The Last Kashmiri Rose

by Barbara Cleverly

  Naurung cleared his throat deferentially, obviously with something to say but reluctant to interrupt his father who turned to him, however, in enquiry.

  ‘I have made a small investigation, if you will pardon me, in respect of this death. Perhaps you will recall this disappearing witness – a merchant, a representative of Vallijee Raja. I have a friend who works for this firm and I asked him if he could find out who was the box-wallah in Panikhat who came a couple of weeks ago to sell the products of this firm. They have no record of any representative of the firm in Panikhat at that time or indeed at any time this year so this too is a figure of mystery.’

  The silence which greeted this revelation was broken by Naurung senior. ‘Now I will tell you something which is not generally known. That is to say it is no secret but it is not widely spoken of. Six weeks ago at Bhalasore, that is twenty-five miles from here, the wife of a post office official was killed when she was out riding. It was thought that she had been kicked by her horse. Fractured skull. Three weeks ago the wife of a planter who lives ten miles from here was killed “accidentally” by misreading the label on a medicine bottle. Such things happen. They are not what you would call the “stop press news”. But for those with eyes to see a connection between these things a connection can be found. I myself think that we are looking at no more than the kind of thing that happens in India. Probably the kind of thing that happens in London? But I am remembering that in 1858 connections were seen which were not there. Truth was ignored because a lie was more valuable.

  ‘Sandilands Sahib, you know that I am a letter-writer. We letter-writers hear things spoken in confidence – secrets, policies, mysteries. We speak little but we know a great deal. When we are concerned we share our knowledge and our fears. And there is a fear, a great fear in the bazaars and in the corridors of Government House that the country is on the point of another and greater rebellion than the one sixty years ago. Then the Sikhs stood with the British against the mutineers. If terrible times should come again, the Sikhs would stand with you once more. It is their way. But many fear the powder keg is in place.’

  ‘And the spark that could ignite it?’ asked Joe, already knowing the answer.

  ‘A fuse. A trail of murdered memsahibs. Already it is spoken of. One thing is lacking, sahib. The match. And that you hold in your own hand.’

  ‘Joe Sandilands holds it?’ Nancy said sharply. ‘What do you mean, Naurung?’

  ‘He means,’ said Joe, ‘that when the great detective from Scotland Yard finishes his investigations and declares to the Governor of Bengal that five English ladies, wives of officers in a smart cavalry regiment, have each been murdered with much malice aforethought by Indians or even a single Indian, there will be reprisals. There will be token arrests, there may even be executions. And with a dedicated and implacable Colonel like Prentice in command of the regiment, who knows how far it will go? We all know what his reputation is for exacting revenge.’

  ‘And then there will be retaliation and overreaction from native groups,’ said Nancy, white-faced. ‘The Congress wallahs could seize on this and use it! Just what they need as a battle flag to wave in our faces! Oh, Joe …’

  Naurung, who had stood in almost total silence throughout the exchange, now spoke quietly.

  ‘Sandilands Sahib says when he makes his revelation. May we know if it is indeed his decision to incriminate Indians in the deaths?’

  Joe looked at the three strained faces around him and shook his head, smiling bleakly. ‘You must think that so far I have done very little to justify my professional status and the confidence the Governor has shown in me. You may well even be recalling the title the press frequently gives us at Scotland Yard – the Defective Force. It is difficult to take over cases years old, badly managed from the outset, cases in which I cannot use any of the new forensic methods I have been so proudly demonstrating to the Bengal Police for the last six months.’

  Naurung nodded in understanding.

  ‘No fingerprinting, no blood-typing, no door-to-door enquiries, no string of informants. I’ve been forced back on to a dependence on reason and common sense … but something more.’

  He paused for a moment, wondering how receptive his audience would be to what he had to say next, and then plunged on.

  ‘I was billeted in the war with a very clever man – a well-read man. He’d brought two books to the war with him – the works of an Austrian psychologist, Sigmund Freud, and a Swiss called Carl Jung. I had snatched up the works of Shakespeare and Kim. When war isn’t being instant noisy death whizzing past your ears it’s being a boring longueur and my companion and I whiled away the waiting between pushes by reading each other’s books. I don’t know which of us had the better bargain! I learned much about the science of psychology of the unconscious mind, about psychoanalysis and the development of character. My friend didn’t believe in the existence of evil and he laughed at the policeman’s idea of the “criminal type”. He believed that a man’s character was set for life – moulded if you like – by circumstances in the first seven or so years of his existence. If he is born into poverty and crime, he is likely to grow up poor and a criminal, through no fault of his own.’

  The Naurungs looked at him alertly and nodded. Naurung senior said, ‘We have a saying in Bengal – “The Rajah’s son does not exchange shoes with the cobbler’s son.”’

  ‘Just so,’ said Joe a little deflated. ‘I have also made a study of a phenomenon in the history of crime in Europe and America which began with the slaying of five ladies of the night – five prostitutes – in the East End of London fifty years ago.’

  Naurung senior listened with heightened attention and his son nodded eagerly. It was clear they were both aware of the case.

