Dark Road to Darjeeling

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  I made the proper noises of appreciation and hoped he would not ask me to repeat anything he had just said. My mind had been wandering to my conversation with Primrose, and as if the thought of her had conjured it, the Reverend leaned closer, his voice pitched confidentially.

  “I did not invite myself to accompany you solely because I had business at the Peacocks,” he said. “I wanted to thank you for your interest in my children.”

  I felt a thrust of shame at the fact that I had in fact been using his children as informants unaware, but suppressed it.

  “They are interesting children,” I told him, quite sincerely.

  He made a little moue of deprecation. “I could wish them a trifle more conventional. Of course, it is difficult to observe the proprieties here, but it seems they grow wilder with each passing year. Primrose is so thorny and sulky. At times she seems a child, at others a woman fully grown. And Robin, I do worry for him.”

  “Why? He seems a very intelligent, self-possessed boy.”

  “That is my fear,” he said. “He is so self-possessed, he hardly has need of anyone at all. He taught himself to read when he was three, can you imagine? Since then, I have let him shift for himself. He is far too energetic and spirited to keep indoors. We tried him with a tutor once and the poor boy nearly went mad from being made to stay inside. Cassandra persuaded me to let him be.”

  “It does not seem to have harmed him,” I observed. “Perhaps he might be a trifle more comfortable in company if he had had a more conventional education, but most boys his age do not appreciate constraint.”

  “I suppose,” he agreed slowly. “And he does seem to pick up whatever he needs to know to get along. He has an odd habit of attaching himself to the nearest person who can give him the skills or information he lacks. He gathers knowledge like a magpie gathers gewgaws,” he said with a fond laugh. “Harry Cavendish taught him his sums by way of account-keeping with tea ledgers. Dr. Llewellyn instructed him on how to care for injured animals by applying the same principles he uses with people. Even Freddie Cavendish managed to teach him the rudiments of drawing so he could record his observations.”

  “Freddie liked to draw?” If the Revered thought my interest in the dead man was strange, he did not betray it.

  “Oh, yes. He was rather skilled, although if I am to be very honest, Cassandra said he lacked the true perception of an artist. He was a capable draughtsman, I should say. He was very generous of his time with Robin. I know Robin missed him when he passed,” he added with a little sigh of regret. “It is difficult the first time death touches a child. One must explain the eternal mysteries, and in spite of my training, I can tell you I found it most trying.”

  In another man, such flowery language would have seemed pompous, but I rather liked Reverend Pennyfeather’s old-fashioned manner of speaking.

  “Robin took Freddie’s death to heart then?” I pried gently.

  “Not precisely. They had reached the end of what Freddie could teach him and Robin had taken to spending more time alone. He still saw Freddie from time to time, but with the child coming, Freddie was naturally more involved with Mrs. Cavendish,” he added with a kindly smile.

  “Naturally,” I agreed.

  “Of course any change to Robin’s education would mean crossing Cassandra, a thing I do not like to do. It is not that she is difficult,” he hurried on, “you must not think such a thing. It is simply that she does not view the world through the same lens as other folk.”

  “Literally,” I quipped.

  The Reverend hesitated a moment, then gave a laugh, a dry, rusty sound. “Yes, precisely. She is so carefree and natural a creature, so free with expression and emotion. It was so beautiful to see her with the children when they were babies. She never imposed rules or discipline upon them, you see. It was simply not how she was brought up. She was reared to value feelings and the free demonstration of them. It seemed harmless enough when the children were younger, and I always hesitated to use a firm hand. But now, I wonder if I ought to have tightened the reins.”

  I found the metaphor distasteful—neither the children nor their mother were animals to be controlled—but I understood his dilemma. A man of the church would be less likely than most to indulge his family in artistic license.

  “My father was indulgent about such things,” I told him. “We were given opportunities to express ourselves, although perhaps not as freely as Mrs. Pennyfeather,” I admitted.

  The Reverend sighed, causing the petals on his orchid to tremble.

