by Blythe Baker
“Not bothered,” I said, cutting a piece of food and chewing slowly. “Just surprised. Most people would have been more disturbed by the sight of a dead body.”
“Like I said, I’ve seen much worse during my time as a soldier.”
“But the White Tiger Club is far from a battlefield,” I said, gesturing to the room around us with its crystal chandeliers and busy waitstaff. “I am not afraid of deer, but I’d scream if I saw one in my own sitting room.”
“Fair enough.” The Major smiled at my comparison and then leaned forward until his cigar was hovering over the Lieutenant’s dinner plate. “To be honest, I did not see much of the scene. I had never even been in the library before that day, so it is a complete coincidence that I’m the person who found General Hughes at all. I opened the door to see what the room was used for and saw a man suspended in mid-air.”
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“Is this an inquisition? Do I need to bring the Lieutenant back to defend me?” he asked playfully, though I sensed his defensiveness.
“Only if you feel you need defending.”
“I left,” he said with a loud sigh, as though it should have been obvious. “I know many people want to think I left because I was afraid or startled, but I left to avoid disturbing the scene and because it was obvious to me that the General was dead. I needed to alert the staff to the situation and get the authorities to the club as soon as possible.”
“After seeing a man hanging from the rafters, you didn’t feel any desire to attempt to cut him down while yelling for help?” I asked.
The Major narrowed his eyes. “What many people who have never been faced with the realities of life and death don’t understand is that human nature is animalistic. When under duress, our bodies are not operating on a moral code. When I saw General Hughes puffy-faced and hanging from the ceiling, I was not thinking about him or his wellbeing, I was thinking about my own safety. Many would say that is cruel, but anyone who says that has never been in a similar situation. My desire was to get away from whatever threat may have caused the General to end up dead, and I would suggest anyone else in a similar situation do the same thing. Run away from the danger and stay away.” He paused for a moment, maintaining steady eye contact until I blinked and looked away. Then, he leaned back in his chair and laughed. “It is why you will never find me in another library.”
Did Major McKinley know who I was? Everyone else I’d encountered in Simla had recognized my name, and he did not seem like someone who was out of touch with local events. So, did he know I had been in a life or death situation less than a year before? Did he really think it necessary to explain to me how the body responded to stress?
Or, was this a warning?
Run away from danger and stay away.
Major McKinley was the only Scottish man I’d met in Simla. Did that make him more or less suspicious? A trained assassin would want to blend in. He wouldn’t disguise himself as a loud Scottish Major. Or would he?
My mind was spinning with possibilities I hadn’t even been considering moments before, and I felt entirely out of my depth. Thankfully, or perhaps not so—I was quite frazzled in the moment—Lieutenant Collins returned.
“The carrot debacle has been handled.” He tossed his cloth napkin over his lap and sighed. “They are making some right now. Apparently, they aren’t on the menu, but with a little persuasion, they agreed to prepare some special.”
“You didn’t have to go to such trouble,” I said, papering on a thin smile.
Lieutenant Collins smiled at me and patted my hand with his. “When are you going to realize you are no trouble to me, Rose?”
Major McKinley caught my eye, one of his fiery eyebrows raised in suspicion, letting me know he didn’t have the same warm opinion of me as the Lieutenant. To him, I looked like trouble.
Major McKinley left before we finished our meal and Lieutenant Collins had a meeting right after lunch, so I would finally be alone inside the club. However, it was all I could do to force the Lieutenant to leave and allow me to find my own way home.
“I have been exploring town all morning,” I insisted, pushing him towards the doors that led to the entrance hall. “I am perfectly capable of escorting myself around.”
He looked towards the doors and back to me, unsure. “I feel horrible deserting you this way.”
“You can’t desert me if we didn’t have any plans to begin with. This lunch was just a happy circumstance, remember?”
Had he not been in serious danger of being late, I wasn’t sure I would have ever gotten rid of him. But finally, he pressed a quick kiss to my cheek, thanked me for my company, and flew through the doors without looking back. I hesitated in the entrance hall for a moment, making sure no one was paying any serious attention to me, and then turned and walked down the hallway marked “members only.”
Wood paneling came halfway up the walls, the top half covered in a dark blue and yellow floral pattern that, when looked at quickly, resembled a thousand sets of eyes watching me. The illusion could have been because I was trespassing, but regardless, I felt like I was being spied upon.
A rectangular plaque stuck out above a set of double doors with the word ‘Library’ printed on it in gold. In the retelling of General Hughes’ death, I’d imagined the library to be a central room in the club with several doors going in and out to other spaces, but in reality, it was quite secluded. Not the “public space” Miss Dayes had made it out to be. In fact, aside from faint voices coming underneath a door near the mouth of the hallway, I had not seen or heard another human since I’d left the entrance hall.
I stood in front of the solid wooden doors, wondering whether I should knock or walk right in. The latter option seemed the most authoritative, but it also lent itself to the possibility that I would storm in on a private meeting or, heaven forbid the same situation occur twice, a man preparing to commit suicide. Knocking, however, seemed meek, and I didn’t want anyone to doubt my presence here more than necessary. So, steeling myself with a few deep breaths, I pushed the doors open and walked in as though I knew exactly where I was going.
