The mind reeled with possibilities, I decided. The most logical explanation was that she had been the old man’s mistress, the funds used to keep her. With a bride of his own, Freddie would likely have had no interest in his grandfather’s leman, but perhaps Harry had no such scruples. Had he offered her a similar arrangement and been scorned? Or had the truth been more sordid still? Had the old man inflicted himself upon the girl and given payment to make the arrangement more orthodox? And if that were true, had Harry offered money as a means of assuaging his guilt that his grandfather had so blatantly used a defenceless young woman?
I rose and tidied the desk, checking twice more to make certain I left everything as I had found it. I let myself out of the office, using the lockpicks to erase any trace I had been there, and made my way to my room and my notebook. I had much to record.
To my relief, Brisbane and Plum seemed to have called a truce of sorts, and they both appeared at luncheon, making a show of elaborate politeness that stank of insincerity. No one but me seemed to take note of it, for the rest of the company was sunk deep into preoccupation, and even I gave off thinking about it after a moment. I was far too interested in the question of Miss Thorne, and how I might discover the precise nature of her relationship to the Cavendish family. For the sake of simplicity, it would have been far easier if I could have just quizzed Miss Cavendish over the prawn toasts, but it would hardly have been polite. Children seldom like to be reminded of their father’s flaws, I reminded myself. I should have to seek answers elsewhere, and as I applied myself to a rather delicious gooseberry fool, I knew exactly where to go.
I had made up my mind to call upon the Pennyfeathers, hoping for enlightenment on the subject of Miss Thorne. But no sooner had I passed the crossroads—mercifully empty of leprous old women—than I saw a figure approaching. It was Dr. Llewellyn, looking disheveled in the warmth of the afternoon sun. His neckcloth was askew and his coat creased as if he had slept in it, and as he drew near I caught the distinct smell of spirits upon him.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Llewellyn,” I said politely.
He screwed up his eyes against the sun, his expression bewildered.
“It is Lady Julia Brisbane. We met yesterday at the pooja. I am a guest of the Cavendishes,” I supplied.
After a long moment, his expression cleared, but it did nothing to improve his appearance. His eyes were pinkly moist and he had not shaved, and I tried to cover my distaste.
“Lady Julia,” he echoed in his musical Welsh lilt.
I hesitated, then offered him my arm. “You seem a trifle unwell, doctor. Perhaps the warmth of the afternoon has taken you by surprise. May I walk with you as far as your home?”
He swayed a moment upon his feet, then took my arm, biddable as a lamb. “This way,” he motioned, leading me back toward the crossroads. We ventured down the road toward Pine Cottage. A wisp of smoke escaped the chimney of the little house, but no one emerged, although I thought I saw the drawing room curtain twitch as we went past. The window to Emma’s room was shuttered fast, and I hoped she was resting.
We walked some little way past the cottage in silence. From time to time I glanced at the doctor to find his eyes closed as he gave himself up to being led home. After several minutes’ walk, we came to a pleasant little villa, or what might have been a pleasant villa were it not for the garden. It was overgrown with rank weeds, and the pond, which must once have been a pretty feature, was thick with slime. The doctor seemed not to notice the odours, but only politeness prevented me from holding a handkerchief to my nose as we ventured past. The door to the villa swung open and unsecured upon its hinges, rather reckless, I thought, but then it occurred to me that crime was unlikely given the remote and intimate community of the valley.
Aside from murder, I corrected. But pushing aside all thoughts of Freddie Cavendish, I guided the doctor in to a peaceful blue sitting room where he collapsed onto a sofa, his hands covering his face.
There seemed to be no servants about, so I undertook to attend him myself. The kitchen was easy enough to find, but the tins of tea held the merest crumbs and there was no sugar to be found. I carefully collected the tea sweepings from the various tins and boiled the whole mess, then poured it into a stout cup and stirred in a hefty measure of the dusty spices I had found languishing upon the kitchen shelf.
