Dark Road to Darjeeling (22 page)

Catching my meaning, Portia flushed deeply. “I do not like the idea of a murderess so close to hand and yet not at all involved,” she said finally.

“I know. It would be very tidy if she were the authoress of Freddie’s destruction.”

We all fell silent again, musing on the suitability of the feeble Emma as a murderess.

“It’s foul really,” Jane observed. “Here we sit like some unholy coven, hoping to lay a murder at that poor woman’s door when she is dying.”

“All the more reason for her to own her misdeeds,” Portia said
firmly. “If she is going to meet her Maker—” Her eyes flew to mine and I held up a hand.

“No. I cannot ask him.”

“But if she has made her peace with her past sins, she will have talked to the Reverend Pennyfeather,” Portia argued. “He is the only clergyman in the valley, the only possible confidant besides Miss Cavendish, and she would hardly tell Camellia if she murdered her nephew!”

“Unless they did it together,” I said. I rose and began to pace the room. “I am sorry. I cannot seem to look at anyone without imagining they murdered Freddie.”

Jane put out her hand and I took it. “I understand,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I have done the same these past months. There have been times I could hardly choke down my food, I was so certain it was poisoned. And it was during one of my worst moments that I wrote to Portia and confessed my unease. I am not sorry, for it has brought you here, both of you, all of you,” she corrected, “and you have been more my family than any blood kin I have ever known. But I begin to wonder if it even matters anymore.”

Portia and I regarded her with outright astonishment. “Dearest,” Portia told her, “of course it matters. Someone killed Freddie and must be brought to justice.”

“Did they?” Jane demanded. “We have no proof. Yes, we can construct a case that he was murdered. It is possible, it may even be probable. But we do not know for certain, and we may never know, and I am beginning to think it may be for the best.”

I pressed her hand. “You are looking to the future.”

Her hand dropped to her belly and she smiled again. “Yes. He kicks and I forget everything else, all my fears and doubts. I had forgot my strength, but you have returned it to me. All will
be well,” she insisted, “and it is enough that Freddie is gone and past whatever demons he wrestled with in life. And if he was murdered, then whoever bears the guilt of it must do just that—bear guilt, and for the rest of their lives. Think of how awful it must be to any right-thinking Christian soul to carry that burden, how terrible and unspeakable it must be to know that you have taken the life of another human being. The fear of being discovered, the pain of knowing that you have done that which must never be done.”

Jane had always been prone to the occasional philosophical turn of mind, but this new serenity in her could only be attached to her impending motherhood, I decided, and I for one would not think of disturbing her newfound peace.

I kissed her on the brow. “As you wish, my dear. All your thoughts must be devoted to this,” I said, placing a hand briefly upon her belly. The child kicked then, hard against my palm and I laughed at the feeling of it.

“He already loves his Auntie Julia,” she told me.

“He has an odd manner of demonstrating his affections if he kicks me,” I said with a smile.

I left her then, and Portia slipped out to follow me. She grasped me by the elbow to face her. “Did you mean what you said? You will abandon the investigation?”

I gave her a patient look. “Portia, Jane said she does not wish to pursue the matter any further, and she is quite right—she has a child to get into the world. She should not worry about such things.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And you?”

“I have a murderer to find,” I told her.

She smiled, a cat’s smile, full of malicious promise. “Good. Because if anyone did murder Freddie, then if Jane bears a son,
the child will be in danger, and I will not have that. You have until the baby is born to find whoever killed his father.”

“And if I do not?”

Portia’s expression turned grim. “Then I will find the villain myself.”

“Julia, is that you? What the devil are you doing under that shrub?” demanded my brother. I sighed. It was the fourth interruption of the morning, and if I did not have peace and quiet, I could not hope to catch my prey.

“Yes, it is I. Do be quiet, Plum,” I ordered softly.

Ignoring my wishes, he clamped his hands around my ankles and dragged me bodily from under the shrub.

“Explain.”

I dusted off my hands and gave him a cross look. “I am attempting to catch a lizard, and you have just caused him to scuttle off.”

