Read Ellis Peters - George Felse 11 - Death To The Landlords for Free Online

turned his back on her abruptly, and the shutter clicked.
    ‘Then where
do
you go after that?’ she said, and she had been so startled by this burst of confidence from him that it was almost a cry of appeal.
    ‘If I knew that, I should be on my way.’ That was the most Dominic had ever yet heard from him about his own intolerable situation, and perhaps the most anyone was going to hear until he resolved it one way or another. ‘Good, here’s Lakshman, we can get off now.’
    Lakshman came round the corner of the hotel in conversation with a young fellow of his own slender build, but taller and more muscular. He was dark-skinned and clean shaven, with a prominent nose and strong brows, above narrowed dark eyes that had the seaman’s look of focusing upon distance. He salaamed briefly and cheerfully, and favoured them all with a broad and gleaming smile.
    ‘Sir, I am Romesh, your boat-boy. Ladies, you please come this way.’
    He pattered before them down the steps in his worn leather sandals, and led them down the tongue of grass and the curving causeway to the boats. His working wear consisted of khaki shorts and a tunic of white cotton, with a red sash round his waist, and a loose white cotton turban, with a short cockade of pleats over his forehead and a balancing fan of pleated folds on his neck.
    Patti danced down the steps after him, Priya following more sedately. ‘Romesh, you speak good English. That’s lucky!’
    ‘I speak a little, memsahib. Not good!’ He turned upon her a flashing smile, half-bold and half-shy; she saw that he was quite young, probably only a few years older than herself. ‘But I try to show you all game, very good. It will be fine morning, many elephants come.’
    He loosed the rope that moored the smallest of the white boats; the canvas canopy slapped gently in the breeze, and then was still. The vast, bright body of the sun glowed through the trees, and the clouds, unbelievably high in a pale sky, began to sail slowly like boats on a reflected lake. Romesh drew in the line and steadied the boat, holding out a hand to help the girls aboard. There was comfortable room for them all, and seats to spare. The largest boat, rocking languidly to the motion they created, must hold as many as fifteen passengers without crowding.
    Romesh kicked off his sandals and sat down to the motor, and in a moment teased it into life. They slid out into the deep channel, clear of the skeleton trees, and headed across the first bight of the lake. On either shore the bare, peeled area of grass rose, steeply or gradually, to the contour of the high-water-mark, and there the grass and bushes soared to a man’s height, and the trees crowded close.
    ‘The water is rather low,’ said Lakshman, ‘but that is good, because then the animals must come well clear of cover to reach the water, and we shall have a good view. Sometimes it is much lower even than this, and then it is more difficult for the boats, because there is so much dead forest.’
    Close to the shore, wherever they turned, there was always at least one spectral tree to be seen. In the deeper passages whatever remained of the drowned giants – if anything remained – was far below the draught of motor launches. They looked back, and the hotel and the landing-stage were already out of sight. The note of the boat’s engine was low, leisurely and quiet. Romesh scanned the shores as they moved, watching for anything living that might emerge from the rim of the trees.
    ‘He is trained to catch any movement. If he sees something he will not make any sound, but point. Then he’ll try to bring the boat in more closely and switch off the engine, so that we can watch without disturbing them.’
    They had, as it seemed, an immense world to themselves. It was difficult to grasp the scale of these hills and these remarkably English-looking trees, until Romesh stiffened and pointed, and found them their first elephants. In a sheltered bay on their left