The Faraway Drums (16 page)

“So you use the selfishness of all these petty rulers like the Ranee and the Nawab and the bigger maharajahs to keep India under your thumb?”

He smiled. “I’m surprised you Americans don’t burst with your self-righteousness. Some day, when America decides to have an Empire you people will do exactly what we’re doing.”

“I hope I never live to see the day.” But even in her own ears she sounded as if she was talking from a pulpit.

Farnol glanced at Savanna, saw the pale blue eyes wide open and looking at him. He got up hurriedly, crossed to the bed, excited by the thought that at least he would be able to question Savanna. But as soon as he leaned over the bed he saw the eyes were blind, unmoving. Savanna was dead. He let out a curse and straightened up, thumping his fist on the bed.

Bridie knew from the curse what had happened. She got up at once, went to the door and opened it. “You’d better come in, Karim. Major Savanna has just died.”

Farnol
remained standing beside the bed; his stare was almost as intense as that of the dead man. Savanna was beyond all the wages of Empire now; he no longer cared about whatever prizes he had hoped to achieve with his intrigue. His place in the order of precedence would no longer be a worry to him; and anonymity might after all be a joy in Paradise. He had died relatively young, as most men did in India; Farnol knew as a fact that one rarely saw old Europeans in the country; his own father at sixty-five was looked upon as a survivor. Farnol was a man in whom pity ran deep and, though he had never liked Savanna, all at once he felt sorry for the dead man. To die from poisoning somehow took all the dignity and honour of one’s dying.

“Wrap him up in the sheet, Karim,” he said. “We’ll bury him first thing in the morning. Get some of the servants to dig a grave.”

Karim bundled up the body, slung it across his shoulder; in such a country as his he was accustomed to the dead, they were part of the landscape. “I’ll put him across in Miss O’Brady’s room, sahib. That Irish chappie can keep an eye on him till morning. You get some sleep.” He had the tact not to say
You and Miss O’Brady get some sleep
: but he nodded at the bed. “I’ll wake you early, sahib, so you can say the prayers for Major Savanna.”

Across the hall in Bridie’s room Ahearn looked with horror on the sheet-wrapped bundle Karim brought in and laid on the floor. “Holy Jay-sus, I can’t sleep with him in here!”

“He can’t hurt you,” said Karim contemptuously. He could never understand some of the lower levels of the British Army, especially the Irish. They seemed to be full of more fears and superstitions than a child. “He’s dead. You don’t have to salute him or anything any more. Just let him lie there and ignore him.”

“Ignorant coolie bastard,” said Ahearn after Karim had gone out and shut the door. He looked down at the body in the sheet, then lay down again on the bed and turned his back on it. “Jay-sus, Mary and Joseph . . .”

In his room Farnol was saying, “Do you mind sleeping in the bed after a dead man’s been in it?”

“I think I’d rather sleep here on this couch.” Bridie had her sensitivities if not her superstitions. “My mother thought every bed should be blessed with holy water after someone had died in it.”

Farnol handed her two blankets and a pillow. “I’ll turn my back if you want to undress. You may find it uncomfortable sleeping in your stays.”

“
I don’t wear a corset when I’m travelling, thank you. But if you would turn your back, I should like to undo a few buttons.”

Farnol lay down on the bed, pulled the remaining blankets over him, undid a few buttons of his own. “I wish we had met somewhere else. In England, perhaps at some country house party. I once spent a very pleasant weekend—” Then he smiled. “But you don’t want to hear that.”

“No. Goodnight, Major.”

But Bridie, too, wished that they had met in other circumstances. She felt that if they had, he would not be sleeping in the bed alone.

5

I

Extract from the memoirs of Miss Bridie O’Brady:

BURIALS, EVEN
in the most mundane surroundings, always have their awkward air for us Caucasians, as if we have still not accepted them as part of the routine of living. Grief does take the stiffness out of some, but most of us, those there only to pay respect to the dead, are rigid with disquiet, selfishly aware of who might be lowered into the grave. In that early December morning in that narrow valley in the Himalayas, as we buried Major Savanna, none of us was limp with grief; but we were as awkward as gate-crashers at the wrong party. Not so the hundreds of palace staff who, despite the early hour, materialized to stand in a circle round the newly-dug grave as Karim and Private Ahearn lowered the body into it.

