Dark Road to Darjeeling

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  She shifted a little and I rose to plump her cushions.

  “I thought it would be enough, and it very nearly was,” she continued. “But then I began to notice babies. Everywhere. Your family in particular was overrun with them. The parks suddenly seemed thick with nannies and prams and those darling little babies. And then my sister had a child, and all I could think was that it would never happen for me. I would never know the most primeval of all pleasures for a woman, that of bearing a child of my own.”

  She stroked absently at the sturdy round bundle of her belly. “And even though Portia was the whole world to me, she was no longer enough. I wanted, I needed, a child. Not a foundling, not some poor babe we took in to raise as our own. I wanted a child born of my body, something of my own blood and bone. Can you understand?”

  Her eyes were fervent, and I smiled. “Of course. I’m not broody myself, but I know plenty of other women who are. I daresay I am unnatural,” I added lightly.

  She returned the smile. “Not unnatural. Blessed. It was the most horrible craving I have ever known. I fell asleep each night, my pillow sodden with tears because I did not have a child of my own. And then I met Freddie again. He was so absurdly silly, so unexpectedly sweet. He confided in me about his own troubles, and suddenly it all made sense, how we could save each other.”

  She faltered then, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Jane,” I said, covering her hand with my own. My heart ached for her. “You need not speak of it, if you don’t wish to. I understand. Your loss is still so fresh, it must feel as if you have lost him all over again to tell me. There is no shame in grief, Jane.”

  She covered her face with her hands, and I gathered her into my arms. Her shoulders shook in my embrace. I smoothed her hair and murmured soft words of sympathy.

  It was only after a long minute that I realised she was not weeping. She drew back, and wrapped her arms around her body, convulsing in hysterical laughter.

  “Oh, Julia, I do not grieve for him, not now, not ever,” she told me, gasping for breath. She paused a moment and composed herself. “I am not sorry he is dead. The only emotion I felt when I buried him was relief. Do you understand now, Julia, I am free.”

  The Tenth Chapter

  A thousand useless things happen day after day,

  and why couldn’t such a thing come true by chance?

  It would be like a story in a book.

  —The Hero

  Rabindranath Tagore

  At this confession, Jane fell into noisy sobs again, and I sighed, wondering if every conversation I was to have in India was destined to end in pronounced weeping.

  She cried until she exhausted herself, falling into a deep sleep. She was curled like a child, or at least as curled as her heavily-pregnant body would permit, and her face settled into repose, sweetly innocent.

  Deceptively innocent, I thought, remembering her last words. Hardly the statement of a fond widow, and dangerously close to a confession. I crept from the room then, and just as I pulled the door closed behind me, I almost collided with Portia.

  “How is Jane? Does she need something?”

  I grasped her by the elbow and towed her to my room where we could speak in private. When we gained the sanctuary of my bedchamber, Portia sat upon my bed, rubbing sulkily at her elbow.

  “You have left a mark,” she said pointedly.

  “I apologise, but I must speak with you. Do you know what Jane told me when we were alone? She hated Freddie Cavendish! She is glad he is dead.”

  Portia blinked slowly. “Yes, I know.”

  “You knew! You knew, and you hid this from me? How the devil am I supposed to aid in an investigation of the man’s murder if you conceal pertinent information?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said flatly. “It is not in the least pertinent that Jane despised him. He was monstrous to her.”

  I strove for patience. “Portia, your loyalty to Jane does you credit, but I cannot believe it has escaped your notice that she has the best motive for wanting to murder him.”

  “Really, Julia, you have the most suspicious mind! If Jane had killed him, she would hardly have appealed to us to help her, would she?”

  “That is the first thing she would have done,” I said waspishly. “Any murderer, unless he is half-witted, would divert suspicion by requesting an investigation. And how much more clever to ask amateurs to do the work!”

  “Amateurs and Brisbane,” she pointed out icily. “Your husband is one of the foremost private enquiry agents in England, if not the whole of Europe. Tell me, if you had committed a murder, would you want Brisbane hard upon your trail?”

  She had a point, but I refused to concede it, and before I could develop a reply, she pressed her advantage. “Have you discovered anyone at all who could conceivably have a motive to murder Freddie?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How many someones?”

  I bit my lip, counting silently. The Cavendishes of course, then Miss Thorne. And if Miss Thorne could have had a motive, it was just possible one could be imputed to her sister. And then there was the doctor. I nearly slapped my own brow. If Portia knew the doctor himself had confessed to killing Freddie, I should never hear the end of it.

  “A few,” I temporised. “But Portia, I hardly see that any of their motives are as pressing as that of a wife who is desperate to be rid of her husband.”

  “As yours when Edward Grey died?” she asked, her voice deadly calm.

  “Badly done, Portia,” I told her, feeling something of the sisterly bond between us fray at the edges.

  She must have read my emotion in my face, for she relented a little, but only a little. “I apologise. I know you would never have harmed Edward. I only meant that there must have been people who suspected you might have turned your hand to murder to be rid of him.”

  That much was true. “Brisbane, actually,” I admitted.

  “And yet he worked to prove otherwise, and so did you,” she said. “And you can do the same here. In fact, I must insist that you continue the investigation, so strong is my belief in her innocence.”