Several paces in, I realized the room was empty. Shelves lined the walls and stretched up to the high ceilings, and a number of seating areas were arranged throughout the room—one in the center with a leather couch and sofas, one in the far corner with a wooden table and four wooden chairs, and then another just to the right of the door with three plush armchairs each with their own reading lamp. Every seat was empty. I closed the doors behind me and moved in slowly.
I half-expected a portion of the room to be roped off to stop people from walking through the location where, less than a week ago, a man had died, but there was nothing. The room seemed quiet, peaceful. Then, I looked up slowly, almost reluctantly, not wanting to look at the rafter where Thomas Hughes had hung, but I had to.
It was a thick wooden beam that ran the entire length of the room. It looked to be quite wide, plenty sturdy enough to hold the weight of a grown man, even one as large as Major McKinley. The amount of space between the beam and the arched ceiling also left plenty of room for a rope to be thrown from the floor, looped over the beam, and fall down on the other side. In terms of death by hanging, the library in the White Tiger Club almost seemed to be made for it. So, that much of the story checked out.
I walked the edges of the room, glancing up at the rafter every few steps, trying to discover what there was to see. What did Elizabeth Hughes know that led her to believe her father hadn’t committed suicide? Was it simply that she didn’t believe him capable or was there something else? I desperately wished I could talk with her. Our conversation had been frustratingly brief, and I highly suspected it would never happen again. Whether her paranoia was justified or not, it would keep her quiet.
After circling the room twice, I finally moved to the leather couch in the center of the room and sat down, letting myself sink into the cushion. Was I paranoid? The fact that I was aski
ng the question made me believe I wasn’t, but I couldn’t be certain. Had the man in that prison cell with the Buddhist prayer beads been the same man I’d seen throwing the bomb in the marketplace? Was I looking for trouble where there wasn’t any, purely because I could not accept that the Beckinghams had been killed in a random attack? Was Thomas Hughes simply a disturbed man who had sought relief in the only way he knew how? Because truthfully, I couldn’t understand how the two cases could be connected. It had been observed before that Elizabeth and I were in similar situations after losing our family members in such public ways, but was there more to it than that? Had our family members been taken by the same hand or was I looking for connections where there were none to be found?
With no evidence and nothing solidly tying the case of the Beckinghams to Thomas Hughes, I was beginning to doubt my theory. In fact, I was beginning to doubt myself. For the first time since leaving him in Tangier, I wished Achilles Prideaux were with me. He had the uncanny ability to shed light on situations, allowing me to see things more clearly, and I felt like I was sitting in the dark. I needed light desperately.
I studied the rafter again, hoping to see a secret note or symbol scrolled on the underside of the wood, but there was nothing. So, I sighed and moved to stand up. As I did, the heel of my shoe caught something just under the lip of the sofa, and I heard a metallic clatter across the hardwood floor.
The back of the sofa was open to the rest of the room, so I walked around the piece of furniture and knelt down behind it, holding the back of my skirt against my legs. Along with a great deal of dust, I noticed a palm-sized silver tool underneath the sofa. Careful to avoid dusting the floor with the sleeve of my cardigan, I reached out blindly until I felt the cool metal in my hand. When I stood up, I held it to the light and recognized it immediately as a cigar cutter, a small tool I’d seen Mr. Beckingham use for its intended purpose and also fiddle with often when he and Mrs. Beckingham were having a disagreement.
Assuming a man in the club had simply dropped the cutter, I began walking around the couch to set it on the glass-topped coffee table. But as I went to set it down, my thumb brushed across the back, and I noticed indentations in the metal. Major Gordon McKinley.
Bits of our lunch conversation came back to me, things that had seemed so unimportant, I’d hardly paid any attention. Now, I went back through every word, combing them for clues.
Major McKinley had asked to borrow Lieutenant Collins’ cigar cutter.
“I misplaced mine a week or two ago and haven’t been bothered enough to buy a new one yet. I keep assuming it will turn up eventually.”
That alone meant nothing. The Major had admitted he’d misplaced his cigar cutter, and I’d found it, thus proving his story. The problem was that he’d misplaced it at least one week ago, by his own admission, which was prior to General Hughes’ death. How could that be possible if he had never been in the library before the day he found the General’s body hanging from the ceiling?
“I had never even been in the library before that day, so it is a complete coincidence that I’m the person who found General Hughes at all. I opened the door to see what the room was used for and saw a man suspended in mid-air.”
Why would the Major lie about something as trivial as having been in the library? Was it a simple exaggeration in the name of story-telling? An understandable desire to distance himself from the trauma of the day he’d found the body? Or, had he lied in an attempt to disguise the truth that he had killed the General?
The door to the library opened, and I startled, dropping the cigar cutter and sending it sliding across the floor once again. It only stopped when it collided with the feet of a young Indian girl carrying a broom and dust pan. She looked just as shocked to see me as I’d been to see her.
