by M. M. Kaye
Reggie ate a hurried breakfast and looked at his watch. ‘It’s fairly early yet,’ he announced, ‘so I suggest we slide down and head off the people who are coming up here for the day. I don’t like the look of those clouds at all. There’s a nasty storm coming up, and I’ve a feeling it’ll be here a lot sooner than we think. I’m not for having a packet of people caught up here by bad weather. What do you say, Johnnie?’
Johnnie Warrender lounged to the door and looked out above Gulmarg to the far side of the valley, where the sky was darkening above the cloud bank that concealed the Nanga Parbat range. The sun still shone serenely, but the curious, dirty yellow stain above the black bar of cloud was spreading rapidly over the cool blue of the sky, and there was an uneasy mutter in the air.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ conceded Johnnie, who was looking tired and cross in the morning sunlight. There were dark pouches under his eyes and he had cut himself shaving. ‘Personally I shouldn’t say it’ll be here for hours yet—if at all. It may go down the valley and miss us altogether. However, it certainly looks as though something sticky was brewing over there, so I suppose we’d better play safe.’
They had rolled up their bedding and the various items that would be carried down by coolies, packed their rucksacks and strapped on their skis, when Reggie Craddock asked: ‘Where’s Janet?’
‘Gone down ahead,’ said Ian Kelly. ‘What about Mir?’
‘Oh, Mir’s quite capable of looking after himself. I couldn’t spot him anywhere when I came back, so he’s probably gone down too. But in case he hasn’t I’ll leave a note on the door to tell him we’ve gone on ahead.’ Reggie scribbled a few words on a page of his pocket diary, ripped it out, wrote Mir’s name across the front in block capitals, and tucked it under the latch where he could not miss seeing it. ‘Come on, we’d better get going if we want to stop the rest of them coming up. We’ll go down by Red Run. You two’—he addressed the Coply twins—‘had better stick to the path. I won’t have you risking your necks on the top half of the run. We’ll give you a quarter of an hour’s start. Shove off.’
The twins broke into injured protests, but Reggie was adamant. Fudge volunteered to accompany them to see that they got down without mishap, and after a moment’s hesitation Helen Warrender decided to go with them too. She was not a particularly good skier, and disliked fast running except on open snow.
Fifteen minutes after their departure Reggie Craddock gave a hitch to his rucksack and set off down the slope with Sarah, Ian, Johnnie Warrender and Meril behind him. They fanned out on the crest of Slalom Hill and each took their own line, swooping down over the crisp shimmering surface like a flight of swallows; dipping, swaying, turning in a swish of flung crystals, and leaving behind them clear curving tracks on the sparkling snow. The icy air, whipping past them, sang a shrill crooning song in their ears as they swung round the Brooklands curve and shot over Hill 60, and presently they were among the tall tree trunks; swerving and swinging down the track under the dark snow-laden boughs of pine and deodar.
It is not far short of the first houses that Red Run is crossed by Blue; the junction of the two runs bearing the appellation ‘Dirty Corner’ for reasons not unconnected with the frequent and simultaneous arrival at this point of both Blue and Red runners moving at speed and arriving from opposite directions.
Sarah shot down the curving track, jump-turned with expert precision, and emerged into the straight stretch above the junction of the two runs a bare yard ahead of Ian Kelly—only to check violently, in a flurry of snow.
She saw Ian, swerving wildly to avoid her, shoot past and cannon off a tree trunk to fall with a whirl of skis, sticks, snow and startled swearwords into a piled drift, and heard Reggie shout behind her as he came to an indignant standstill a yard or so to her left, the others stemming behind him on the slope. But she did not move. Her eyes, fixed and dilated, were on the two figures immediately ahead of her. The Coply twins, who were standing at the junction of the two runs.
Alec was bending down, dragging frenziedly at the straps of his skis, while Bonzo, his hands cupped about his mouth, alternately shouted something unintelligible up the slope, and pointed down it.
