Enemy of the Raj

by Alec Marsh

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Historical Thrillers; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

The second in the series of the Dabble and Harris thrillers! Set in the mid-twentieth century, this adventure series is perfect for fans of action-packed, historical fiction. ' A rollicking good read' IAN RANKIN India, 1937. Intrepid reporter Sir Percival Harris is hunting tigers with his friend, Professor Ernest Drabble. Harris soon bags a man-eater - but later finds himself caught up in a hunt of a different kind... Harris is due to interview the Maharaja of Bikaner, a friend to the Raj, for his London newspaper - and he and Drabble soon find themselves accompanied by a local journalist, Miss Heinz. But is the lady all she seems? And the Maharaja himself is proving elusive... Meanwhile, the movement for Indian independence is becoming stronger, and Drabble and Harris witness some of the conflict first-hand. But even more drama comes on arrival at Bikaner when the friends find themselves confined to their quarters... and embroiled in an assassination plot! Just who is the enemy in the Maharaja's palace? What is the connection to a mysterious man Drabble meets in Delhi? And what secret plans do the British colonial officers have up their sleeves? Praise for Alec Marsh's Drabble and Harris thrillers... ' An immensely readable treat!' ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH 'Marsh chomps the period bit between his teeth and relates his yarn with winning gusto' NEW STATESMAN 'Tremendous stuff! With the arrival of Alec Marsh's first Drabble and Harris thriller, John Buchan must be stirring uneasily in his grave' STANLEY JOHNSON

Release date: September 17, 2020

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 255

Sample

The jungle outside New Delhi,March 1937

For some time now Sir Percival Harris had been turning green. It had come on shortly after dawn as they made the walk of a mile or so from their camp into the jungle. At first in the early light his face exhibited a certain pasty gloss, rather like he’d got a case of sea-sickness going on – despite being five hundred miles from the coast. He hadn’t lost his cheer, however. That disappeared when their hunting guides, the shikaris, led them through the dense forest to the tiny clearing by a nullah or dry river bed, where the afternoon before they had left a goat tethered to a stick, inviting attack by the tiger – and they saw it gone. The blood on the ground and large pug marks indicated a large tiger, as did the signs of the body being dragged away by a powerful creature. That’s when Harris’s bluster vanished. Then in the improving light Ernest Drabble, his old friend, saw the tinges of green appear beneath the rim of Harris’s pith helmet.

Back at the camp, while men were secured from the four surrounding villages to act as beaters, Harris hardly touched his breakfast. Instead he drank three cups of black coffee, and checked his ammunition sockets five or six times, before retiring to his tent to lie on his bunk and stare up at the fabric above his head. Now the poor bastard’s face was the colour of gangrene – one that is likely to take off its victim within hours.

Harris was, Drabble mused silently, a man transformed. When just 36 hours before he had been indignantly booming, ‘I won’t be the first Harris in two centuries not to shoot a tiger!’, he now looked like he was going to retreat into a coma of fear. Perhaps it was fair enough.

After a week of nothing – four goats had been left out nightly at various locations across the nearby jungles, which the shikaris and Harris (now armed with A. E. Stewart’s Tiger and Other Game he considered himself an expert) judged to be perfect for enticing ‘Old Stripes’ to show himself – suddenly the heavens had opened.

For the tiger prowling the nearby forests was not just any top feline predator; no. As of three days previous it qualified as a man-eater, thanks to some poor, half-lame buffalo-wallah who was snatched in broad daylight from the edges of a local village. His partially-eaten remains and mangled crutch were found several hours later. The hysterical witness described the tiger as being very pale – almost ghostlike – and very, very large. A thirteen-footer, they said.

What therefore had begun as a private shooting expedition by Harris – a flight of fancy which he somehow regarded as a rite of passage owing to various ancestral shooting trips – was now transformed into a public act. It oughtn’t have come as a surprise to him therefore – but it evidently did – when shortly after eleven o’clock, he was roused from his tent and his tortured solitude.

Pulling back the oily canvas flap of his tent, he froze – before him stood a veritable army of volunteers, drawn from the local four villages. They were armed with sticks, clubs, hoes, and axes.

‘One hundred and eighty-two beaters, sahib,’ beamed the local headman. ‘Very good.’ They stood in a vast circle around the camp, gazing at him like an imperialist hero, delivered of them by Vishnu to rid them of their new scourge.