  ‘Jack the Ripper?’ said Nancy. ‘Are you talking about the Whitechapel murders? The police never solved those crimes, did they?’

  ‘No,’ said Joe. ‘But, with the help of my friend in the trenches, I do believe I have worked out Jack’s identity. The motive, I think, is very different in the sequence of murders we’re investigating but there are aspects in common. We’re not looking here at a frenzied attack carried out through an overriding sexual motive but at a carefully executed pattern of killings. The victims have been selected. They didn’t just happen to stray into range of the killer when he was experiencing a maniacal urge to destroy. Their habits were well known to him. He could follow them, even into their bathroom in the case of Peggy Somersham, murder them and instantly disappear. Like Jack, he could disappear with ease because he was at home.

  ‘When I was doing some research into the Ripper murders a couple of years ago I came on a paper – or letter rather – addressed to the head of the CID in 1888 by a Dr Thomas Bond who was much concerned with the Ripper investigation. I was fascinated. What I had in my hands was a portrait of the murderer in words. The good doctor, as if by some magic it seemed at first reading, was sketching an outline of the man – his height, his weight, his disposition, his job, the place where he was to be found and the make-up of his family. Had I been on the strength in 1888 I could, on reading that letter, have walked down the Whitechapel Road and felt his collar! On second reading I was impressed for quite a different reason. The doctor was using nothing but sound common sense and inspired reasoning, drawing on information from the scenes of crime. And I could do the same.’

  ‘You’re about to tell us that you’ve solved our problem?’ Nancy asked.

  Joe grimaced. ‘Your problem, I’m afraid, is a lot more complex than the Ripper case! There we had the same modus operandi – the same knife was used, the killings were done in the same framework of time and place and the motive was blatantly obvious. The killer experienced an ungovernable and psychotic rage against women – women of a certain type, that is.’

  ‘You mean he was trying to clean up the streets? Get rid of the prostitutes?’ said Nancy.

  ‘No. I’m certain there was no element of crusade in what he did. I think it was
an outburst of sexually inspired fury against a class of women he had good cause to hate. I believe he had personal reasons, springing from his own early days perhaps, for hacking to death and obliterating these women. He was possibly the son of a prostitute, reared by a prostitute – certainly the man was a client of and probably actually knew the women he murdered. It’s my theory that he actually lived with one of them.’

  ‘But none of the ladies in this case was molested, sahib, and all were killed by different methods,’ said Naurung.

  ‘And that is what makes it almost impossible to explain,’ said Joe. ‘Let’s look for a moment at motivation. We have already ruled out the two most common ones – lust and financial gain. Not even the ladies’ husbands gained in the slightest by their deaths. So we are left with four: jealousy, elimination, revenge and conviction.’

  ‘Well, we can rule out jealousy, I think,’ said Nancy. ‘None of the wives had given cause for suspicion … At least I’m not quite certain about Dolly Prentice … There are stories that she was, well, a bit of a flirt … But about the rest there was no gossip at all. You’d say that all the men loved their wives and were quite devastated when they died. None has remarried and I think that’s very significant, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and that in a sense rules out the next motive of elimination. You know – “I will kill off my wife because I want to marry someone else or because she is in possession of a hideous secret concerning me.” Dr Crippen, for example, needed to eliminate his wife in order to marry his lover. But, no, the facts don’t support this explanation in any of the cases. None of our husbands would appear to have profited and flourished as a result.’

  ‘No. I agree,’ said Nancy. ‘Colonel Prentice, as witnesses claim, was horrified by his wife’s death and out of his mind for a fortnight. There are rumours that all was not well with that pair but, according to Kitty, he took it very badly.’

  ‘And yesterday I interviewed a wreck of a man. The husband of Joan Carmichael. You’d say he never smiled again after her death. He had some money from Joan but, as her husband, he could probably have had access to it at any time and he didn’t make use of it until two years after her death.’

  ‘And Dr Forbes whom I saw at the hospital yesterday. He’s thrown himself totally into his work which is his whole life now. His distress at Sheila’s death was still evident.’

  ‘Simms-Warburton, well, we’ll never know. He went straight into the war and never came home again but certainly there was no whirlwind remarriage, no instant elopement with the daughter of a subhadur-major!’

  ‘And lastly Billy Somersham. You’ve met him. I know him. He gained nothing but heartache from Peggy’s death. No, he had absolutely no reason to “eliminate” her. So that leaves only two motives – revenge and conviction, whatever you mean by that!’

  ‘Revenge? Would anyone, seriously, have cause to be revenged on these women?’ Joe asked. ‘What had they done? All perfectly innocent creatures who had annoyed nobody, not even their husbands. I really can’t see this as a convincing motive.’

  ‘So – you’re going to have to explain what you mean by your last motive, conviction.’

  ‘Conviction.’ Joe sighed. ‘This could take us into the realms of madness. If a person is convinced, for example, that he has a God-given right to kill for religious motives, I would call that a conviction killing.’