  I said nothing, my arms folded over my chest. I was still smarting over her remark about Edward. She rose and came to me, and put her brow to mine.

  “Oh, hen. You must help her. I love her so.” The fact that she called me hen was an indication of the depth of her feelings. It was a secret between the two of us that we had run away as children when our younger brother Valerius was born. Our mother had died in the effort, and Portia and I decided we did not wish to live at Bellmont Abbey without her. So we each of us packed up our most important treasures into a knotted handkerchief and went to live in the henhouse. We had decided upon the henhouse because we were forbidden to leave the estate, and the henhouse was small and cosy and we liked the chickens. Besides, we had a rather mercenary scheme to sell Father’s own eggs back to him and earn our keep with the poultry money. Of course, the scheme had failed when we realised precisely how vile the smell of a henhouse could be—to speak nothing of the hens themselves. I still bore a small scar upon my thumb from the beak of the boldest. But from time to time we still called one another hen when we meant to recall that time when we needed nothing and no one but each other.

  I sighed. “Very well, hen. I will do what I can.”

  My promise to Portia left me feeling rather low. I had liked Jane for a murderess. She was quiet and self-contained, and the proverb about still waters running deep was a true one, I thought. But I was instantly ashamed of myself. This was Jane, whom I had loved as a sister for many years, and my first thought, like Portia’s, should have been to establish her innocence, not to implicate her in the crime.

  I said as much to Brisbane after we retired that evening. We had assembled a chessboard and played half a game, but my mind wandered and Brisbane finally surrendered and retrieved his pipe.

  I always enjoyed the ritual of watching him light his pipe. It was an ela
borate affair, purchased at great expense in Turkey, an antique from a pasha’s collection. Smoked last in a lush harem, now it puffed peacefully the fragrant clouds of the hashish that Brisbane occasionally smoked to allay the pains in his head. He offered me a draw upon the pipe, and after my second attempt, I waved him off.

  But even that tiny amount of hashish had caused a lassitude to steal over me, and I began to confide a little of my doubts to him. I related my conversations with Jane and Portia, reserving my intelligence from the doctor and Lalita and what I had discovered in my search of the estate office. I might have been relaxed, but I was not stupid. Brisbane had far more experience with hashish than I. No matter how indolent he became, not a detail of our conversation would escape him later.

  “Are we wrong to exclude Jane simply because she is a friend?” I asked him, carefully couching my query to include him.

  He took a long, slow inhalation of the pipe, drawing the sweet smoke into his lungs, puffing it out again after a minute of perfect stillness. “Yes.”

  I put my tongue out at him. “That is hardly helpful. Elaborate please.”

  Another moment of oblivion, then he put the pipe to the side to consider. “Have you never heard the fable of the scorpion and the frog?”

  “No.”

  “There once was a scorpion who came to the edge of a fast-flowing river.”

  “You did not begin with ‘once upon a time,’” I interjected.

  “That is for fairy tales,” he said with a look of faint reproof. “Now, there was a scorpion who came to the edge of a fast-flowing river. Seeing no way to cross it alone, he spied a frog and asked the frog to bear him across upon his back. The frog refused. ‘What if you should sting me?’ But the scorpion reassured him. ‘If I sting you, then we both shall drown.’ The frog could see the sense in this, and he permitted the scorpion to climb onto his back. They began to cross the river, and suddenly, when they were halfway across, the scorpion lashed with his tail and stung the frog. ‘You fool!’ cried the frog. ‘Now we will both die. Why did you do that?’ And the scorpion said, ‘I could not help myself. It is simply in my nature.’”

  I struggled to relate the tale to the topic at hand. “Surely you are not suggesting that it is in Jane’s nature to kill!”

  He shrugged. “I am only saying it is not impossible. Every person has that place inside where the scales tip and murder suddenly becomes not just acceptable but necessary.”

  “I do not,” I told him firmly.

  “Really? You could not kill? Not even to protect a loved one?” His voice was soft, and I knew he was right. I would kill to protect him, and a dozen others besides if I included my family.

  “But we are not speaking of such primitive motives as survival,” I pointed out. “Whoever killed Freddie Cavendish did so for monetary gain, to line his own pockets and live a comfortable life. I do think Jane would scruple at murder for such a reason.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps Freddie was not killed for money. You yourself just said the marriage was unhappy. What was she to do if she decided she wanted to be free of him? What options would a wife have in this remote and, if I may say it, godforsaken place?”

  I pricked up my ears. “I thought you liked it here.”

  He gave a little shudder. “There is not a decent tailor for two hundred miles. The scenery is spectacular, I grant you, but one can only look at a mountain for so long before one grasps all there is to know of it. It is large and cold, and I am ready to go home.”

  It was not like Brisbane to be peevish, particularly after he had imbibed. “Home? You mean to England?”

  He gave a bone-deep sigh of weariness. “Yes. I am tired of travelling. A man can only spend so much time abroad before he longs for the comfort of his own hearth and the regularity of his own routine.”

  I went to sit at his feet, putting my head upon his knee. “We will go tomorrow if it will make you happy.”