If they’d fallen prostrate before him, Harris would not have been more surprised. Drabble stifled a grin. To be fair to him, Harris did a passable job of taking it on the chin.

Affecting a military bearing, and accompanied by the shikari, he did a lap inspecting the assemblage, rather like a judge at a village show or a visiting dignitary reviewing the honour guard. He sent the youngest boys and a couple of the more elderly looking men, including one who was clearly lame, home. They would not do as beaters. And then, smartly taking up his rifle, he gave orders for the shikaris, beaters, and assorted other members of the entourage to fall in behind him, and set off purposefully. In the right direction.

For Drabble this was all rather interesting: it permitted Harris to live out various fantasies that underpinned his world view – something they had argued over many times, namely the rights and wrongs of Britain’s imperialist policy. But it also trapped him into an even more exposed and more pressurised situation. If he failed to kill the tiger now – or worse, if he winged it and the angry beast careened off and went on a wild killing spree taking out various locals – then Harris’s failure wouldn’t just be personal, bad enough that that would be with several hundred natives watching. His failure would be letting down the whole imperialist shooting match. Drabble knew that that would be weighing on his friend’s shoulders too, as he strode out in front of his volunteer army of helpers. That Harris was by his own admission a hopeless shot, born as he was with two left eyes, didn’t help. In this respect the fact that this man-eater was said to be a thirteen-footer was to be welcomed: the bigger the target the better. The truth was that the tiger would need to be the size of an elephant to make a meaningful difference to Harris.

So, with all that going on, it was small wonder that Harris was turning green. As far as Harris was concerned he had the weight of the British Empire on his shoulders – as well as the immediate safety of about two hundred souls in his hands. It was now midday and the shoot was set. Any moment around a hundred of the beaters, who were formed up some six hundred yards off, would start shouting. They would then approach, thrashing at the trees and undergrowth with their sticks in order to wake up the tiger which would be expected to be sleeping in the middle of the day after its feed. It would – so the plan goes – move away from the oncoming noise, and follow the path of least resistance straight into the ‘kill-zone’, directly in front of the sights of Harris’s double-barrelled hunting rifle. If the tiger went in a different direction, either to the left or right, then the remaining seventy men had been arranged safely up trees, in a vast V-formation. Their job was to cough or clap if they saw the tiger coming their way: that was enough usually to make the tiger turn and change course. Eventually, the tiger would be funnelled into the firing zone before Harris’s gun.

That was the plan, at least. And a strict instruction was that on the first shot being fired, all beaters must climb trees immediately – in case the tiger was not killed outright and charged in their direction. All things considered, man-eater or not, it would be best if Harris missed the animal altogether, thus sparing them the dangers of having to deal with an injured tiger. The golden rule? Never follow an injured tiger: not unless you wanted to commit suicide.

The day was heating up nicely, too. Drabble, now up a banyan tree, looked over at his friend; Harris lay with his rifle at the ready on a small platform tied about fifteen feet from the ground. The sweat poured from his face and his hands trembled. He wiped them again on his sleeves to dry them. Every now and then Harris pivoted from side to side, staring intently down the sights of his rifle – in the way that his instruction manual had told him. He was imaging the tiger rushing from the jungle. Drabble caught his eye and shot him a thumbs up; Harris nodded in reply and forced a smile.

They waited.

Until the moment it started everyone was under very strict orders to stay absolutely silent – for fear of rousing the tiger prematurely. A breeze rustled the leaves in the trees around him, but the overwhelming sound was the monotonous tonk-tonk of a copperbird somewhere in a tree close by, joined intermittently by the tap-tap-tap of a golden-backed woodpecker. Harris changed position on the wooden shooting platform, which creaked gently beneath his weight, and proceeded to clean his spectacles. Drabble heard several crows cry and there was a brief loud chatter of monkeys. Harris had replaced his glasses and picked up his rifle, cocking the first barrel. He swallowed hard and gave Drabble an assertive nod.

Drabble put his hand to his hip, where his Webley revolver was holstered; he hoped he wouldn’t have to use to it, but instinct had told him not to come on this venture unarmed. Not that he would like to be staring at a tiger armed only with his Webley. But it was better than nothing if it came to it.

