They all stood and watched Midge walk slowly back through the street, dragging her heels and pausing to cast a last reproachful glance back at Dickie before she turned the corner.
‘Are you really the guardian of that bundle of trouble?’ Joe asked.
‘Not exactly,’ said Andrew. ‘Midge wouldn’t understand the distinction but I am Prentice’s executor and trustee. People in India die quite often and quite suddenly, especially the military. It’s safer to name an official by his position and there’s always a Collector of Panikhat. And, for the moment, I am he.’
The calm that followed the tornado of Midge’s appearance was welcome to all. Andrew called for another pot of coffee and, as though by agreement, they settled themselves at the table on the verandah. Discreetly, Andrew took charge of the coffee and dismissed the servants.
‘Joe,’ he said, ‘if I read your expression correctly, you have something to tell us.’
Dickie Templar stirred uncomfortably and started to get to his feet. ‘Look, if you chaps are about to have a conference or something, I’ll make myself scarce for a while…’
‘No!’ said Joe abruptly. ‘It is important that you stay. What I have to say concerns you, your future and your past very closely.’
Dickie looked puzzled. Nancy and Andrew exchanged glances.
Joe produced his notebook. ‘Templar, I have a list here of names which I copied from the mess records last night before the Manoli binge. They refer to the night of the 17th of March twelve years ago. It was a Saturday and it was the night the Prentice bungalow burned down. There were five officers of Bateman’s Horse dining that night. Their names are: Carmichael, Forbes, Simms-Warburton, Somersham and Templar.’
Nancy sat up with a jerk and Andrew put down his coffee cup very carefully. Neither spoke.
‘Take your time to remember and tell us exactly what happened that night. As I say, it is vitally important.’
Dickie was silent, his expression grave. Finally he said, ‘Important for whom? For you?’
‘For me, yes, certainly, but mostly for you yourself.’
‘Well, this is all very mysterious. And, quite honestly, it’s not something I have any pleasure in thinking back on. But if you have to know I’d better tell you, I suppose… It’s Prentice, isn’t it? Has he been talking? Has he asked you to rake all this up again? Is he trying to use this as a wedge between me and Midge?’
Joe shook his head. ‘Prentice has said nothing to me. As far as I am aware he has never spoken of it to anyone. Just try and recall the events of that evening if you can.’
Dickie paused for a moment, focusing on the past.
‘There were five of us dining in the mess that night. Most of us had cried off going to some awful Panikhat Week event – a midnight picnic, I think.’ He shuddered. ‘Being eaten alive by mosquitoes while you ate cucumber sandwiches and drank tepid champagne wasn’t my idea of fun. All the same, I wish now I’d gone… There we all were in the mess, some of us pretty drunk – no, I have to say, somewhat paralytic. I was not. In fact I was fed up with the rest of them. I didn’t like the Greys officers and they didn’t like me. They’d adopted the terrible practice of not speaking to junior officers and not expecting junior officers to speak unless spoken to. A lot of regiments used to be like that and cavalry regiments especially. I got fed up with them. “Snobbish, conceited, ill-mannered louts,” I said to myself at the advanced age of eighteen! I went off to have a pee to get away from them and looking out of the window I saw, for God’s sake, that the bloody place was on fire. Was anyone taking any notice? Not as far as I could see. Drawing a deep breath, I went back and told them. While they were drinking themselves senseless, the cantonment had caught fire. What were they going to do about it?
‘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.’
Joe watched Dickie finding his way along the track he had so unwillingly taken himself.
‘And, from what we have seen of the bereaved husbands,’ said Nancy, ‘he has been successful. They are each as unhappy as Prentice is himself. And that, I suppose, is what put us completely off his track – we were counting him always as the first victim in a series of victims. The first of five to lose his wife in a hideous way. But Dolly was never part of that. She was the reason for it. She died in March. The other four died in March. Why do I keep saying “died”? – I mean were murdered! And on or around the anniversary of her death. Ritual. It was important to him. He was marking out the time of her death with other deaths.’ She shuddered.
