‘There’s only me here, Alice. Let me come up, will you? Why don’t we take a seat? Why don’t we share a cigarette? Why don’t we enjoy a moment of tranquillity together? Tranquillity! A commodity always in short supply in Simla as far as I can see.’

As he spoke, step by step he climbed the stair until at last he joined Alice on a small terrace platform shaded and scented by jasmine. Alice was just discernible in the fretted moonlight but the pistol in her hand was clear to see.

‘Spare me!’ he said. ‘I am unarmed! At least, not entirely unarmed. Not quite sure how the evening was going to turn out, I took the precaution of filling a flask with the Governor’s excellent Courvoisier! Whatever else, you’ve had a taxing evening! Won’t you join me?’

With a sob Alice threw herself into Joe’s arms and clung to him. Gently he disengaged himself and led her to sit on the low parapet wall. He sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders, waiting while she gained a fragile measure of control.

‘Before we do or say anything,’ she said, ‘please tell me who or what on earth – or in hell – that was? Was he real? Did he exist? Did you see him too? Did everybody see him? Did you see him, Joe?’

Joe hesitated. Perhaps the truth might be most serviceable. ‘He was real all right,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t a figment of your imagination. He wasn’t a revenant. He was, though, someone you know. Someone you have known. Any ideas?’

Alice looked at him with huge, uncomprehending eyes. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never met such a… a… creature. And anyway, you heard him – we all heard him – he was looking for someone with the initials… oh, what was it?… I.M.? Yes, I.M. Isobel something or other…’ She shivered. ‘I shall never ever go to a seance again! It was horrid and very frightening. I had to get away! And that wretched woman, Miss Trollope! Did you see her? Fainted away completely! I really think Mrs Freemantle has overstepped herself. It’s perhaps time that she moved on from Simla. I’m quite sure that when Her Excellency hears of tonight’s fiasco she will insist. Don’t you agree, Joe?’

Alice had recovered her self-possession; only a tremor in the voice and a trembling hand remained of the storm she had passed through.

Joe held her firmly by the shoulders and turned her face to his. ‘Isobel,’ he said gently, ‘Isobel Newton. It’s no use. You can’t fool me. And before you think of shooting me to get rid of a witness, let me tell you that Carter knows and, of course, the man you met again tonight at the seance…’

To Joe’s surprise she stopped sniffling, sat up, favoured him with a broad smile and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, well! It was worth a last shot, I suppose!’ She gave him a level glance. ‘You should have waited a little longer, Joe, I was going to make it worth your while to forget about all this. But tell me – who was that – the thing that appeared in the doorway? The only man I have ever met with whom that creature had the slightest resemblance is long dead.’

‘I can promise you he isn’t dead. Nor yet was he undead. His name is Simpson. Captain Colin Simpson and, by a miracle, he is as alive as you or I. It was a trick. It was a put-up job. It was a trick on you.’

‘Simpson?’ said Alice slowly. ‘Simpson!’

‘Yes. And a member of a select band. A very select band. A band of those who survived the Beaune rail crash. Now are you getting it?’

‘Christ, yes!’ said Alice. ‘The man in the railway carriage! He still lives? Can it be? And what the hell was he doing here?’

‘I’ll exchange information for information,’ said Joe. ‘But, in the meantime…’ He lit two cigarettes and handed one to Isobel. He unscrewed the cap of his flask and passed it across to her. ‘If ever a girl needed a swig of aqua vitae, I suspect it is you so help yourself. And why don’t you begin at the beginning?’

‘The beginning?’ said Isobel bitterly. ‘The beginning is a long time ago and a long way away from here!’

‘It’ll do,’ said Joe. ‘The night is young.’

‘We could begin in an impoverished Surrey vicarage if you like,’ said Isobel. ‘With a cold and ambitious father, a mother who died when I was eleven. Or we could begin in a bleak girls’ school in the Home Counties. Or would you like to start in the south of France when our heroine is seventeen? We’d be talking about the same person. We’d be talking about me. It was a very long journey, ending – though ending is not the word – here in a private and concealed Simla garden.’

‘Good God,’ said Joe, looking round in astonishment. ‘Garden? Private garden? Whose? Where?’

‘Old Simla’s full of gardens, big and small. The house this belonged to is gone but the garden remains. It belongs to Rheza Khan’s family. They are a very well-to-do family – you might almost say tribe – with extensive lands north towards the Nepalese border but they’ve always kept what you might call a town house here in Simla.They keep the garden in order – as a sort of gesture of family piety. I come here sometimes. It’s a peaceful place. Away from everybody. If I want to see someone privately it’s always here and here we are – private.’

She took the proffered flask from Joe’s hand and drank. She coughed and spluttered and drank again.

‘Well, the beginning? Born of poor but honest parents… I won’t deceive you, Joe. They weren’t particularly poor. Thinking of my detestable father not particularly honest either but he’s done pretty well for himself.’

Joe’s mind was racing. ‘Newton?’ he said, the picture of an austere and influential bishop of the Church of England coming to mind. ‘Not… ? Are we by any chance talking about “Retribution Newton”? And he’s your father?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that Bishop Newton. The scourge of sinners. Just a rector the last time I saw him. Difficult to live with, I think you’ll agree. But that’s jumping ahead and I said I’d begin at the beginning. It was a detestable childhood and it got worse after my mother died. I couldn’t wait to get away! But I had a stroke of luck. My father had an old friend, very rich, very much of the Church, very corseted and a great subscriber to my father’s good causes. Fallen altar pieces one day, fallen women the next! You know the sort of thing. She spent every winter in the south of France and she had a pathetic, quenched companion. Her name, almost inevitably, was Mildred but Mildred got measles and lo! Horror! Tragedy! Crisis! Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe had no one to accompany her on her winter trip to Nice and after more debate, discussion (praying if you can believe!), it was decided that I should fill the vacant slot and set off for the south of France. So, suitably admonished as to how to conduct myself and much to my father’s relief, off I went to carry Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe’s knitting about for her.’

‘And you went for it?’ said Joe.

‘Did I ever go for it! And, in the fullness of time, I ended up in an attic bedroom in a large Nice hotel only three flights of stairs away from Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe’s first-floor suite overlooking the sea and – no telephones in those days – a voice tube from her to me so that if she felt she needed a little glass of water in the night she could blow down it. A whistle would go off in my ear and I would come padding down three fights of stairs in my school dressing gown and see what was what. Not much of a life for a girl but anything was to be preferred to the Gothick splendours of St Simeon-under-Wychcroft, Surrey’

‘Yes,’ said Joe, considering. ‘I can imagine that it would be. And there you found yourself, enjoying the winter sunshine?’

‘Yes,’ said Isobel, ‘anything would have been better and one thing was – my employer was fabulously rich and there was throughout that winter and on into the spring an endless procession of her nieces, nephews, cousins, sisters, brothers-in-law, all eager to wind her wool, carry her parasol, escort her on gentle little walks down the Promenade des Anglais and all with but one idea.’