‘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.’
‘Good back-up in there, Coblenz!’ he said cheerfully as they climbed up and settled to look over the parapet. ‘If ever you want a job with the Met. let me know!’
‘You really are a policeman, aren’t you?’
‘Whatever else did you think I was?’
‘I thought you were Military Intelligence, you know – one of Sir George’s bright young men.’
Joe was very surprised. He’d been in India six months, working with Sir George, before he’d guessed at Sir George’s ambivalent role in the government of India, a guess never articulated and certainly never confirmed.
‘Are you suggesting that good old Sir George is a . . . what shall I say? . . . a grey eminence? An unseen mastermind?’
‘Are you suggesting that you didn’t know?’
‘I’m not saying that,’ said Joe with irritation. He could not resist asking, ‘But tell me – who put such an idea into your head?’
‘Oh, come off it, Joe! No one puts ideas into my head! I figure things out for myself. Wasn’t difficult! “You want anything done,” my father always says, “you go straight to the top.” Well, in India, if you want anything done – forget the Governors, forget the Army Top Brass, even the guy in the feathered hat.’
‘The Viceroy?’
‘Yes, him. You go straight to the top of the pile and that’s where you find Sir George. He huffs and puffs. He tried to make me see him as a woofly old sheep dog but us Yankee girls – we ain’t so easy to fool! He pretends there’s someone above him he has to consult but there isn’t, you know. He’s not that easy to handle but he’s a straight arrow, I do believe. Good dancer too.’