In the distance the beaters started shouting. Their words were muffled by the dense jungle but the noise was unmistakable – and loud. So too was the snap and snatch of their sticks as they thrashed their way through the undergrowth. Drabble knew that the next two minutes were vital. To his left, some ten yards on, he could just make out the turban of the next in the human chain of watchers whose job it was to cough or clap if they saw the tiger trying to leave the shooting zone. Drabble took one last glance at Harris, now lining up his eye on his sights again; and then focused on the ground before him – watching for any sign of movement on the jungle floor. The shouts of the beaters and the drone of their sticks was getting louder. Any moment now the tiger would be here . . .

Drabble heard a loud cough. He saw Harris’s body jerk on the platform, swivelling right towards the direction of the cough. Suddenly Drabble heard footsteps. He looked down and saw stripes on a whitish-brown background, moving silkily like fish in the shallows. He clapped loudly and the tiger turned lithely on a sixpence; Drabble glimpsed the swish of its tail. In that moment, Drabble turned to see Harris. He saw Harris squeeze his left eye shut, his face pressed against the stock.

‘BOOM!’

A tongue of fire flared from the muzzle and smoke billowed into the void.

The tiger roared. It was deafening and protracted and then he heard it charge – back in the direction of the line of beaters, breaking through the branches and undergrowth.

‘I hit it,’ exclaimed Harris, as he urgently reloaded. And now, thought Drabble, we have an even more dangerous man-eater on our hands. But there was no time to think: a stag came crashing across the jungle floor, followed by a doe and her young. Next, monkeys bounded through the trees all around them. The jungle was running for its life. A family of mongooses and wild pigs charged by below, squealing in fear.

Amid the pandemonium there was a distinct human howl. O Lord . . . He turned to Harris. Where was Harris? He looked down and glimpsed Harris running along the jungle floor, reloading, in the direction of the tiger. Christ.

For Harris that was suicide. If he came face to face with the tiger he’d have to be very sure of his shot and confident in his abilities to down it before it downed him, and Drabble knew that was not the case. Harris was not the man for a sure and confident shot under those circumstances. Bloody fool. Drabble slipped down from the tree – landing hard but recovering before falling flat on his face – and charged after Harris. He raced along the path of broken branches and hauled out his Webley on the run.

‘Harris!’

The jungle path widened abruptly, opening up along the nullah. Straight ahead Drabble saw Harris, kneeling, rifle shouldered, taking aim. Perhaps a hundred yards further on was the tiger, clawing up at the feet of a fat beater who hung from one of the sprawling branches of a vast banyan tree. Drabble saw the barrel of Harris’s rifle wavering. It was a dangerous shot but he had no choice. Harris fired. The shot boomed out –

The tiger roared and spun around, now looking at Harris. Its eyes were large, yellow, and luminous, and somehow intoxicating. Out in the daylight Drabble saw just how pale it was; and its size – the long body running back from the broad, powerful shoulders and that large head. It was breathing heavily, and there was a decided nick in its left ear – an injury of some standing; its red tongue curled up beneath the silvery bristles of its muzzle. Drabble heard it grunt and start towards Harris. Quick as a flash, Harris was up and stumbling backwards, his arms jerking fearfully. He had one shot left, and if that missed he was toast.

The tiger strode coolly towards him; he had the measure of the man before him and was determined to make him suffer for it. Harris retreated faster, breaking into a rearwards trot, and raised his rifle for that last shot. Suddenly he tripped, his arms flailing, and crashed down on his back. He fired as he hit the ground, a cloud of smoke and flame enveloping his foot.

The stalking tiger’s powerful shoulders and hind parts compressed – and then it pounced towards him.

A shot rang through the air; higher in pitch than the dense boom of Harris’s rifle. Its aim was surer. The tiger landed in a heap, barely a yard from where Harris lay, and rolled over on its side. Drabble lowered his Webley revolver; he then took two steps quickly towards his right, aimed again, this time just below the tiger’s throat, and fired. The creature jolted at the impact of the round but was otherwise motionless. He took another step towards the animal and fired again, this time at its shoulder.

Many is the tiger, he had been told, will spring back into life having had a bullet put into it. Drabble could not make a mistake. Next, he picked up a rock and threw it at the stationary beast. It bounced off the broad, striped side and rolled away. There was no movement from the tiger.

‘Well, Harris sahib,’ he sighed. ‘This man-eater won’t be troubling anyone else.’

