Barbara Cleverly (5 page)

‘A thousand rooms!’ declared Edgar. ‘Udai says he’s been in every one of them but I bet he hasn’t.’

‘Who lives here?’ Joe asked.

‘Well, the state rooms are kept for use only on special occasions. Udai has more sense than to live here himself. You’ll see the New Palace in a minute. He’s got a large family. Aunts, uncles, sons and daughters, his wives if it comes to that. They all have their apartments. Each apartment has its servants and I could go further and say that each servant has his servant. The last time the Ranipur army went into action each fighting man was accompanied by two armed retainers. You need a big house if you’re going to accommodate that size of entourage, and pension them and feed them. There must be upwards of three thousand people living within the palace walls, each as careful of his or her dignity as it is possible to be, quarrelling, tale-bearing, eating, stealing I shouldn’t wonder, plotting and planning

Sounds awful, doesn’t it, but really, on the whole, I think they have a pretty good time. But I don’t think it would suit me.’

‘I don’t think it would suit me either,’ said Joe.

‘Damn sure it doesn’t suit me!’ said Madeleine with feeling.

Edgar ignored her. ‘Doesn’t always suit Udai. I’ll show you the state apartments tomorrow. In the meantime, the idea of a bath is beginning to appeal to me.’ He turned to Madeleine. ‘Shall we continue?’

‘Sure. But first, prepare yourself for another surprise!’ said Madeleine. ‘You’re about to get a welcome, Texas style!’

She pointed up to the sky above the flat foothills separating them from the town and palace where a small aeroplane appeared to be lazily circling. Catching sight of them, the pilot turned and made towards them at speed. He swooped low and everyone in the car ducked as the plane sheered the dusty air only feet above their heads. Joe squinted into the sun as it passed over to the west behind them. In the two-seater plane the front passenger seat was empty, the clearly silhouetted figure in the rear position raising an arm in salute.

‘Who the hell’s that?’ Joe shouted, startled.

‘Best pilot in India or America or anywhere,’ said Madeleine with pride. ‘That’s Captain Stuart Mercer, ex-Escadrille Américaine. My brother.’

‘Your brother? What’s he doing in Ranipur?’

Madeleine’s eyes never left the small Curtiss Jenny as it began a series of stunts. ‘Well, I’ll never know for sure whether it was me or Stuart that Prithvi fell for!’ she said with a smile. ‘He met us on an airfield

well, it was more of a cow pasture

in the States where we were performing. Came backstage at the end of the performance, you might say. We have - we had - a family business. We’re barnstormers. Ever heard of the “Airdevils”?’

Joe nodded. So that was what she was - a wing dancer in an aerial circus! Had Sir George got it wrong deliberately? He’d heard of many flying circus acts, even seen some of those that made the trip to Europe. Their suicidally daring exploits left him breathless. The young pilots, many of whom had survived service in the war, had been turned adrift in a dull and unrewarding world which had no appreciation of their talent. What they craved was some way of earning a living using their flying skills and they soon caught on to the entertainment value of those skills. People would pay to see them perform, even pay to go up for a flight themselves. Joe shuddered at the idea. But, inevitably, as the public grew used to the spectacle, they became jaded and pilots had to devise ever more daring stunts to keep their attention. Death drops, flights into the heart of Niagara Falls, leaps from racing car to low flying-plane, even leaps from one plane to another in mid-air, they were all attempted with the aim of making money from their audience. Some of the daredevils got rich but most had trouble raising meal money and some died.

‘Planes were going for six hundred dollars when Stuart got back home. No shortage. They were stockpiled all over the States. The military were glad to get rid of them. Spares were no problem either. So he bought a couple and cannibalized one of them to get the plane he wanted and we set up in business. Dad helped with the mechanical side and I soon learned that too - I can fly and maintain an aircraft as well as dance on the wings.’ Madeleine spoke with pride and a touch of challenge.

Joe guessed she had probably run into much male criticism for involving herself in such unladylike pursuits. She would hear none from him; he was fascinated. Madeleine Mercer was a very unusual and attractive girl, he acknowledged, and it was no wonder to him that she should have caught and kept the undivided attention of a maharaja’s son. He tore his own attention from the smiling, chattering girl at his side and looked up again at the pilot, who was performing a manoeuvre which Joe had never seen before. ‘I thought being a policeman was dangerous,’ said Joe, ‘but it’s nothing compared with this!’

