Barbara Cleverly - The Damascened Blade

‘Right,’ said Joe. ‘That’s all we can achieve here, I think.’ He grinned. ‘Now let’s go and lean on the villain who attacked Zeman last night, shall we?’

They approached the guest wing silently. They were anxious not to alert their suspect lest he should abscond before Joe had the chance to put him to the question.

Joe assumed a copper’s voice. ‘You cover the outer door, Lily, while I see if he’s in there.’

He padded forward, ‘ ’ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo. Anyone at ’ome? You’d better come quietly. That way no one gets hurt.’

‘We’ve got you surrounded!’ added Lily excitedly.

Minto emerged from his kennel. His hackles were up. His teeth were bared.

‘I think he’s going to resist arrest!’ said Lily.

Joe put his hands on his hips and looked menacingly down. ‘Would you mind telling me, sir, exactly where you were at 1 a.m.? Or would you prefer to come down to the station and answer a few questions there?’

Minto unleashed a throaty growl.

‘How rude!’ said Lily. ‘I can’t believe he said that!’

‘Just keep your teeth bared for a moment, would you, sir?’ said Joe. ‘Well, Lily, what do you think? Is this our man?’

‘Well, we could send for his dental records or you could offer up your arm for testing purposes but I don’t think there’s any need. It’s right there – one inch from canine to canine. Less than one and a half anyway.’

‘Thank you, sir. That’ll be all for the moment. We’re releasing you on police bail. Don’t leave town without notifying me.’

They stood for a moment looking at the bleak staircase where they pictured Zeman dying his lonely and agonizing death. ‘Poison – the coward’s weapon, they say,’ Joe thought, and doubly despicable for Zeman, forbidden by tribal custom to declare his sickness or seek help before it was too late. He stood for a moment and traced the damp patches on the floor and stairs, cleaned now and smelling faintly of carbolic and marking Zeman’s last desperate steps. And to be attacked, held back by the sleeve, in extremis, by that awful little dog was a note of near farce beyond contemplation.

Bleakly, Lily’s thoughts had been echoing his. ‘Dreadful, pointless death,’ she said and then, after a pause, ‘But there is something wrong here, Joe, isn’t there? The dog – what’s his name?’

‘Minto. Named after the last Viceroy but three, I believe. Lord Minto.’

‘Right. Well, does His Lordship only attack men?’

‘No idea. Why do you ask?’

‘When I came down at midnight I had to pass his kennel. He didn’t come out. Oh, he was in there all right – I heard him growl but that’s all and when I came back in at about one he didn’t even bother to growl. Although, I was so upset I mightn’t have noticed.’

‘Perhaps he’d gone out for a midnight stroll too,’ said Joe. ‘He’s not tied up after all and his kennel’s right by the entrance.’

‘But you heard just now the noise he makes when he’s disturbed. It would have echoed up this stairwell. Now you’ll have noticed – I certainly have because I was creeping about last night – that you can’t hear a thing between rooms. The walls are thick adobe. But you can hear things happening on the stairs and corridor. I was still awake. It took me a while to sleep because I really was feeling hurt and angry. I might have heard the noise if he’d attacked Zeman but I’ll tell you who would certainly have heard it!’

‘Iskander was right next door and his door’s pretty close to Minto’s kennel. Look, Lily, there’s no one about, they’re all still at breakfast and Iskander said he was going to talk with his men. I’ll slip into his room if you keep watch. Oh, and stir up the beast again, would you?’

Joe went into Iskander’s room, closing the door behind him. He took the opportunity of having a quick look around but there was nothing at all of note: the standard issue bed and furniture. There were no personal possessions other than his evening clothes hanging in a cupboard, and the damp floor and made-up bed told Joe that the staff had been busy and thorough in their daily cleaning. Almost at once he heard the din. Muted, thanks to the thickness of the door, but audible nevertheless. And certainly audible to a sharp pair of Pathan ears.

He emerged and ordered Minto back into his kennel. ‘No doubt about that,’ he said. ‘If my war-ravaged ears could make it out I’m sure Iskander’s keen senses could. And remember what the proverb says – “A Pathan never sleeps.” They’re famous for their vigilance – no one has ever taken a Pathan by surprise as far as I know. So, Lily, tell me – why didn’t Iskander pop his head out to see what was going on? He ought to have taken a dog’s growl as a message that something was not right and I would have expected him to investigate.’

‘Unless he was already a part of what was going on,’ said Lily. ‘None of this makes sense, Joe. What are we saying? That Zeman didn’t die at one o’clock, or he didn’t die here, or Grace is deliberately lying, James is part of a cover-up and Iskander probably knows the truth and may even have killed Zeman himself. Is any of this likely?’

‘Iskander would be my number one suspect, I think, if it weren’t for the second victim. Keep an eye on Betty!’ said Joe.

‘Of course. The second victim. Was that unintentional, do you suppose? I mean I can’t imagine that anyone, especially Iskander, would want to harm Betty.’

‘No, you’re right.’ Joe sighed. ‘It would be completely out of character. Pathans treat women with great care and respect, apart from their own adulterous wives, I understand. It would be contrary to their culture and their religion to attempt to murder even a British woman. As far as I know there’s only been one case of an Englishwoman being killed deliberately out here on the frontier. It was two years ago. Colonel Foulkes and his wife were killed by a gang from the Bosti-Khel Valley. But they were outlaws and the local tribesmen were as outraged as the British authorities. And then again, thousands of English women and children were trapped in these passes on the road from Afghanistan seventy years ago. They all perished, shot with jezails or hacked to pieces with talwars. But that was war. How can you ever predict how men will behave in war or in peace?’ he finished hopelessly. ‘I wonder if Betty could just have been having a recurrence of the sickness she’s been suffering for the last month? That was certainly what Grace supposed when she went off in the night to treat her.’

‘And where does that leave us? This is a can of worms, Joe, isn’t it? Can we get the lid back on, do you think?’

‘Would you want to?’

She shook her head dubiously. ‘No. We’ve got to follow this through. And I’ll tell you something else – I don’t think it’s all over yet.’

‘Well, I think there’s one thing we can be relatively certain of and that’s that if he was killed, he was most likely killed by one of seven people, if I exclude you and me, Lily. The people who were sitting around the dinner table and sleeping in this guest block. Look, they’ll start straying back from the mess any moment now – let’s go up on to the wall to discuss this further. It’s about as quiet as you can get in a fort of a thousand men!’

To his surprise, in Lily he was finding a bright intelligence, an ingenious colleague, quick to understand what he was saying, asking the minimum of questions and quite prepared to put forward her own sensible suggestions. But, underlying the mask of efficient colleague, he sensed a paralysing uncertainty. Lily was struggling with an emotion he could not quite identify. She’d cheered up, however, when he’d staged his mock interview with Minto. ‘I must keep it light,’ he thought, ‘to get the best out of Lily Coblenz.’