by Tessa Harris
“My profession, madam,” he replied. “My father is a doctor, and he knew of the work of a noted London anatomist. I was accepted as his apprentice before the war, and I have stayed here ever since.”
“Zen America’s loss is our gain, Dr. Silkstone,” commented Mrs. Hastings, a coquettish glint in her eye.
The rest of the meal passed pleasantly enough, and the conversation was kept light until it was time for the women to leave the men to their port and pipes. It was at this point that Thomas hoped to make more headway in his investigations, subtly questioning Scott and Markham in an effort to delve below the surface of this whole murky affair. The servants placed decanters of port and sack on the table, and then one of them produced large pipes that Thomas supposed to be made of bamboo.
“You look perplexed, Silkstone,” ventured Markham, seeing Thomas’s expression. “Have you never seen an opium pipe before?”
Thomas had to confess he had not. “I use the poppy to ease pain in my profession, sir, but I have not smoked it recreationally.”
Scott smirked. “Then it is high time you tried, Silkstone,” he told the doctor, taking a pipe and allowing a servant to light it for him.
Thomas felt awkward and intrigued at the same time. He knew that opium could have a most extraordinary effect on a man’s behavior and intellect. He believed Professor Carruthers to take it, and now these two. He also knew that whoever murdered Sir Montagu had smoked it, as well. “I shall stick with my usual tobacco, gentlemen, if you please, for this evening.”
Markham shrugged. “Of course, you are escorting the lovely Lady Lydia.” He smiled as he puffed at the pipe. “I am sure you will need all your faculties about you for later.”
Ignoring the insinuation, Thomas lit his pipe. “So you gentlemen knew Captain Farrell?” After witnessing his hostess’s reaction to the name, he decided to call the men’s bluff. It paid dividends.
Markham, too, lit his pipe, but his face hardened. “They called him ‘Ring’ Farrell on account of the diamond on his finger,” he replied. “Rumor had it that he even murdered for it.”
Thomas wondered if they had heard news of the robbery at Boughton. “So he had quite a reputation in India?”
Scott, an unlit pipe in his hand, had remained relatively diffident up until this point. Now, however, he strode toward the mantelpiece and turned his fire on Thomas. “You have some nerve bringing that woman here,” he suddenly blurted.
“I beg your pardon?” Thomas was taken aback.
“You must have known that Farrell and his sidekicks used to hire out their services to Philip Francis.” The major was vehement in his accusation, pointing the stem of his pipe at the doctor. “And it was Farrell who entrapped Thomas Motte because he was one of Hastings’s staunchest allies.”
Now Markham joined in. “Farrell, Lavington, and Flynn,” he snarled. “They did everything in their power to bring down Hastings. And now it looks like they have succeeded, albeit later than they would have wished.”
Thomas recalled Dr. Carruthers’s mention of a duel between Hastings and this Francis. The latter had been seriously wounded, but had recovered and returned to England three years ago. Yet he still bore a grudge. Thomas needed to know more. He feigned ignorance and shook his head. “I do not follow,” he said.
“Do not play the innocent abroad, Silkstone,” flashed Scott. “Hastings is isolated. Thanks to Farrell and his cronies picking off all his allies, he’ll not last another year in post. There’s even talk of his impeachment. Philip Francis is in league with Charles James Fox to bring him to his knees.”
“And you choose to invite Farrell’s widow as your guest to this house?” Markham was shaking his head.
Thomas suddenly thought of Lydia. He was used to being treated discourteously by English gentry, but she was not. Fearing she might also be suffering, he rose. “Gentlemen,” he said with a bow, “thank you for enlightening me. I now realize why Lady Lydia and I are not welcome and apologize if our presence caused offense. I shall take my leave. Good night to you both.”
Not bothering to wait for a servant to show him out, Thomas stalked into the hallway and asked a sepoy to notify Mrs. Hastings of his intention to leave, taking Lydia with him. Keen not to sour the atmosphere, however, he decided to invent an excuse. A moment later both ladies emerged from a nearby room. Marian Hastings looked agitated and Lydia perplexed.