‘And the roses,’ said Joe. ‘Prentice put roses on the graves of the women he’d killed in March each year.’
‘Do you think that could show a more human side to his nature?’ Andrew asked. ‘I find it hard to enter into the mind of such a man but do you suppose that could be his way of – well, apologising – to his innocent victims? His way of acknowledging that they were not his real target, and honouring their memory? Mad, I know – but let’s admit it, that’s what we’re trying to understand – madness.’
‘Excuse me, sahib,’ said Naurung, ‘but I do not believe that there is a more human side to this man. The roses are not a mark of honour and regret as they would be when placed there by a normal person. I think he must be an evil spirit who takes delight in signalling what he has done. The victims may have been innocent and no more than a way of being revenged on their husbands but you will not be forgetting the horror of what he did. He did not need to cut Memsahib Somersham’s wrists to the bone! I think he enjoyed killing these memsahibs. I think he puts roses – blood red roses, remember – on their graves to remind himself of the pleasure he took in killing.’
A chilled silence followed Naurung’s confident statement.
‘This man must be caught,’ said Andrew in anguish. ‘What can you do, Joe? It’s outside everyone’s experience here. What would you do if this were happening in London? What do investigators do when they’re brought face to face with a multiple murderer or an evil spirit – and it’s one and the same as far as I’m concerned.’
Joe had been expecting this question. It was a question he perpetually put to himself and he was not satisfied with the answer. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said slowly, ‘that with all the might of Scotland Yard behind them, to say nothing of contacts with other police forces, what they do in these circumstances is wait.’
‘Wait?’ said Naurung urgently. ‘Wait? Is that all we can do? And do you mean wait for the next tragedy to happen? Wait until our man strikes again?’
‘I don’t like it either,’ said Joe. ‘We could charge him and lay the facts as we know them before him – scare him, if you like, though he’s not a man who scares easily – but with what result? He’d either laugh in our faces or – perhaps worse – disappear. Oh, he could disappear, all right. Like an eel into the mud. And then where would we be? No. I want him where I can see him. And…’ His face suddenly distorted with loathing. ‘… let him overplay his hand and we will have a better chance of taking him. Think for a moment – what evidence have we got that would stand up against him? Andrew – you are the man who would have to deal with this, the ultimate authority in Panikhat. Would you feel able, on the strength of what we have so far, to issue a warrant for his arrest?’
Andrew shook his head.
‘Wait until he strikes again, you say?’ said Dickie. ‘Look, I know what you’re all thinking and I can quite see why no one wants to put the thought into words so I’ll do it myself. I think we all know who the next – and last – victim is, don’t we? According to the grisly schedule he’s set himself, come next March it’s whichever lady has made Dickie Templar the happiest of men.’
‘Oh, no!’ Nancy was horrified. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. But no. Certainly not! You’re not suggesting that Midge, his own daughter…? No. Not even Giles is that mad. But I can quite see why he looked as though he’d seen a ghost when Midge greeted you last night.’
‘No. I think he won’t turn his anger on Midge but we are dealing, as you say, Drummond, either with madness or evil and I’m taking no chances. I’m certainly going to marry her but I won’t marry her until he’s under lock and key. I was thinking out loud, trying to guess how he’ll react now that I’ve ruined his equation. How is he going to deal with an enforced change in his plans? I think he’ll work out his revenge before she is able to marry me. He must know by now that I’m planning to leave for Calcutta and then on to Peshawar to rejoin my regiment the day after tomorrow…’
‘I’d come to the same conclusion,’ said Joe. ‘He’ll try to kill you, Dickie.’
Dickie gave a sharp laugh. ‘So I’m to be the tethered goat? I can see that and I agree to it. But, tell me, which of you fellows is going to stand by with a rifle when the tiger comes for me?’
Looking round at their stricken faces, he banged his fist on the table, rattling the coffee cups. ‘Ayo Gurkhali!’ he said. ‘It means, “The Gurkhas are here!” It’s what we shout when we go into battle!’
‘Ayo Gurkhali!’ repeated Naurung.