‘It’s dangerous but it’s safer than flying the mail routes,’ said Madeleine laconically. ‘And it beats liquor smuggling over the Mexican border which is what we were doing as a sideline before we left the States.’

Joe smiled. ‘Do I gather you and your brother were one step ahead of the law when you skipped off to India?’

‘Something like that

Some would say, “Captain Mercer, dashing young air-ace with twenty kills chalked up on his fuselage, accepted the job of personal flying coach to his brother-in-law and accompanied him home to Ranipur. The maharaja’s second son, international socialite Prithvi Singh, is said to have in his stable a collection of no fewer than ten aeroplanes all of which he is able to fly.” ’ Madeleine was obviously quoting from a society magazine. ‘See what he’s doing now!’

Joe hardly dared look. The plane was flying over their heads, upside down, the pilot waving a cheery hand. No - two hands.

‘Oh, my God!’ breathed Joe.

‘Now that is dangerous!’ Madeleine said with pride. ‘These Jennys - you can’t trust ’em! The engine cuts out sometimes when they’re upside down and then you’ve got trouble! They were never intended to be stunt planes but Stuart’s a fabulous mechanic as well as pilot and he’s worked on his planes until they do what he wants when he wants it. Now look at this!’

The plane was spiralling upwards, gaining height. As he climbed, the pilot threw out a shower of shiny tinsel that fell, sparkling against the sun, drifting lazily down over the plain.

‘This is the Eastern bit of the welcome,’ said Madeleine.

Edgar caught a piece of tinsel and looked at it closely. ‘Gold?’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said Madeleine.

‘Urn

how high is he proposing to climb?’ asked Joe nervously as the pilot continued his upward spiral, releasing more tinsel as he went.

‘Oh, he’s barely started,’ said Madeleine comfortably. ‘Stuart tried for the altitude record a couple of years ago. Just kept on going until he ran out of gas then freewheeled back down. He made over twenty-five thousand feet but he was still a hundred feet off the record. He’ll do it one day.’

They watched in silence, mouths open, increasingly tense.

‘Okay, Stu, that’s good enough

We’ve got the picture,’ Joe heard Madeleine mutter.

As though hearing her, the pilot stopped his ascent, levelled out and began an abrupt dive.

‘What’s he doing now?’ said Edgar uneasily.

‘He’s going into a loop,’ said Madeleine. ‘Never seen a loop before?’

The plane’s nose pulled up and the frail fuselage fought its way upwards, the engine screaming a protest.

It was her gasp that alerted him. At the moment of maximum effort, half-way into the loop, the plane had suddenly stopped rising. Its nose dropped and the plane flattened out. At the same moment, the engine appeared to stop.

‘Now why the hell would he do that?’ she said to herself. ‘That’s not in the script!’

To Joe’s horror the plane began to drop out of the sky. This was no lazy, calculated, gliding descent.

‘He’s going to crash!’ he blurted out and wished he’d kept silent.

Madeleine’s face was anxious but she replied confidently enough. ‘Not this plane. Not this pilot. This’ll be some new stunt he’s been working on for our benefit. He’s supposed to scare us! That’s what he does! Oh, come on, Stu! Pull out now!’

‘But the engine’s cut out,’ said Edgar. ‘How can he pull out? Idiot’s leaving it too late!’

Madeleine rounded on him. ‘Well, you sure know a lot about planes! These crates can have the whole engine drop off and you can still land them. Done it myself!’

But Joe noticed that she was climbing out of the car and beginning to run towards her brother’s plane. In a few strides he had caught up with her and grasped her by the shoulders. ‘It won’t help to have us cluttering up his landing space!’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Maddy, let’s get back!’ But they stayed, frozen together, unable to run in any direction as, inexorably, the plane continued its uncontrolled descent. Joe thought he saw the pilot struggling with the controls a second or two before it crashed on to its belly in the dust about fifty yards ahead of them.

The fuselage fell apart, the wings crumpled in on themselves, the tail section broke off and dropped away, trailing steel cables. The machine Joe had admired dancing like a dragonfly only minutes before was a pile of matchwood.

Edgar lumbered past them. ‘God’s sake, Joe! Shift your arse, man! He may be alive still! Madeleine - stay back!’

They set off to sprint the short distance to the plane, one thought in both their minds. ‘Fuel tank! Can we get him out before it blows?’

