‘We don’t have the facilities to test these,’ said Carter, once again reading Joe’s mind, ‘but we can send them away to Calcutta if it’s relevant. In the meantime I’ll handle them with care.’ And he produced a fold of paper evidence bags from his pack. ‘.303,’ he said. ’You were right. From a British service rifle perhaps.

‘And look,’ he added, ’here’s something else. A cigarette end.’

‘Two cigarette ends,’ said Joe, pointing further up the hill.

‘Black Cat,’ said Carter. ‘Fat lot of help! Probably the most common English cigarette in India after the Woodbine. That won’t tell us much. Now if only it had been a Russian cigarette or an Afghani or a Balkan Sobranie, it might have told us something.’

They peered together at the remains of the cigarettes held on Carter’s outstretched palm.

‘Nervous type?’ said Joe.

‘See what you mean,’ said Carter. ‘They’re only half smoked. A few puffs and they’ve been extinguished. Still, at least we know where the shot was fired from. Line yourself up with the black rock down there. My lady’s maid couldn’t have missed!’

Carter moved in closer to take a sighting between the rocks. Joe noticed that he was careful, before he did so, to look closely at the ground for footprints or other disturbance. Joe looked too, trying to make out any slight indentations where elbow or knee might have rested.

‘Well, that’s plain enough,’ said Carter. ‘See there.’ He pointed to two deep scrapes in the moss about two feet apart. ‘That’s where the toes of his boots rested and over here… yes… there and there… you can just make them out – those depressions are where he placed his elbows. And here’s where his knee went. Clear as day.’

‘Tall man, would you say?’ said Joe. ‘Hard to make out, looking at the signs from above like this.’

‘I’d say average to tall,’ said Carter. ‘Taller than me, shorter than you.’ He looked along the group of interested sowars who were following developments and selected one. ‘Gupta?’ He did not need to explain further. The Indian came forward, dropped to his knees and adopted the classic sniper’s attitude, lying slightly oblique to the line of shot. His boots fitted the scrapes perfectly and his elbows and knees the depressions.

‘Arrest this man!’ snapped Charlie.

A shattered silence was followed by loud guffaws as Gupta leapt to his feet in surprise and then joined in the joke. ‘Thank you, Gupta,’ said Charlie, writing down ‘Five feet ten inches’ in his notebook.

‘Who in Simla would be capable of firing these shots?’ Joe began and instantly regretted the naivety of his question.

‘Who wouldn’t?’ said Carter. ‘That’s our problem. Place is full of Dead Eye Dicks! Army, retired army, tiger hunters – even the women are crack shots! You should see the Ladies Rifle Club at it on the range in Annandale! Still, we’ll go through the motions. Get the cases and the cigarette ends fingerprinted in Calcutta then if we should ever have anything so useful as a suspect we can get them tested and do a comparison.’

‘At least the cigarette ends tend to uphold the theory that Korsovsky was the intended target,’ said Joe.

‘How’s that?’ said Carter.

‘Only two of them. How long does it take to smoke two cigarettes? A matter of minutes. I would guess that our killer turned up here thinking he had all the time in the world to prepare himself for the arrival of his target in a slow-moving tonga. Snipers do nothing in a hurry; they like to take up position well before the intended killing time. The time of the train’s arrival in Kalka was known, easy then to calculate the arrival to this point of a tonga, but to his surprise and having had no time for more than two cigarettes, up draws a car carrying his target. He’s done his job and back home for tea earlier than expected.’

The daffadur listening intently to Joe and nodding excitedly chipped in. ‘Yes, sahib, sir, that is very correct. And last year, I remember, the same thing. Here at the Devil’s Elbow. The young gentleman who was shot – he arrived by tonga and there was a pile of cigarette ends… twelve at least!’

Chapter Four

«^»

That was a damned odd remark,’ said Joe as they scrambled breathlessly down the hill towards their waiting horses. ‘Are you going to tell me what it was all about?’

‘Yes,’ said Carter. ‘You’ll have to know what it was all about. The plain fact is that that’s the second time that somebody’s been shot on more or less that spot.’

‘And the victim on that occasion?’ said Joe. ‘Don’t tell me – a Brazilian counter-tenor?’

Carter laughed. ‘Nothing so exotic as that, but a strange enough story all the same and a very sad one.’

They mounted and set off together towards Simla, their escort clattering and chattering behind them. Carter took up his story. ‘An Englishman coming out to Simla to visit his sister. His name was Lionel Conyers. His sister Alice is a prominent local citizen, a director, and indeed a majority shareholder, I believe, in ICTC. The Imperial and Colonial Trading Company. Very rich merchant family and high up the social scale too. This young Lord Conyers had a very remarkable experience. He was a regular soldier attached to an American unit and he was caught in the retreat on the Meuse Argonne a few weeks before the war ended. Blown up and buried alive. He was only discovered two days later and by the advancing Germans. Poor chap! He’d lost his memory completely. No idea who he was or where he was and can you wonder after all he’d been through? He got hauled away by the Germans, who filed him away somewhere in a POW hospital. They didn’t even know his nationality and it was some months before he surfaced again. At last they found out he was British and then by degrees who he was and sent him back to Blighty.’

‘That’s a terrible story but, sadly, not uncommon,’ said Joe. ’I expect his sister was overwhelmed to get him back – almost literally – from the dead?’

Carter hesitated for a moment. ‘Not that simple. In fact his reappearance caused an almighty muddle. You see, while he was mouldering in a German hospital he was posted “missing presumed dead”. His family at that stage consisted of his grandfather and his only sister – parents both died of the flu just after the war and he didn’t even know that. By the time he bobbed to the surface again his grandfather had died and left the considerable family fortune and the business to be shared between his sister Alice and her second cousin. I think she has a fifty-one per cent share in the company, he has forty-nine.’

‘I see,’ said Joe. ’And what was the reaction of the two directors? What, in law, was their position?’

‘See what you’re driving at,’ said Carter. ’First thing I thought of too. Bad situation. Legal nightmare! Young Conyers seems to have been a decent sort of chap. He wrote to Alice announcing he was still alive and had taken up the family title. He also said he was coming out to see her and would make arrangements for the equitable share-out of the company. He didn’t want to snatch it all straight from under her nose but he was damned if he could see why a remote second cousin should be involved. He was proposing to cut him out completely, take fifty-one per cent for himself and reduce Alice to forty-nine.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Joe asked.

‘Alice herself told me. She showed me the letter he’d sent her announcing his arrival in Simla.’

‘How did she react?’

‘Well, after a period of disbelief (only to be expected, of course), apparently with joy. Her friends say she was thrilled to be getting her brother back from the dead. And then I saw her after the shooting and I can say my own impression is that she was devastated. Lost her only close relation twice, so to speak. She was, I’d say, stunned and incredulous.’