by M. M. Kaye
A flurry of barks from Lager announced her approach and gave Sarah just time to push the day’s quota of unsorted books under the frill of the sofa and hurriedly brush the dust from her hands, before going out to greet her. Helen, it appeared, had come to make her an offer for the boat.
Friends of hers, explained Mrs Warrender airily, had specially wanted this particular boat, and been most disappointed at hearing that it was already occupied. But on hearing that Helen knew the present occupant they had asked her to approach Sarah with a view to an exchange of boats: ‘And of course dear,’ concluded Helen, casting a disparaging eye about the cluttered living-room of the Waterwitch, ‘I knew you couldn’t possibly have any objection, so I told them they could consider it fixed. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said Sarah coldly. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t. I have absolutely no intention of giving up this boat, and when you next see Reggie you can tell him that from me!’
‘Reggie?’ exclaimed Helen Warrender blankly.
‘You can add,’ continued Sarah, with a dangerous sparkle in her green eyes, ‘that I am a moderately easy-going person, but I don’t like being pushed around.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Helen Warrender. Her customary drawling voice had suddenly lost its veneer of affectation and was quick and harsh: ‘Reggie? What Reggie? You mean Reggie Craddock? The man who—but he can’t be…’ Helen stopped abruptly and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said more slowly. ‘There seems to have been some muddle. It wasn’t Reggie Craddock who wanted the boat. It was—oh well. Someone you wouldn’t know. A friend of mine.’
She turned and stood for a while staring out of the houseboat window in frowning concentration and tapping her teeth with the edge of her sunglasses. She seemed to have forgotten about Sarah.
Presently she swung round and said: ‘Why did you think I was trying to get the boat for Reggie Craddock? Has he been after it too?’
‘It looks that way, doesn’t it?’ said Sarah. ‘I’m sorry I was rude, Mrs Warrender, but——’
‘Oh, call me Helen,’ said Mrs Warrender impatiently. ‘There’s no need for you to apologize. I didn’t realize your boat was so much in demand. Why did Reggie Craddock want it?’
‘Sentimental reasons,’ said Sarah. ‘Or so he said. I didn’t really go into it. Srinagar is full of houseboats and most of them appear to be empty this year. But as I happen to have taken this one, I prefer to stay on it.’
‘And that goes for me too, I suppose?’ said Helen.
‘Well, yes; I’m afraid so. I’m sure your friends will be able to find a dozen boats as good as this one, and probably at half the price. After all, prices should have fallen considerably this year.’ She realized suddenly that she had made a tactical error and stopped.
‘Oh,’ said Helen Warrender in an interested voice. ‘So you booked this boat last year? But you can’t have done that. You weren’t here. How did you come to take it? And why are you paying higher than you need for it?’
Sarah considered for a moment. She was strongly tempted to tell Mrs Warrender to mind her own business, but realized that this would only create an impression of secrecy; in addition to being rude. It was not that she had any particular objection to being rude to Helen Warrender (who in Sarah’s opinion had asked for it), but she particularly wished to avoid a suggestion of any mystery being attached to her occupancy of the boat. She therefore decided that an edited version of the truth would serve her best: ‘I took over this boat from a friend of mine,’ she said carefully. ‘Janet Rushton.’
‘You mean the girl who killed herself skiing in Gulmarg? But I knew her!’
‘Yes, that’s the one. She had this boat last year, and she’d taken it on for six months of this year as well. Then she changed her mind about it, and happened to tell me one day that if I ever wanted to come up here later in the year before the lease ran out, I could take it on. I thought it might be a good idea, so I took over her lease, hoping that I could sub-let if I didn’t come up after all. But I did, and I like the boat; and I like this ghat. But I don’t expect I shall stay up here long, and as soon as I’ve gone your friends and Reggie Craddock and the agent’s uncle’s brother-in-law, and anyone else who wants it, can fight it out between them. Until then I intend to stay on it myself.’
Mrs Warrender said ‘Oh’ in an uncertain tone of voice, and sat down on the arm of the sofa. ‘Well, that’s that, isn’t it? It’s damned hot all of a sudden; I shouldn’t be surprised if we were in for a thunderstorm. I could do with a drink if you’ve got one around.’