‘What the hell—!’ said Reggie Craddock violently. He thrust strongly with his ski-sticks and shot away down the track; the others following behind him, except for Sarah, who stayed where she was, held in the grip of a sudden, sickening premonition of disaster. It was only when she heard Ian swearing in the undergrowth and saw Reggie and the others reach the twins that she forced herself to follow them.
Alec had rid himself of his second ski by the time she reached them, and was running down the Blue Run slipping and stumbling on the treacherous surface, while Meril was saying in a high, cracked voice that sounded as if it came from a gramophone: ‘But they took Mrs Matthews away—I know they took her away! She can’t still be here. They took her away!’
Sarah took one look at the sprawled figure that lay at the foot of the icy slope below them, a dark smudge against the whiteness, and took the slope at a run. She heard Reggie’s warning shout and Meril’s scream, and then Alec had caught her, and they had fallen together among the snow-covered boulders beside that other figure that lay so still.
It was Janet of course. Sarah had known that it would be. Perhaps she had known it, subconsciously, from the moment when she had awakened in the ski-hut, heavy-eyed and sick with apprehension, to find that Janet had not returned. The Coply twins, gesticulating in the snow, had only supplied the dreadful confirmation of what she already feared to be true.
Sarah reached out and touched her. Janet lay on her side in the snow in a curiously confiding attitude, almost as though she were asleep. Her knees were bent, and her arms lay stretched at her side, her hands still gripping her ski-sticks. There was a little scarlet stain on the snow under her head, and her blue eyes were open. There was no trace of either surprise or horror on her dead face, but rather a faint, definite impression of scorn: as though she had expected death and derided it.
Sarah became aware of Reggie Craddock swearing violently under his breath, of Meril’s hysterical sobbing, and of Fudge’s arms about her, pulling her away.
‘Come away, Sarah. Don’t look dear. We can’t do anything; she’s dead.’
Sarah jerked herself free and stood up. She had seen all she wanted to see in those first few minutes, and verified it when she had reached out to lay her hand on a pocket of Janet’s snow-powdered ski-suit.
The narrow metal zip-fastener was closed, but the gun had gone. And it was not until after they had carried the slim, stiff figure up the hill to the hotel, and laid it in an empty room in an unoccupied wing, out of consideration for Miss Parrish’s nerves, that Sarah learned—by way of Dr Leonard’s wife, Frances, who has assisted her husband to remove the dead girl’s clothing, so that he and Major McKay could conduct a thorough examination to eliminate any possibility of foul play—that nothing unusual had been found. Which could only mean that the holster and its sling had also been taken, since its discovery would certainly have aroused a good deal of curiosity and speculation.
5
‘Where are you going, Sarah?’ Ian’s voice sounded as cheerful as ever.
‘Out,’ said Sarah briefly. She pulled on her skiing gloves, and picking up her ski-sticks, stepped out of the over-heated atmosphere of the hotel lounge into the chill of the darkening afternoon.
‘Then I’ll come with you and keep an eye on you.’
‘No thank you, Ian,’ said Sarah, allowing him to adjust and buckle on her skis. ‘I’m only going across the marg, and I’d rather go by myself if you don’t mind.’ She drew the loops of her ski-sticks over her wrists as Ian fastened the last strap and stood up, dusting the snow off his knees.
‘Don’t be silly, Sarah. I know this business has been a bit of a jolt for you, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t behave in a rational manner. There’s a hell of a storm coming up, and it isn’t going to help the situation if you
get yourself lost in it. At least let me come with you if you feel you must go mooching about the marg.’
Sarah said: ‘But I don’t want you, Ian. And don’t worry, I won’t get lost. See you at tea-time—and thanks for your help.’
She slid swiftly away down the snow-covered path, gaining momentum as it dipped sharply downwards, and vanished round a curve of the hill, leaving Ian Kelly to mutter evil words and return moodily to the hotel and the subdued groups of skiers discussing the latest tragedy in the lounge.
At the bottom of the hill Sarah swung to the right, and skirting it, made for the end of the Red Run and turned up into the forest.
