Ragtime in Simla (Joe Sandilands, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 13: Joe Sandilands

Cleverly, Barbara

 
9780385339728: Ragtime in Simla (Joe Sandilands, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385339720 ISBN 13: 9780385339728
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Simla 1922. While the rest of India bakes in the hot season, up in the pine-scented coolness of the Himalayan hills the English have recreated a vision of home. Here are half-timbered houses, amateur theatricals, gymkhanas and a glittering vice-regal court for the socialites. The summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the jazz age. It is toward this country that detective Joe Sandilands is heading as the guest of the governor of Bengal. But when Joe's travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side on the road to Simla, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation. As Joe begins to unravel the mystery which has its roots in the aftermath of the First World War, he discovers that behind the sparkling facade of Simla lies a trail of murder, vice and blackmail.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Barbara Cleverly is the author of nine novels of historical suspense, including The Damascened Blade, winner of the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award, The Last Kashmiri Rose, Ragtime in Simla, The Palace Tiger, The Bee’s Kiss, Tug of War, An Old Magic and The Tomb of Zeus. She lives in Cambridge, England where she is now at work on the newest Joe Scandilands novel, Folly du Jour.

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Simla 1922. While the rest of India bakes in the hot season, up in the pine-scented coolness of the Himalayan hills the English have recreated a vision of home. Here are half-timbered houses, amateur theatricals, gymkhanas and a glittering vice-regal court for the socialites. The summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the jazz age. It is toward this country that detective Joe Sandilands is heading as the guest of the governor of Bengal. But when Joe's travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side on the road to Simla, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation. As Joe begins to unravel the mystery which has its roots in the aftermath of the First World War, he discovers that behind the sparkling facade of Simla lies a trail of murder, vice and blackmail.

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Chapter One

Paris, 1919


"Don't stare, Alice, dear!"

Maud Benson (Universal Companions, Foreign and Eastern Travel Division) shot a glance of concentrated disapproval at her latest charge. Her charge remained willfully oblivious and continued to turn her head excitedly, drinking in the strange sounds and bustle of the Gare de Lyon refreshment room, still elegant in spite of four years of wartime neglect.

Alice sighed, and in pursuit of a world-weary image lay back against the buttoned leather upholstery of the banquette. Like the second barrel of a shotgun, inevitably came: "Don't loll, dear!"

Alice continued to loll and turned to her companion with a mutinous expression. Fearing that she might just have gone too far (for the moment), Maud said in a placatory tone, "You need not, Alice, feel obliged to finish your cup of tea. The French really have no idea . . ." The monument of corseted rectitude creaked forward slightly to take up her own cup and, while deploring the dire French habit of putting the water in the pot before the tea leaves, determined, nevertheless, to set a good example. "Always finish what is put in front of you," even if it is a cup of badly brewed tea.

Alice didn't take the hint but continued to stare enviously at the drink in the hand of the Frenchwoman sitting opposite. Frothy and pink, it fizzed seductively in a tall glass and Maud had no doubt, to judge by the appearance of the woman sipping it, that it contained alcohol. To her horror, Alice leaned forward and addressed the woman. In English public school French.

"Excusez-moi, madame, mais qu'est-ce que c'est que cette . . . er . . . boisson?"

"Alice!" hissed Maud, bristling with indignation. "You don't address a perfect stranger! What will she think?"

The woman in question put down the enviable pink drink and, after a moment of well-bred surprise, replied in scarcely accented English and with a charming smile of friendship. "It is called a Campari-soda. Very refreshing and very French." And without pause she turned to a passing waiter and said, "Monsieur, un Campari-soda pour mademoiselle, s'il vous plait!"

Alice's face lit up with a smile of guilty delight. Maud Benson closed her eyes and pursed her lips.

They were only three hundred miles into their journey and Maud shuddered at the thought that there were at least seven thousand more to be survived in the company of this girl. Alice Conyers. Time and again she had warned her charge, "This is France. You're not in Hertfordshire now and the company is very mixed. You should avoid getting involved with strangers. And, above all, avoid a certain type of woman. Yes, woman. One learns to recognize the type. It's easy to connect with such people but not so easy to disconnect. A good rule is 'never talk to strangers.' " She didn't know what more she could have said. And yet . . . "For all the good I've done, I might as well have been playing the flute!"

