‘It has, truly, left me very disturbed, Mrs Sharpe. I had known Korsovsky for a few hours only but that was enough, I think, to count him my friend. I’m here in Simla on leave but with Sir George’s permission – indeed at his request – I’m going to make it my business to find his killer. And, by your reaction on stage this evening, I’m wondering whether you were personally acquainted with him? You appeared intensely moved by your song and your Russian, as far as I am any judge, was perfect…’

Alice nodded again and whisked aside a curtain under her dressing table, producing two glasses. These were followed by a bottle of Islay malt and, without a word, she poured two generous glasses and handed one to Joe. As she held up her glass to him in a silent toast he noticed that her deep blue eyes were large and still wet with tears. She sipped for a moment at her whisky before answering.

‘I don’t find your response at all strange, Mr Sandilands. I too am able to make an instant judgement about people. I know within minutes whom I am going to like, respect and trust. And you are very perceptive! That song always makes me cry. It has many memories for me. It was taught to me by my first singing master – I had a very old-fashioned English country upbringing – and he was a young Russian émigré fleeing from the Revolution. He was the penniless son of a Count from Georgia.’ She laughed. ‘Nothing very special about that; as far as I can see everybody in Georgia is a Count and all penniless – and he was trying to accumulate enough money to pay for a passage to America. He was the first glamorous man to come into my life. I was fifteen and ready to fall in love. I fell in love. He went to America. And that was the end of it. At least, not quite the end, because I still sing that song and I still weep.’

Her steady gaze had held his while she spoke and Joe was the first to look away.

‘Your singing master?’ he said hesitantly. ‘His name was not Feodor Korsovsky by any chance?’

She laughed again and shook her head. ‘No, my singing master was a tenor. But I would have liked to meet Feodor Korsovsky. He might have… you will think me very odd to say such a thing, respectable married woman that I am… he might have known, have heard of my tenor, might have been able to give me news of him. Korsovsky was much travelled. He had spent some time in America, I understand. Mr Sandilands, I was…’ again her intense feelings were clear in her direct look, ‘I was waiting eagerly to meet him. I am devastated that such a talent has been silenced. I will do anything I can to help you catch the man who has done this.’

‘And the man who shot your brother also?’ said Joe. ‘Mrs Sharpe, forgive my mentioning your previous sorrow but we have reason to believe that the two killings may have been carried out by the same person. They were ambushed in the same place, shot by the same calibre bullets. Can you think of any connection, any connection at all between your brother Lionel and Korsovsky?’

She turned from him to the mirror and rubbed absently at a scar running the length of the right side of her face. ‘I have given it much thought. I have no answer for you. What connection could there be but that they were travelling on the same road? There are bandits even in this part of India, you know, Mr Sandilands. Three years ago the train was stopped by a boulder on the line. Five dacoits walked along the line of carriages shooting passengers and robbing them. Carter caught them and there has been no trouble since then but others may try. On the tonga road perhaps.’

Faced with his silence, she shook her head and agreed with his thoughts. ‘No, it’s not likely, is it? I believe, and you will know the truth of this, that no attempt at robbery was made. Very well, here’s my serious theory: political killings. You have heard of Amritsar?’

Joe nodded. The shooting down of over three hundred peacefully demonstrating Indians by British troops three years earlier in the town of Amritsar had been a scandal that had reverberated throughout India and Britain.

‘Amritsar is not all that far from here. Someone may be seeking revenge on the British. Any British. My brother with his fair hair would have been an obvious target and Korsovsky looked British from a distance. And last month,’ she hesitated, wondering how wide Joe’s knowledge of the Indian political scene might be, ‘last month, you may have heard that Mahatma Ghandi was sent to jail. For six years. On what many consider to be a trumped-up charge. He has many friends in Simla, Mr Sandilands, amongst whom he counts no less than the Viceroy, Lord Reading, and Lady Reading. There are both English and Indians who might try to voice their disapproval of such a sentence in a telling manner.’

‘But Ghandi abhors and rejects violence, doesn’t he?’ Joe objected.

‘Yes, indeed, he does. But one cannot always control one’s supporters. And there are many in India who are ready to stir up trouble for the British by any means at their disposal. Even these green hills, Mr Sandilands, could prove to be the slopes of a sleeping volcano. The population of Simla in the summer months is forty thousand. And do you know what proportion of these are European?’

Joe shook his head.

‘Four thousand. And it is the same all over India. There are millions of Indians who have never even set eyes on a white face. You could say we only scratch the surface of the continent. And, like an irritant flea, we could be swept away with one flick of our host’s finger.’

‘Any moment now,’ thought Joe, ‘she’s going to start lecturing me on the Indian Mutiny.’ Aloud he said, ‘I’ll bear this in mind, Mrs Sharpe. But I’m reluctant to begin to form any theories until I’ve seen the forensic evidence, however slight it may be, gathered from the scene of the crime. And this I will do tomorrow with Carter.’

‘I expect you would like to see me again?’ she volunteered.

Joe was taken by surprise. Her tone had been almost flirtatious. He was unaccustomed to his interview subjects requesting a second session.

She laughed, again, he suspected, reading his thoughts correctly. ‘I’m sure you’ll need to ask me if I was responsible for my brother’s death… where I was at the moment he was killed… how I may have profited from it and so on. When you’ve learned all you can from Carter why don’t you come to see me at my place of work – it’s just off the Mall.’

‘Your work?’ said Joe.

‘Oh, yes. I work, Mr Sandilands. I work hard. I am a director of a big – a very big – international company. It’s based in Bombay but I prefer to run things from Simla in the summer. Now we have telegraph and telephone such an arrangement is not out of the question. Heavens! They run the whole of the Indian Empire from here for seven months of the year, one business is nothing in comparison! Take a rickshaw – all know where to find me.’

And, with a dazzling smile and an unambiguous gesture she managed to convey without any possibility of contradiction that the interview was at an end.

Much puzzled, Joe returned to the auditorium, still full of chattering people reluctant to disperse. Sir George, accompanied by James, was still holding court. Over the heads of the crowd and discreetly watching, Joe caught the eye of Carter and made his way to him.

‘Well?’ they both said together.

‘One or two things here,’ said Joe, ‘which – I don’t know if you agree – we really ought to talk about. When can we arrange to do that?’

‘I was going to say the same thing. Look, why don’t we meet again tomorrow? Go over some of the evidence with me. And, to take this thing away from the cloak of officialdom, why don’t you come and have tiffin with us? Apart from anything else I’d like you to meet my wife.’

‘I’d like to meet your wife. Let’s do that.’

‘Any rickshaw will bring you to my house.’