Drabble cocked the Webley and went over the tiger. He immediately spotted a wound from one of Harris’s shots at its hind parts. That probably explained why it hadn’t immediately charged Harris.

Drabble gave the tiger’s mighty paw – it was silvery and the size of a small dinner plate – a decided kick. It moved lifelessly. He took in the length of the body, marvelling at the size of the thing, and then noticed it; the bullet hole from his first shot – right between the bugger’s eyes. He couldn’t have done that better if he’d tried.

At that moment the shikaris and cheering beaters started rushing into the scene, shaking their sticks and spears in jubilation and talking excitedly. Drabble turned to Harris.

‘Harris?’

Harris had fainted. The right lens of his spectacles was cracked, and fresh blood was collecting in a steadily expanding pool around his outstretched right foot, the toe of which was scorched black from the muzzle-flash and partly disintegrated. You stupid sod, thought Drabble.

‘Stretcher!’

‘Now, the one thing everyone knows about being in the Tropics is that it’s imperative to drink gins and tonic – constantly,’ waxed Harris cheerfully, as the turbaned waiter placed two drinks before them. Harris seized the glass. ‘In this searing heat your life absolutely depends on it. Otherwise one will die of dehydration – or worse, malaria.’ His heavily bandaged right foot was propped on a stool placed before his rattan chair, so to the casual observer it might resemble a nasty case of gout. In all other regards his turnout was impeccable: cream cotton double-breasted suit, paisley handkerchief, pale blue shirt, starched white collar and Granville club tie. His spectacles had been repaired and his blond hair had been parted so that in many respects – with the lightest of tans – he looked as well as he had at any time in the twenty-one years that his friend Drabble had known him. And he was, except that he was now one toe lighter on his right foot. The doctor said he was lucky only to have lost the one, and fortunate that it wasn’t the big toe. Rather important, big toes, apparently.

‘How’s the foot?’ asked Drabble.

Harris waved the enquiry away; it was a sore subject.

‘Cheers,’ he said instead, raising his glass. They clinked.

‘Is it painful?’

‘A touch itchy, that’s all,’ he frowned. ‘Nothing that the gin and tonic can’t cope with.’

A savagely hot breeze gushed in from the open window, which looked out over the Imperial Hotel’s stunning green, spreading lawns. The hotel was an oversized art deco monstrosity with an unremitting geometry that taxed the eye, but the gardens were beautiful. A fan turned decoratively above, rather too far away to be any use.

Harris sighed.

‘We should have stayed at the club.’

‘It’s meant to be rather nice,’ replied Drabble. And a good deal less expensive, he might have added.

It was a week since the shooting of the tiger; it had taken a full day to get Harris to hospital on the back of a two-wheeled cart, and they had arrived back in Delhi by train after the second night. Despite his injury Harris has fussed inordinately about ensuring that the tiger skin was properly preserved and a particular taxidermist had been engaged – the best in New Delhi, apparently. ‘The way things are going here, it might be the last tiger the family gets,’ Harris had pronounced gloomily.

Drabble smiled at the recollection and took in the scene. The hotel’s lobby bar offered a broad cross-section of the ruling class: there were British Indian Army officers in the main in khaki; English women in pale starched dresses; men of business – box-wallahs as they were known dismissively by the local hierarchy – sweating into three-piece suits of cream and white. The principal difference between a similar crowd in, say, the Ritz or Savoy in London was the sheer acreage of facial hair on display. All the men, with the exception of Drabble and Harris, wore deep moustaches or broad mutton chops; it felt like being in a Victorian painting. As for the ladies, there was a certain Edwardian formality to the quantity of their dress and their hair. As was often remarked, British India was twenty years behind the times. These European men and women were being attended to by an army of finely uniformed and impeccably mannered Indian waiters. At the far end of the bar, beyond the lobby and down the stairs, a corridor led to a vast swimming pool, perfect for the conditions. It was really rather nice, Drabble had to admit. Though he officially despised it, of course. But it would do as a resting place while Harris convalesced from the accident, before the real purpose of their trip to India could begin.

There was a polite cough and he looked up to see a smallish man, one – right on cue – sporting a deep moustache, the sort you imagined shouted ‘Fire!’ under a pith helmet at Omdurman. He was probably in his mid-fifties.

‘Sir Percival?’ asked the man, proffering his card to Harris. His voice had dried quality to it, like it had been left out in the sun for too long, but his lean face was curiously unlined and spoke of a life lived in the shade of a topee. ‘My name is Arbuthnot. I’m from the GOI – may I sit down?’