‘I’m so sorry. I should have offered you one before,’ apologized Sarah. ‘What’ll you have? Lemon squash?’
‘As long as you put plenty of gin and a spot of bitters in it, yes.’
‘Sorry, no gin on board. But if you’ll wait a minute I’ll run across to the Creeds’ boat and hijack some of Hugo’s.’
‘That would be darling of you,’ drawled Helen, dragging off her sun-hat and fanning herself with it. ‘I confess I loathe soft drinks, and I could do with a stiff John Collins.’
Sarah ran down the gangplank and across the short strip of turf that separated the two boats, but it took her a minute or two to locate the gin which Hugo had left behind a flower vase on the writing-table, and when she returned it was to find Helen Warrender sitting on the floor with a pile of books strewn around her. She had one in her hand and looked up, unabashed, as Sarah entered: ‘Funny place to keep your books,’ she observed. ‘Your sausage puppy started rooting them out from under the sofa, so I thought I’d better rescue them. Your mānji must be an untidy devil. There are lots more under there.’
‘Are there?’ said Sarah, in what she hoped was a disinterested voice; and mentally consigning Lager to perdition, she mixed a John Collins and handed it to her unwelcome guest. ‘I’m afraid there’s no ice. Do you mind?’
‘Not at all, darling. Thanks. Well, here’s cheers.’
Helen downed half the glass while continuing to gaze at the book in her hand, and Sarah saw that she was looking at a fly-leaf across which Janet had written her name.
‘This Rushton girl,’ said Mrs Warrender. ‘Wasn’t she supposed to be rather a spot skier?’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah briefly.
‘Damn silly thing for her to do. She ought to have known better. I rather wonder at your wanting to take over her boat after that.’
‘Why?’ inquired Sarah coldly.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Rather gruesome, don’t you think? Still, if you don’t mind. It’s been an unlucky year for Kashmir in the way of accidents, hasn’t it? First the Matthews woman and then the Rushton girl. I keep on saying there’s bound to be a third one. These things always go in threes, don’t they? Well, I suppose I’d better be going.’
Sarah did not attempt to dissuade her and Helen stood up and brushed her skirts, and tossing Janet’s book onto a chair, walked over to a looking-glass in an atrocious Victorian frame of plush and shells hung on one wall, and replacing her sun-hat, peered at herself and exclaimed: ‘Heavens, what a mess I look! It’s this heat. Let’s hope we get a good storm to clear the air.’
She dabbed at her nose with a rather grubby powder puff, and having touched up her mouth with lipstick, said: ‘Well, my visit seems to have been rather abortive, doesn’t it? Sorry you don’t feel like giving up the boat. Still—there it is. If you feel like changing your mind, let me know.’
Sarah continued to say nothing, and Mrs Warrender snapped shut her handbag, adjusted her dark glasses and trailed out of the boat into the sunlight. At the bottom of the gangplank she turned and said: ‘Thanks for the drink. I do hope you won’t regret it. The boat business I mean.’ Upon which cryptic remark she waved a languid hand and walked off between the willows.
‘Now what was that intended for?’ mused Sarah, addressing herself to Lager: ‘A threat or a promise? Either way, I’m not sure I like it. No. I do not like this set-up one little bit and I’ve half a mind
to——No, I haven’t! I won’t be pushed around!’
There were two gangplanks on the Waterwitch. One that led from the bank to the pantry, and was used almost exclusively by the mānji and the other houseboat servants, and a second that led to a small open space on the square prow of the boat from which one entered into the living-room. Sarah stood on the prow in the hot sunshine and watched Helen Warrender take the field path that led between young corn and a blaze of yellow mustard towards the Nagim Bagh road, and presently she said again, and with more emphasis: ‘No, Lager. I will not be pushed around!’
12
Having replaced the books so tactlessly exposed by Lager, Sarah postponed any further search through the houseboat’s tattered library, and spent the remainder of the day with the Creeds.
