‘But it was a long time ago – 1913. Quite difficult to beat up any fresh evidence now.’ She broke off and shouted, ‘Koi-hai!’ to the bearer in his little cabin and issued an order, resuming her story with the words, ‘I thought we could do with a cup of coffee – unless you’d like something stronger? I’ve got some whisky somewhere.’
‘No. No whisky for me. Anglo-Indians start rather too early in the day for me. Don’t forget I spent some time fending off Uncle George’s hospitality this morning!’
‘Well, to continue my trip down Memory Lane, we turn back now to 1912 and Sheila Forbes. There’s a favourite ride in Panikhat. Everybody does it all the time. You go across the river at the ford and then you go up a very narrow little track up the side of the mountain.’
‘Mountain?’ asked Joe with a glance through the window at the endless stretch of low-lying paddy fields they were passing through.
‘Don’t worry, the hills will be coming up soon on the starboard bow. Of course it’s not a real mountain, more an outcrop of reddish, rocky high land. It’s not a dangerous track but you have to be careful what you’re doing. It seems that Sheila’s horse shied at something and threw her off. She was riding side-saddle and when you’re riding side-saddle you can only depend on balance so, at best, it’s a bit precarious. They all rode like that in those days and even now you’ll find an old jungle salt who will look sideways at the Collector’s wife for riding astride. Men! But that’s not fair – the women are just as bad!’
Joe asked again, ‘So much for the basic story. Were there witnesses?’
‘No. Not really. The party she was with were ahead and had gone on round the corner. There was a beggar on the path and he saw it happen. His evidence was just what you’d expect – Sheila’s horse had shied and poor old Sheila went over the cliff – it’s quite a height – and didn’t stand a chance. The horse survived, incidentally. Bold as brass. But… the only unusual thing was that she was not a regimental wife – her husband was in the IAMC. Still, in everyone’s mind it counted as another death on the station.’
The bearer came into the carriage with a copper tray on which stood a coffee pot and tiny china cups. He set it down beside Nancy and she resumed her story.
‘Now we go back to Joan Carmichael, wife of Colonel Carmichael. A bitter man. Didn’t do quite as well out of the war as he thought he ought to have and got stuck at Lieutenant-Colonel. I knew him very slightly from my distant childhood; he was the worst the Indian army had to offer – all moustache and bluster, not kind to the young officers, not popular with the men. I don’t think he and Joan had much of a life together.’
Joe sipped his coffee, his mind more distracted than he would have liked by the story-teller. So she was presumably born and brought up in India; he would have guessed that from her easy manner and knowledge of the language.
‘Tell me what happened to Joan.’
‘Ah, this really makes my blood run cold! She was killed by a cobra. Not unknown in India though actually less common than people back home seem to think. They’ve all read The Jungle Book! They all expect a cobra to pop up out of the plug hole every time someone takes a bath!’
‘I always travel with a mongoose,’ he said seriously.
She laughed and carried on with her tale. ‘Well, it’s a pity Joan didn’t have hers with her that day. She always rode out every morning – most of us do – and she always went the same way.’
‘Does anyone know exactly what happened?’
‘Well, the police work seems, for once, to have been quite good. Again, I’ve read the reports. There were evidences that she – er…’ She seemed suddenly embarrassed and finished with a rush, ‘that she had dismounted to answer a call of nature. Can you imagine anything more appalling? Being bitten by a cobra with your knickers down? I’m not trying to make a joke of it but there’s something awful about people… it’s just the kind of thing that makes us laugh until we think about how terrible it must have been.’
‘It’s a very human reaction,’ said Joe easily. ‘You must have encountered it a lot when you were nursing. We certainly did in the trenches. Laughing was sometimes the only thing that kept us sane. In the beginning. It made the unspeakable something we could handle.’
They were both silent for a moment, thoughts on the death and final painful indignity of the Colonel’s wife.
‘But how did they know it was a cobra?’ Joe asked. ‘I have never been to India before and perhaps there are things obvious to an old Koi-hai that would be a mystery to me…’
She leaned forward, suddenly intense.
‘They knew it was a cobra because it was still there! At the scene. This sounds really extraordinary and there may be a simple explanation but – it makes me shiver to talk about it – but, someone had killed the cobra – chopped its head off – and left it lying there right beside Joan’s body.’
‘But that means…?’
‘Yes, that someone passing by had seen Joan lying dead. Someone passing very soon after the attack. Or even witnessing the attack? Soon enough after to have caught the cobra and have killed it. But why? In revenge for Joan? It’s macabre! Now, Mr Policeman, what do you make of that?’
‘Did the police at the time form a theory?’
‘As far as they were able to discover there were no witnesses to this death, not even a passing beggar. They thought, as I suggested, that perhaps a woodsman – a charcoal burner perhaps – may have tried to save her from the snake, killed it and then realising it was a hopeless case just cleared off and kept his head down.’
Joe sat in silence for a moment, suddenly grieving for Joan Carmichael. Lonely Anglo-Indian wife, unsatisfactory marriage, unkind husband, seeking what relief from boredom she could find by riding out in the early mornings, suffering the while from a bladder complaint, it really was a bleak and pathetic story.
Following his sorrowful thoughts, he turned to Nancy. ‘Had she friends?’
‘I don’t really know. It didn’t occur to me to find out. Acquaintances, obviously. You couldn’t live in a place like this without acquaintances, but close friends, no, I wouldn’t know. Is it important?’
‘No, I don’t think so. It’s just that I was getting such a sad picture. I’d like to have thought she had some nice chum she could call in on, on her way back from her ride.’
She arched her eyebrows. ‘A sentimental policeman? But I know what you mean… We can ask about. There are quite a few officers and their wives on the station who were there before the war. They haven’t been there all the time, of course. They move around. Everyone in India moves around! They may have been posted to several other stations in the meantime but they will remember. If they were here, they will remember. You can count on that.’
‘And you say the first death occurred in 1910?’
‘Dolly Prentice. Twelve years on – and that’s a lifetime in India – but people still remember Dolly! Half the regiment were in love with her from what I hear. Even the memsahibs liked her and that’s unusual because she was young and quite lovely. There are photographs. They salvaged almost nothing after the fire but a tin trunk with the family valuables in it wasn’t too badly damaged and it contained, among other things, two photograph albums. She was a real English rose, Dolly – all fair hair and huge blue eyes. The sort of fluffy, feminine creature that turns men’s heads… all the charm of a twelve-week-old kitten…’
Joe smiled. He looked at the rather sharp profile being offered to him, the tilt of the chin, the straight, determined nose and the knowing, mischievous smile, and thought that Nancy Drummond would not have had a great deal in common with Dolly Prentice.