The sky was by now completely overcast and, although it was barely two o’clock, the day had darkened to a twilight dimness. Little gusts of wind were blowing across the open marg, but under the snow-ladened boughs of the forest trees the air was cold and still, as Sarah picked her way carefully between the tree trunks and presently reached the junction of the two runs where the twins had stopped that morning. Brushing the snow from a tree stump she unfastened her skis and sat down facing the slope of Blue Run, and propping her chin on her hand, thought deeply.
Of one thing only she was completely sure. Janet, like Mrs Matthews, had been murdered. Not for one moment did she believe the doctor’s diagnosis of accidental death due to a fall at speed and the striking of her head against a rock. She was certain that the blow that had killed Janet had been deliberately inflicted, for to prove it, as in the case of Mrs Matthews, there was the missing gun.
The question was how? Sarah went back once more over that conversation with Janet in the moonlight outside the Khilanmarg hut, and once again she seemed to hear Janet’s low confident laugh as she said: ‘It’s all right Sarah. Don’t look so horrified. I’ll keep to the edge of the run, and I know the route like the back of my hand. Don’t worry. There won’t be a murderer waiting down there for me at this time of night.’
The edge of the run …
Sarah stood up, and carrying her skis, walked up the side of the Blue Run, keeping among the trees. Presently she crossd to the other side, and less than a minute later came upon what she was looking for: the track of a single skier on the extreme right-hand side of the run, among the tree trunks.
Turning she followed the track downhill, and at the junction of the runs stopped to fasten on her skis before picking up the trail again. It ran down the hill following the line of Blue Run, passed without pause the small scarlet blotch that marked the spot where Janet’s body had lain, and continued for a couple of hundred yards until the trees thinned at the edge of the marg; at which point it turned right and was lost among a maze of crossing and recrossing tracks made by a beginners’ class.
Pausing again, Sarah leant against a snow-powdered tree trunk and stared out across the sullen levels of the marg with unseeing eyes——So Janet had not been killed on the way down from Khilan after all. She had kept to one side of that treacherous, frozen run and had gone on across the open levels of the marg, to keep her appointment somewhere among the dark pine trees where that red spark of light had shown like a small, evil star on the previous night. That meant that she must have been killed on her way back to Khilan, her mission completed. But there was something wrong there too …
Sarah turned and glanced back at the lowering ridge of Apharwat, coldly white against the slate-grey sky, and realized as she did so that although Janet might have come down from the ski-hut by the Blue Run, she would never have returned by that route, since the quickest way down would have proved the hardest way back. She would have come by the forest path. So why had her body been found on the Blue Run?
A theory was forming itself slowly in Sarah’s mind, and she leaned her head against the rough bark of the tree, and shutting her eyes, tried to visualize Gulmarg as she had seen it last night from the snowfields of Khilan, following the direction of Janet’s hand pointing down at that far small speck of light.
‘About level with the Gap,’ said Sarah, speaking aloud. ‘And not more than a quarter of a mile this side of it.’
She opened her eyes and turned to look in the direction of the hotel, and from there, frowning, to the lowering sky overhead. Then, with a sudden squaring of her small jaw, she set off resolutely towards the Gap.
Fifteen minutes later she was among trees again at the far side of the marg, and she had found what she was looking for. Halfway across, a single track had detached itself from the multitudinous tracks of the beginners’ slopes and struck off alone towards a point to the right-hand side of the Gap. It was not in a direction ordinarily frequented by members of the Club, and Sarah was fairly certain that she was following the track that Janet’s skis had made on the previous night.
The track herringboned up the slope below the road that runs round the edge of the golf-course, and on reaching it, followed the road for several hundred yards, before turning off up a side path between the trees: and following it, Sarah found herself standing before a rickety wooden gateway beyond which, half hidden by tree trunks and snow-laden branches, stood a low, log-built bungalow of the usual Gulmarg pattern.
