Butterfly Island

by Corina Bomann

  Diana took the casket over to the desk, ran her hand thoughtfully over the lid, and then opened it. Inside, nestled on the red velvet lining, were four objects. A pendant with a large blue stone, a long-dried leaf covered in strange marks, a photograph of a mountain, and a little book, which Diana picked up first. She felt a strange tension run through her. This was what it must feel like if you were able to look through a window into the past. If you had the chance to see your own roots.

  Diana reverently ran her fingers over the book as she drank in all the details. An old travel guide. It had a blue-green binding with blue print.

  The Passenger’s Guide to Colombo.

  Opening it, she saw that it dated from 1887. There was a pressed flower between the pages. Frangipani, one of India’s most beautiful flowers. This one was white and had a blood-red eye.

  On the well-thumbed, but not yellowed, pages, a few sections were underlined—presumably places the owner of the book had wanted to visit.

  Enraptured, Diana thumbed through the pages, which were illustrated with beautiful vignettes and promised a comprehensive overview of the sights of the city. Had this book once belonged to Henry Tremayne’s brother, who had met with his fate on a faraway island? All at once she felt as though someone had come up behind her to quietly whisper the story of this object into her ear.

  9

  Colombo, 1887

  “Look what I’ve got here!” Victoria handed her elder sister a little book bound in coarse green paper, with The Passenger’s Guide to Colombo printed on it. Her blue eyes shone like the clear sky above the harbour, across which they had an excellent view from their room in the Grand Oriental Hotel.

  “A travel guide?” Grace said, as she turned the book over in her hands.

  A frame of stylised flowers edged the otherwise plain cover, which was printed the same on front and back.

  “For one rupee!” Victoria announced proudly, taking the travel guide back and hugging it to her as though it were a rare piece of jewellery.

  “Papa lets you go into town with Wilkes and there you go buying a travel guide!” Grace shook her head reproachfully and leaned back into the broad window seat of their hotel room.

  “We’ll be able to make good use of it here!” Victoria said, pouting defensively. “After all, we’re in a foreign country. How will you find your way around without help?”

  I’d prefer not to at all, Grace almost slipped out, but managed to swallow her words at the last moment.

  Although she didn’t share her sister’s excitement, she didn’t want to spoil her fun entirely. It was bad enough that they had been deposited here in the hotel like so much luggage.

  While her younger sister immersed herself in her reading, Grace gazed with a sigh out over the deep blue sea, on which modern steamers sailed alongside double-masted dhows and Chinese junks as though they had accidentally found themselves in ancient times.

  The quayside was teeming with people at that time of day. Natives scurried among sailors of all nationalities, clothed either in plain white trousers or magnificent yellow and red robes. Many of them wore turbans, and some had a red mark painted on their brows.

  Grace’s eye fell on two women crossing the street. Their bright-pink and turquoise saris made a delightful contrast with their golden-brown skin and raven-black hair. Naturally they attracted the attention of men of all nationalities.

  Grace had to admit that the view of the harbour alone was far more fascinating than anything she could observe back in dreary, grey London. But that foggy city was where her friends were. At that very moment, Grace thought sadly, Eliza and Alyson were probably trying on their dresses for the debutantes’ ball. The date, which she had been aware of for months now, had almost arrived—but now, instead of getting herself ready for the ball and the season that followed it, she found herself at the other end of the world, in searing heat and surrounded by the smell of fish. Her presentation to Queen Victoria had been postponed “for as long as it takes for Papa to get the plantation up and running,” her mother had said.

  Grace knew better. Although an official veil of silence had been drawn down over the situation, it was nevertheless impossible to overlook the fact that they were experiencing difficulties, which could only be overcome by taking over the plantation. The old family estate in Scotland was draining away a substantial portion of the Tremayne household’s coffers, and their family home in London also needed to be maintained.

