I knew this was a lie. The tailor who did odd jobs for me also worked for Mirza Abdullah’s family. He had told me that he often saw Hassan Askari in Mirza Sahib’s house. As I said before, you can never trust natives. They learn to lie from the day they learn to speak. They think it’s more clever to tell a lie than to tell the truth.

Alec went to report on my visit to Mirza Abdullah’s house to Mr Metcalfe. When he returned he told me of mysterious fires in the cantonments and strange people running about with chappaties. That the wily blacks were plotting against us we were sure, but we did not realize how soon these double-faced traitors would stab us in the back. How well I recall the day it happened!

Our usual practice before we retired was to spend the evening on the roof-top (unless there was a dust-storm blowing) where we had our sundowner and our dinner. Then as I’ve said, we’d have the bhishties sprinkle water and servants lay out the beds. At first I had mine alongside Alec’s. But when he had eaten hot curry, he used to get very windy and make things unpleasant. So I had his bed removed to a distance so that we were not disturbed by his farting. On the roof-top the nights were cool and the early morning breeze very pleasant.

The betrayal began one morning in the month of Ramadan when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. I remember being woken by the muezzin’s call for prayer. It was still very dark but I could not sleep because there were many mosques in Daryaganj and one muezzin followed another. Our Muslim servants were making a racket cooking and gobbling their day’s meal. Just as the dawn appeared above the jungle across the river, a cannon was fired from the Royal Mosque. The explosion woke Alec and the children. The khansama brought up our chota hazri.

My girls were soon romping about on the roof, taking their time over their tumblers of milk. Alec and I were having our tea when we saw a fat Bania come with his brass jug and squat down near the wall: these natives can never resist a wall. Alec always had a catapult and a trayful of pebbles brought up with his morning tea. Before the Bania could relieve himself, Alec senta pebble flying towards him. It hit the brass jug, ping. The Bania quickly stood up to adjust his dhoti. ‘Bugger off you black bastard!’ yelled Alec. And so the poor fellow did. We had a big laugh. Then along came a man carrying a wicker cage with a partridge in it. Another partridge ran a few yards behind calling teetur, teetur, teetur. Alec raised his bundook—he always had his bundook by his bedside to shoot geese or duck coming overhead from the river—aimed it at the partridge and said, ‘Bang! I’d like to get that fat one; make a nice partridge pie, what!’, He used to aim his bundook at the partridge every morning and say the same thing. The day had begun like any other day.