“Dr. Silkstone, I am told you have to leave,” said his hostess.
“A patient, I fear,” lied Thomas. “I must attend to him urgently.”
Lydia frowned, and looked at him quizzically. Suspecting something was gravely amiss, she turned to Mrs. Hastings. “Please forgive us,” she said.
“’Tis a matter of life or death,” Thomas said assuredly.
His hostess’s bejeweled hand reached up to her throat in alarm. “In zat case, you must surely hurry,” she replied.
“We surely must,” agreed Thomas. “Thank you for a very interesting evening,” he said with a shallow bow. And with that he steered Lydia away by the arm and made for their waiting carriage.
Chapter 38
“Is hould never have asked you to come,” fumed Thomas, shaking his head. As he sat by Lydia’s side on their way back to Sir Theodisius’s house, he grasped her hand and held it tightly.
Unsure as to what irked him so, she shook her head. “Will you please tell me what is going on?”
He paused to look at her for a moment. She seemed quite composed. “Mrs. Hastings and Mrs. Motte,” he began. “They did not insult you?”
Lydia shrugged. “They were civil enough, if a little distant,” she replied. “Besides, I am growing accustomed to being regarded as an outcast,” she added.
“An outcast?” He frowned.
Lydia rolled her eyes. “The Farrell name is a blight. I know Michael did some very bad things, and as his widow, it seems I must bear part of the blame.”
Thomas clutched both her hands. “You know that is not true, my love. You cannot blame yourself for Michael’s misdeeds.”
She shook her head. “Clearly other people do.”
“They insulted you?” asked Thomas. “About Michael?”
Lydia’s eyes slid away from his. “No.” She shook her head, but her reply was less than convincing.
“What did they say?” urged Thomas.
Her eyes returned to his. “They did not say anything. It was their manner toward me.”
Thomas sat back in the carriage. He was relieved that nothing had been said to hurt Lydia’s feelings, but she would not let his behavior rest.
“But ’tis you who owes me an explanation,” she told him. “I know there is no sick patient.”
Feeling his chastisement justified, Thomas turned to her once more but paused, thinking how to frame his words.
“I am sorry to have whisked you away like that, but I feared that the ladies might turn on you.”
“Turn on me?” She looked shocked.
Thomas cleared his throat. “You see I learned tonight something of the governor-general’s archenemy.”
Lydia lifted a brow. “Philip Francis?”
“You know of him?”
“All of England and indeed India knows of the enmity between the two men. They fought a duel and—” She broke off suddenly when she saw the look on Thomas’s face. “You are going to tell me that Michael was in Francis’s service?”
Thomas nodded. “And Lavington and—”
“Patrick Flynn.” Lydia dived in to finish the list. “You cannot think he would harm Mrs. Hastings, could you?”
The thought had occurred to Thomas the moment he knew of the association. “I fear that perhaps he may,” he replied. “But can you think of any connection between Sir Montagu and either Hastings or Francis?”
After a short pause, Lydia shook her head. “You know I was never informed about his business dealings, although—” She broke off.
“Yes?”
“Perhaps Mr. Lupton might know s
omething.”
Thomas nodded. “You may well be right. I shall ask him as soon as I am able.” He was due to meet with the former Boughton steward the following day to hear him report back on his mission to track down Patrick Flynn. He would also quiz him over how Lydia’s card came to be in the possession of Flynn’s mysterious caller. “Finding the captain is our only hope of ever discovering who killed Sir Montagu,” he told her.
“I know,” said Lydia, looking at Thomas. There was both a resignation and an understanding in her tone, and she smiled at him tenderly.
A moment later the carriage had arrived at their destination and Thomas was helping Lydia down the folding steps. “I am so sorry,” he said as they stood in the forecourt of Sir Theodisius’s town house.
“For what?” Puzzled, she tilted her head.
