Présentation de l'éditeur
In her acclaimed mysteries set in the age of the British Raj, Barbara Cleverly brilliantly captures a fascinating collision of cultures against a backdrop of jasmine-scented nights and neatly trimmed English gardens. In her gripping new novel, the author of
The Last Kashmiri Rose and
Ragtime in Simla transports us to the remote and exotic setting of India’s North-West Frontier, where a group of travelers is swept into a spellbinding drama of kidnapping, vengeance, and murder.
Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands has been given the unenviable mission of guarding a spirited young American woman with far more wealth than sense. Lily Coblenz, accompanied by a cunning businessman, a woman doctor, and two quarreling military strategists, expects the adventure of a lifetime when she arrives at a remote British outpost. But when the son of a Pathan tribal leader is discovered dead, Sandilands, a decorated war veteran, knows that his mission to protect Lily has suddenly taken a startling new turn that may bring them all to the brink of war.
Now, from the far reaches of an empire, Joe Sandilands must separate lies from truths, innocents from killers—and find the one person with a desperate motive for murder and the key to India’s destiny.
Extrait
Chapter OneIndia, 1910
"This isn't human country! It was never meant that anyone should be here, stand, sit or walk here. This isn't country worth fighting for. Leave it to bake in the summer, freeze in the winter; leave it to bury its dead or not even to bury its dead--leave them to bleach away to nothing in the sun. What did Bismarck say? 'Not worth the good bones of one Pomeranian grenadier.' He was thinking of the Balkans or some other God-forsaken part of Europe but it's even more true of this part of India. The North-West bloody Frontier! Not worth the bones of a single gallant native Scout. Not worth the bones of a Sandhurst-trained British officer. My bones! A subaltern, who has--dammit--only been in this foul oven for two weeks."
The serrated and crumbling mountains, grey with hideous old age, black with seams of basalt, were empty, sterile and useless. Empty? Not quite. In the middle distance a lonely signal flag was frantically wagging. All the watching officers turned their binoculars on this. Someone read it off.
Under attack. Carrying wounded. Three dead. Can you help?
The Colonel turned to his second-in-command. "Send this, Neil," he said. "
Stand by to retreat on the Tit. Await my signal. Will cover you." He paused for a moment. With urgent speed the signal flag swished beside him in the hands of his second-in-command. "Have they got that?" he asked anxiously.
"Yes, sir, they acknowledge."
"Now send,
Abandon the dead." The signal flag swished again at his side. "And add,
Don't abandon wounded."
Paddy Brownlow out there commanding the beleaguered patrol would know how to translate that--"Bring them in if you can--shoot them if you can't." Any British officer falling into the hands of the Afridi would, without question, be tortured to death. A process which would generally be extended to cover two full days especially if the women came down to join in the fun, and the same fate awaited any Hindu soldiery who might have the bad luck to fall into enemy hands.
"They acknowledge, sir."
"In that case, Neil, send
Retreat and open covering fire on the ridge . . . now!"
The three twin Lewis guns burst into a wild and deafening rattle of sound. Chips of stone began to fly and whine away from the ridge. Surely nothing could live in that?
The little temple, derisively designated "the Tit" by the British, stood half-way between the relieving force and the retreating men. A swelling dome surmounted by a blunt pinnacle, it was aptly named. The Colonel was only reasonably confident. Out there were thirty men carrying wounded under fire, doubtless running short of water, exhausted by three days in action with half a mile of country to cover and only t