The log-built ‘huts’, as all houses here are called, are only occupied during the summer months. When autumn comes and the chestnut trees add their splashes of bright gold to the pine forests and the snows begin to creep down from the mountain tops, the population retreats to the houseboats and hotels of Srinagar in the valley below, and the huts remain shuttered and empty until the following May. This one was no exception—apart from the fact that there were tracks on the short path leading to the front door and that the top bar of the gate had been swept clean of snow.
At least three people had entered and left the bungalow within the last twenty-four hours. Probably more, for the track Sarah had followed was crossed by others, coming from the direction of the Gap, and there were two more leaving the gate, so close upon each other that they might almost have been a single track. Yet despite this, the house appeared completely deserted.
The roof was hidden under a thick covering of snow, and a fringe of icicles hung from the eaves. The door was closed and there were rough board shutters nailed over all but one of the windows. But the blank, rime-fringed panes of that single unshuttered window looked out, free of the encroaching trees, towards the hotel, and above it to the heights of Apharwat and the long snow slopes of Khilanmarg …
It was from this window then, thought Sarah with sudden conviction, that the light that had lured Janet to her death had shone last night. And drawing a deep breath, she pushed open the unlatched gate and walked up the path towards the house.
Her ski slipped and slithered where the tracks of those earlier visitors had hardened the snow to ice, and a sudden thin gust of wind, herald of the coming storm, blew across the marg and soughed among the deodars; sloughing off snow from over-weighted branches and whispering about the crude pine walls of the empty house.
Sarah tried the front door cautiously, and finding that it was not locked, took her courage in both hands and pushed it open. The hinges creaking protestingly, and suddenly, daunted by the darkness and the silence inside, she would have turned and run back down the trodden path and out into the open marg but for the thought of Janet setting off alone in the moonlight for that last long ski-run through the lonely woods … ‘Sarah!’ apostrophized Miss Parrish, in an angry undertone, ‘you are a lousy little coward—and anyway, it can’t be worse than the V-bombs!’
Unfastening her skis and leaving them beside the path, she set her teeth and stepped over the threshold of the silent house.
The air inside was stale and very cold, and the house smelt damp and musty. But there was a faint scent of cigarette smoke in the small dark hall, and another fainter smell that was barely more than the ghost of an odour: a sickly smell; sweetish, cloying and wholly unfamiliar.
Sarah wrinkled her nose and stooped to pick up a half-smoked cigarette. She touched it gingerly, almost as if she thought it might still be hot, and then dropp
ed it back on the floor with a little grimace of disgust. The door had partially closed and now she saw that a chair stood behind it. It was an ordinary verandah chair with a wooden back and arms and a sagging cane seat, and someone had been sitting in it comparatively recently for beside it lay a couple of cigarette-stubs and a film of scattered grey ash.
There was something on the arm of the chair that made Sarah’s heart leap like a trout on a line: a small, triangular splash of blood that showed wet and vivid against the unvarnished wood. But when she removed a ski-glove and put out a shrinking finger to touch it, it was not blood at all, but only a fragment of thin shiny red rubber, such as might have been torn from a child’s balloon, which had caught in a crack of the wood.
The bathos of the discovery, coming on top of that terrified leap of the heart, sent her off into a sudden and uncontrollable gale of giggles that contained more than a touch of hysteria. Oh, for heaven’s sake! thought Sarah, mopping her eyes with the glove, I must stop seeing horrors at every turn. This isn’t getting me anywhere!
She controlled herself with a considerable effort, and looked about her. To the left of the hall in which she stood were three doors which when tried, proved to be either locked or bolted on the other side, while to the right a narrow passage led to another doorway, presumably a sitting-room. The passage was dark and smelt of rats, pinewood and cheap varnish, and there were marks on the uncarpeted floorboards: smears of damp and traces of discoloured snow. Sarah advanced along it cautiously, and trying the door at the end found that it was unfastened and opened easily.
When the track she had followed across the marg had turned up to the gate among the pine trees, she had not doubted that it was to this house that Janet had come last night. But if she had needed proof, it was here——This, then, was the room with the unshuttered window.