Dark Road to Darjeeling (21 page)

“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 edu
cation 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.”

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, why 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.

Jane shrugged. “The little one who dusts the ground floor, why?”

“Was she responsible for dusting the box?”

Jane thought a moment. “Yes, it used to sit upon the piano. Aunt Camellia herself is the only one who dusts the dining room porcelains aside from Jolly, but the rest of the things she leaves to the maids. Why?”

“It seems perfectly simple, dearest. She either broke the box or stole it, and made up the story of the ghost to explain its absence.”

I regarded them smugly, and Portia curled a lip. “I do hate to admit it, but Julia has a point. It is the simplest explanation. And if you invoke Occam’s Razor, I will smother you with this pillow,” she warned me, brandishing a cushion.

I clamped my mouth shut, and turned to Jane.

“It is the likeliest explanation,” she agreed, “but what of the other things? The maids do not touch my jewellery. You think that could be put down to petty theft as well?”

I shrugged. “A better explanation than the supernatural, don’t you think? And Freddie may well have misplaced his own clasp knife. Men do all the time.”

She nodded slowly. “I suppose.” She gave us a nervous smile. “I didn’t really believe it was Fitzhugh. I wondered if it might have been Freddie playing tricks.”

Portia kissed her hand, while I did a swift mental calculation.

“But Freddie has only been dead a few months. If things had gone missing some time ago, how could it have been Freddie?”

She looked confused a moment, then rubbed her head. “I think I must have been confused. So much has happened, and I remember seeing Freddie handling the vase in the peacock dining room shortly before it disappeared. It must have all got quite muddled in my head,” she said apologetically.

“And why shouldn’t it?” Portia said stoutly. “You have been through an ordeal. But it is very nearly over.”

I sensed she wanted me to leave off the questions, but something new niggled at me. “Jane, did Freddie have access to your jewellery?”

“Well, I suppose. He knew where I kept the key to my jewel box.”

“And no one else did?” I pressed.

“Leave it, Julia,” Portia said, giving me a stern look.

I ignored her. “Jane?”

She thought, then shook her head. “No. I was always careful. I suppose it comes from living so long in London with all of those ghastly maids we got from Aunt Hermia’s refuge. They may have given up prostitution, but at least three of them tried to steal the silver. I always kept the key to my jewel box upon my person, except when I slept.”

“And the only person in the room when you slept was Freddie,” I pointed out triumphantly.

Portia’s expression had taken on Medusa-like properties, and I had no doubt if I looked directly at her, I should be turned to stone. I continued to look only at Jane.

“You think Freddie stole. From the house, from me,” she said slowly.

“Technically, it would not have been stealing,” I pointed out. “As the master of the Peacocks, everything in it, including your jewellery, would have been his property.”

She considered this, shaking her head, but even as she did, I saw the conviction lighting her eyes. “But why?”

“Was he short of money?”

“No, he—” She broke off. “Oh, but he was! I remember now, he had a terrible row with Harry. Not long before he died. He had gone into the safe in the estate office and taken out the money meant to pay the workers their wages. Harry had no cash with which to pay them and he was furious. Freddie told him it was his money to do with as he pleased and Harry would just have to think of something, but he wouldn’t be spoken to as if he were anything less than master in his own house.”

She collapsed against the pillows, her face white with strain. “I cannot believe it. Freddie, a common thief.”

“Worse than that,” I mused aloud. “You have just given Harry Cavendish the strongest possible motive for murder.”

We had all come over sober at the mention of Harry’s name. He was, after all, an immensely likable fellow. It did not please any of us to think of him as a murderer. And what of Lucy, I wondered? I related swiftly the news of her secret engagement, and Portia covered her face with her hands.

“Not again,” she said, her voice muffled. She lifted her head. “Are you quite sure Emma would have been unable to do the deed herself? She might have wanted to secure Lucy’s future. What if she knew she were dying, but was still strong enough to call here at the Peacocks and visit with Freddie as he lay in his sickbed? She could have introduced some poison and done away with him on the grounds that his inheritance would most likely go to Harry in due course, enabling him to marry her sister.”

I gave her a doubtful look. “Lucy indicated the engagement was not one of long standing. There would have to be some sort of understanding for such a scheme to be worthwhile.”

Portia scowled. “It is possible,” she insisted.

“Many things are possible,” I returned tartly, deliberately not looking at Jane.