“What business do you have with a lizard?”

I thought of half a dozen lies, then opted to tell him the truth. “I mean to speak with Robin Pennyfeather about Freddie and I thought the gift of a lizard might loosen his tongue.”

His eyes narrowed precisely as Portia’s did when she was suspicious of something, and he put his hands to his hips.

“I looked in on Jane last night and she said the investigation was at an end per her request.”

“Her involvement is at an end,” I corrected. “Just because she is about to have a baby and has come over all sentimental does not mean I am prepared to let a murderer walk free.” I looked at him a long moment, considering, then decided to divert him with a bit of news that would strike closer to his heart. “Did you know that Miss Thorne is the granddaughter of Fitzhugh Cavendish on the wrong side of the blanket?”

He blinked. “Yes, actually. I did.”

“Really?” I rose and brushed off my skirts. “How?”

“I made inquiries, Julia. You are the one who pointed out my interest in the girl. Did you really think that I wouldn’t make it my business to find out everything I could about her?”

I nocked another arrow to my bow. “Did you know she has a twin sister who serves as cook to the Pennyfeathers?”

“Lalita, yes. And did you know that their younger brother is the youth who tends the flower beds for Miss Cavendish?”

I thought of the beautiful boy Naresh and cursed myself.

Plum was clearly enjoying himself. “And did you further know that their uncle is Jolly?”

I stared. “You are not serious.”

“Well, not an uncle precisely,” he amended. “But some sort of relation on their grandmother’s side.”

“What else have I missed?” I muttered.

He grinned. “Be of good cheer, my dear sister. I am sure there are plenty of mysteries left for you to winkle out on your own.” He broke off and dove under the shrub, emerging a moment later with a fat blue lizard dangling from his grasp. He took up the jar I had brought, popped the fellow in, and clamped the lid down tightly.

He gave me a pitying smile and strode off, whistling.

“Of all the condescending,” I began. I broke off, studying the lizard. “At least he was useful enough to capture you,” I told him.

And together we went in search of Robin Pennyfeather.

To find Robin, I had of necessity to pass the crossroads where the leprous granny was once more installed with her merry grandson. The boy was playing a flute, a series of long, low maudlin notes that rose in the air and descended once more with a sense of sorrow.

“Are you well today?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Today I am sad because I do not know how to read, and yet I have this book.”

He showed me, and it was a volume of boys’ adventure stories. I could well imagine Robin passing it along after he had outgrown such things.

“Have you no school?” I asked, passing it back.

The granny began gabbling then, and the child cocked his head listening.

“She is unpleasant today,” he told me, rolling his eyes like a reluctant pony. “She has nothing to say to you. But there will be a festival soon, and she will tell the fortunes of those who come. She hopes you will honour her by letting her tell your fortune.”

I thought of the decaying flesh of those hands touching mine and repressed a shudder. “I do not know if I will be at the festival,” I hedged.

The child’s eyes widened. “Of course you will be, memsa. Everyone in the valley will be there. It is to celebrate the end of the first picking. It would dishonour the gods who have caused the tea to flourish not to be present,” he warned.

The granny raised an arm, or something where an arm must once have been, and waved it menacingly.

“She says there will be misfortune for you if you do not go.”

I gave him a hard look. “How does she know I said I would not go? I thought she did not understand English.”

Suddenly, a horrible wheezing grating sound came from the bundle of rags, so much worse than her attempts to speak Hindu. “I know more than you think, lady,” she rasped out. Then she fell into her usual beldame cackles, and I dropped the customary coin in her begging bowl. Her mood changed then and she sketched a gesture of blessing over me, a faintly Catholic gesture this time, and I wondered how many tricks she had learnt to eke extra coin from her benefactors.

I left them then, and continued on, reminding myself to ask Robin about the festival. If everyone in the valley planned to gather in one spot, it might make for some very interesting observations, I thought.

