by Caro Peacock
Tom was walking down the path now, with a determined air.
‘So you had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of McPherson’s assistant?’ I said.
‘Do you know, you’re the first person in all this who’s actually asked me that outright. The answer’s no. I did not.’
The Indian lad showed Tom into the room.
‘I hope you’ll excuse us, sir,’ he said to Griffiths. ‘The next stage for town leaves in ten minutes and there’s a long wait if we miss it.’
‘Then you must go, with my thanks for allowing me to meet your sister. Miss Lane and I have had a most interesting conversation. You must bring her to see me again very soon.’
There were other passengers in the stage back, so Tom had no chance to ask the question that was obviously burning in his mind: had Mr Griffiths managed to convince me? I avoided his eye and mostly looked out of the window, wondering how much to tell him. Lying to Tom was clearly impossible, but Mr Griffiths had decided not to burden Tom with more speculation about Burton’s death and that seemed a wise course. When we got down at St Paul’s, we walked for a while, looking for a cab.
‘So what did you make of him?’ Tom said.
‘An honest and interesting man.’
He beamed.
‘I’m glad you thought so. What did you talk about?’
‘Life in India.’ And death rather more, but no need to say that.
‘So has he convinced you?’
‘I’m not sure he was trying to convince me.’
‘That’s Griffiths’s way. He doesn’t push you to a conclusion, just gives you some gentle guidance.’
‘And we talked about his pamphlet.’
Tom’s face clouded.
‘You disagree with him?’ I asked.
‘No. I agree with him entirely. Only it’s going to make a lot of trouble.’
‘I think that’s what he wants.’
A cab came. When we got down in Adam’s Mews, Tom escorted me to the foot of my staircase but wouldn’t come up.
‘I’m supposed to be back at East India House. They get worried if I’m out of their sight for long. They haven’t told me not to talk to Griffiths, but they’d like to.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘They’re all worrying about what I’m going to say to this confounded committee. They know how I hate giving evidence against Griffiths.’
As he turned to go, I said: ‘Do you think Mr Griffiths meant it, about wanting to see me again?’
‘If he says it, he means it.’
‘So we’ll be going again?’
‘If this committee business allows, yes.’
I was surprised how eager I was to see Mr Griffiths again. I’d liked him, but it was more than that. He’d piqued my professional curiosity with a puzzle I couldn’t see how to solve and I knew I couldn’t let it rest.
FIVE
For the next ten days or so, Tom and I existed in a state of more or less amicable truce. Once, he escaped from his duties at East India House to come riding in the park with Amos and me. We raced along Rotten Row and although Rancie and I easily beat him on his hireling hunter, we ended our race breathless and laughing, much as in the old days. But I couldn’t help noticing his suspicious looks when gentlemen recognized me and raised their hats, though he said nothing. At least he had the sense to treat Amos as a friend. It might be ‘Thank you, Legge’ and ‘Yes, Mr Lane’ in the stable yard, but out in the park they rode side by side and talked, mostly about India. Amos was endlessly curious about it, and not only the horseflesh. He couldn’t have enough of the sights and customs of the country.
Tom had seen the Gurkhas from the hills with their curved knives, a line of a hundred jewelled elephants in procession, the dervishes whirling. Once, when they thought I couldn’t hear, he told Amos about the religious processions called carkh puja with men dancing with iron spikes stuck through their tongues or knives in their arms and legs, to win favour of the gods.
‘Would you believe that one of them had made a hole in his arm with a dagger and threaded a live snake through it? But when his friends drew out the snake and bound up his arm, the wound hardly bled at all, no more than from a cut in your finger.’
And then again: ‘. . . the most beautiful women in the world. They wear a light silk garment called a sari, and have a way of drawing it across their faces, just so, with their eyes looking out at you over the top. And such eyes . . .’
But mostly he talked to Amos about the beauty of the country, the wonder of riding out in the cool of the morning into a world that seemed new-made, the variety and beauty of the people, the Bombay sunrises. I knew that was meant for me as well and, just as Tom hoped, it did make me want to see them for myself, only not on his terms. Sometimes, too, it made me think of another traveller in a distant country. When Robert set out on his travels, he’d written to me every week. We’d come close to each other through a dangerous time and he’d wanted me to marry him. I thought we should wait, not sure that he knew his own mind, and he’d gone abroad on a journey that would keep him away all year. He should be near Athens by now. I hadn’t heard from him for two months.
Tom came to tea in the parlour with Mrs Martley and me several times. I’d taken the trouble to buy the finest China tea and served it without milk. He said it was almost as good as his khitmutgar made in camp over a fire of dried horse dung when they were travelling. I took that for a compliment. As we talked and drank, and exchanged some childhood memories, the strain that had been obvious on his face when he arrived would begin to drain away. Gradually he relaxed enough to talk about what was worrying him. I suppose he had to talk to somebody, and the men from the Company who’d been brought over to give evidence to the committee were Calcutta men. They were senior to him, older – and enemies.