  Naurung could not wait for the end of Joe’s explanation. ‘Suttee!’ he said. ‘As in suttee! The disgusting Hindu custom of burning alive a man’s widow on his funeral pyre! The British have tried to stamp it out but it goes on, oh, yes, it still goes on in the villages! Sometimes the lady goes willingly to her death as it brings great honour to her family but often her relatives force her. There was a case, in my father’s memory, where the widow escaped from the fire and ran away. She was found hiding by her own son who dragged her back and threw her once more into the flames.’

  ‘Yes, that would be, as far as an Eastern mind could encompass it, an example of killing for religious conviction.’

  Nancy said angrily, ‘Not necessarily religious! I think that’s too convenient an excuse for such a revolting custom. Social, perhaps. A strong social reason – after all, who in a family wants to be saddled with a useless widow to support for the rest of her unproductive life? She cannot remarry and is bound to be a burden to her family if the problem isn’t solved by means of the funeral pyre and excused by the notion of religious observance!’

  ‘Which brings us to the second strand of “conviction”. The social strand. If our killer had an unshakeable belief that he was ridding society of an undesirable element – a belief so strong that he felt his actions were above all laws – he might kill off a series of similar victims. Prostitutes? Priests?’

  ‘Money-lenders?’ suggested Naurung.

  ‘Certainly money-lenders! But officers’ wives?’ Nancy exclaimed with derision. ‘We’ve all been irritated or bored out of our minds by them but hardly to the point of taking a knife or a cobra to finish them off!’

  Joe smiled. ‘I agree. And this is where it all begins to get a little unreal. They are not just a series of officers’ wives. They are a very particular group of officers’ wives, chosen according to some obscure pattern. There are things they had in common, there are things they did not have in common. There are things a proportion of the group had in common – both Dolly Prentice and Peggy Somersham were pregnant. Is this significant or is it misleading? But there is one thing which I think is very significant. Naurung – Mrs Drummond and I have discovered that the ladies all had this in common – they had a phobia.’

  Translations of the word rattled back and forward over Joe’s head until the satisfied nods of the two Naurungs encouraged him to go on. Nancy supplied the details of each victim’s special horror, linking it with the means of her death and the faces of father and son grew grim.

  Finally, Naurung said seriously, ‘This is the work of a devil, sahib. I fear we have worked our way back to our first conversation if the sahib remembers?’

  ‘The Churel? Kali the Destroyer? I still do not accept this. But you and your father have added today another element to the motive of conviction killing and that is – political. To murder, not soldiers but soldiers’ wives and by subtle and repulsive means might be a calculated way of sowing terror and suspicion in the ranks of the British army. A way which would lead to the reprisals and overreaction we have discussed. But I don’t think the answer lies here either. For two apparently insignificant reasons. The murders have all occurred in March. On the grave of each victim has been placed a bunch of Kashmiri roses – all in March. This is a ritual aspect which rules out every one of the motives we have so far examined.’

  Joe frowned. ‘And so I am reduced to working out this whole problem from what any decent policeman would consider the wrong end. I have built up a picture of the person who must have committed these crimes …’

  ‘Very well, Sandilands,’ said Nancy with a hint of challenge in her voice, ‘prove that you’re not a defective! Tell us who’s responsible.’

  ‘He is male. He is European. He is middle-aged, strong and agile in body and mind. He is very close to Indians and either has employed them to do these killings or is sufficiently confident to have tricked himself out as an Indian to get close enough to do the murders himself without arousing suspicion. He lives on the station at Panikhat. If you passed him walking on the maidan you would greet him by name.’

  There was a deep silence as names crowded into everyone’s mind. Nancy shook her head and muttered, ‘No. That’s not possible.’

  The young Naurung was more positive and Joe even wondered whether he had arrived at this point before he had himself. ‘Sandilands Sahib, I think you know and I too can guess who has done these dreadful things,’ he said, ‘but why? My father,’ with a short bow to Naurung senior, ‘will always say, “Know how and why and you will know who,” but what you are saying is quite the reverse.’

  ‘I
know,’ said Joe, ‘and to fill in the picture I must go back to Panikhat. That’s where it started and that’s where the answers lie.’

  ‘One thing, Sandilands Sahib,’ said Naurung’s father diffidently. ‘I worked with Bulstrode Sahib on the case of Memsahib Simms-Warburton who was drowned. It was I who interviewed the ferryman who nearly drowned with her. I suspected him. He could, unseen by the bystanders, have secreted a knife about the raft and slit the hides when they were in the middle of the river. He dived under water to help the poor lady but they were both under the surface for a long time. It occurred to me that he could have been holding her down until he was sure she was dead. I spoke to him afterwards and took a statement which unfortunately did not attract the interest of Bulstrode Sahib but I remember it well.

  ‘Commander, Englishmen are brown down to their neck and pink below that. This man was naked apart from his turban and loin cloth. I saw his body. And he was Indian-skinned from head to soles of his feet.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  JOE AND NANCY rose to take their leave of the Naurungs, who accompanied them to the foot of the stairs with what Joe supposed to be an exchange of formal compliments.

  ‘Well, Naurung senior rather exploded your theory, didn’t he?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Joe slowly. ‘In fact what he had to say may answer other questions I still have.’ He looked at his watch and said, ‘Uncle George will be home by now. Perhaps we should report to him?’