  Her father had not spoken to her late uncle Richard for a long time. Just as silence was maintained over their financial straits, so he maintained his personal silence—even denying that Richard had been the more successful of the two brothers. The plantation was well established and doing nicely, as she had discovered from a letter she had found in her father’s study and read in secret. As for the circumstances of her uncle’s death . . .

  “Oh, look!” Victoria cried, clapping her hands as though she were four rather than thirteen. “There’s a map here! And it even marks the location of the lunatic asylum!”

  “Lunatic asylum?” Grace repeated, frowning.

  “One of the sights listed in the guide. It says the building’s new and well worth seeing.” Victoria turned the page on the map and carefully leafed through the book until she found the place she was looking for. “The new lunatic asylum, a charitable institution, supported solely by the government, caused the colony a lot of concern in the past. The cost of its establishment, six hundred thousand rupees, seemed unnecessary to many, causing the original building plans to be modified. Four hundred lunatics are housed in this building, which is among the largest of those attributable to the governor, Sir James R. Longden.”

  “You could have gone to see lunatic asylums anywhere in England,” Grace remarked laconically. “I don’t recall you showing an interest in such charitable institutions a few months ago.”

  “Because if I’d suggested going to visit one, Mama would no doubt have had a fit,” her sister replied, undeterred.

  “She would now.”

  “Which is why I’m telling you and not her!” Victoria retorted.

  “You’d be better off visiting some church or temple. Mama would be bound to allow you to go to those.”

  “Churches are boring, but the temples here are supposed to be really beautiful.” Victoria began once again to leaf through the guide. After a while she found what she was looking for.

  “Just look here—you must be interested in this, too!”

  She held the book under her sister’s nose, so close that she could do nothing other than look.

  “The Cinnamon Garden,” Grace read. “There’s a museum close by, so Mother need have no concerns about our intellectual edification.”

  Grace wanted to reject this suggestion, too, but she had to admit that the Cinnamon Garden had aroused her interest. She loved the spice, which their cook, Mrs. Haynes, had sometimes added to desserts and cakes.

  Victoria seemed to sense that her defences were crumbling because she continued, “In the Cinnamon Garden you can see how the cinnamon bark is stripped and then dried. If we go, we may even be able to bring some back with us. You must have missed your cinnamon milk on the voyage here.”

  “Oh yes, I really did!” Closing her eyes, Grace indulged in the memory of the taste.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Hayes had stayed behind in England, and Grace had had to make do with her uncle’s cook here. But maybe she, too, knew how to use cinnamon and could be persuaded to sweeten their exile with her favourite bedtime drink.

  As a child she had been veritably obsessed with cinnamon and wanted to know all about the spice. Her father had waved away her questions in a kindly but firm manner, while her mother pretended to know nothing about it. Only the cook, with whom Grace liked to spend many a forbidden hour, let her into some of its secrets. “Cinnamon comes from India and Indonesia,” she would reply.

  She had long since forgotten these stories by the time she heard they were to move to Ceylon, but
now, thanks to her sister’s travel guide, the memories had been reawakened, suddenly bringing a little relief to the heat and boredom.

  “So, shall we go to the Cinnamon Garden?” Victoria nagged.

  “You don’t know for how long we’ll be staying in Colombo,” Grace replied as she handed the guide back to her sister. “Uncle Richard’s plantation is near Adam’s Peak. That’s a long way from here.”

  “It looks as though we’ll be here long enough to put down roots!” Victoria replied, gesturing angrily towards the harbourmaster’s building. “Father seems to be well ensconced there. If we just set off in a rickshaw, we can be at the Cinnamon Garden in no time. We’d be back from a visit to the museum before they even knew we were gone.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Grace said with a shake of her head. “If we’re still here in a few days’ time I’ll ask Mother myself. I don’t believe even she could have anything against the Cinnamon Garden.”

  “Honestly, how long is all this going to last?”

