‘Nothing untoward?’

‘Colonel, I sense that that’s something on which the surgeon wishes to speak directly with you. I didn’t press him. He knows where I stand, and I trust his judgement.’

‘Handsomely put. Very well, show him in. And then, perhaps too, you’d better withdraw.’

St Alban bowed.

Milne came in saluting and taking off his cap in one motion.

‘My dear doctor!’

He took the chair as Hervey indicated. ‘A relief from the saddle, Colonel. My poor mare’s carried me well this past week, but more miles than I’d foreseen.’

‘Some refreshment?’

‘St Alban said he’d send in tea.’

‘Very well, what’s to report?’

‘On the whole, as regards the troops, very little. B had a man die of a convulsion, one of the new draft and—’

‘Which of the new draft?’

Milne took out his notebook. ‘Newing.’

Hervey shook his head. One new recruit was much as another, but Newing, the farmhand from Kent, who’d shown promise at riding school …

He’d only reluctantly agreed to letting them join a troop instead of the rear details (all bar two, whom the RM was certain weren’t yet fit to pass out) on condition they were under the strict eye of a serjeant.

‘How do you account for the convulsion?’

Milne said he couldn’t, that it was almost certainly a latent condition.

‘So not the fault of any neglect.’

‘No, I judge not.’

‘Proceed.’

‘There are one or two sunstrokes, but nothing likely to prove fatal. No, I should say that the exercise is to the greater health of all.’

‘And what of Waterman?’

Milne sighed. ‘Now there’s a strange case. Gibb, the Fifty-seventh’s surgeon, who’s doing duty, wrote me that he’d been called to his bed, Waterman having been discovered lifeless by a servant in the middle of the morning, and found no obvious sign of the cause of death, but a great odour of alcohol – brandy, he thought. He therefore had the body brought to his hospital and carried out an extensive post-mortem examination. Waterman’s stomach didn’t contain the excessive alcohol he’d expected, and he began to think it possible that there’d been some sort of violent reaction and Waterman had spilled the contents of his flask. An examination of his nightclothes suggested this was in fact so. He then made an examination of the exterior of the body – I have to say that I would have done so before any incision, but that’s by the bye; we each have our methods – and he found two wounds on the left ankle.’

‘A snakebite, you mean?’

‘A krait, he believes.’

‘How might he know that?’

‘The bite’s usually deeper than the cobra’s.’

‘So he died of a snakebite. Yet another, if this time more exalted than your chowkidar’s wife. Though I must say I don’t think I’ve heard of an officer being bitten in his own room, though one or two close shaves … I presume we may suppose he was bitten in his room, not elsewhere?’