‘Major Prentice as he was then. Giles Prentice. He’s now Colonel Prentice and commands the Bengal Greys on the station. You will meet him, of course.’
‘Was their marriage a happy one?’
‘I can’t tell you for certain. I’ve heard stories. Some say he worshipped Dolly and certainly there is evidence that he was completely undone emotionally by her death. Some say he was indifferent to her. He’s a rather… well, you will decide for yourself… but I think he’s a bit odd. A difficult man to understand or like. But whatever his faults he clearly wasn’t responsible in any way for Dolly’s death.’
‘Can you be certain?’
‘Oh, yes. Beyond any doubt. He was in Calcutta dining at the Bengal Club with the selection board at the time of the fire. He was apparently truly devastated when he got back and they told him about it. The officers had left the bodies in the place where they found them in the wreckage of the bungalow and…’
‘Bodies? Did you say bodies?’
‘Oh, yes. There were two. In the bedroom. There was Dolly’s body still lying on the bed and there was another…’
Her voice faltered and she looked uncomfortable as she frowned, considering how to go on.
‘Another?’ he prompted.
‘Yes, another. Holding Dolly in his arms. It was Chedi Khan. Prentice’s Pathan bearer.’
Chapter Four
Anglo-India goes to bed early. Anglo-India wakes up early too. Joe Sandilands was awoken at six o’clock by the insistent clamour of a bugle. The Reveille. And as his mind fitted the words which British soldiers had taken to singing to this jaunty calclass="underline"
‘Wake up Charlie,
Wake up and wash yourself.
Wake up Charlie,
Get up and pee!’
Joe, half awake, thought himself back in France. Back in the army. Back in the war. It was a moment before he realised that the bugle was sounding in the hot awakening of an Indian summer day and not echoing flatly across the muddy fields of Flanders. He fought his way out of his mosquito net and stepped down to feel the welcome coolness of the tiled floor.
He had had a troubled night. His brain had coursed with a mass of undigested and uncorrelated information. His attempt the night before to write up his notes had not been entirely successful. His damp wrists had blotted the page. Ink had run on the soft foolscap paper with which Nancy had supplied him. Paper stamped ‘The Office Of The Collector Of Panikhat’.
He pulled up the blind and opened up the window and leant out. Feeling the promise of another hot day and, mindful of the formidable list Nancy had given him of people he ought to see, he was aware that these might be the only hours during the day that he could have to himself. He decided to set off on a voyage of exploration before it got too hot. He armed himself with a small notebook stamped ‘The Metropolitan Police. New Scotland Yard W1. Telephone, Whitehall 1212.’
The heat struck him as he stepped from his verandah on to a corner of the parade ground and reminded him that he should be wearing a hat. To his right a tree-lined road opened before him and, glad of the shade, he set off down this. It was evidently called Victoria Road (what else?) and a quick reference to his notebook reminded him that William and Peggy Somersham had lived at number 9 (a house which John and Alicia Simms-Warburton had occupied before the war) and, further, that Sheila and Philip Forbes, the doctor, had lived at number 30.
Although the bungalows were of many different periods evidently, they all conformed to the same pattern. They each had a passionately tended garden within a dusty compound, thatched roofs, tiled roofs, even corrugated iron roofs, wide eaves and, on all sides, a wide verandah. Views into the interior as he went on his way revealed pyjama-clad men beginning their day, women in early morning deshabille, here and there children being got ready for the day or playing in the sun with attentive servants. In most gardens a water carrier was seeing to the avenues of pot plants that lined every entrance drive. Further reference to his notebook revealed that Dolly and Giles Prentice had lived at number 5 Curzon Street.
Walking on, a branch road set off to the right identified itself as Curzon Street. In 1910 there had been a substantial house at number 5 but now there was nothing. The plot was set apart from its neighbours at the end of the cul de sac, its rear open to cultivated fields and, Joe calculated, eventually to the river. And wide open to a night attack by dacoits, he thought. He made his way on to the abandoned site but his progress was hindered by the dense scrub and weeds which struggled across the place where Dorothy Prentice had died in the fire and where Chedi Khan had died holding her in his arms. Joe stood for a moment, feeling his way back to that disastrous night. He was not surprised that Prentice had chosen not to rebuild. Consulting his notes again, he discovered that Prentice, however, had not gone far away. The neighbouring property was now his, a large bungalow whose garden adjoined the scene of the old disaster.
But disaster seemed to be all around him. As he pressed on down the street, he peered more closely at little plaques attached to the gates of some of the older bungalows and shivered in spite of the warm morning when he understood what he was reading.
‘In this bungalow on Sunday the 17th of May 1857 died Mrs Major Minter and her three children, cut down by mutineers and their bodies thrown down the well’ read the plaque on number 1 Clive Street. At number 9, Captain Hallett of Bateman’s Horse had died ‘gallantly defending his wife and son from an attack by mutinous Sepoys. All were hacked to death.’
Who was it who had called India ‘The Land of Regrets’? He walked on and a turning led him once more back to the parade ground where the full heat hit him. He decided it was time to turn back. Two young officers trotted past, eyeing him curiously until, with a flash of recognition, one called out derisively, ‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman!’
Joe was not in the mood to be patronised and favoured them with a repressive police stare, a stare he had perfected in dealing with recalcitrant fusiliers during the war and London ’s criminal classes and even disrespectful police constables. He was pleased to note that it did not seem to have lost its force; under his level regard, both seemed abashed.
Resolving never again to step out into Indian sunshine without a hat, Joe turned back in the direction of his dak bungalow. By the time he reached it, military Panikhat had awoken to full and raucous life. Nailed boots marching formed a clashing foreground to the softer noises of the town and marching orders, familiar to Joe, were heard in an almost continuous stream.
‘Move to the right in fours! Form fours! Right!’
And, from a distance, ‘At the halt! On the right! Form close column of platoon!’
‘Good old army,’ thought Joe, ‘though what relevance this has to infantry action on the north-west frontier which is probably what’s waiting for these men, I can’t imagine. Probably pretty useful for Wellington ’s army in the Peninsula and here they are, still at it! I’ve been out of the army for four years but I could step back in and form fours!’
He returned to the care of the bearer assigned to look after him. His bearer had decided that, on this his first public appearance in Panikhat, he should be in uniform. Pressed, folded and neat, his khaki drill lay on the bed. In the ghulskhana his bath was full, his towel folded over a towel horse.
The bearer appointed to him, his palms pressed together, greeted him. ‘Egg, bacon, sahib. Coffee. Jildi.’
Joe thanked him in English and, deciding it would be churlish not to wear the uniform put out for him, stepped thankfully into the bath which was neither hot nor cold and washed away his sticky night and his no less sticky walk. Breakfast appeared at astonishing speed and, assuming that someone would tidy his room, empty his bath, empty the large top hat-like contrivance in the corner which did duty for a closet, he decided it was not too early to embark on his course of obligatory calling.