“For putting you in harm’s way tonight,” he said. He felt his heart beat faster, and he bent his head to kiss her hand.
“Nonsense,” she upbraided him. “And at least you have learned something more to help you in your investigation.”
“I have,” he conceded, thinking about Farrell’s connection to Philip Francis. He paused and looked at her. For a split second he wondered if he should ask her, there and then, to marry him. He heard her catch her breath, as if she was expecting him to say something profound, but he suddenly shrank from the idea. It did not feel right. He took a small step back from her, but it might as well have been a voyage home across the Atlantic. The moment was lost.
“May I call on you tomorrow?” he asked her.
He heard her breath escape in a barely discernible sigh. “I would like that very much,” she replied.
Chapter 39
That night, as she lay in her feather bed, thousands of miles away from her husband, Bibby Motte cast her mind back over the evening’s events. Had she known that Michael Farrell’s widow would be at dinner, she would have steered clear, feigned sickness, or tiredness, or both. It was so hard for her to try to make polite conversation when all she wanted to do was tell the world how her beloved husband had been so wronged and betrayed. And then she was reminded so cruelly. Hearing the name Farrell took her back to a night nine years ago that had sealed Thomas Motte’s miserable fate.
It had been hot; too hot for an Englishman, as her husband would so often say. The home they shared stood on the other side of the Musi River from Hyderabad. Their residence was on the water’s edge, but even the breeze along the river did little to cool the air. During the monsoon season, the Musi was turned into a raging torrent, but back then it was little more than a slow, fordable stream.
From her bedroom window, Bibby Motte had watched her husband pace the veranda. She knew that he had long ago dismissed his punkah wallah, but two sepoys hovered on the threshold, their daggers clearly visible at their belts. They would ensure he was not threatened in any way. At least she could be confident that his personal safety was not at issue.
Once more her husband had wiped away the beads of sweat that gathered on his forehead. She could tell he was going over the deal again in his mind. Captain Michael Farrell, dashing, debonair officer that he was, had come to the house for their first meeting. There were two others with him, Lavington and Flynn, but Farrell had been the talker—charm personified, she recalled—and Motte had fallen for his wiles. He had given him what he wanted, a length of fabric covered in strange symbols that no Englishman could understand that he had purloined on his travels in Sumbhulpoor. Her husband had confided in her that he considered it a worthless trifle. “Of course there are stories that surround it,” he had told her. “But this land seems to thrive on stories.” Clearly the Irishman, however, did take heed of the wild tales, believing the embroidered scroll to be some sort of map of the diamond mines. In return for it, the officer had assured her husband of a gem beyond compare. Still uncut, it weighed nearly half an ounce, he was told. In the hands of an expert it could be hewn into one large stone of at least four hundred carats—a cushion brilliant, perhaps, like the famous Pitt diamond—together with several secondary ones. That was what her husband had gambled on. That was why he had handed over twelve thousand pagodas to retain his interest. It was a down payment, Farrell had told him, and a sign of their mutual trust.
Bibby Motte recalled how, that night, her husband had turned toward the river and squinted into the gloom, looking for any lights from a budgerow or other craft. He saw none. But his expression had changed. Lifting her gaze, she wondered what clearly troubled him and found the answer on the horizon. Hyderabad was lit by a bright red light. It seemed there was a fire in the city. Had her husband’s plans gone up in smoke, too? Another hour must have passed before he admitted that he had been deceived, or let down, or both. He dismissed the sepoys.
Slipping on her silk robe, Bibby Motte left her bed and joined her husband on the veranda. Draping her arms ’round his neck, she had urged him to come to bed. But it seemed he was not interested in seduction. He was too enraged.
“I’ve been a fool,” he told her, his voice crackling with anger. “I’ll wager those three scoundrels will soon be boarding a ship and making their way home to England to spend my money.”
