After the slightest pause she continued, ‘Now tell me who you’ve met, where you’ve been, what you’ve seen, what you’re thinking. For example – have you met Prentice yet? The Pathans have a name for him. I can’t speak Pushtu so I can’t tell you what it is but – translated it means “never asleep” or something like that. He spent many years on the frontier, you know. Had a second tour with the Gilgit Scouts and only came away because his regiment insisted. Just in time to take them to France. By then he was more Pathan than the Pathan! What he didn’t know about Pukhtunwali…’

‘Pukhtunwali?

‘Yes, the Pathan code of honour. Giles pretty well lived by it. Still does, I’ve no doubt. Ready to avenge an insult to the third and fourth generation if necessary, ready to defend the stranger within his gates to the same degree. It’s logical, it’s consistent and no doubt essential for existence on the north-west frontier but it can be a frightful nuisance in Bengal. And an intelligent Pathan – if that’s not a contradiction in terms – would be the first to admit that it leads to some wild and ludicrous events. Drink up and have another one – must keep up the fluids in this country!’

‘And Dolly Prentice? What about her?’

‘Oh, she was wonderful! She’s been dead twelve years and she was at least twenty years younger than me but I still miss her. She was my friend, she was everybody’s friend. There was a quality about her that all admired. She could light up a room just by walking into it and if she was talking to you, you felt honoured and all the better for her conversation. I know it sounds sentimental and absurd but ask anyone who knew her and they’ll all say the same. Wait a moment.’

Kitty clapped her hands and called for the bearer. She spoke briefly to him and he bowed and left the room to return carrying two dusty and ragged, leather-covered books.

‘The Prentice family albums,’ said Kitty. ‘I don’t know that Giles would approve of my showing you these but I shan’t inform him of my intentions. It comes under the heading of helping the police with their enquiries, wouldn’t you say?’

She waved for the servant to place them on a table between them and began carefully to turn the pages. ‘Now, these escaped the fire. About the only things that did. They were kept in a metal trunk in Giles’ office at the end of the bungalow with the family papers. When they were salvaged, of course they were brought to me. Giles and Midge both know I’ve got them in safe keeping but they have never asked to have them back and, somehow, it never seemed the right moment to return them. Midge comes over to look through them and hear me tell stories of her mother but Giles has never shown any desire to have them returned. Too painful.’

She found the photograph she was looking for and pushed it towards him. ‘There, you can see something of her style. She was beautiful. There was an elfin quality about her that appealed to everybody.’

Joe looked with admiration and sadness at the bright, mischievous face raised to the camera. Yes, Dolly would have enslaved him too, he thought.

‘And her reputation remained intact?’ he asked delicately.

‘Well, she could have said, with Queen Elizabeth:

‘ “Much suspected of me,

Nothing proved can be.”

‘And so it was. I would suspect there was a string of affairs or at least flirtations and if I was minded to do so I could name names.’

‘And Prentice? Was he aware of all this? Did he mind? Was he very devoted?’

‘What can I say? He had a reputation for devotion and it’s true that when he had to leave the station he took her with him whenever he could. And that’s unusual. Most of the officers are only too glad to leave domestic bliss behind for a few days, I’d say. But devoted? Truly I’d say he wasn’t. I’d almost be prepared to say he was indifferent to her, though you wouldn’t find many to agree with me. Fond of her perhaps and he never mistreated or neglected her certainly but, compared to all the other men on the station, indifferent.’

‘How did he come to marry Dolly? On the surface they don’t seem to have a great deal in common.’

‘Dolly had an Indian background. Rather like Nancy – and dozens of other girls – if you want to have a place in India there’s only one way to achieve it – you have to marry a man who is making his career here. After school, Dolly came out on the fishing fleet and never was likely to be a “returned empty” as we rudely used to call the poor plain girls who went back home without a husband. She had her pick of the eligible men that year – 1902, was it? Of course, by far the best catch is a three hundred pounds a year dead or alive man…’

‘Dead or alive?’ asked Joe puzzled.

‘A civil servant, like the one Nancy’s got for herself, the best paid and having the advantage that if he dies, you go on drawing your husband’s salary in full for as long as you live. Not a bad bargain, I think you’d agree?’

‘It beats police arrangements, certainly,’ said Joe.

‘And Dolly had her offers from that quarter but – and to many people’s surprise – she chose Prentice. And here they are on their wedding day.’

‘He was a handsome man,’ Joe commented.

‘Oh, yes. Physically an outstanding man. And he still is. Fiendishly handsome, don’t you think? But there was something about him which did not appeal to most girls. He didn’t flirt. All those years in the hills were no preparation for the trivialities of polite society. He had no idea, I think, of making himself attractive to women. It’s my opinion that he had been sent back to the regiment here in Bengal with advice from his senior officers to make a serious push for promotion and there is a point beyond which it is difficult to proceed if you do not have a wife. There’s a saying in the Indian army: “Subalterns may not marry. Captains may marry. Majors should marry. Colonels must marry.” Prentice was determined to make colonel. He got Dolly in his sights and carried off the prize of the season.’

The album with its melancholy parade of singed and stained but evocative images was entrancing Joe. ‘May I?’ he asked.

‘Certainly,’ said Kitty. ‘Take your time.’

She waved a hand again to her bearer who interpreted her gesture without a word and presented a cigarette box at her elbow and a lighted match. At her invitation, Joe helped himself to a cigarette.

‘And this is Midge?’ he asked, pointing to a tiny child being supported on a pony by a smiling syce.

‘Yes, that’s Midge. Very dark, you see. Takes her colouring from her father.’

Joe was silent for a moment as he gazed at another portrait. A tall, dark young man dressed in the baggy white trousers, loose white shirt and tight waistcoat of a Pathan tribesman smiled in a confident and swaggering way at the camera.

‘Ah, I see you’ve found Prentice’s bearer.’

‘Chedi Khan?’

‘Yes. Now how do you know that? Am I going to have to respect your detective abilities after all? Chedi Khan. That’s the name. Haven’t heard it for years. But I would never forget the man! No one who saw him ever would. I can still remember the flutterings he made in the hen coop when he appeared on the station with Prentice for the first time! The women swooned! Discreetly, of course!’

‘He has a strong look of Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik.’

‘We haven’t yet had the pleasure of moving pictures in Panikhat, so I am not able to comment. But Chedi Khan certainly cut a most romantic figure about the station. He was about six foot two and, as you see, handsome as the devil. He moved like a panther – stalked through the station looking neither to left nor right and he was subservient to no one but Prentice. His hair was black and he wore it long on his shoulders… sometimes he would twine a red rose through it. That was surprising enough but the most amazing thing about him was his eyes. They were blue. Yes, turquoise blue and he would ring them with kohl which made the effect even more devastating. Apparently some of these northern tribesmen do have light skins and blue eyes. They say the colouring goes right back to the invading armies of Alexander the Great. Extraordinary.’