about what your opponent is going to do next. But it sounds from what you say that all three victims were roughly the same age, fifties in the case of the Jesus Hospital man and the bursar, rather more in the case of Sir Rufus.’
‘That is correct. I should have told you that there is a blank space of fifteen years in the early life of Sir Rufus, according to his entry in Who’s Who.’
‘Never trusted Who’s Who myself. They never check anything, those people, just take a man’s version of himself at face value. Odd. Pretty damned odd, if you ask me.’
Powerscourt was looking at an enormous calendar on the wall behind Smith Dorrien’s desk. There were rings round various days in different colours, red and black and green, each one presumably denoting some military activity of fixed date. He told Lady Lucy later that day that the idea came to him as he wondered if any of the circled dates might denote a family birthday in the general’s household.
‘Do you know the date of the battle of Isandlwana, General?’
‘I do, or rather I think I do. I’ll just check it so we can be sure.’ He delved into some grey military almanac on the side of his desk. ‘Thought so, memory not going quite yet, thank God. The battle was fought on the twenty- second of January, eighteen seventy-nine.’
Powerscourt stared at him for a moment. His mind shot back to the painting he had seen that morning, brave redcoats hemmed in against a grey mountain, being slaughtered by the bloodthirsty Zulu warriors.
‘Out with it, Powerscourt, what’s so upsetting about the date, for heaven’s sake?’
Powerscourt wondered if the general might be about to start shouting at him. ‘It’s just this, General. The first murder, the one at the Jesus Hospital, took place on the twenty-second of January this year. The chances of that being a coincidence must be about three hundred and sixty-five to one.’
‘Good God, how very strange. Speculation must come more readily to a man in your profession than it does to me, Powerscourt. How do you think these events could be related?’
Powerscourt was looking at the calendar again. ‘God knows,’ he said. ‘Maybe the murders have something to do with the battle, though it’s hard to think what after thirty-one years. Tell me, General, can you remember how many are said to have died at Isandlwana?’
‘That’s a tricky question,’ said General Horace Smith Dorrien. ‘You must remember that I was ordered from the field to take a message to the rear. I wasn’t there at the end. I didn’t see most of the carnage. Certainly over a thousand of our men were slain by the Zulus. They didn’t take any prisoners. They hardly left any wounded, they finished them off as they lay on the ground. And after that the dead were disembowelled to a man. Their clothes were stripped from their bodies. Any number between five and fifty were said to have survived but those figures are very unreliable.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Well, it wasn’t going to be good for your career if you were a member of one of the regiments there to have survived. You could only have done that by running away earlier and faster than everybody else. Some men made a stand where they stood. They were all slaughtered. But another body of men tried to save themselves. Many were cut down by the Zulus who ran faster. But if you did escape — and I heard stories of a number of people in this position — you wouldn’t be in any hurry to return to the military. You might be court-martialled and shot if you did. So a lot of people could have drifted off and never rejoined the army at all.’
‘And if you did that, would you be registered as a deserter?’
‘Well, you might have been, if anybody had been keen to establish a true record of what happened. I don’t think anybody ever conducted a proper review of the battlefield to establish the identities of the dead. They just lifted the names out of the regimental rolls and assumed they had all been killed. Commanding Officer Chelmsford was off looking for a different bunch of Zulus when the battle happened. So he wasn’t keen to establish the facts as they didn’t reflect too well on him. Most of the other officers were dead and the living in other regiments who hadn’t been at the battle were happy to record all those whose whereabouts they didn’t know as killed in action. Much neater that way. Close the account down, that sort of thing.’
‘Am I right in thinking, General, that you could have survived Isandlwana but that everybody would think you were dead?’
‘You are. There is a further complication about those regimental rolls, mind you. They were completely up to date at the time they were taken, but that could have been months before the battle. In the interim people went home sick or were discharged and new recruits whose names were not on the rolls joined up in their place. There were a number of cracks where people could fall through the system.’
‘And where would I find those regimental rolls now, General?’
‘Hold on a moment, Powerscourt.’ The general returned to his almanac which he seemed to regard as the fount of all knowledge for things military. ‘Bloody politicians,’ he said with feeling. Powerscourt suspected that bloody politicians could be worth a whole afternoon of ranting invective. Two telephones might end up in pieces on the floor. ‘They will keep changing things for no apparent reason. Many of the men at the battle came from the Twenty-fourth Regiment of Foot, known as the Warwickshires. They’re now known as the South Wales Borderers, God knows why, headquarters at Brecon, God help you. Unless you can find a copy in the War Office, though I rather doubt that. Are you going to see if any of your victims are on the last regimental rolls before the battle? Bloody thankless task, if you ask me.’
‘If I think it necessary, General, then I will head off to Brecon. Do you think it possible that one or all of the victims could have been present at the battle?’
Smith Dorrien paused and stared out at his parade ground, his mind back on the battlefield in South Africa. ‘Judging from what you told me about their ages, yes, it is possible.’
‘I want to ask your advice on another related matter, general. Where could I lay my hands on a knobkerrie? I need to show it to one of the medical men to see if it caused the marks. That is the most important thing for me now.’
‘Well, I don’t have one myself,’ said the general, ‘but I know a man who does, or who almost certainly does. Fellow by the name of White, Colonel Somerset White. He’s retired now, lives in a big house near Marlow. I’ll let him know you’re coming. He’s got an enormous barn full of weapons he’s picked up in his career, much of it in Africa. I know he’s got Zulu spears and assegais so he’ll almost certainly have a knobkerrie. The colonel’s been saying for years that the government should have an army museum where the public could come and see all his stuff but nothing ever happens. Bloody politicians.’ The general looked up an address in a small black book on his desk.
‘Here we are. The Oaks, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. I’m sure he will be able to help. Now then, I’ve got another useless officer coming to see me on a charge. I would ask one thing of you, Powerscourt.’
‘Of course.’
‘If you need further advice or assistance, then you must come back to me. I’d be delighted to help in any way I can.’
‘Thank you so much, General. And thank you for all your help today.’
As Powerscourt gathered up his drawings, he felt the fires of wrath were being stoked again. Smith Dorrien was reading some report in front of him and making furious marks with a black pen. The general was turning red in the face. He began squeezing a different pen in his left hand very hard. His left foot was tapping angrily at the leg of his desk. Powerscourt managed to escape to the comparative sanctuary of the outer office.
‘For what we are about to receive,’ a tubby captain was saying to the lieutenant, ‘may the Lord make us truly thankful.’
There was a bellow from the far side of the door. ‘Murphy! Murphy, you bloody fool, come in here at once!’
‘I think,’ said the young lieutenant, ‘that what the gladiators are supposed to have said on their way into the Coliseum is more appropriate, actually: “Ave Imperator, morituri te salutamus. Hail, Caesar, we who are about to die salute you.”’
Inspector Grime and Inspector Devereux made their way back from the listening cell to Devereux’s office.
‘It nearly worked, dammit,’ said Inspector Grime. ‘I wonder if they suspected we were listening in.’
‘What do you think they were up to?’ asked Inspector Devereux. ‘Do you think they popped up to Fakenham and slew the bursar?’
‘I don’t think they went to Fakenham, but I could be wrong. It would have been incredibly risky to walk up
