Barbara Cleverly by The Last Kashmiri Rose Page A

cover their bodies with ash and yellow paint and they are not polite to women. Oh, there are bad stories but they are holy people and must be allowed to behave as they have always behaved.’
    Joe resumed his reading. ‘ “He told us how we could get down to the river. He didn’t speak any English but luckily Cathy can manage a bit of Hindustani and that seemed to work. We gave him a four anna piece and asked him if he’d seen anything. He said he’d seen the whole thing. The horse had shied at something in the path — a snake possibly — and had unseated Sheila.
    ‘ “At the time it never occurred to us that he could have been responsible. He made no attempt to hide which he could easily have done in that terrain — I mean, you could hide a whole division in those rocks — and was really very helpful. For a saddhu. We offered him another four annas and he agreed to come back with us to the station and make a statement.”
    ‘And so on
    I notice that there’s no statement from the beggar! Not surprised. He must have taken his annas and run.’ Joe shook his head and smiled at the credulity of women. ‘Still — good witness, Emma. Brave girl too. She managed to scramble down to the river with her friends and they found Sheila or rather Sheila’s body. It seems she had died instantly from a broken neck. I think this tells us almost everything we need to know. I would just like to have a talk with Sheila’s husband to round things off.’
    ‘Do you agree, sahib, that this was an unfortunate accident? Now that you have seen the dangers of the place
    ’
    ‘No, Naurung. Nor do I believe that an evil spirit exacted a sacrifice, though it’s tempting in this place to imagine it. No — Mrs Forbes was murdered. With deliberation, with calculation and in very cold blood!’
    They remounted and followed the trail for a further five miles until it arrived at the junction with one of the main roads to the station, a road which stopped abruptly at the river bank and continued across the other side north towards Calcutta.
    ‘This can’t be the main road north, can it?’ Joe asked, taking in the single small boat which made up the ferry service and which was just casting off on the further bank to make the crossing.
    ‘Oh no. Ten miles downstream there is a bigger road and there is a bridge. This is the road used by people going to the village of Jhalpani, two miles beyond the river.’
    Joe watched as the boat came steadily towards them, rowed along by one Indian pulling on the pair of oars. His back was towards them but they could easily make out the two faces of the Indian ladies he was ferrying. Joe’s gaze intensified as the boat reached the middle of the river.
    ‘Now that’s about where the ox-hide ferry was when it went under?’
    ‘Yes, sahib. At the centre. About forty yards from where we are standing.’
    ‘Do Englishwomen from the station often use this crossing?’
    ‘No. Very rarely. They would normally have no reason to cross the river here. They would have no business in Jhalpani. If they came out riding they would have broken off at the place I showed you five miles south where there is a road branching back to the station, sahib.’
    ‘Then what on earth was Mrs Captain Simms-Warburton doing risking her neck on an ox-hide raft?’
    Joe sighed. The heat was beginning to tire him and so much concentrated death was becoming unnerving. The slaughter on the Western Front which he had never expected to survive had disgusted and degraded him like every other man who had been involved but this digging up of dead memsahibs affected him quite differently. These were not soldiers expecting death at any moment; these were perfectly ordinary ladies, some happy, some dull, none outstanding apparently, and all being snuffed out in bizarre ways. Were they no more than random victims of their surroundings? People kept telling him, ‘Of course, India is a dangerous place, Joe. Watch out for
    ’
    But no one had mentioned ox-hide ferries.
    ‘There’s a