I looked in at the Pennyfeathers’ garden first, wondering if I would find Robin close to home. He was nowhere to be found, but I came across Primrose in the garden, sunning herself in a rather abbreviated costume in spite of the cool air. I noted that the gardeners were not about, and I was glad of it. I had thought Primrose an odd mixture of woman and child, but I was wrong. The childish dresses with their frills and ruffles had hidden a perfectly mature, indeed voluptuous, figure.

I coughed discreetly. “Good morning, Primrose. I do hope I am not disturbing you. It is a lovely day for taking in the sun,” I observed, although I noticed the quickening breeze had raised goose pimples upon her bared skin.

She opened one eye and gave me a sullen stare. “It gets me out of the house when I do not feel like being with people.”

She did not rise, and I reflected then that the Reverend had good cause to be concerned for her. The girl’s manners were atrocious.

“I was looking for Robin. Do you know where I might find him?”

She shrugged. “Try the lake. He said something about fishing today.”

I thanked her and turned to leave, then turned back. “Primrose, I wondered if there was a problem in the valley with petty crime, things missing from houses, that sort of thing.”

She puffed a sigh of impatience and sat up, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. “What things?”

“I don’t know—jewellery perhaps, or small
objets d’art
. Things of value, but portable. One or two items have gone missing over the past few months at the Peacocks, and I wondered if the same had happened here.”

It had occurred to me that if Freddie was not above stealing from his own home, he might not scruple at pocketing treasures from the houses of his friends and neighbours.

She gave a short laugh. “If you have to ask, you do not know my parents. They are forever misplacing things—Mother’s photography albums, Father’s pipes. Miss Thorne spends half her time searching for things under cushions. Do not worry, Lady Julia. The valley is a very safe place, aside from the odd tiger, of course. I am sure the things will turn up sooner or later. Jolly probably took something to be mended and forgot to mention it.”

As a solution, it was a feeble one, but just as likely as any other.

I secured more specific directions to Robin’s favorite fishing spot and realised he would be found at the lake we had first seen at the mouth of the valley, thick with water plants and shimmering green.

“Thank you, Primrose.” She settled herself back onto the grass, clearly finished with me. “And mind you don’t stay out for too long. Freckles are unflattering to everyone,” I said nastily.

She sat up again, sputtering, but I made a hasty exit from the garden. There was an avenue of information now firmly closed to me, I decided, but it had been worth it. The girl was churlish beyond belief, and I had serious doubts about her mother’s system of child rearing if Primrose was the result of it.

The lake was almost half an hour’s brisk walk, but at the end of it I found Robin lying flat upon his stomach on the bank, dangling the pole into the water and teasing it slowly back and forth.

I went to sit beside him. “Good day, Robin. I have brought you something.”

I brandished the jar with the lizard, now sluggish and out of sorts. I tapped upon the glass and he gave me a resentful look. “Well, the lizard does not seem appreciative, but I hope you will put him to good use.”

Robin looked at the jar briefly and sighed. “It is a male. I already have a male. One must have a male and a female to breed.”

“Oh, dear,” I murmured. I opened the jar and told the lizard to leave, watching idly as he crawled into the grass, casting bitter glances behind him.

“But it was kindly done,” Robin said hastily. He fell silent, a pensive pall upon him.

“Are you quite well today, Robin? You are woolgathering.”

“My mother calls it building castles in Spain,” he told me. “Why Spain?”

“The saying is an old one. When it was coined, Spain was very far away and exotic. Now I suppose we ought to say building temples in India,” I said with a smile.

He did not return the smile, but merely gave a heavy sigh and returned to his fishing pole.

“You did not answer my question, Robin. Something ails you.
If you want to talk, I am rather a good listener,” I said. I reached into my pocket and retrieved a packet of chocolate biscuits. What the lizard could not do, the biscuits accomplished. He sat up and took a handful, crunching them appreciatively.

“I was starving,” he said. “I forgot to pack anything at all to eat. Usually Lalita makes certain I have some
chapattis
and cheese, but she was not in the kitchen today,” he said, referring to the delicious native flatbreads.