  “I hope that it will all come round for the best,” he said. “At the beginning, I could deny Cassandra nothing. I was a besotted fool, as so many newly-married husbands are.” He blushed a little and shoved his spectacles farther up his nose.

  For some reason the thought of an impassioned Pennyfeather amused me. “And you indulged her,” I guessed.

  “Yes. I used my first earnings to purchase her photographic equipment. But she hated Norfolk, the isolation of the parish, the loneliness. When I inherited this property, it seemed like such a grand adventure. We told the children we were stamping the dust of England off our shoes and leaving all we knew behind. And when we arrived, it seemed indeed like a new Eden, so beautiful and untouched.”

  He surveyed the land around him, the great looming bulk of Kanchenjunga, the pickers moving slowly between the rows of rich green leaves, filling the air with the scent of tea.

  “I thought we had found paradise,” he murmured. After a moment, he collected himself. “But even paradise had its serpent. If Norfolk was lonely, it was nothing to this. The smallest handful of families for us to call upon, and even then Cassandra found it difficult to meet anyone in sympathy with her artistic ideals. She was quite happy when Freddie brought Mrs. Cavendish here. Her skills as a potter and musician endeared her to Cassandra.”

  “I can well imagine it,” I said, thinking of how insular and stultifying it would be to live here permanently. I had seen before only the wild beauty and remoteness of the place. I had not thought of the emotional isolation of having no one to truly unburden oneself to.

  “They were just beginning to form a friendship when Mrs. Cavendish discovered she was expecting a child. Naturally, her expectations and then Freddie’s death consumed her. And Cassandra has never been very good at facing down reality,” he said. “She prefers the fantasies in her head to the life in front of her eyes.”

  “I know a good number of folk who are just the same,” I reassured him, thinking of my family.

  “Yes, well, she is a good woman,” he told me, his voice nearly breaking in earnestness. “But she is a child in so many ways. She simply does not view things as right and wrong in the way that you or I would.”

  I held my tongue, supposing that the Reverend Pennyfeather would be rightly shocked by what I considered right and wrong.

  “I suppose most artists are the same,” he went on. “That is why I engaged Miss Thorne to help shape the children. They are still impressionable, and I thought by bringing a more conventional presence into their lives, it might carry some weight with their behaviour.”

  “A logical decision,” I temporised. In fact, it seemed rather backwards to engage a governess to teach one’s children morality, but I had known many people who rested their children’s education in the hands of professionals rather than troubling themselves to do it.

  “I hope Miss Thorne has been a success,” I finished.

  The Reverend shrugged, once more upsetting his orchid. “Personally, Miss Thorne is beyond parallel as a governess. Quiet, demure, with a prodigious but not unfeminine intellect. She is punctual and tidy and attentive to detail—all the things one could wish. Of course, the fact that she is half-caste raised a number of eyebrows. Miss Cavendish herself scarcely spoke to us for the first sixmonth we engaged her.”

  “Really? I knew Miss Cavendish was very orthodox in her views, but surely it is the norm here to hire servants of mixed blood.”

  “
Oh, no, it was not the fact of Miss Thorne’s mixed blood that distressed her. She believed that without employment Miss Thorne would have left the valley and gone to teach in a school in Calcutta. It was the embarrassment of meeting her socially she could not endure.”

  I opened my mouth to ask, but before I could form the question, the Reverend saw my look of enquiry.

  “Oh, did you not know? Miss Thorne is the misbegotten granddaughter of Fitzhugh Cavendish. She is Miss Cavendish’s niece.”

  The Thirteenth Chapter

  No mystery beyond the present;

  no striving for the impossible;

  no shadow behind the charm

  no groping in the depth of the dark.

