‘And tell us how they resolved it.’

‘They didn’t! Isabelle obviously was not going to give way and in the end the maid just got fed up and turned on her heel almost in mid-sentence and stormed off down the platform towards the third class carriages. At last I was able to make my way into the compartment and claim my seat.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Poor girl! She can’t have had a very comfortable journey and, of course, it all ended in death and destruction. No one from the third class survived.’

‘Think hard, Simpson. We want you to try to remember whether Isabelle called the girl by her name.’

‘I’m sure she did.’ Simpson frowned in an effort to recall the events of that morning at the Gare de Lyon. ‘She used it several times, sort of barked it at her to bring her to heel… It was a common French name, um… Florence! Yes, that was it – Florence!’

Joe wrote the name in large letters on a pad in front of him. He looked at Carter. Carter got up and fetched the French newspaper. He spread it out on the table in front of them. ‘Can you find her, Joe? Can you find Florence?’

The three of them eagerly scanned the list of third class passengers. There was no casualty by the name of Florence.

‘All bodies eventually accounted for in the third class except for the one thirty-year-old man,’ Joe reminded them.

‘What does this mean?’ Simpson asked. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Clearly the maid’s name is not listed here for the simple reason that she was never on the train,’ said Joe.

‘Good God! Yes! I’ll bet you’re right! If she’d been in the third class she’d have been killed along with all the other humble citizens. None of them got out. And if she’d been killed she’d be listed – so,’ said Simpson, ‘she walked off down the platform and everyone assumed that she was going to the third class carriages but she must have just kept on walking! Straight out of the station!’

‘But the question is,’ said Carter slowly, ‘where is the maid now?’

Joe looked at the name he had written down. Florence. He picked up his pen and crossed out the last four letters and added an ‘a’. Flora. He drew a little flower next to the name and showed it to the other two.

‘She’s in Simla,’ he said. ‘And she’s been watching us all along.’

Chapter Twenty-one

«^»

Flora took the blue velvet box eagerly in her two hands and carried it to the table in the centre of her sitting room. She returned to the door and locked it behind her. Biting her lower lip in anticipation she opened it and looked inside. Her eyes grew wide with disbelief and with a gasp of irritation she drew out the contents and held the jewel up to the light. Incomprehension was swiftly followed by anger as she tried to understand what she was seeing. She turned it this way and that, her attention caught finally by the exquisite enamelwork on the back of the brooch. If the maker had gone to the immense trouble of so skilfully decorating the back of the piece perhaps her first judgement that this was a gaudy lump of costume jewellery, a paste gem surrounded by ticky tacky and an incomprehensible joke on the part of Robertson, was wrong.

She took a jeweller’s magnifying glass from a drawer and examined it in detail. She sighed. Her re-evaluation of the gem was even more disturbing than the original. What was going on? Something was going on – that was quite clear. She looked at the ruby in the centre and murmured, ‘You are a messenger. You are here to tell me something of importance. But what? And who has sent you? Not Robertson, I’m thinking.’

She put her head in her hands and thought deeply for a minute or two and then, by degrees, a narrow smile began to creep across her face. She rubbed the cool stone sensuously against her cheek and she made her plans. She got up and went to the adjoining room where her dresses were stored in cupboards. She flung one open and searched through the ranks of silks and velvets. ‘An opulent gem must have an opulent setting,’ she told herself and she chose a simply cut black velvet dress with a low neckline. She put it on and fixed the brooch between her breasts, turning from side to side and admiring the result in her looking glass. That would do well.

Flora took a French novel from a shelf and settled down to wait.

Chapter Twenty-two

«^»

So you’re saying,’ said Simpson, still struggling to understand, ‘not only that I must think of Isabelle de Neuville as a high class tart but that her maid – one assumes long ago initiated into the, er, arts of the profession – is still alive and plying that trade. And has been plying her trade for the past three years here in Simla? I really can’t believe this!’

‘It takes a bit of believing – but it’s true,’ said Carter. ‘And perhaps we could add that a sideline to her activities has been blackmail. Substantial sums of ICTC assets in the form of jewellery have made their way via the blue boxes into Madame Flora’s sticky little hands.’

‘You forget the more serious charges of murder,’ said Joe. ‘Remember, I’m here on George Jardine’s invitation to solve a murder – two murders – and everything else is peripheral and only of urgency if it leads us to the man – the woman – the people who pulled the trigger. Alice is never going to charge Flora with blackmail – how could she? – but there’s nothing she can do to prevent us arresting Flora for murder. Or as an accessory to two killings. She would have realized the significance of Lionel Conyers’ arrival in Simla – would have found out about it from Reggie or Edgar Troop and made her plans to make quite sure that Lionel never caught sight of his sister. Everyone in Simla knew that Korsovsky was coming to appear at the Gaiety but only one person, apart from Alice herself, knew that the Russian could identify her as Isobel Newton. Former lover. He too had to be eliminated before setting eye on Alice.’

‘But who did pull the trigger?’ asked Simpson. ‘I can see that Florence was the instigator but who was the agent?’

‘It hardly matters,’ said Carter thoughtfully. ‘Edgar Troop – if we can ever break his alibi – would be my favourite for trigger-man but what about that Italian youth she keeps running her errands for her? What was his name? Giulio?’

‘Claudio, I think,’ said Joe.

‘Yes, Claudio. But, you know, there’s about twenty other rogues with that kind of skill up here. We’ll probably never know which one was used until we break down Madame Flora.’ He sighed.

Simpson was already rising to his feet. ‘To identify the maid becomes terribly important. You’ll need my help, I think I will be able to identify her.’

‘Steady, Simpson,’ said Carter, laughing. ‘One thing at a time! We must wait a little. We wait until our irregular forces report back.’

Carter wandered out on to the balcony, leaned over the rail and glanced down. ‘Not long to wait!’ he said.

The police havildar joined him on the balcony. ‘There are some boys to see you, sahib,’ he said. ‘Do you want them up here? They’re very excited – do you think it would be better if…’

‘Yes, I think it would be better if,’ said Carter. And to Joe and Simpson, ‘I’ll go down and see what they have to tell us.’

As soon as Carter appeared in the compound, and in spite of the efforts of the havildar, Joe and Simpson watched with amusement to see him instantly surrounded by chattering boys. With difficulty he waved them to silence and, picking out Raghu, he seemed to be inviting him to speak. He did. Joe and Simpson, looking down, couldn’t understand a single one of the many words that came fluting up from below but they hardly needed to. Sometimes one, sometimes two boys speaking together, sometimes all six, mimed their recent adventure. Their account was easy to follow.