  In the next-door hotel room, Claudia Tremayne was complaining to her butler, Wilkes. She looked reproachfully out of the hotel window at the building her husband had vanished into two hours ago. Since the harbourmaster had to examine their papers in any case, Henry wanted to take the opportunity to meet Mr. Cahill, his brother’s lawyer.

  “I’m sure he’ll be back soon, madam,” Martin Wilkes replied. Still a bachelor at fifty, he was just as much a fixture in their household as the trunks they had travelled with.

  “So you say, Wilkes! But you know Mr. Tremayne!” Claudia, whose accent always fell back to her native Scottish when she was agitated, looked through the connecting door to her daughters’ room. The two of them were poring over a thin book, which Victoria had bought when she accompanied Wilkes to the Harbour Office.

  Claudia looked wistfully at her daughter Grace. The girl resembled a younger version of her own mother, whom Claudia could remember well despite her death at a young age. Claudia had always admired Bella Avery for her golden-red hair, pale skin, and green eyes.

  She herself had taken after her father—heavy-boned, tough, dark-haired. She sometimes wondered how Henry Tremayne, the handsome son of an influential member of parliament, could ever have noticed her. On the occasion of her debut presentation to Queen Victoria, Henry had been surrounded by so many beautiful young women that she could hardly have stood out among them with her dark hair. And yet, one day, he had appeared at her father’s door asking his permission to court her.

  Her parents would have preferred the elder son of the Tremayne dynasty, but even then Richard had been showing signs of rebellion against his ancestral family. By the time he had moved out to Ceylon on the adventurous trail of a tea plantation, Claudia’s parents had been satisfied, not least because Henry, whom she had married in the meantime, had now become the heir of the Tremaynes and the owner of Tremayne House. A house that had gradually proved to be a curse. Part of the animosity shown towards Richard by Henry was due to the fact that he had assigned the house, with all its obligations, to him. Unlike his parents-in-law, Henry had never harboured aspirations towards inheriting his family estate.

  And now, after Richard’s death a few months ago in mysterious circumstances, Henry had even been forced to take over his brother’s plantation in Ceylon.

  With a sigh, Claudia smoothed a few creases from her blue-grey taffeta skirt, which in the tropics felt like a greenhouse concentrating the heat.

  Gazing once more out of the window, she thought she glimpsed her husband. Had the meeting finally come to an end?

  Clearly not—the figure turned, and she realised that it was not Henry, but probably the man he was to meet.

  Hopefully he’ll be back soon, she thought, cooling herself with a Chinese paper fan she had found in Victoria’s bag.

  “The plantation extends to three hundred acres of land near Adam’s Peak,” John Cahill said, lowering the pince-nez, which was gradually beginning to give him a headache. He was with Henry Tremayne, the new owner of the Tremayne plantation, going through the estate’s papers now that the formalities relating to their arrival had finally been settled. “This makes you one of the biggest plantation owners, after the Stocktons and the Walburys, and in any case their holdings are on the other side of the mountain.”

  Henry seemed tense, and no wonder after the strain of the journey and the exhausting meeting in the harbourmaster’s office. The room had been stuffy and teeming with smells carried in from the harbour on the wind. They had assured him that when the wind was from the south it would smell of cinnamon here, but right now it stank of fish, seaweed, brine, and an incongruous mixture of the spices and fruits on sale in the nearby market.

  If only we could have held the meeting in a nice cool room, Tremayne thought as he suppressed the urge to fan himself with the papers in his hand.

  “It produces an excellent yield, as you can see from these figures, and it is expected that the profits will double this year. All the plantation needs to make the problems go away is a strong owner.”

  Henry looked sullenly at the book Cahill pushed over to him. Despite his attorney’s optimistic words, he had no desire to go through the figures. His grief for his brother gave way regularly to heartfelt anger and bouts of hatred. At that moment the former feeling was fast giving way to the latter.

  The death of Richard Tremayne, Henry’s older brother by five years, had left chaos in its wake. Badly kept books, outstanding payments, and disorder in his personal papers. Although the land was clearly good, it was increasingly obvious that his brother had possessed little idea of how to manage it.

