Free Death in Kashmir by M. M. Kaye

should have gone back with the others.’
    â€˜Risk?’ repeated Sarah sharply. ‘What do you mean? What risk is there in staying up here?’
    â€˜It’s not that,’ said Janet. ‘It’s … oh well, perhaps it doesn’t matter.’ She turned to glance up at the steep slope of the mountainside that rose behind the small hut, and at the clear star-pricked sky above it, and added with apparent inconsequence: ‘Anyway, there’s a moon tonight.’
    A tangle of dark figures shot past them in a flurry of snow to collapse in a confused heap before the hut door. ‘Get your skis out of my hair, Alec!’ demanded Ian Kelly. ‘Where are the others, Sarah?’
    â€˜Some of them have arrived and some of them are just arriving,’ said Sarah. ‘Hello, Reggie. Where have you been?’
    Reggie Craddock and his two companions, a tall slim Indian with a face that would have graced a Greek coin, and Meril Forbes, a thin sandy-haired girl with pale eyes and a multitude of freckles, came round the side of the hut and joined the group by the door.
    â€˜Up to the top of Gujar Gully,’ said Reggie, unstrapping his skis. ‘By the way, you all know each other, don’t you? Miss Forbes, and Mir—I can’t remember all your names, Mir.’
    The tall Indian laughed. ‘One is sufficient. But we have all met before.’
    â€˜Speaking for myself, very painfully,’ said Ian Kelly. ‘I cannoned into Mir coming down Red Run two years ago and I’m still black and blue. Where did you learn to ski, Mir? Up here?’
    â€˜No, in Austria, and then in Italy. I had not skied up here before this year. It is good snow.’
    â€˜Best in the world!’ asserted that loyal Secretary of the Ski Club, Reggie Craddock. ‘By the way, I’m thinking of doing a run to the Frozen Lakes tomorrow morning. Five-thirty start. Anyone coming with me? What about you, Janet?’
    â€˜No thanks. Too much of a slog. I feel like idling for a change.’
    â€˜I will go,’ said Mir Khan, ‘and so will Ian. It will do him good. He is putting on weight. Two years ago he was a gazelle—a fawn!’
    â€˜Ah youth! youth!’ sighed Mr Kelly. ‘I was young then—at least nineteen. All right, I’ll martyr myself. Coming with us, Sarah?’
    â€˜I’ll think about it,’ said Sarah. ‘Come on, Janet, let’s see if anyone’s got the lamps lit and the stove going. I’m frozen.’
    The door closed behind them and within minutes the last gleam of daylight faded from off the mountain tops. Stars glittered frostily in the cold sky, and far away, beyond the towering peak of Nanga Parbat, a flicker of lightning licked along the ranges. But overhead the sky was clear and cloudless, and paling to the first pallid glow of the rising moon.
    The interior of the ski-hut was partitioned into three sections: a living-room with a men’s dormitory leading off from it to the left and a women’s dormitory to the right. A double tier of bunks ran round three sides of each dormitory wall; fourteen bunks to each room, with an additional three bunks in the living-room in case of need. But the days when the ski-hut could be filled to capacity had gone, and Reggie Craddock had been both surprised and pleased at being able to muster the handful who now replaced the thirty-one of earlier years.
    Fudge Creed, who was engaged in drying socks at the iron stove that stood in the middle of the women’s half, welcomed Sarah and Janet with enthusiasm, and dropping her voice to a feverish whisper said: ‘My dears! Thank heavens you’ve come: another ten minutes and I should have sunk through the floor. I never realized before how lowly are my antecedents, and how few, if any, of the right people I know. I don’t believe there is a single peer whom I can call by his first name—let alone his