ill – food poisoning or something – that might be convincing. I told Grace I had actually been sick earlier that night and that gave her the idea . . .’

‘We had to work fast,’ Grace interrupted, sensing that Betty had some qualms about recounting the next step of the deception. ‘There was the question of hypostasis, of course. We would have to deal with Joe and we weren’t quite sure how much knowledge of post-mortem procedure and the physical aspects of death go with being a London policeman these days, so I had to assume the very best information and evidence would be required. The body had to be placed without delay where eventually it would be discovered so that the blood and other fluids could settle into a convincing pattern. I took a flake of white stone from the steps and inserted it into the wound and then addressed the problem of the vomit.’

She looked round the pale faces at the table with a slight touch of malicious humour and said, ‘In deference to everyone’s sensibilities – and none more sensitive here than Iskander and Betty herself, I imagine – I will simply say in answer to your unvoiced questions – syringe! From porcelain washing bowl to the throat of the corpse was the work of a minute.’

‘And then you artistically placed a trail from Zeman’s room to the body and left a pond under his chin,’ Joe confirmed.

‘Yes. But this is where we hit a problem during the autopsy. I don’t think it escaped your eagle eye, Joe, that the, um, solid material contained therein was relatively fresh. I had to assume that every London-trained policeman is familiar to some extent with vomit . . .’

Joe nodded. ‘Ruined many a pair of copper’s boots!’

‘So I decided to tell the truth about the time of the expulsion of the part-digested matter rather than the actual time of the death. I skewed the estimate of rigor mortis and I don’t think anyone was aware of that. It can vary quite a bit anyway. If I’d given 3 a.m. as the time of death Joe would have guessed at once that the pantomime in the corridor was not unconnected.’

‘There was an alternative course of action,’ said Joe.

‘Yes, of course. We could have told you there and then. Tried to enlist your help. Don’t think it didn’t occur to me! But James was adamant. He refused to confide in you.’ She looked at Joe, head on one side. ‘And now I know you better, Commander, I understand his reservations.’

‘But there was something about the sick that gave it all away!’ Lily said. ‘I remember, Joe, when we went back to look at Zeman’s clothes you said, “The smell – it takes me back to any Saturday night in Seven Dials.” And then you went quiet for a bit and said, “Or does it?” I know what you were thinking! No alcohol!’

‘That’s right,’ said Joe. ‘George, you for one won’t know that, unusually – and I have to ascribe this to stress brought on by association with the infuriating Rathmore for the space of an evening – Zeman and Iskander both indulged themselves in a brandy or two at the end of the meal. There was no olfactory trace of alcohol in the vomit ascribed to Zeman. “Children’s party” rather than “Seven Dials gutter”, you might say! Sorry, Betty! This isn’t easy for any of us and particularly hard on you. So, incredibly, if the eleven o’clock vomit sample didn’t belong to Zeman, no matter how intimate its association with the corpse, then it had to be someone else’s eleven o’clock vomit. Betty had been sick at the appropriate time and – she was the only person at the party who did not drink any alcohol.’

‘So if Betty was involved, James was involved too and Grace was helping in the cover-up,’ Lily concluded.

‘But I can’t see,’ said Grace, ‘how you guessed about Minto’s part in all this.’

‘The tooth marks!’ Lily said. ‘Joe and I went back to the infirmary and checked over his clothes. There were holes in the sleeve of Zeman’s shirt. And the distance between the holes was what you’ve all just seen between the teeth of that little mutt over there. And we knew he’d been trying to get into Betty’s room because there are scratch marks in the paintwork on the door.’

‘A formidable pair of investigators, you and Lily, it would seem,’ said Grace. ‘But tell me – if you had worked it out with such ease what stopped you from revealing all this?’

‘I think it must have been the curlers!’ Joe allowed himself a smile. ‘I was unwilling to believe that a lady in curlers and dressing gown could possibly be on her way to a murder or the cover-up of a murder. I was completely taken in by you, Grace. And as for Betty – she should be treading the boards at the Old Vic!’

‘We had a certain amount of luck too,’ Grace admitted. ‘The poultryman’s revelation that the pheasant had been poisoned with arsenic was a bonus.’

‘Yes! Innocent old Achmed! Played right into your hands. Rather superfluous, though, coming after your colourful account of death by androthingamajig!’ Joe smiled. ‘What imagination!’

Grace shook her head. ‘Andromedotoxin! And I didn’t make that up! There
is
such a condition – though I’m still waiting to see a real case of it.’

‘This is all getting a bit self-congratulatory,’ said Sir George reprovingly. ‘May I remind you that we’re accounting for a most regrettable death? What a devious crew I have to deal with! I don’t wonder Iskander decided to hold a pistol to your heads! But where, politically speaking, do we stand now?’

‘
I
would ask where, in the eyes of the Law, do we stand now?’ said Joe firmly.

‘I expect you’re ready to answer your own question?’ said Sir George.

‘The death, being occasioned by an attempted murder on the part of the deceased, must be viewed as justifiable homicide,’ said Joe. ‘A clear case of self-defence. James had no alternative . . . anyone would have done the same. He was a man with, literally, a dagger at his throat and the thought that his wife also was likely to be similarly done to death as she slept at his side. No court in the land, military or civil, would convict James of murder or even manslaughter in the circumstances, but for the sake of order and clarity and honouring the legal process he should be arrested and charged and the case brought to court.’

Grace and James exchanged a look but remained silent.

‘Well, there speaks the voice of Scotland Yard and the British Judicial System,’ said Sir George, ‘and, indeed, if James were so foolish as to crack someone on the head with a candlestick in a bedroom in Berkeley Square, I would agree that a trip to the Old Bailey was distinctly on the cards. But we are here on the North-West Frontier, practically a battle zone, not a court of law for hundreds of miles and a fort to run while James is languishing in chains. Hmm.’

Joe waited. He had grown used to hearing George rehearse an apparently insuperable problem which he would promptly solve by a quick change of direction. George turned suddenly to Iskander. ‘This is your land, Iskander, the loss was your loss, an Afridi loss. What have you to say?’

‘Dr Holbrook has spoken of the arrangements she made with Ramazad Khan. She bartered three lives for three lives and Ramazad agreed to cancel the debt. Before the whole tribe, he had taken upon himself the duty of badal for Zeman. As far as the Afridi are concerned the trail of revenge ends there.’ He shrugged his shoulders and stared at the wall. ‘What the British official response is does not concern me any longer. I wanted to know the truth. Now I have an admission of the truth. What
you
now do with it is your affair. Bury it if you wish.’

There was a long pause as everyone pondered his words. Yes, they had the truth but who had any use for it any longer? Apart from the intellectual satisfaction of knowing the answer to a puzzle there was solace for no one in it. Joe suddenly realized that he was the focus of everyone’s attention. Iskander had reminded him that the Afridi were no longer in pursuit of revenge or justice and had passed the initiative back; Sir George would do and say anything which would smooth over the situation and Grace would support him in that. Betty looked at Joe, stricken and appealing, but James, expressionless, refused to meet his eye. They were all waiting for him to speak, sensing his struggle with the uncompromising puritan side of his nature. Joe felt a flash of resentment. He was not a judge and jury – his role was to find out the details of a crime, ascertain who was responsible and deliver the accused up to the proper authorities. It was no part of his job to decide whether to pursue or abandon an enquiry. He knew exactly where his duty lay.