“I am sorry. I did not know anyone was in here,” she said in perfect English, grabbing the cigar cutter and walking it over to me, her face turned towards the floor.
“That’s all right. Actually, you can keep it,” I said, gesturing to the cigar cutter in her hand. “It doesn’t belong to me. I just found it beneath the sofa. I think it is the property of Major McKinley.”
Her eyes widened at his name, confirming that the Major had either terrorized her the same way he had the server over lunch, or his rude reputation had preceded him.
“Do you mind returning it to him?” I asked.
The girl pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head.
“If it is a problem, I’m happy to do it myself,” I said, holding out my hand. “I know he can be an intimidating man.”
She glanced around the room to confirm we were alone, and then her shoulders sagged, her relief palpable. “He can be, yes.”
I smiled and took the item from her. She appeared noticeably happier to be rid of the task. “Has Major McKinley belonged to the club for a long time?”
She shook her head. “He is a new member. Just within the last year.”
Within the last year. When the bombing and the “suicide” of General Hughes had occurred. It could easily be a coincidence, but I filed the information away in my head for later.
“And does he frequent the library often?” The question was specific, and I didn’t want her to become suspicious. “It is just that I cannot imagine him opening a book. I daresay I’d pay someone for the privilege of seeing him reading.”
Her eyes widened from the scandal of my words, but I noticed her trying not to smile. “I’ve never seen him in the library before, but then, I do my best to avoid him. The staff use codes to alert one another where he is in the club.”
“That is understandable,” I said with a smile. Then, I leaned in, lowering my voice. “I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable, but I wonder if you were working here the day General Thomas Hughes was found.”
Her eyes flicked towards the rafters of their own volition and she swallowed. “I was.”
“Did you see anything unusual?”
The girl bit her lower lip and looked up at me from beneath long lashes, her brown eyes wide and nervous. She couldn’t have been much older than seventeen. Just a child.
“I would never say a word,” I said, holding my finger to my lips.
She mulled it over for another few seconds and then leaned in quickly. “I was leaving the smoke room, which is next door to the library, only ten minutes before the body was found, and I saw a man walking down the hallway.”
“Is that unusual?” I asked, failing to see the importance of this detail.
She sighed, her shoulders sagging. “I was asked whether I had seen anything unusual that day since I had been working in the area, and I told everyone I had not because I did not think I could convey the importance of what I had seen.”
“I wasn’t trying to discredit your observation. Please, continue. Tell me what you saw.”
The girl fidgeted with the broom, running her fingers nervously up and down the handle. “I did not see which room he came out of, but the feeling I had when he turned around and looked at me. It felt like looking into the eyes of the devil.”
“The devil?” I asked.
She nodded and let her head fall forward. “I did not want to say anything and get anyone in trouble, especially since the death was later ruled a suicide, but the man I saw had done something evil, Miss Beckingham.”
I startled. “How do you know my name?”
Shock and then embarrassment crossed her face, pinking the bridge of her smooth nose. “I’m sorry.”
I laughed. “Do not apologize. I’m only curious how you have come to know my name before I am aware of yours?”
“My name is Rashi,” she said, bowing her head forward. “My best friend is a servant girl in the Hutchins’ home, and she told me you were staying there.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Rashi. I hope your friend had nice things to say.” Internally, I cringed. Did servants speak of me the way they did Major McKinley? Was I feared or hated for uncivil behavior?
“Oh
, yes,” she said, almost lunging forward to correct me. “Jalini says you are incredibly kind and clean up after yourself, which is better than other wealthy women.”
The girl clamped a hand over her mouth, and I could tell by the glassiness in her eyes that she was seconds away from crying, fearing she had said too much. Our interaction was taking years off of her life, so for her own sake, I decided to cut it short.
“I’m glad Jalini thinks so,” I said, smiling and reaching out to pat her arm. “I will be sure to tell her I met you when I see her next.”
She shook her head. “I almost wish you would not. I made a fool of myself, I am sure.”
“Certainly not. Thank you for enduring my questions.”
I moved around Rashi and towards the doors but was stopped by the feeling of her hand on my arm. “Miss Beckingham?”
“Yes?” I turned back to her, a friendly smile on my face, one that fell as soon as I saw the fear in the girl’s eyes. “What is it, Rashi?”
“The man I saw that day, he may not have had anything to do with General Hughes, but his intentions are dark,” she said, her voice so unnaturally low it sent shivers down my spine. “I know a demon when I see him, and he was one. A ghoul walking among us. Please be careful, Miss.”
Then, she removed her hand from my shoulder, turned around, and began sweeping the floors.
10
Mrs. Hutchins was lying down for an afternoon nap when I returned to the bungalow, and Mr. Hutchins was closed away in his study. I could not understand why either of them had bothered to leave Bombay. They rarely left the house, and aside from the guests they’d had over for lunch the first full day after our arrival, I hadn’t seen them welcome any visitors or leave for a single event since we’d arrived. Somehow, I’d found myself staying with two of the least social people in all of Simla, and as much as I didn’t want to talk to the Hutchins more than necessary, it made for a rather boring day. So, I went for a walk around the grounds.