  —The Gardener

  Rabindranath Tagore

  For the rest of our walk to the Peacocks, I seethed with annoyance. I made the proper replies to the Reverend’s conversation, but my mind whirled, and the moment I could politely excuse myself to my room, I did so, thinking furiously. Miss Thorne was a Cavendish, born from Fitzhugh Cavendish’s indiscretion. There was motive, I told myself fiercely. The payments in the office ledgers had been those of a man determined to buy off his conscience at siring a line of bastards. I would wager if I had gone back far enough, I would have found payments made to the child he had fathered, as well as the woman he had gotten his illegitimate offspring on.

  I cursed myself for a fool for supposing the beautiful Miss Thorne’s only connection could have been through her personal indiscretion. I paced the room, working out what must have happened. Fitzhugh Cavendish had carried on a liaison with a native girl from the valley, that much was obvious. He must have got a daughter on her, as Miss Thorne’s surname was English. That half-blooded daughter must have married a Mr. Thorne at some point and borne the twin daughters, Miss Thorne and Lalita.

  Lalita! My mind spun again, considering the ramifications of a pair of by-blow Cavendishes in the Valley of Eden. Either of them might wish to claim a share of the estate. Granted, bastards seldom inherited, but if Fitzhugh Cavendish had paid out some sort of maintenance to his granddaughter, this meant formal acknowledgement of the connection. And such things often weighed heavily within the courts. I thought carefully, considering all I had been told about the position of this area within the Raj. Presuming we were actually in Sikkim, it was a self-administering district, I recalled, a place not subjected to the same strictures of British law as the rest of India. The old kingdom of Sikkim had only been absorbed into India within the last thirty years, and when it had ceased to be an independent country, it had retained some of its autonomy. What effect this might have upon laws of inheritance, I could not say, but even in England if all legitimate heirs to a property were dead, it was possible for the illegitimate to inherit. The last legitimate heir could designate the devolution of the property by their own will or it could be part of the original entailment.

  There had been no copy of the entailment documents in the estate office, and I reflected it was most likely that they were held for safekeeping in the offices of a solicitor in Darjeeling or Calcutta or perhaps kept with the family banker. Until I saw them, I would have no way of knowing if Miss Thorne or Lalita had any cause to cast covetous eyes at the Peacocks, and it seemed highly unlikely I would ever be permitted to see them.

  But one man could, I thought bitterly. Brisbane could manage it, of that I had no doubt. It would be child’s play for him to concoct a scheme by which he could get his hands upon the entailment documents, but I hesitated to give up my inspired hunch so easily. I would sleuth a bit more on my own, I decided, paying close attention to Miss Thorne and Lalita as well as Harry and Lucy. If I saw a call for it, I would share my thoughts with Brisbane regarding Miss Thorne’s parentage and the possible claims she and her sister might make upon the Peacocks.

  Besides, it would all prove moot if Jane bore a son, I reminded myself. And as it had been too long since I had seen her, I made my way to Jane’s room to look in. Portia was there, sitting placidly by the fire reading to Jane who shifted uncomfortably in the bed.

  “May I interrupt?” I asked.

  Jane huffed an irritable sigh. “You may as well. The baby certainly is.”

  I offered her a sympathetic smile. “Uncomfortable, my dear?”

  “You have no idea,” she said. Portia rose and stuffed another pillow behind her back. Jane gave her a grateful little smile. “I do not mean to be cross.”

  Portia dropped a gentle kiss to her brow. “It will not be long now. A matter of days, a few weeks at most.”

  “And then you will have nothing to complain about but how beautiful your child is,” I added.

  Jane’s smile was a shadow of itself. “I hope so. Mary-Benevolence is skilled, but she will tell the most revolting stories of childbirth.”

  I raised a brow in enquiry, and Portia hastened to inform me. “Mary-Benevolence spent the morning with us explaining the intricacies of childbed. I told her I had seen enough dogs whelped to have a general notion of how it all works, but she seemed quite adamant that we hear the unvarnished truth.”

  “Good Lord,” I said faintly. “Couldn’t you just take a nice whiff of ether and be done with it? After all, it was quite good enough for the queen.” Too late I remembered my own musings upon the subject when I had considered the cruelty of Emma’s operation. At least poor Emma had been given a bit of morphia. It seemed too awful that labouring mothers had no such alternative.