“Is she at Pine Cottage?”

He nodded, his mouth full.

“I am not surprised. My cousins live there, and the elder of the pair is quite ill. I’m afraid she is going to die quite soon,” I confided. I hoped that offering a bit of ghoulish news might be just the trick to gain the confidence of a boy with such unsentimental interests. Of course, I was perfectly aware of how loathsome it was to offer up Emma’s suffering as fodder for gossip, but that did not deter me for even a moment.

His eyes rounded. “I heard she had an operation. Dr. Llewellyn did it.”

“He did. With no proper anaesthetic. Only a bit of morphia for the pain.”

Robin crunched another biscuit. “Then it was really rather pointless,” he said at last. “She endured a very painful operation, and now she is going to die anyway.”

“Yes, well. At the time, she hoped the operation would cure her. Unfortunately, her disease was too far advanced for Dr. Llewellyn to be of any real help.”

Robin rolled his eyes. “Dr. Llewellyn is little help to anyone these days. I feel sorry for him, of course, but he is entirely useless.”

“He is deeply unhappy,” I told him.

“He drinks,” Robin contradicted flatly.

“He drinks because he is unhappy,” I corrected. “It is unfortunate, but there it is. Your father tells me you used to see quite a little bit of him.”

Robin nodded. “He taught me a bit of medical knowledge for my animals—how to apply tourniquets and bandages and set bones, that sort of thing. It was wildly interesting. I thought for a time I should like to be a doctor myself. But then one has to deal with people, and I like animals more than people.”

“I do not blame you,” I told him truthfully. “The more I see of people, the more I like my own pets.” I felt a rush of homesickness for Grim, my beloved raven, a souvenir of my first investigation. My butler, the devoted Aquinas, was caring for him in my absence, but no place would seem like home until I heard that familiar quork. “I have a raven, you know,” I said suddenly.

Robin’s eyes rounded. “Do you? I should love to have a raven. I kept a buzzard once, but the Indians use them for picking the flesh from corpses, and when the staff discovered him in my room, they all left at once and we had nothing to eat and no sweepers.” Sweepers, contrary to their title, were not solely occupied with cleaning floors. Their primary task was tending to the removal of non-hygienic wastes. They came from the caste of untouchables, and if they had fled, there really must have been a terrible stigma attached to the buzzard.

But talk of the dead had sparked my curiosity. “Is there a burial ground here? A churchyard, I mean?”

He nodded. “Not far from the crossroads is a plot of land given over to burials of the English. The Indians have their own ways, of course. But the Cavendishes contributed a parcel and paid for things like the fence and gravestones. Father presides when any of the English die, but of course it happens so seldom. Not since Freddie,” he said softly.

He returned to his fishing pole, twitching the line.

“Do you miss him?”

“Sometimes,” he said, blinking hard.

I chose my words carefully, treading with caution upon a slippery path. I was uncertain how much of Freddie’s personal life he might have confided to the boy. On the one hand, adults seldom talked of such things before children. On the other, Freddie was a great child himself, and perhaps he had been in some way proud of his little peccadilloes.

“Robin, there were items taken from the Peacocks. Taken by Freddie. Now he had a right to take them,” I hastened to add. “They were his by right of inheritance. But he took them secretly and no one seems to know why. Do you know what he might have done with them?”

To my astonishment, he rose, scarlet-faced and clearly angry. He jerked the pole from the water.

“I do not want to talk about Freddie,” he said, his face turning an alarming shade of puce. “He is dead and gone, and he is never coming back. Never!” he cried, taking to his heels.

I sat back, amazed at the strength of his reaction. Even the gentle prodding into Freddie’s activities had been far too much, just as the smallest poke can inflame a sore tooth. He could not bear the slightest pressure where Freddie was concerned, and as I rose and dusted off my hands, I realised I had uncovered a fresh lead. Robin knew something of Freddie’s unsavoury activities, and I had only to craft the proper approach to learn the extent of Robin’s knowledge.