  The figures nevertheless lifted Henry’s mood a little. If Cahill was correct with his talk of the profits doubling, he wouldn’t have to give up the family seat and would even be able to keep the Scottish castle.

  “Have they found out yet why my brother fell?” Henry asked as he snapped the book shut. His words made Cahill, who clearly wanted to show him yet more figures, lose his thread.

  “No, sir. I’m afraid the enquiries are still continuing. And although there are Englishmen involved in the investigation, it’s dragging. But I think we can safely assume it was an accident. Adam’s Peak isn’t a dangerous mountain, but there are risks there nevertheless. I don’t know why your brother felt the need to clamber about the place all the time with that naturalist.”

  “Was the naturalist there?”

  Cahill shook his head. “No, not on the evening in question. It seems he had set off completely alone, strangely enough. The staff say that he was angry about something, and they assume that he went up to the mountain to let off steam.”

  “Without anyone to accompany him?”

  “Yes, as far as we know. But . . .”

  Henry looked with embarrassment at the toes of his shoes. “You don’t think he might have gone to end his own life?”

  “No, that’s not possible. I knew your brother. His bookkeeping may have been eccentric, but he wasn’t a man who would have left a mess behind him. If he’d been planning to take his life, he would have tried to ensure that things were in some kind of order. Or at least have left a farewell note. But there was nothing of the kind.”

  “Could it have been murder?”

  Cahill paled. “Let’s hope that isn’t the case. You’d never hear the last of it from the authorities, not for months at least, should grounds be found for such a suspicion.”

  “Did my brother have any enemies, as far as you knew?”

  “No, sir, he got on well with more or less everyone. If any disputes arose, he resolved them amicably. Tea cultivation is a gentleman’s business—they’re not like Texas cattle barons shooting one another out of the saddle.”

  Henry fell into contemplation. Could his brother really have been the victim of an accident? Maybe it would be better if he stopped thinking about it or trying to find out more. He certainly didn’t want any trouble from the authorities; things were complicated enough as they were.

&nb
sp; “When can we move to the plantation, do you think?”

  “The workmen are still there at the moment getting the house shipshape. Over recent months it suffered a little neglect at the hands of your brother. But I’ll make sure they get a move on, and I’m confident they’ll be finished in a few more days. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s worth it. Vannattuppūcci is a very special place—a paradise if you like. You’ll soon see!”

  Over dinner, in a quiet corner of the hotel dining room, Henry told his family what John Cahill had said—as much information, at least, as was unlikely to overexcite or perplex them. Claudia was unsatisfied all the same.

  “My goodness, how long are we going to have to stick it out here?”

  She looked around with disapproval at the other guests in the room, who took no notice of her. “You know what workmen are like—they always drag projects out to try to earn more money.”

  “Mr. Cahill promised he’d hurry them up.”

  “Even if they do hurry up, I dare say that will mean they make a botch of it.”

  “Claudia, darling.” Henry gave his wife an almost beseeching look. Did carping make things better?

  As if she could read his mind, Claudia appeared to agree with him. She lowered her head as if in shame. Her husband took her hand.

  “Maybe you should have a look around the gemstone markets in the city. I’ve heard there’s some magnificent jewellery to be had at half the price you’d have to pay in England.”

  “And what opportunities would I have to wear fine jewels in this wilderness?” Claudia asked, still feeling a little ungracious as she saw herself a prisoner between palms and tea plants.

  “Mr. Cahill speaks of a lively social life in Nuwara Eliya. Apparently there are hotels there, lots of villas used as holiday homes by some very high-ranking English families and, of course, other plantation owners who are very highly regarded. I’m sure that with your social graces you’ll soon find some friends—and you can hold balls that will be the talk of Ceylon.”

  A smile came to Claudia’s lips now. And although Grace knew it would be small consolation for missing the debutantes’ ball, she also looked forward to the next opportunity to dance.