At seven o’clock, duly bathed, shaven and starched, he set off for the Club. ‘Protective colouring,’ he thought. ‘I think I have it!’

The clubhouse and its gardens occupied the best part of one side of the maidan. Dating from the spacious days of the East India Company, it was a building which, though it had seen better days, was luxuriously designed. Somewhat in the Italian manner, somewhat in the Islamic manner and owing not a little to Hindu architecture, it made a very confident statement. A fitting residence for its first owner, a Calicut nabob whose summer residence it had been. If the stucco was perhaps beginning to peel, the swarming bougainvillea and jasmine and the embracing spray of climbing roses concealed most of the effects of time. The Club employed five full-time gardeners and the lawns were watered and immaculate, the flower beds ablaze with English flowers.

There was a press of buggies, horses, men in dinner jackets, women in evening dresses gathering round the door of the Club and Joe lost himself in this crowd, making himself briefly known to the servant on the door before walking past the long bar on to the verandah to get his bearings.

Internally, the ‘large ballroom’ had been converted by a vandal hand into squash courts but the smaller ballroom remained. The dining-room, lit through a series of french windows opening on to the all-embracing verandah, was furnished in the heaviest possible Victorian style with furniture from Maples in the Tottenham Court Road. But the life of the Club, Joe guessed, was lived on the verandah and the tennis court and even on the croquet lawn. In more recent years a single-storey extension surrounding a courtyard had been added at the rear with spare bedrooms for the use of visitors, for the use of bachelors from up-country, for the use of the bereaved such as William Somersham whose grief and despair had taken refuge here.

The verandah was supplied with an endless array of bamboo planters’ chairs with their long foot rests, with sockets thoughtfully provided in the arms safely to contain a tumbler. Here was the social life of Panikhat while the punkhas creaked overhead, the click of croquet balls came in through the windows as one late party drew to a noisy close with shouts and laughter, while, in the charge of attendant syces, horses kicked and fretted in the shade.

Joe became aware of two men, invisible behind the high backs of their long chairs, both, he judged, in spite of the early hour, somewhat drunk and both prepared to be indiscreet with each other.

He overheard: ‘It’s all the fault of the Greys, I hear. Can’t imagine why Prentice was so keen to elect the feller an honorary member of the mess and, of course, if they made him an honorary member the Club had to follow suit. Damned embarrassing, if you ask me!’

His companion rejoined, ‘Damned embarrassing! Quite agree! I suppose we should be grateful we’ve only been visited with one blue locust! Hear they usually go about in swarms! Damned chap’s come down here to investigate – spy on us, you might say. Can’t believe anybody that’s been involved wants any of this raked up again.’

There was a laugh from the other. ‘What do we have to put up with? Magnifying glass and fingerprint kit? “Where were you on the night of the 11th of March 1910?” I mean, scent’s a bit cold, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, not very keen on the idea of a London policeman prancing round the dance floor! Are you?’

‘Mind your toes, girls! Here comes a pair of regulation police boots!’

There was a chink of glasses and a laugh from both as they scrambled to their feet. ‘ Nancy!’ he heard. ‘Good evening, my dear. How are you? We were just talking about your policeman.’

‘Joseph Sandilands?’ He heard Nancy ’s voice. ‘Have you met him? I was hoping he might be here somewhere…’

Joe decided the time had come to step forward.

‘Mrs Drummond!’ he said. ‘I was hoping to hear a friendly voice!’

He was well satisfied with the confusion his sudden appearance had created.

‘Commander!’ said Nancy Drummond. ‘I’m so pleased to see you! Come and meet my husband, if these two sots will excuse us.’ And, to the two sots, ‘See you in a minute or two.’

She took Joe’s arm and led him away.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘tell me everything! Tell me what you’ve been doing. Give me the benefit of the razor-sharp accuracy with which you have cut to the heart of our problems! And, by the way, take no notice of those two.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Joe, ‘but I’ve been quite amused to hear what’s being said.’

They walked together through the thickening crowd, attracting many curious glances as they went. Joe was aware that they made a striking couple and he didn’t wonder that Nancy should draw so many admiring gazes. He watched her covertly as she stepped aside to exchange a brief greeting with a middle-aged pair. Her slender shape in yellow silk was all energy and grace. The dress was the height of London fashion, floating a discreet inch below the knee, the clinging and diaphanous top held up by narrow straps over her shoulders. Where most of the ladies were wearing their long hair up in tormented chignons, Nancy ’s shiny, dark chestnut bob swung free about her neat head and Joe was aware that every man she spoke to would have liked to run his hands through it. He decided that he would do just that. When the occasion offered itself.

She led him to a table and two chairs. ‘Let’s sit for a moment. You never get more than a moment for private conversation on a barrampta of this sort! Sit down. Buy me a drink.’

She waved a hand and a waiter came to her side. ‘We don’t seem to drink anything but gimlets these days. Gin and lime? That suit you?’ And she held up two fingers. ‘Now, let’s look about us. First, that’s my husband over there waving to us. He’s very eager to meet you but he appears to be rather affairé at the moment. I’ll introduce you to him in a minute. And that’s Giles Prentice over there of whom you will have heard a great deal, I dare say. I think he’s outside our enquiry – I hope you don’t mind my saying “our” enquiry, do you? – but he’s probably the most interesting man on the station, or anywhere else for that matter. His father was British Resident at Gilgit in the North-West Frontier Province and he was brought up there as a child. He’s a fantastic linguist and that, no doubt, is where it all started. He spoke Pushtu before he spoke English and was practically brought up by Pathans. He speaks Hindustani, Bengali when required, Persian they tell me and not only that – half a dozen dialects as well. He never went home for schooling. You’ve probably already gathered that poor little European children get sent home when they’re about six. An iniquitous system! But instead of going to a smart public school in England he went to a Catholic school in Calcutta and from there to Sandhurst.

‘When he came back to India the Indian regiments were queuing to get him. He had a family connection of some sort with the Greys and that’s where he ended up but he hadn’t been in India five minutes before he got himself attached to a Scouts Unit, the Gilgit Scouts, I think…’

‘Scouts?’

‘Oh yes. The Scouts. Regular or semi-regular forces on the north-west frontier with Afghanistan. Toughest men in the world. English officers, Pathan other ranks. Giles Prentice joined them on attachment and spent five years back on the frontier where he was born. I don’t think he would have ever come away but his regiment insisted on his doing a little regimental duty. I’ll call him over. Hey! Giles! Come and meet the police!’

Joe saw a dark face, a commanding nose, hair unfashionably long and a searching eye. So this was Colonel Prentice. Now commanding the Bengal Greys. This was the man who’d come home to find his bungalow destroyed, his wife burned to death and his little girl hysterical and terrified. This was a man who had taken the Bengal Greys to France in 1914, had led the charge of the regiment at Neuve Chapelle, who had won a DSO and bar and now, austere and aloof, ascetic and seemingly dedicated, commanded the regiment in peacetime.