“Can’t you shoo them away? Listen to them. It’s indecent, all that chatter.”

“There’s no privacy in India, m’dear,” said Lady Westbrook. “There are always onlookers. Curiosity is a healthy habit with them. Just ignore ‘em.”

I tried to do that, but it was not easy. I stared at the body, still wrapped only in a sheet and with no coffin, as it disappeared into the hole in the brown earth; Major Farnol had said a prayer, in a stiff formal voice that suggested he did not say many prayers in any circumstances at all. Karim and Ahearn stepped back and the two palace coolies who had dug the grave began to shovel dirt in on the body. The chatter in the crowd increased as it turned away and began to stream back towards the palace. The show was over and it was time to go to work.

I drew my collar up against the chill morning air, looked up gratefully at the sun as it slipped in through the gap at the end of the valley. The dawn blue of the valley suddenly gave way to greens and browns; retreating shadows made quick sketches of the contours; the thin air sparkled for a moment or two as if full of tiny translucent insects that lived and died in an instant. Mist rose out of the river like steam,
turned
into wraiths that fled before the sun. On a high peak snow had fallen during the night and it glittered like a silvered mailed fist held in the sky.

As we walked back towards the palace I heard barking and roaring and screeching. “That’s the menagerie,” Clive said. “Quite a clamour, eh?”

“Do the animals know someone is dead?”

“If they do, I don’t think they care.”

“Do you? I mean about Major Savanna.”

“He was an English officer, so I care about the way he died. But on a personal level, no. Not if you mean shall I miss him. We were never close. As a matter of fact, we detested each other. But—”

“But?”

“I’m not going to forget how he died. And I’ll do my best to find out why.”

“I should let him rest, Clive.” Lady Westbrook was smoking her first cheroot of the day, spoiling the morning air. “You have enough to worry about with the possible plot against the King.”

“What if it should all be linked?”

Lady Westbrook looked surprised, a reaction I hadn’t seen in her up till now. “Your imagination is running away with you. Are you trying to play Sherlock Holmes?”

So far this morning Clive (for that was what I was calling him in my mind now, not Major Farnol) had looked very stern; but now he smiled. Some people have a smile that can alter the whole set and character of their face; his was one of them. I wondered what he had been like as a younger man, before he had had to shoulder the burden of other men’s deaths: what he had been like at the country house party weekend, for instance. Some women are selfish and jealous, resentful of what they can never fully know, the years of a man’s life before he came into their own life. I was one of them.

“I don’t think I should ever make a good detective, Viola. One needs patience to follow clues and I’m not a patient man.”

“You have been warned, Bridie,” said Lady Westbrook, a matchmaker even at seven o’clock in the morning.

The air now was full of the cries and roaring of animals. We came up the road to the main gates and I saw the fighting elephants moving restlessly at their stakes, lifting their heads and trumpeting
challenges
that chilled the blood. Down towards the river the caravan elephants were tied to their stakes, but they were quiet, they knew better than to advertise in a tough neighbourhood. The whole palace was coming alive, turning into the small town which it really was.

Then through the gates came Prince Mahendra on a splendid black horse. Behind him were two mounted servants and behind them a small cart drawn by two horses. In it were two more servants and, in a cage behind them, two masked leopards.

Mahendra reined in his horse. “Out walking so early? The English do so love to exercise, don’t they?”

“We have been burying Major Savanna,” said Clive and pointed back along the valley to where the new grave was already lost in the brightening sunlight.

“Oh yes.” Mahendra’s mocking smile hadn’t changed. He was a man whose smile didn’t alter anything about him: it held the world at a distance. He was dressed this morning in khaki drill hunting clothes and the drab colour seemed to accentuate his thinness. “Well, I shall see you later. I am going hunting
chinkara
. My pets haven’t had a run lately.”

I looked at the two leopards, could hear them growling softly in their throats. Pets?

Clive said, “Your sister told me you were coming with us this morning when we leave.”

“I am. You will wait for me.”

“No, Your Highness. We go when I give the word. And that will be in, let’s say another hour.”

“The caravan belongs to my sister and me. It will leave when we give the word, not you, Major.”