‘You have to have been out there to understand it, Libby, but there’s a coarseness about the Calcutta men. It’s the capital of the country, where the Governor-General lives, and all very grand; palaces on every corner and some of the streets you’d think you were in Bath. And it’s the centre of our trade to the east, with Burma and China, so it’s where the money men are. The Calcutta men pretty well look down on us in Bombay.’
I said I could see that Mr Griffiths wouldn’t fit in there. It sparked an outburst from Tom.
‘They hate him, Libby. Only now, I’m seeing how much they hate him. Back in India, it was more like contempt: “Mad Griffiths” or “Old Griffiths has gone completely native”. The Calcutta men didn’t want to be dragged back to give evidence to this committee, but now they’re here, they’re using it as a chance to discredit him.’
‘Just as he’s hoping to use it to make the case against compensating them for their opium.’
‘That’s partly why they want to destroy him. Though it’s more personal than that. And I have to listen to them dripping their poison every day.’
‘Couldn’t you move out of Company lodgings? Come and stay here, if you like.’
‘Too far away from the City. I’m still a servant of the Company. In theory, they’ve found me some temporary work in the accounts section in East India House, but it’s so that the Calcutta faction have me under their eye. And their influence – they think.’
‘Influence?’
‘Going over and over my evidence to this confounded committee. Suggesting things about Griffiths’s behaviour that might have slipped my memory and that I might care to include. Sheer bunkum.’
‘But once you get in front of the committee, they can’t influence what you say.’
‘Of course not, and they shan’t. I shall say exactly what I saw and heard, nothing else. But even that’s bad enough.’
No denying it. What with the comments made about McPherson and the discovery of the hawk jewel, my poor brother was one of the main witnesses for the prosecution.
‘But it’s not like a court case,’ I said, clutching at straws.
‘No, it’s worse. In a court case, there are r
ules. The judge won’t allow hearsay evidence, for instance. A parliamentary committee can do what it damned well likes – sorry, Mrs Martley – just what it likes.’
‘I’ve been thinking about your finding that hawk on his desk,’ I said.
‘I wish to goodness I’d thrown it straight in the waste-paper basket.’
‘Did Mr Griffiths often ask you to fetch things from his desk.’
‘Almost never – that’s the ill luck of it.’
‘Why not? I should think an assistant would be always fetching papers.’
Tom laughed, though not cheerfully.
‘We discovered early on that it was a waste of time to ask me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of what we called his poppadom filing system.’
He saw my puzzled look and explained.
‘Poppadoms are a sort of flat bread the natives make, crisp and thin as parchment. They serve them in stacks, twenty or so at a time. That’s how Griffiths kept his papers, in a lot of different stacks, all the papers on top of each other. He could plunge his hand in at any time and draw out just what he wanted, but nobody else could find anything.’
‘And yet he sent you to find a report?’
‘It surprised me at the time, but he said it was near the top of a pile, and it was.’
‘Did everybody know about his way of keeping papers?’
‘Yes. It was part of his eccentricity.’
Something didn’t quite fit here. For the moment I put it away in my mental stack of poppadoms. There was something else I wanted to discuss.
‘Mr Griffiths says you all have a lot of servants in India.’
‘There’s no avoiding it, and it would be inhumane even if you could. The few rupees we pay them are the difference between starving and not starving.’
‘How many do you employ?’
He had to think about it.
‘I share a bungalow with another man. There’s the gardener, and two boys, or it might be three. A cook and his boy. Three or four cleaners, plus one who empties the chamber pots but isn’t allowed to do anything else. The laundry woman we share with the bungalow next door, the punkah wallah and his assistant . . .’
‘The what?’
‘The man who pulls the rope that works the fan. You can’t do without a punkah in that heat. Then there’s the syce for our horses, another couple of boys, the bearer who runs messages . . .’
He stopped to think.
‘That’s already seven and a quarter servants for your share,’ I said.
Tom laughed, entering into the game.
‘Oh, that’s only at home. When we ride out, there’s the boy to hold the horse and a bearer to carry our guns or our work papers. In the office, half shares in another punkah wallah and quarter shares in the boy who brings round the tea. Of course, when we ride out on an inspection tour, that’s another lot of bearers to set up camp, the mahout for the elephants and their boys and an escort of native soldiers.’
‘It sounds as if you’re never alone,’ I said.
‘You’re not. That’s one of the first things you have to get used to about India. But you will get used to it, I promise you.’
He’d noticed I was looking thoughtful, but mistaken the reason. Just as well.
‘So there’s always a lot of gossip among the servants. What was the word Mr Griffiths used?’
‘Gup. Yes, and not just the servants. You wouldn’t believe how the Europeans gossip, men as well as women. Gupgup all the time, even worse than London. It comes from not having enough to do.’
And, dear gods, he wanted to drag me into that world. I pressed on.
‘So the whole of Bombay knew about this business of the hawk on Mr Griffiths’s desk?’
‘Pretty well, yes.’
‘And they were saying that Mr Griffiths had got some of his Indian friends to kill Burton and steal the jewels?’
He shifted uneasily in his chair. The relaxed mood was draining away fast, but I needed to know.
‘Some of them, yes. I mean, not actually saying so in terms, but . . .’