He didn’t quite wait for a response before drawing up a chair. ‘GOI’ stood for ‘Government of India’ and this was a text-book example of how people seemed to speak out here; there was no time expended explaining any of it to the newcomer. His taking of the seat gave Drabble the chance to observe the top of his head: he nudged Harris’s elbow. Originating at the left-hand side of the man’s head, a weave of silvery-brown hair, probably a foot long, curled around the crown. It made for what was quite possibly the most ornate comb-over in the hirsute history of mankind.

Arbuthnot pulled at his starched cuffs from under his black morning coat and began:

‘If, gentlemen,’ he offered Drabble a meaningful look, ‘Professor – if you are prepared to tolerate a brief interruption, it is my sincere pleasure to welcome you to these shores on behalf of the government of India and to express our great relief that you were not injured further with your recent feline encounter.’ He paused for Harris to acknowledge this sentiment, and continued, but not before offering a small bow of recognition to a passing guest in the lobby bar. He turned away and lowered his voice, discreetly. ‘What brings me here, Sir Percival, is a delicate matter, which if you’ll permit me, I’ll come straight to – what, may I ask, is the precise nature of your interest in His Highness Sir Ganga Singh, the Maharaja of Bikaner?’

If Harris was the least taken aback by Arbuthnot’s knowledge of him or his undertaking, he did not evince it. He lowered his gin and tonic. ‘I think it speaks for itself,’ he asserted. ‘The Maharaja is a staunch friend of the Empire, a great patriot, a leading member of the Chamber of Princes here in India, and a great supporter of the government’s federation plans – he’s progressive and forward-looking. He’s therefore of great legitimate interest to my readers, and, of course, he’s got his golden jubilee this year. And he likes shooting tigers – so all in all, he’s a thoroughly good egg and makes for excellent copy.’

‘I see,’ replied Arbuthnot, after a moment’s reflection. He adjusted the knot of his tie, which was patterned with Masonic symbols and distracted Drabble’s attention. ‘I suppose from our office’s perspective, we wondered if he was a tad old hat – we do have quite a few other maharajas on the books who are a good deal younger and even more progressive than Ganga Singh, much as we like him. I confess we wondered if you would you be open to the idea of considering one of those instead for your interview – assuming you only want the one maharaja?’ He raised his eyebrows quizzically before continuing: ‘The Maharaja of Bandahan, for instance, is a sensational shot and, I gather, has a collection of one hundred Rolls-Royces.’

Harris looked over at Drabble doubtfully. He did not like being pressed on such matters. Harris asked:

‘Is there something wrong with the Maharaja of Bikaner?’

‘Oh no, heaven forbid. No, he’s entirely on side. It’s just a question of nuance.’ Arbuthnot smiled. ‘We simply thought that Bandahan might be more to your taste. I dare say you know of him? His new fiancée is a Hollywood actress, and she is very nice indeed. All in all, he’s rather hot property at the moment.’ Arbuthnot cleared this throat, ‘I could get it all fixed up for you in a jiffy.’

Harris frowned.

‘But Bikaner has granted me the interview; it’s all fixed for Thursday – he’s unveiling a statue and so on. It’s all arranged.’

‘Oh,’ Arbuthnot swatted this obstacle away with his lean hand, like a fly in his face. ‘We can have it unarranged without any indelicacy or inconvenience for you. The Maharaja will understand.’ He offered Harris a firm smile that seemed to imply that the matter was settled.

But Harris wasn’t moved. He looked over at Drabble, his brows furrowed. ‘I would need to clear this with my editor,’ he began. ‘After all, the Evening Express has sent me all the way to meet Bikaner . . .’

‘Of course, of course,’ soothed Arbuthnot. ‘We wouldn’t want to upset the order of play at your end, and if your editor insisted I know it could be accommodated, in due course.’

The moustache widened over the stretched-out lips of Arbuthnot’s tight smile. Drabble realised that the absurd comb-over belied a steely nature that should not be underestimated.

‘Perhaps,’ continued the official as he rose from the chair, ‘you might like to let me know once you’ve telegraphed your editor and had the switch confirmed? You can telegraph or telephone me, as you wish. I assure you, you won’t be disappointed by the Maharaja of Bandahan, or his delightful fia. . .