He rode off and as the cart started up again the leopards’ growling increased. One of them turned its head in my direction and the sharp teeth showed under the black leather mask that stopped it from seeing me. It knew prey when it could smell it.

“What’s a
chinkara
?” I said.

“A small deer.” Clive was staring down the road after Mahendra, who had galloped ahead of his small retinue, disappearing in a cloud of dust. “He lets the leopards go, taking off their masks, when his bearers sight one. The
chinkara
hardly stands a chance with two leopards after it. But I think that would be Bobs’ idea of sport.”

“I feel the whole Kugar family is a damn menagerie,” said Lady Westbrook. “They should all be
wearing
masks, including Mala.”

Clive’s stern, angry face relaxed again as he smiled. “I should not let her hear you say that, Viola. You can’t run as fast as a
chinkara
.”

She snorted, threw away the butt of her cheroot. “I’m going to have breakfast. I hope it’s a little more civilized than that muck we had for dinner last night. Porridge, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade, tea. How does that sound to you, m’dear?”

“Wonderful.” We really gave meaning to the word breakfast in those days; we broke the fast to smithereens instead of just damping it with a cup of coffee. “I’d like some pancakes and maple syrup instead of the porridge.”

“Ugh,” said Clive. I think that the English don’t put in their sweet tooth till mid-morning.

The Ranee must have been as disgusted as we were at last night’s dinner and had issued instructions that a good breakfast had to be provided. It was as good as the one I’d had at the Lodge, a real English breakfast. We ate, not in the dining-room, which was no place for breaking a fast, but in a small room that looked out through arches on to the river. Everyone met for breakfast at the same time, as if nobody wanted to miss anything of what might be said about last night’s happenings.

“A burial?” Magda Monday was a woman obviously accustomed to champagne; she might not be able to hold it while she was drinking it, but it didn’t hold her the next morning. “Before breakfast? Poor Major Savanna.”

“What did this—this Major Savanna die of?” said Zoltan Monday.

“Poison,” said Clive.

I glanced up from my porridge and saw him look casually round the table as he dropped his small bomb. He looked and sounded casual, but I was now coming to recognize how alert he could be under that relaxed exterior. None of the others, except Lady Westbrook and the Ranee, looked relaxed; or if they had been, they had all at once stiffened. Even Magda lost her bright gaiety.

“Or he was overdosed with drugs. One or the other killed him.” He was spreading the shrapnel from his bomb. “Or murdered him, if you like.”

The Nawab was the first to recover. “You haven’t told us why he was here.”

“I don’t know.” Clive pushed his empty porridge bowl away, signalled for a servant to bring him
bacon
and eggs. “I thought one of you might be able to help me.”

“Murdered?” Magda seemed to take a while to recognize the word, as if she had suddenly forgotten all her English.

“He was here to see Bobs,” said the Ranee, ignoring Magda as she might have one of her servants. “I told you that last night.”

“So you did.” Clive’s face might be able to hide his true thoughts but it could never feign innocence. He must have realized it, because he suddenly smiled, then attacked the bacon and eggs that had been put down in front of him. “But Sherlock Holmes examines every avenue.”

“Sherlock Holmes?” Monday, too, seemed to have recovered. “Are we supposed to be characters in some Conan Doyle mystery, Major?”

“The butler did it,” said the Nawab, distributing that wide, insincere smile round the table. “You must have a thousand butlers here in the palace, Mala.”

“You know your household protocol as well as I do, Bertie—there can only be one butler. And I’m sure Mohammed didn’t do it, did you?” She smiled at the grey-haired butler who stood behind her chair supervising the other servants. He just returned her smile, as he might have handed her a clean napkin. “I think it would be good manners if we dropped the whole subject.”

So the death, or murder, of Major Savanna by poisoning or an overdose of drugs was dropped as a matter of etiquette and we all got on with breakfast.

Prince Mahendra did not return till mid-morning. In the meantime Clive paced up and down the corridors and terraces like one of Mahendra’s menagerie eager to escape. With a reluctant Private Ahearn as my bodyguard I, too, paced the terraces but at a more leisurely speed. Despite the threatening atmosphere of the palace I began to wish I could spend a few more days here.