I’m beginning to imagine things and to be suspicious of everything and everybody, she decided ruefully; and that’s fatal. After all, why shouldn’t Reggie Craddock’s story be true? How do I know it isn’t? He did know Janet, and for all I know he may have been fond of her. Suppose Mrs Warrender’s friends really do want this boat, and for quite unsinister reasons? It is rather an attractive little boat, and quite a reasonable size compared with most of these outsize floating palaces I’ve seen. I must try and cultivate a sense of proportion …
With this laudable object in view she lunched with the Creeds, accompanied them in the afternoon on a picnic to the Shalimar Gardens, and returned to dine with them on the roof of their houseboat, though their original plan had been to dine and dance at Nedou’s Hotel, and they had booked a table there. But since Major McKay, who was to have made the fourth member of the party, had sent an eleventh-hour message to say that he had pulled a muscle while playing tennis, they abandoned the dance with some relief and ate a scratch meal, hurriedly concocted by the houseboat staff, instead.
The day had been hot and breathless, but with nightfall a light wind began to blow from the mountains, ruffling the surface of the lake and driving little waves in crisp slaps against the side of the houseboat.
Normally, on moonlit nights the lakeside was noisy with frogs; but tonight for some reason the croaking chorus was silent, and though the sky overhead was still cloudless, away to the southwest summer lightning licked along the distant ranges of the Pir Panjal, and there was a mutter of faint, far-off thunder in the air.
Beyond the willow trees a line of tall lombardy poplars bent their heads before the freshening breeze, the mānjis came out upon the bank and began to tighten mooring-ropes and chains, and Hugo, who was dispensing coffee, got up from the table and went to the roof’s edge to observe the operation.
‘Ohé, Mahdoo!’ called Hugo in the vernacular: ‘What dost thou do?’
‘Perchance there will come a storm in the night, Sahib. We make the boats secure so that should the wind be great, it cannot pull them away to drift and sink in the lake.’
‘That’s a jolly thought!’ said Hugo, returning to his seat. ‘Nice thing for yer uncle to wake up in the small hours and find himself drifting rapidly away from the home bank and about to turn turtle at any moment.’
Sarah yawned and got to her feet. ‘Well I’m off to bed, I think. Good-night, and thanks for a lovely day.’
‘Good-night Sarah. Sweet dreams.’
Sarah strolled along the bank in the moonlight and waited at the foot of her gangplank while Lager scampered off into the shadows to chase imaginary cats. He was away for an unconsciously long time and Sarah, growing impatient, whistled and called. She could hear him scuffling about somewhere in the shadows beyond the willow trees, but he would not come to her, and when at last he reappeared he was licking his whiskers and prancing in a self-satisfied manner.
‘Lager, you little horror,’ reproved Sarah sternly, ‘you’ve been scavenging! What have you been eating? You know you aren’t allowed to eat rubbish!’
Lager’s ears, nose and tail drooped guiltily and he pattered docilely up the gangplank at Sarah’s heels.
The mānji had left the lights burning and Sarah made a tour of her little boat, checking that the windows and doors were fastened before returning for a last look round the living-room. She had already commented caustically to Fudge upon the feeble lighting in Srinagar, for the Power Station being unable to supply the load demanded of it, even a 60-watt bulb produced only a feeble yellow glow. But tonight, for some reason, it seemed to her that the lights were suddenly over-bright and garish and that in their glare the small houseboat appeared larger and less overcrowded and strangely empty.
Outside, the night was full of noises. The slap of wind-driven water against the sides of the houseboat, and the jar and whine of the ropes and chains that moored it to the bank; the sough of the wind through leaves and branches, and the chorus of creaks and groans from the boat itself as it rocked and jerked and fidgeted at its moorings. But inside the small living-room it was comparatively quiet.
The harsh yellow light poured down on the faded covers of the chairs and sofas, the tortured carving of the overornate tables, the shabby Axminster carpet and the long row of dusty books and tattered magazines. And looking about her, Sarah was seized with the uncomfortable fancy that everything in the boat—each piece of furniture—was endowed with a peculiar life of its own, and was watching her with a curious, sly hostility. So must they have watched Janet. Janet scribbling her record with fear-stiffened fingers and repeated glances over her shoulder. Janet hiding it away somewhere on this small boat.