‘And nobody asked Mr Griffiths outright?’
‘I don’t suppose so. You can’t just sit down with a man and ask him if he’s killed somebody.’
‘I did.’
‘What!’ Tom nearly fell off his chair.
‘To be precise, I asked him if he had anything whatsoever to do with the death of McPherson’s assistant. He said he didn’t.’
Tom had gone red in the face.
‘You were talking about all this to Griffiths?’
‘Yes.’
‘Liberty, how could you? What must he have thought?’
‘Probably that I was taking a decent interest in something that affects him and you very much.’
I didn’t tell Tom that it was Mr Griffiths who’d brought up the subject. He wasn’t listening in any case.
‘I’d have thought I could have trusted you to behave with normal politeness. I must go to him at once and apologize. As for you—’
‘He wasn’t in the least offended. I can’t believe that everybody was accusing him behind his back but nobody thought to ask him. Not even you.’
‘Least of all me. Are you seriously suggesting that I should ask a man old enough to be my father, who also happens to be my friend, if he’s a murderer?’
‘Why not? You could have asked him at the same time why he sent you to find that hawk on his desk.’
At that point, my brother had a simple choice. He could explode through sheer indignation or he could start using his brain. It was a relief, on the whole, when he decided against explosion. Instead, he scowled at me and told me to stop talking nonsense.
‘Unless India’s addled your brain completely, it must have occurred to you,’ I said. ‘Mr Griffiths seldom sends you to find anything on a notoriously disorderly desk, but that day he does and you put your hand on the hawk almost at once. Just as he knew you would.’
‘But anybody could have put it there.’
‘That’s true. But if somebody besides Griffiths himself put it there, he still knew it was there.’
‘In that case, why leave me to find it?’
‘Because he wanted a trustworthy witness.’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know.’
Tom repeated, routinely, that I was talking nonsense but with less conviction in his voice.
‘There’s another thing,’ I said. ‘Both you and Mr Griffiths have told me you can’t go anywhere or do anything in India without servants. But that morning, McPherson rode out to meet Burton alone. Does that mean really alone, or with only half a dozen or so servants?’
This time his reply was prompt. ‘Really alone. People were commenting on that.’
‘And what did they say?’
‘Even the man’s enemies admit he’s got good nerves. There were suggestions that the jewels Burton was bringing were more valuable than McPherson had let on and he didn’t want a lot of gossip about them.’
‘Did anybody see the jewels that hadn’t been stolen, the ones in the wallet on Burton’s body?’
‘I suppose some people did. I don’t know.’
‘Since McPherson found the body, I suppose he must have taken the jewels off Burton’s body himself.’
‘I suppose so. What are you driving at?’
‘Don’t you think it’s odd that the robbers didn’t strip Burton’s body and find the rest of the jewels?’
‘They were disturbed, I suppose.’
‘But I thought most of Burton’s servants had run away. Those must have been very timid robbers.’
Tom ran a hand through his hair.
‘I just don’t see where this is heading.’
The truth was, I didn’t either. It had all happened four and a half thousand miles away, mostly to people I’d never met. What was the use of being nagged by questions, and nagging my brother? Still, I risked one more.
‘What happened to the hawk af
ter you and Griffiths took it to the Governor?’
‘I suppose he gave it back to McPherson. Now stop this, Liberty. I don’t want to hear any more about it. And if I do take you to see Griffiths again, I expect you to promise that you won’t talk about it to him.’
When I turned back from seeing Tom on his way, Tabby was waiting for me in the yard. I hadn’t introduced her to him, thinking he had enough on his mind.
‘I might be going away for a bit,’ she said.
There was a truculent look about her.
‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Nah. Just fancy it.’
It was no use cross-questioning her, but my heart sank. The fact was, Tabby and I had a business disagreement. Life as an investigator was not all diplomatic parties. In quiet times, tracing the pet animals that so often went missing around the Park was one of our staples. Tabby, with her gang of urchins from her days of surviving on the streets, had always been an accomplished tracker of dogs, parrots and monkeys. As she picked up an increasingly polished way with clients, I’d turned more of that side of the business over to her and even had cards printed, ‘Lost Animals Found’, with our Abel Yard address, so that she could deliver them to the big houses. I’d not entirely given up hope of converting her to the advantages of being able to read and write.
Then it had come to my attention that Tabby and her gang did not always wait for the animals to go missing of their own accord. The urchins had taken to kidnapping them, then sharing the proceeds of returning them, as finders, to their grateful owners. When I’d told her it must stop, she’d been annoyed.
‘We’ve never hurt none of them, not a hair nor a whisker.’
‘I should hope not. But that’s beside the point. It’s dishonest.’
‘People are happier when they get them back than if they’d never lost them in the first place.’
‘That’s also beside—’
‘And it’s only the rich ones we try it on. What they give us is only small change to them.’
I didn’t say that was beside the point too, because it wasn’t entirely. Working with me, Tabby had seen the way some rich people lived and been unimpressed. I couldn’t blame her. How could I preach to a girl who’d had to fight for halfpennies in gutters that she should be content with her station in life?