‘Well, you can believe it or not but what they were intending to do about it was absolutely bugger all! Oh, sorry, Nancy! Ticked me off for mentioning it! Junior officers were not expected to rush in announcing a fire apparently. They were interested enough to walk on to the verandah and ascertain that the rumpus – by that time there were shots to be heard too – was coming from Prentice’s bungalow. That made them laugh. They all hated him, I think, for one reason or another, and they just stood there and watched the spectacle. One of them actually called for a brandy and stood sipping it while the bungalow went up. That was Simms-Warburton. He was really blotto… “Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,” I remember he said. “Your house is on fire, your children are gone. Except that they aren’t – took his wife and daughter with him, I suppose. He usually does.”
‘ Carmichael was the senior officer present. And he’d drunk more than any of us. Could hardly move.’
‘Five glasses of port,’ said Joe.
‘Was it? Hmm… And you can add the claret he’d drunk earlier. He loathed Prentice and couldn’t see any reason for rushing to save his bungalow. “Stay where you are,” he said. “It’s not our job to go running around after a fire. Leave it to the Queen’s – they’re on duty. This is the army, you know. And to be more precise, the Indian army. Not the bloody Boy Scouts! So, stay where you are! I’ll make that an order if you like.”
‘And so we stayed where we were, for precious minutes – perhaps for as long as a quarter of an hour – and finally I could bear it no longer and Philip Forbes, the regimental doctor, backed me up and we went down there. The rest trailed down after us. I wouldn’t be surprised if, over all, we had wasted half an hour.’
Suddenly his tone changed and, haunted afresh by the memory, his face stiffened as he resumed, ‘You asked if I remembered. Of course. I shall never forget. And when we got there, the dacoits had got away and Dolly Prentice was dead. And Prentice’s bearer was dead, apparently going to the rescue, brave chap that he was. And it was only by the mercy of Providence and the brilliant improvisation of Midge’s ayah that she wasn’t killed too! Those buggers were high on hash. They’d have put anything white – man, woman or child – on the bonfire if they could. And…’
He stared vacantly around the company for a moment. ‘… it might so easily have been Midge. She was on the menu all right!’
There was a silence which Nancy broke. ‘But you were there. You saved her. That’s what’s important.’
Dickie looked gratefully up. ‘That may be,’ he said, ‘but perhaps I could have done more. I could have got them going earlier! I could have shouted at them! God knows, for a long time after it happened, I could think of nothing else. And now all that you’ve told me brings it back again.’
‘I must ask you, Dickie,’ said Joe, ‘if Prentice was aware of your – the group’s – negligence? Because negligence it would seem to have been.’
‘He knew. Oh yes, he knew. He went a bit barmy when he got back from Calcutta and they told him the news. He just sat about and wouldn’t speak to anybody. Cut himself off completely and wouldn’t be doing with words of sympathy from anyone. Then he pulled himself together and started making enquiries and we were all waiting for the wrath to descend on us. But it never did. He decided apparently to take it out on the people who were really responsible and set off on a punitive raid after the dacoits. He knew who they were – he’d been rousting them out of village after village for months. His information was always of the very best. This time he made a thorough job of it and cleared out the whole rats’ nest. But I could tell from the way he looked at us – he knew. Hard to pin down and it could just be my conscience enlarging on it, of course, but I thought I caught his eye on each of us at one time or another… Ever looked a cobra in the face, Commander, eye to eye?’
Joe shook his head.
‘I have. Chills you to the bone. But I can tell you this – I’d rather outface a cobra than Giles Prentice.’
Andrew voiced the thought they were each turning over. ‘It took some courage to appear last night and meet him again after all these years. Especially when you knew you were about to ask if he would kindly allow you to relieve him of his only daughter.’
‘Courage?’ said Dickie. ‘I don’t know about courage. Awkward, perhaps, but for me not more than that. After all, I’m not the beardless, unattached youth I was in those days. I’ve been on the frontier off and on for ten years. You might say I’m, to an extent, the same type as Prentice. And I knew what I wanted.’
Nancy looked from Dickie to Joe and back again. ‘There are things you should know, Dickie,’ she said. ‘Tell him, Joe. He has to be told.’
‘Do you know why I’m here in Panikhat, Dickie?’ Joe asked.
‘Of course. Nancy was telling me you’re on secondment from the Met and she shanghaied you over here to look into the murder of her friend Peggy… Peggy Somersham.’
‘I’m enquiring into the murders of four women and their names are Carmichael, Forbes, Simms-Warburton and Somersham…’
Dickie leapt to his feet. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘The mess dinner! On the night of the fire! Are you telling me that each of those men has lost his wife? That she’s been murdered? Can you be certain?’
‘Naurung and I have looked into each death and we are convinced that they were not accidental…’ He turned for confirmation to Naurung who nodded his agreement.
And so, in turn, and with frequent interruptions from Nancy, Joe and Naurung outlined for him the investigations they had carried out and Dickie listened in silence. When their account drew to a close, he muttered, ‘This is the most devilish thing! I won’t say I don’t believe you – I do. I have to. But it is the most appalling thing…’
‘It’s quite incomprehensible. I’ve never heard of anything so evil,’ said Nancy.
‘Haven’t you?’ said Dickie dully. ‘Then you know nothing about Waziristan! It’s badal, Sandilands, isn’t it? It’s badal that we’re dealing with?’
‘I’m afraid that it is. A terrible mixture of revenge and conviction. Our murderer feels he has a God-given right – no, an obligation – to exact revenge. Not only from those who actually killed his wife but from those who failed through their drunken incompetence to save her.’
‘Let’s say it!’ Nancy almost shouted. ‘This clever chap… our murderer… person or persons unknown… It’s Giles Prentice we’re talking about! Giles Prentice killed Peggy and Joan and Sheila and Alicia!’
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Andrew. ‘Why, if he felt so strongly, didn’t he – excuse me, Dickie – just kill off the five officers he considered responsible?’
Dickie gave a bleak smile. ‘His mind doesn’t work in the blunt, straightforward English way that yours or mine or the Commander’s does, Andrew. You say that Dolly suffered from a phobia – a phobia about fire? So – his much-loved wife dies in the worst conceivable way for her – by fire, her nightmare. And he is left for the rest of his life to deal not only with her loss – he’s left with the tormenting thought that her last moments must have been not just agony for her but utter terror. And his revenge – which he is compelled to seek if he considers himself bound by the Pathan code, as you say he does – is to deal out exactly the same treatment to the men he hates. They are not to lose their lives – he wants them to live on in order to suffer, as he’s suffered, a lifetime’s loss and a lifetime’s anguish thinking of the way their wives died.’