The room knew. The room was aware. The blank eyes of the window-panes blinked and brooded, reflecting a dozen Sarahs in lilac linen dresses. The cheap cotton curtains billowed faintly in the draught, and the bead curtain in the dining-room doorway swayed and clinked softly as though some unseen presence had just passed through it …
Outside the wind was rising, and as the boat began to rock to the gusts, Lager pattered restlessly about the room sniffing at the skirting-boards and the shadows of the chairs, and whining. Sarah spoke to him sharply, and having pulled the curtains to, snapped off the lights and marched determinedly to bed.
She turned off the dining-room lights as she passed through, but left the pantry light burning so that when she was settled in bed with Lager curled up at her feet, and switched off her bedroom light, she would still see its glow through her half-opened door. It gave her a vague feeling of reassurance, like a nightlight in a nursery, and she fell asleep lulled by the rocking of the boat and the wail of the wind through the branches of the big chenar tree. But some two hours later she awoke suddenly and sat bolt upright in bed. She had no idea what had awakened her: only that one moment she had been fathoms deep in dreamless slumber, and the next moment wide awake and with every sense tense and alert.
The threatened storm had skirted the lake and passed on down the valley towards the mountains of the Banihal Pass, but the boat still rocked and creaked at its moorings, and the water still slapped noisily against its sides. The wind was blowing in savage gusts, and in a brief lull between them Sarah could hear the scuffle of rats in the roof and the steady snoring of Lager, who had burrowed under the blankets. It was several minutes before she realized, with a sharp pang of alarm, that the pantry light was no longer burning and the entire boat was in darkness.
Stretching out a hand she groped for the curtains of the window near her bed and pulled them aside, but no moonlight crept in to lighten the little room, for the sky was covered with clouds and a light rain was falling on the uneven surface of the lake. Sarah felt for the switch of the bedside lamp and heard it click as it turned under her fingers, but the light did not come on and the room remained shrouded in darkness.
It’s the storm, she thought. The wind must have torn down the wires or blown a branch of a tree across the line somewhere. There’s nothing to be frightened of …
Then why was she frightened, and what had awakened her? Why was she sitting so rigidly upright in the darkness, listening intently for the repetition of a sound?
And then she heard it: and knew
that this was the sound that had jerked her from sleep into tense wakefulness.
It came from the front part of the boat. From the dining-room, thought Sarah, trying to place it. She heard it quite clearly in a pause between the gusts of wind, despite the multitudinous noises of the night: a muffled scraping sound that was quite unmistakable. The sound made by one of the sliding houseboat windows being drawn stealthily back in its groove.
Sarah knew those windows. They were guarded by outer screens of wire flyproof mesh that also slid back into the thickness of the houseboat walls when opened. They had no bolts, but were fastened together on the inside by inadequate latches of the hook-and-eye persuasion. And as the frames, owing to warping and slapdash workmanship, hardly ever fitted quite accurately, it was a simple matter to slip a knife blade between them from the outside and lift the latch.
Somebody had just done that. Someone who was even now easing the stubborn ill-fitting frames apart, inch by inch.
Sarah sat rigid, her heart hammering; waiting for what she knew would be the next sound. Presently it came: a barely audible thud, followed by a slight extra vibration of the uneasy craft as someone stepped down through an opened window into the boat.
A scurry of wind drove the rain against the window-panes by her bed, and in the resulting rocking and creaks from the Waterwitch she could not pick out any further sound of footsteps.
If I just sit here, thought Sarah frantically, and don’t move or make a sound, perhaps they won’t come in here. Perhaps it’s just someone after the spoons. If I keep still … But she could not do it. There was Janet—and Mrs Matthews. Why had she been so stupid and so stubborn as to sleep alone on this ill-omened boat? It was all very well to tell herself not to panic or do anything silly, because nothing really bad could happen to her. Look what had happened to them? No: she dared not sit still and wait. She must get away quickly. But she had forgotten Lager. If she got out of bed he would wake up and bark …