  He stroked my hair absently. “We promised Portia. And Jane. They are family.”

  I reached up and took his hand. “You are my family. Or so I promised in front of God and everyone else we know.”

  “Bless you for that. But no, you think you mean it now, but you would never forgive yourself if we left now, and eventually you would never forgive me. We will stay until the business is finished.”

  “And the moment we can, we will leave this place and board the first ship for England,” I promised him. “We will go to your rooms in Chapel Street and Mrs. Lawson can cook dainty meals for us and I will darn your socks and you will sit in front of the fire and tell me all about our latest investigations.”

  He reached down and pulled me onto his lap. “Our latest investigations?”

  I opened my mouth to explain, but he stopped it with a finger laid over my lips. “Never mind. You will never be the sort of wife to sit quietly at home whilst I am engaged at work. I do not know why I ever hoped you could.”

  “I could still darn your socks,” I pointed out.

  “Do you actually know how to darn socks?”

  “No, but presumably I could learn. How difficult could it be? Morag does it.”

  He looked searchingly into my eyes. “You were quite right. I want nothing more than to tuck you into a bandbox and leave you safely upon the shelf every time I leave.”

  “I know. And it is a credit to you that occasionally you do not.”

  A wry smile touched his lips. “How good of you to notice.”

  “I notice many things, including how often you manage to distract me from the discussion at hand.”

  He widened his eyes in mock innocence. “I would never do such a thing.”

  “For instance,” I began, “we were discussing the likelihood that Jane murdered Freddie and you have managed to divert me entirely from the subject by means of proximity.”

  I struggled to rise from his lap, but his arms held me fast. “Did I?” he murmured, pressing his mouth to the ticklish spot just behind my ear.

  “Brisbane, I am quite serious. If you think you can always distract me from a discussion of the investigation by such feeble tricks.” I broke off, panting a little. “This is quite beneath you.”

  “Quite,” he agreed, applying himself even more ardently to the demonstration of his affections.

  By the time I had gathered my wits sufficiently to press the point, the lamps had guttered out and Brisbane was sleeping heavily, fatigued by his efforts—highly successful efforts, I must confess—to divert me from the investigation. I lay awake, physically satisfied but deeply annoyed. Even after nine months of marriage, I was still not entirely comfortable with my responses to his physical overtures. The merest touch from him and all reasonable thought seemed to fly out of my head. It was most disconcerting, and more so because he apparently knew it, I thought irritably.

  I rose and went to the window, breathing in the heavily-scented night air. The moon hung low in the sky, full and round, shedding its pearly light over the landscape and silvering the leaves of the garden below. The air was still, and only the occasional cry from the nightingale disturbed the serenity of the scene.

  Just then a flicker of movement flashed in the tail of my eye. It was a shadowy figure, moving noiselessly through the moonlit garden. It kept to the perimeter, and only by the rustling of the leaves was I able to follow its progress toward the gate. At the last moment, it stepped from the cover of the shrubberies and eased open the gate, disappearing soundlessly and closing the gate behind. The figure had been in the open ground only a moment, but long enough for me to see it was Harry Cavendish, sneaking from his home like a common thief.

  I pondered Harry’s furtive actions for some time as sleep eluded me, and I decided to be pleased. If Harry was skulking from the Peacocks at odd hours of the night, it could only be for some nefarious purpose, and it did not take long for me to think of Lucy. Before Jane’s revelation, I had liked Lucy for the murder, and now the pendulum swung back to her. She and Harry, either in tandem or worki
ng alone but in the common interest of their relationship, might easily have killed Freddie. A secret affair, conducted by moonlight and tainted with murder, to be legalised after Emma died and Harry gained control of the tea garden. Lucy would be mistress of the vast plantation, and Harry would have her money to fund his improvements.

  Of course, they might have made a match of it even without Harry’s inheritance, I reflected. They were both of them unattached, and Harry would not be the first to marry a woman with far more money. But that must have been the sticking point to the courtship, I thought suddenly with a rush of triumph. Harry was a proud man, not the sort to settle for being kept upon his wife’s coin. He would no more marry for money than Brisbane would have. Brisbane himself had proved immovable upon the point when he had no money of his own. Only a fortuitous development during our last investigation had given him sufficient funds to take a rich wife upon his own terms. I could well imagine Harry baulking under the same circumstances, and it was a short step from there to the notion that Freddie’s death would solve all of his troubles, and therefore Lucy’s. A happy ending was possible for them, but only so long as their crimes went undiscovered, I mused. The difficulty was in determining which of them had committed the deed or if they worked in concert. I should have to be very clever indeed to discover the truth, and as I finally slid into sleep, I realised with some satisfaction that Brisbane was still favouring Jane for the villain. How surprised he would be when I bested him!

  The next morning the house was at sixes and sevens, servants hurrying to and fro, and Miss Cavendish looking uncharacteristically flustered.

  “It is the day the stores are come from Calcutta,” she explained. “Once every quarter they are delivered and must be sorted and inventoried and stored. It is quite critical that everything be orderly and tidy,” she said severely, as if I had a mind to switch the labels on the bags and boxes personally.