“Come, my love.” She reached out for his hand, but he refused it, walking ahead of her into the bungalow, shaking his head as he did so. Her advances rebuffed, Bibby lingered a moment longer. She cast an anxious look at the citadel. She’d heard talk among the servants. One of the jagirdar’s miners had escaped and was being harbored by a merchant within the city walls. His men were seeking them out, and woe betide anyone who was hiding them.
Shutting out such unpleasant thoughts from her head, she was just about to follow her husband inside when she spotted something odd in the water. The light from the city was reflecting on the river, and she leaned over the balcony for a closer look at what she thought, at first, was a tree trunk bobbing on the surface. It was only when her eyes focused on the object a second or two later that she realized it was not a tree trunk at all that was floating downriver. It was a severed leg. The memory still made her nausated, nine years on. Yet even now, nothing would give her greater pleasure than to see Patrick Flynn’s body float down the River Thames, too.
Chapter 40
“Dr. Silkstone! Dr. Silkstone!”
Thomas was rudely awakened from a fitful sleep by cries below his window and a furious rapping on the knocker. It was light, but still early. He lifted his head from the pillow and heard the front door creak open downstairs and Mistress Finesilver’s loud reproach.
“What, in the name of heaven . . . ?” she cursed as she saw a rough sort of man, all brawn and no brain, standing on the doorstep. He was a driver, and his cargo was behind him in a wagon. Another ruffian accompanied him, while a third, sheepish-looking dolt sat slumped on the passenger seat.
“Coroner’s office,” barked the thug, handing her a letter of authorization.
She barely gave it a look, but stepped forward over the threshold and began berating the man.
“What you got in there?” She waved her arms at the cart. She could see from her vantage point on the steps that its cargo lay under a tarpaulin.
The driver sniffed and wiped a stream of mucus from his nose with his sleeve. “Can’t you read?” he sneered, pointing at the letter she held in her hand. “’Tis a body. A body for Dr. Silkstone.”
Mistress Finesilver’s hands flew up to her face. “Not here, you fools!” she cried. “Take it ’round the back!” She seemed more anxious about what the neighbors might think than the fact that a corpse had arrived on her doorstep.
By this time Thomas had slipped on his breeches and shirt and was careering down the stairs. He arrived at the doorway just in time to witness the driver setting off in the direction of the side street that led to the rear gate and the laboratory.
“Well, I never!” Mistress Finesilver was still fuming. “Who do they think they are bringing a body to the front door?”
“A body?”
She turned
and, still scowling, handed Thomas the letter. “From the coroner’s office,” she told him. He scanned it quickly. It was written in Sir Stephen Gandy’s own hand.
Silkstone,
I have authorized the removal of this corpse from the mortuary. The man accompanying it is a shopkeeper, an ironmonger, who found the victim still alive but mortally wounded. Apparently the unfortunate gentleman repeated your name several times before he died. The ironmonger duly reported the death, and I took custody of the body, but thought it best if you inspect it in the hope that you might identify it—as it seems he knew you by name. If you think necessary, I would also ask you to conduct an examination to ascertain who might be responsible for his death. Please inform me of your intentions as soon as you are able.
Yours,
Sir Stephen Gandy
Westminster Coroner
Thomas hurried back through the hallway and out into the courtyard to see the back gate opening and two men carrying the covered corpse on a stretcher. He called to them to follow him and unlocked the laboratory door to allow them access.
“Here, if you please,” he said, directing the porters to lay the body, wrapped in dirty sacking, on his dissecting table.
The two coroner’s men took their leave, but a third, the one Thomas assumed was the ironmonger, held back.
“You found the man?”
“That I did, sir.” He nodded his head, but regarded Thomas with eyes that were so askew that the doctor could not tell where his gaze was focused.
Thomas approached the table and inhaled through his nose. The corpse was relatively fresh. He was not sure who he would find. All he could be certain of was that the victim knew his name. Bracing himself, he pulled back the sacking, and his stomach suddenly lurched as he saw the face for the first time.
“Lupton,” he muttered.
Catching a glimpse of the dead man, the shopkeeper turned away. “You know him, sir?”