The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [135]
‘Perfectly true, I'm afraid. I don't know what he'd been up to, but it seems that several people cut him at the Club last night. Then this morning he got a couple of letters cancelling invitations that he had already accepted, so at lunch time he took two bottles of brandy from the shop, drank 'em both and then shot himself, poor devil. I got it from Billy Carddock who'd just met the doctor coming away from the firm's bungalow. He said they'd no idea what was behind it.’
‘I was,’ whispered Ash, his face grey and drawn with shock: ‘He asked me what I'd do if I were in his place, and I told him… I told him –’ He shuddered, and pushing the unbearable thought away, said aloud: ‘Belinda was behind it. Belinda and all those narrow-minded, bigoted, bourgeois snobs who purred over him while they thought his grandmother was a countess and cut him when they found out that she was only a bazaar woman from Agra. The —,—!’ The end of the softly spoken sentence was in the vernacular and happily unintelligible to young Mr Cooke-Collis, but its virulent obscenity startled the khidmatgar into dropping a box of cigars, and drew a shocked protest from a senior Major who happened to be standing within earshot.
‘Here, I say,’ objected the Major. ‘You can't talk like that in mess, Ashton. If you must spout filth, go and do it somewhere else, will you.’
‘Don't worry,’ said Ash, his voice deceptively gentle. ‘I'm going.’
He lifted his glass as though drinking a toast, and having drained it, tossed it over his shoulder in the manner of an earlier day when it had been the custom in some regiments to drink a young queen's health in broken glass. The crash brought conversation to a stop, and in the brief lull that followed, Ash turned on his heel and walked out of the mess.
‘Silly young ass,’ observed the Major without heat. ‘I shall have to give him a talking-to in the morning.’
But Ash was not there in the morning.
His room was empty and his bed had not been slept in, and the sentry who had come on duty at midnight reported that Pelham-Sahib had left the fort shortly after that hour, saying that he could not sleep and would walk for a while. He had been wearing a poshteen and a pair of Pathan trousers, and as far as the sentry could remember had not been carrying anything. His horses were still in the stables, and Ala Yar, questioned by the Adjutant, said that apart from the poshteen and a pair of chupplis and some money, the only thing missing from his room was a set of Pathan clothing and an Afghan knife that his Sahib always kept in a locked box on top of the almirah (cupboard). The box had not been in its accustomed place when he, Ala Yar, had brought in his Sahib's chota hazri (small breakfast) that morning; it had been on the floor, open and empty. As for the money it was a matter of a few rupees only, and it was certain that no thief had taken it, for his Sahib's gold cuff-links and silver-backed brushes lay on the dressing table where no one could have failed to see them. It was Ala Yar's opinion that his Sahib, being troubled in his mind, had taken leave and followed after the father of Risaldar Awal Shah and Jemadar Zarin Khan, who had been visiting his sons and had left in the late afternoon of the previous day to return to his village.
‘Koda Dad Khan is as a father to my Sahib, who has a great affection for him,’ said Ala Yar. ‘But yesterday there was some small disagreement between them, and it may be my Sahib desires to mend matters and make his peace with the old man, and when he has done so he will return swiftly. No harm will befall him beyond the Border.’
‘That's all very well, but he's got no damned business to be beyond the Border – now or at any other time,’ retorted the Adjutant, forgetting for a moment whom he was addressing. ‘Just you wait until I get my hands on that young –’ He recollected himself and dismissed Ala Yar, who returned to the Sahib's quarters to remove the chota hazri tray that he had ‘placed on the bedside table in the dawn, and in the agitation of the morning omitted to remove. It was only