Discreetly, she palmed a bismuth tablet into her mouth. A martyr to indigestion, she had learned to take this precaution at the first sign of stress.

Maud recalled the briefing her Principal had given her before this assignment had begun. "Out of the top drawer, Miss Benson. Rich family. Best of prospects. Your charge is going out to India where she is to assume the reins of power, it would seem, at the head of the family business--I'm speaking of the great commercial house Imperial and Colonial--at least, half the reins of power since she is, very sensibly, to share that eminence with a second cousin. Sad recent history--deaths in the family--so you must be prepared for a gloomy little companion, I'm afraid."

(Maud felt a little gloom and becoming mourning would be preferred to this ceaseless chatter and frivolous curiosity.)

"She is not straight out of the schoolroom, she is twenty-one years old, but has led a very sheltered life in Hertfordshire. Her grandfather's executors have expressed a requirement for a highly dependable and experienced traveling chaperone and naturally they came to us."

First impressions had been good on the whole. Though pretty enough (and this was always a concern), the girl had appeared sensible and well spoken. Her manners were those of the lady she was and rather old-fashioned. She seemed to have none of that brash giddiness that some modern young girls affected and which could give such trouble on board a P&O steamer. Her wardrobe consisted of entirely suitable clothes in mourning colours of black and grey appropriate to a girl who had recently lost not just her only brother on the battlefield mere days before the war had ended but also her father and mother to the flu the previous year. And, to cap it all, her grandfather, Lord Rupert Conyers, whose death, in the words of the Times obituary, "was occasioned by a fall from his horse while hunting with the Essex and Suffolk Foxhounds" the previous December.

Maud had hoped for an undemanding run through to Bombay but was aware that the major challenge to effective chaperonage was in the three-week-long sea passage. The steamers were crowded with stylish young army officers returning to India from home leave. Many were looking for eligible wives, always in short supply in India. They had charm; they had slim, active figures and a look of suntanned alertness. Maud was well aware of the dangers and, in spite of her clever stratagems and unsleeping vigilance, had presided, in her time, unwillingly, over no fewer than three engagements (one, at least, most unsuitable) during her traveling career and had lost count of the number of broken hearts.

But she decided she need have no fears for Alice Conyers. The girl had confided early in their journey that she had the greatest hopes of marrying her second cousin, at present a junior officer in a native infantry regiment, thereby securing the dynastic future of the firm. A sensible arrangement, Maud had thought. In all the circumstances. Even a pretty and wealthy girl these days found her choice of husband very much restricted. The war had scythed down young men in their thousands and Alice had confessed sadly that she had met no one in England she could regard as a marriage partner. So, with no regrets behind her and a favourable prospect ahead, Maud thought, it should be an easy matter to keep Alice on a straight canter down the course. Provided, naturally, that she could keep "designing women"--and she felt the description might well fit Alice's new acquaintance--at bay and fortune-hunting men at arm's length.

But Alice had left discretion behind as they had left England. Her first sight of a foreign country seemed to have turned her head. She had insisted on staying on deck on the cross-Channel ferry in spite of the stiff March breeze and had launched into conversation not only with fellow passengers but even with several of the deckhands. Instead of writing up her diary on the train to Paris she had stared about her asking a thousand questions which had brought Maud's crochet work almost to a standstill. And now they were in Paris and the mere name appeared to work some magic on Alice Conyers. Maud was glad their itinerary had allowed for no more than three days in the capital of frivolity. Alice had spent precious time patronizing the boutiques of the Rue de la Paix when she could have been visiting the Louvre. Here she was, luggage stuffed with who knew what frou-frous, bright-eyed, alert, and smiling at the world. Overexcited.

And things were getting worse. They were seated in the elaborately decorated refreshment room of the Gare de Lyon waiting for the Blue Train to be announced. Alice had sighed with pleasure and repeated the names of the towns...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385339720
ISBN 13 
9780385339728
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Scooter-Deluxe GmbH
https://www.roller.com

Am Schürmannshütt 30
Moers
47441
Deutschland

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