I found a tray to carry in the tea, and was rather surprised to find him still awake. I had expected him to slink into unconsciousness as soon as he landed upon the sofa, but he was staring at the ceiling. No doubt counting cobwebs, I thought with a shudder of distaste.
“I have made tea,” I announced, thrusting the cup into his hands.
He looked startled, but he must have been reared to exercise the manners of a gentleman, for he immediately thrust himself into a sitting posture and began to sip. At the first swallow he heaved over, coughing until tears streamed from his eyes. He wiped at them, then smiled.
“It is very good.”
“It is the first time I have ever made it myself,” I confessed. “Is it the servants’ day off?”
He shook his head, causing the light to gleam upon his head. It was lovely hair, thick and tawny as a lion’s, and his broad, rather flat nose only enhanced the resemblance.
“They’ve all left me now. Cannot blame the poor devils. They’ve had no wages for six months.”
“Dear me,” I murmured. “Well, I suppose it must be difficult to find help here.”
“No. They are eager enough to leave the picking and come to work as house servants,” he told me. “It’s me they won’t work for. They say I’m cursed.”
“Cursed? Whatever for?”
He gave me a harsh laugh. “Because the devil himself has better luck than I. Whatever can go wrong for a man has gone wrong for me in this place. Everything I had, everything I was, is gone now. I am a ghost.”
The words were melodramatic, but spoken in such a bleak tone of abject misery that I felt chilled to the bone.
“Surely it is not so bad as all that,” I said gently.
“Is it not? In the space of a year, I have lost everything,” he repeated. “I have lost my wife, my practice, and my dignity, and I do not know which has cost me more. It is only a matter of time before the Cavendishes give me the boot,” he finished miserably.
“The Cavendishes? Are they your landlords?”
“More than. I am employed by the estate to look after the workers. Proper medical care is one of the ways planters look out for their pickers. Miss Cavendish posted an advertisement in the newspaper when she was in England. It was Susannah found it,” he said, breaking off with a faraway look.
“Susannah was your wife?” I again adopted a soft, soothing tone to encourage his confidences without his hardly being aware of my presence.
“Yes.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, tears stood in the soft brown eyes. “She had always wanted to do real missionary work. She thought it would be an adventure to come here. I would run the infirmary and she would sew for the poor and teach letters and speak to them about God.”
He gave a short laugh. “Poor angel. They never wanted to hear. She would make the children presents of sweetmeats to listen to Bible stories, but they would simply take the candy and run away, and she never learned to preach to them first and make them wait for the sweeties.” He fixed his gaze upon me. “Folk will say she was a busybody, but you mustn’t believe it. There was no harm in her. She simply wanted to help and her greatest sin was earnestness. She was a good woman,” he insisted.
“I am sure she was,” I murmured.
His gaze drifted again. “She worried about my habit of drink. I lied before,” he admitted. “I always did like a drop or two at the end of a day. But I was never a drunkard. I always collected myself the next morning and did what I had to,” he said firmly. A little too firmly, I thought. It would not have surprised me to find that some laxity in his professional demeanour had been behind his motivation to leav
e England.
He continued on. “I was a fair doctor in England, some even said I was gifted. But here,” he said with a child’s air of bewilderment, “it was so different. I began to make a bad job of it. I found diseases difficult to diagnose and everything turns septic so quickly.”
My thoughts flew to Freddie Cavendish and his septic snakebite, but this was not the time to intrude with my questions. I simply sat and sipped manfully at the vile concoction I had brewed.
“And the more I failed, the more I drank,” he told me. “My evening dram became a bit of something in my tea, and then a glass taken with luncheon. Susannah and I fought, bitterly. We fought the day she died. She left the house, she was that upset. And I drank to forget that we fought because I drank,” he said with a bitter laugh. The mirthless sound died upon a smothered sob. “They carried her home, torn and bleeding, and I was too far gone to do anything for her.”