Joe reached the plane first. He went straight for the pilot, who was slumped sideways in the open cockpit, blood pouring from him and down the side of the fuselage. Joe grasped him under the armpits and pulled. He was aware that manhandling of this kind was likely to do further damage to a battered and broken body but every pilot he had ever known had had the same fear of being trapped in a burning plane. Any man would rather be hauled away from a wreck at the risk of leaving limbs behind, Joe reasoned, and he gave another desperate tug.

The body moved an inch or two. Good, there were no obstructions in the cockpit. But a splintered wing had come to rest just above the pilot’s head and there was no way Joe could complete the manoeuvre. Just as Joe emitted a curse, the wing creaked up into the air and he turned briefly to see Edgar, purple in the face and muscles cracking, heaving the heavy wooden wing out of the way. Joe eased the body out, avoiding loose cables and torn fabric covering, and with Edgar grasping the feet, they scrambled to what they judged to be a safe distance from the wreckage.

‘Is he dead?’ Edgar asked.

‘Hard to know with all this gear on him,’ muttered Joe. ‘Let’s get his helmet and goggles off.’ He looked keenly at the young face, dust-covered, blood streaming from his nose and mouth but apparently lifeless.

They were hurled aside by the arrival of Madeleine, screaming her brother’s name. Gasping and distraught, she elbowed them out of the way and began with expert fingers to unbuckle the helmet and goggles.

‘Gently! Gently!’ Joe warned. ‘He could have head injuries.’

She threw down the leather gear and stared at the body in silence. Rigid with shock, she sank to her knees, gazing down at the dirty face. Gently she stroked his cheek. Joe watched, aghast, as the eyes fluttered open slightly and he did not imagine that one hand reached out and moved an inch towards Madeleine before flopping back lifeless. Still Madeleine did not move or speak. Joe sensed that, even in these horrific circumstances, there was something off-key about her behaviour. Had she gone into shock? What should he do? He looked at her uncertainly, waiting for a lead.

Finally, Madeleine said one word. ‘Prithvi.’ Then she threw back her head and howled in grief and rage.

Ť ^ ť

Her shriek was obliterated by the whoosh of the exploding fuel tank. With a roar that thumped on Joe’s eardrums the fabric covering, doped with cellulose, caught fire and went up in a sheet of flame. In seconds it had been consumed, leaving behind a scorched skeleton. So swift had been the conflagration, the spruce ribs, the broken wooden limbs, remained for a moment standing in blackened and stark outline against the sand before they too began to burn. To Joe’s consternation, Madeleine started running towards the smoking plane. For an agonizing moment his mind was filled with the image of Rajput women throwing themselves on to their husbands’ funeral pyres and he hurled himself after her, catching her by the arm. She turned on him, shouting desperately, ‘The tail plane, Joe!’ She pointed to the wreck. ‘The tail plane! Can you pull it away? It mustn’t burn!’

Instant understanding and the surge of outrage it brought with it sent Joe recklessly on towards the plane. Through clouds of black smoke he spotted the tail lying several yards behind the main body and still intact. He tore off his jacket as he ran and using it as protection from the heat and thick fumes he grabbed the nearest section of the tail, already almost too hot to hold, and dragged it away, trailing steel cables with it.

At a safe distance, he straightened, gasping and choking, the super-heated air burning his lungs. He turned to look back at Madeleine. She was standing, a tragic figure, the last remnants of the festive tinsel mingling with black smuts from the burned canvas and swirling down on to her head, a surreal confetti, Joe thought grimly, not for a bride but for a widow.

Madeleine joined him, white-faced and staring but gaining a measure of control. With a supreme effort to keep her voice calm she said, ‘Examine this with me, will you, Commander?’

It was the use of his rank which confirmed Joe’s suspicions that the scene they had just witnessed was not an accident. He had little experience of aeroplanes but had listened for hours with interest and pleasure to the stories of Squadron Leader Fred Moore-Simpson in the time they spent together as guests of the fort at Gor Khatri on the North-West Frontier, had even gone up with him once or twice, and he remembered his terror when Fred had demonstrated with mischievous relish a stall at five thousand feet over the Khyber Pass.

He thought he knew what to look for. Kneeling in the sand he hauled in the lengths of twisted steel cable that had linked the controls in the cockpit with the elevators. He picked up the two ends, brushed away the sand and looked at them closely.