‘Shalimar? Can you be certain?’ said Lizzie, disbelief in her voice. ‘I’m not aware of it but I can imagine. Sort of thing that Shubhada would wear but – Lois? She wouldn’t buy anything but Yardley’s so someone must have given it to her. And who would do that but Claude?’ She giggled naughtily, pleased with her solution. ‘Claude! Well! What have you uncovered, Joe! Perhaps our upright Englishman has a secret penchant for oriental mystery? “Here, Lois, old gel, try a spot of this behind the ears, what!” Sorry, Joe. I’ve no idea. But I’ll see what a bit of female gossip can reveal. Not really my style but in the interests of detection . . .’ She hesitated for a moment then said suspiciously, ‘It is in the interests of detection, I hope? Purely a professional enquiry? Not been getting too close to Lois, have you? You begin to worry me, young man! Sniffing, all too literally, around your female suspects! Are you an expert in scents? A . . . what do the French call it . . . a nose?’

‘Just one of my surprising skills,’ said Joe, smiling. He sniffed the air, stagily. ‘And you, Lizzie? Now let me see . . . Mmm! Got it! Eau de formaldehyde! Very alluring!’

Too late he realized that his flippant remark had not amused Lizzie. She looked away and busied herself arranging the glasses on the tray but he caught a sudden expression of sadness and distance in the lively brown eyes. He decided to move to safer ground.

‘Tell me, Lizzie, what brought you to India?’

‘Elopement,’ she said at once, and sat back to enjoy his surprise.

‘Ah. Elopement. Now, are you going to enlarge on that or are you going to leave me squirming with embarrassment and framing my next question which will undoubtedly be about something of undeniable tediousness like the weather?’

‘I ran away from a rather dour Scottish home in the company of a young man who loved me. He was taking up a post in India and I came with him. We were intending to marry – I suppose that makes it an elopement.’

Joe nodded. ‘And what became of your young man, Lizzie?’ he asked quietly, unable to dodge the question, though fearful of the reply.

‘Henry had been offered a position of assistant surgeon in Bombay – a very lowly position, not at all what my father had in mind for me. When we landed there was an outbreak of the cholera and what would Henry do but roll up his sleeves and pitch in? And what would I do but help him? He died. I survived,’ she said bleakly. ‘I was actually then quite glad firstly of my father’s forgiveness and secondly for his influence in getting me a position here in the royal household. Though I was not unaware that by this gesture he effectively ensured that his disgraced daughter would stay on the other side of the world for some years, if not for ever. My stipend is generous and I’ve managed to save enough to ensure I have a comfortable return. I shall buy a little tile-hung lodge in the Home Counties, grow wisteria over the door and breed spaniels.’

‘Lizzie! I forbid you to do any of those things!’

‘Well, perhaps I may concede on the wisteria-hung, dog-infested cottage but the return home at least is not something I’m prepared to give way on. My job here, as you’ve noticed, is just about completed. I don’t want to be discovered in a few years’ time mopping and mowing in my dotage in some remote cubicle of the palace warren! And – tell me – what choices does a thirty-four-year-old spinster have in post-war Britain?’

Joe was prepared to give this question his best attention and they discussed for a while the depressingly narrow range of occupations open to a clever, unmarried woman. Under the warming influence of Lizzie’s large brown eyes and the no less large measures of her whisky, Joe was on the point of suggesting that she marry him and allow him to make her the happiest of women but on running the phrase through his mind again he thought he might not have got that quite right.

Before he could commit himself the door opened and Bahadur came back into the room ostentatiously consulting, Joe noticed, another impressive wristwatch. He was shadowed by Jaswant who was carrying a linen bag at his side. Half an hour had passed quickly in Lizzie’s company and, alarmingly, Joe calculated that, allowing for study or – heaven forbid! – capture, a family of dangerous snakes must be at large within a ten-minute walk of the Old Palace. He looked again at the bag Jaswant carried. He saw something stir in the depths.

Bahadur looked rather put out to find his nanny and his British bodyguard side by side on the sofa sharing a convivial whisky and said with some asperity that if Miss Macarthur could spare the Commander he was ready to take him to a further appointment. Another glance at the watch underlined his eagerness to be off.

‘I have a feeling,’ Joe muttered in Lizzie’s ear, ‘that someone’s playing Pass the Parcel with me!

‘Keeping you on the move, at any rate. Perhaps there is a thought that a rolling policeman gathers no information? Where are you taking him now, Bahadur?’

‘We are working in accordance with the Commander’s expressed wishes,’ said Bahadur loftily.

Joe wondered whether the ‘we’ was the royal we or referred to some company of which Bahadur now considered himself a part.

He took his leave of Lizzie and set off to follow a pace or two behind the heir to the throne, thinking that couldn’t be wrong. After a few yards Bahadur waited for him to draw level and continued at his side.

‘You will miss the heat and the beauty when you go away to school in England, I think,’ said Joe conversationally.

‘I shall not be going away to school,’ said Bahadur. ‘I have decided to stay here in Ranipur where I am needed. I can have tutors sent out to me to continue my education and I have no desire to learn to play cricket.’

Joe smiled to himself. This young Rajput promised to be a challenging ward for Claude.

‘I understand you would like to speak to my uncle, Zalim Singh?’

Joe agreed.

‘Well, he is anxious to see you and to conduct you to the zenana. An honour, sir. My uncle is the only person who has the authority to admit you and he only does this because an audience has been requested by First Her Highness. You will not forget what I told you about Their Highnesses?’

This last was not so much a question as a command. Again, Joe agreed.

‘Their grief and anger will have redoubled on hearing that I have been named Yuvaraj. I myself will not accompany you to the women’s quarters. It is full of their servants and who knows with what orders they may have been issued?’

They seemed to be working their way into the deep centre of the Old Palace and it was some minutes before they arrived in front of a pair of highly decorated doors flanked by two Royal Guards who promptly stepped forward and barred their way. Bahadur spoke up sharply and Joe caught his own name in the exchange. Moving with synchronized efficiency, the guards opened the doors and one of them stepped inside and announced him. Joe looked around for Bahadur but, disconcertingly, the boy had quietly slipped away.

‘Sandilands! Do come in!’ a welcoming voice boomed out and Joe stepped into the room that he guessed to be the command centre of the state of Ranipur. Indian rooms in Joe’s experience were sparsely furnished: often merely carpets and cushions were added, perhaps with the thought that nothing else was required to compete with the lavish decorations to walls and ceiling, perhaps in the knowledge that anything more substantial risked attack by armies of ants or some sort of tropical fruiting body. Joe had heard both explanations. This room was an exception. Although it had the customary hangings, a silk carpet held down at its four corners by carved lumps of precious stone and many breathtakingly lovely Rajput paintings, the largest part of the floor area was occupied by desks, tables, bookcases and racks of ledgers: all the accoutrements of an office in Whitehall were here. Clerks were busy. No fewer than three were tapping away at typewriters, the very latest American models. In pride of place was another upto-the-minute piece of equipment – a Bell telephone, its black and gold splendour holding its own against the Eastern glamour of its surroundings. Electricity had been installed even in this far corner of the palace. The air was stirred gently above them by electric fans and the working areas were lit by pools of shaded light supplied by Liberty lamps.