I put an impulsive hand to his. He started as if my touch scorched him, but he made no move to withdraw it. “Was there anything that could have been done?”
He shook his head. “No. I went to see her when I was sober. I owed her that much, don’t you think? I went and forced myself to look at her and I realised it was a miracle she had lived a minute beyond the attack at all.”
“You must not reproach yourself,” I instructed. “There was nothing to be done.”
“I might have eased her out of the world,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper, as if even in that restricted company he could scarcely say the words aloud.
“You mean a merciful death?”
“I might have saved her suffering.”
“And increased your own,” I countered. “The guilt you bear now would be nothing compared to that you would carry if you had actually dispatched her.”
He rallied a little at this and sipped again at his tea. This time he did not choke, but merely coughed a little, and I noticed the streaming of his eyes had nearly abated. He was lost in memory for a moment, and I do not think the trip was a pleasant one. But he recalled himself and looked earnestly at me. “You must have a care when you go about on your own. The tiger that killed her still roams these hills. He has tasted blood once. He will kill again.” His voice rose, as if some tightly wound grasp upon his nerve was coming undone.
I patted my pocket. “I am prepared, I promise you.” I hastened to change the subject. “Perhaps you ought to think about leaving this place,” I suggested. “You seem most unhappy. A change of scene—”
“A change of scene!” He burst out laughing, a rich and mirthful sound that must have been engaging once. At last he sobered again, and I noticed fresh tears stood in his eyes.
“No, I will stay here and live out my life, what remains of it, as a penance for my sins.”
Sins! There was the word again, I mused, although Dr. Llewellyn seemed rather further from death than Emma Phipps. Curious that they should both be contemplating eternity.
“But if there are so many reminders of your previous life, perhaps to start anew, where no one knows you would be a good thing.”
A mantle of hopelessness seemed to settle over him. “You do not understand,” he said softly, gazing into the depths of his tea. He lifted his eyes, and there was world of anguish there, so complete and so sharp it took my breath from me.
“Wherever I go, my mistakes will follow me. My follies, my failures, they are my constant companions.”
He paused and I said nothing for a long moment. I had thought to question him about valley gossip, but there was such tremendous pain in the man, I had not the heart to press him. I felt only a true sympathy for this shattered soul, and I wondered if he could ever be mended. I sensed no evil in him, no viciousness, only weakness and self-loathing and pity without measure.
“Surely there is somewhere,” I persisted. “Somewhere you can go and forget all that has happened here.”
His face suffused with hope for a moment, but it was a feeble flame that flickered and died almost at once. “No, I can never forget. Wherever I go, whatever becomes of me, I cannot forget that I killed Freddie Cavendish.”
The Ninth Chapter
You who smile so gently, softly whisper; my heart will hear it, not my ears.
—The Gardener
Rabindranath Tagore
At this dramatic pronouncement, he burst into tears and let his cup fall to the floor, and I continued to hold his hand, thinking hard. It was not the first time I had held hands with a murderer and likely would not be the last.
He sobbed for a long while and I waited for him to finish, contemplating my situation. It did not seem so very dangerous, so I made no attempt to escape, but merely passed the time in counting tiles upon the fireplace.
When at last he had concluded his weeping, he mopped his face with a rather soiled and disreputable-looking handkerchief. “I haven’t said it aloud before,” he said by way of apology. “It is a dreadful thing.”
“Dreadful indeed,” I agreed with him. “Tell me, did you intend to kill him?”
A look of purest horror contorted his features. “No! Freddie was a friend, a good one. I never had the first thought of harming him. The case was an easy one. Percival’s bite had not penetrated deeply. The only real danger was infection. I thought it best if he stayed quiet and rested in his room. Jane and I insisted. Truth be told, Freddie was a bit lazy,” he added with a faint smile. “We did not have to work overhard to persuade him. He had stacks of books and letters from England, and everyone in the valley came to visit him at some point or other.”
“Then what happened?” I urged softly.