  Jane gave me a sour look. “No ether in this godforsaken spot. Nothing but prayer flags and rosaries here. Mary-Benevolence may be Catholic, but she remains enough of a good Hindu to burn a bit of incense for me as well.”

  “Perhaps it will help,” I consoled her. “You might put a knife under the bed to cut the pain. I hear Tudor midwives used to do that.”

  At this Jane began to laugh and the gloomy mood was dispelled. “I shall simply be glad when it is all finished and I can go,” she said, looking longingly at Portia.

  My sister returned the look of affection, and I stared at them both.

  “Go? You mean to leave the Peacocks?”

  “As soon as she is fit to travel,” Portia said stoutly. “There is no call for her to live here. We have discussed it, and there is no reason she cannot take the child and go back to England.”

  “But if the child is a boy—”

  “I would not keep him from his inheritance,” Jane said swiftly. “But most children here are sent back to England to school. I will simply be taking him back a few years early. When the time comes, I will return him here. He will belong to the Peacocks, but he is mine first,” she finished with a ferocity that surprised me. Gentle Jane was becoming quite the tigress where her child was concerned.

  “We will both bring him back,” Portia corrected. “We will be a family in England. We will not be parted again.” She took Jane’s hand, and I saw then the beginnings of a real little family.

  “And of course he must be close enough to see Auntie Julia,” I put in lightly. “I always have sweets in my pockets for my nieces and nephews.”

  Jane gave me a grateful look. “I shall not even mind if you rot his teeth. I am glad he will know his Auntie Julia.”

  “And his Uncle Brisbane,” Portia added. “Heaven only knows what things Brisbane will teach him.”

  The notion of Brisbane dandling an infant upon his knee was sufficiently diverting that we fell silent for a moment.

  “How soon after the child is born do you plan to leave?” I asked finally.

  “A matter of weeks,” Jane answered firmly. “As soon as I am fit to ride or be carried in a palanquin. We will swaddle him up and take him as far as Darjeeling. It is lovely there in the summer, if a bit rainy. But the air is fresh and the society is pleasant. We will spend a few months, and in September when the rains end, we will make our way to Calcutta and sail for England. We should be in London by the first of November.”

  “If you cannot leave Darjeeling until September because of the rains, w
hy not just remain here at the Peacocks?” I asked.

  She and Portia exchanged glances, then Portia answered, her tone perfectly casual. “Because the Peacocks is haunted, dearest.”

  I looked to Jane, but she was nodding emphatically. “Quite,” she added.

  “You are both entirely mad,” I told them.

  “There is no call to be rude,” Portia said. “How else do you explain the odd things that go on here?”

  “What odd things?” I demanded.

  Portia began to enumerate on her fingers. “The odd noises at night, the creaking doors, the things that go missing.”

  “The odd noises are the peacocks,” I explained patiently. “We have discussed this.”

  “The peacocks are not inside the house,” she corrected. “The noises we have heard are inside the house. Odd little shufflings and the creaking of doors, as if something walks by night.”

  I thought of Harry and Plum, both abroad on assignations and bit my tongue. Leave it to Portia and Jane to put a supernatural construct on something as mundane as a pair of men who both crept out in the middle of the night to attempt a little illicit lovemaking.

  “What things have gone missing?” I asked.

  “First it was porcelain, several months ago,” Jane told me. “Then an antique box, a lacquered affair from China that was inlaid with rather valuable stones. Then a few pieces of jewellery, Freddie’s clasp knife. They simply vanished into thin air, never to be seen again,” she said, eyes wide in her pale face.

  I suppressed a sigh. Once more, the most logical explanation had been overlooked. “And you think a ghost was responsible?”

  “One of the maids saw him,” she said. “She said she saw the image of old Fitzhugh Cavendish standing just outside his office door, and while she watched he simply walked through a wall and disappeared with the lacquered box in his hand.”

  I thought for a long moment. “Which maid?” I asked at last.