“Then Susannah died,” he said, burying his face once more. “For a week after, I could not sleep. I could not eat or think. I could only close my eyes if I had a dram.” He turned to me, pleading for understanding. “I thought I should go out of my mind with grief. And when I could not sleep, I began to have hallucinations. I knew the only way to stop it was to drink myself into oblivion and that is what I did.”
“And Freddie?”
The emotion left his face and his voice dropped to a dull monotone. “I treated him whilst in that state. I do not remember it. But I know I did.”
“What did you do for him?”
“I changed his bandages. It ought to have been a simple thing,” he said flatly. “But the bandages I wrapped about his wound were dirty. They were doubtless the source of the infection that killed him.”
I felt slightly queasy at this, but I pressed on, ever so gently as I retrieved his cup and poured a fresh serving of tea. “How can you be sure?”
I passed him the cup and so tight was his grip upon it, I thought it might shatter. “Freddie was in good health generally, but he had had a bout with fever the fortnight before. His constitution was weakened even before the bite from Percival. The wound was healing slowly, much more so than I should have expected. I could see he was not sound. Any further claims upon his health would have been…fatal,” he finished softly.
“And you believe the soiled bandage was just such a claim,” I concluded.
He nodded, then sipped at the fresh tea. It had steeped longer now, and I had little doubt the brew was twice as strong.
“You do not have to finish it,” I told him.
“It is vile,” he said, laughing, and for the briefest of moments I could see the man he had been before tragedy had marked him so indelibly.
“I am no monster,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “I am weak and stupid, but I have done nothing out of malice. You are safe enough with me,” he said, somewhat awkwardly.
I touched his hand again. “I have no doubt of that.” I paused, then rushed on, impulsively. “Dr. Llewellyn, I know you believe Freddie’s death was a terrible accident, but was it possible for someone else to have tampered with Freddie’s bandages?”
I never knew what prompted the question. It sprang from my lips before I had even thought it, but as soon as I spoke the words, I liked the taste of them. Something about Freddie�
��s death was too convenient, too easy to lay at the feet of this benighted creature. But I could well imagine someone of cruel intention and malicious imagination using him to advantage.
He thought a long moment, then shrugged. “I suppose. I know several others changed his bandages whilst I was indisposed,” he said, his tongue lingering upon the last word with bitterness. “Jane, Miss Cavendish, Mary-Benevolence.”
I did not like the mention of Jane, but she had no motive to kill her own husband. Or did she? came the thought, unbidden and unwelcome. What if she had come to India with Freddie and realised she had made a terrible mistake? She clearly still loved Portia. If she helped Freddie upon his way, she would have money and freedom. There was nothing to stand in the way of her reunion with her beloved, and the more I thought of it, the more chillingly possible it seemed.
“No,” I said firmly, and Dr. Llewellyn looked at me, startled.
I gave him a reassuring smile. “I was thinking aloud.”
He fell silent a moment, then burst out, “I apologise for yesterday. You were only offering kindness and I have lost the habit of it. I do drink,” he admitted. “Even now. When it has cost me everything.”
I thought of my own husband and his demons and the measures he sometimes took to elude them. “Sometimes forgetfulness is worth any price,” I told him.
He nodded, and I saw his shoulders sag with fatigue. I had no notion how long he had been drinking, but the state of his clothes spoke to a poor night’s rest, and his emotional outbursts had left him drained.
“I will leave you now,” I said, rising. “I will have Jolly send some food. Mind you eat it, and do not despair. I have a mind to save you yet.”
I left him with a determination akin to what the Crusaders of old must have felt. I did not believe Freddie’s death could be laid at his door, although his weakness for drink had certainly given someone the opportunity. For no other reason than the intuition of the feminine sex, I was certain of his innocence, and furthermore, I was certain that someone had deliberately exploited him to play the villain. There were simply too many people who stood to profit from Freddie Cavendish’s demise. Brisbane did not like coincidences, and neither did I.
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