Dark Road to Darjeeling (26 page)

“Did Plum know Black Jack was your father?”

“Yes.”

The word sliced between us, severing the tenuous bonds of partnership as professionals working together. That he had not told me was something I could have endured; that he had confided in my brother I could not. Something rose up within me then, and the anger and fear of the past hour burned clean away, leaving only bleakness and desolation behind.

“You were right to bring me here,” I told him. “I do now see
what I married.” I put out my hand for the book and he surrendered it without comment. I turned on my heel and left him, standing alone on the road.

I locked myself in my room when I reached the Peacocks, but I need not have bothered. Brisbane did not attempt to seek me out, and I threw myself into a fine fit of sulking that lasted the better part of the day. So enraged was I that I did not even think to look at the book until late in the evening. The gentlemen had been engaged to dine with Dr. Llewellyn, whom I now thought of with a mixture of pity and revulsion, and we ladies had been a subdued bunch. Lucy had returned to Pine Cottage, insisting she was ready to face the emptiness of the little house, and Miss Cavendish seemed exhausted by the events of the past few days. She had been a friend to Emma, and the loss, though not unexpected, was painful. She ate her food, but it seemed done with deliberation, as if she managed to eat simply because she must and took no pleasure in it. Portia took her meal on a tray with Jane, and I was Miss Cavendish’s only company, and poor company at that. I said little, picking at my fish until Jolly finally carried the plate away. We both of us seemed rather relieved when I excused myself early and retreated to my room, and I hoped the burden of entertaining was not proving too taxing for Miss Cavendish. She was not a young woman, I reminded myself, and four houseguests might be an encumbrance to her.

I dismissed Morag after she undressed me, settling in to bed with a novel until I remembered the book Black Jack had given me. I retrieved it and got into bed again. I had finished perusing it and had fallen into reverie when Brisbane arrived. I was rolling the emerald ring in my palm, watching the play of light within the stone itself.

He approached the bed, clearly preparing himself for another conversation of some import, but I stayed him with an upraised hand. I brandished the ring.

“Is it genuine, do you think?”

He did not touch it. “Black Jack never deals in paste jewels. Gems are his preferred means of currency. He always keeps a few shockingly valuable pieces upon his person should he need to fund an escape.”

“It is a curious jewel,” I mused. “How much do you think it is worth?”

“That particular ring is priceless,” he told me coolly.

I blinked at him. “How can you know? You haven’t even touched it, much less inspected it with a loupe.”

“Because that is the Isabella emerald, given from Queen Isabella of Spain to the Borgia pope, Alexander VI. He in turn gave it to his daughter, Lucrezia, upon her marriage. She had it set with a lock of her own hair and returned to him as a pledge of her loyalty.”

“You are joking,” I said, almost dropping the ring.

Brisbane shrugged. “Look inside.” I turned it over to find the underside of the setting had been fitted with a piece of crystal. Embedded behind it was a lock of silken blond hair and around the setting of the crystal was incised a Latin inscription, faint, but still legible.

“Heavens,” I breathed. “Where did he get it?”

“I’ve no idea, although I can promise you he did not buy it from a tidy little jeweller in Bond Street. It was stolen from the Vatican centuries ago. It would be impossible to trace at this point.”

“But it belongs to the pope,” I clarified.

“Do you mean to wrap it in brown paper and return it to his Holiness?” Brisbane asked pointedly. “Besides, the ring
was ordered buried with Lucrezia. Technically, it was not Vatican property any longer because the pope instructed it be interred. One might just as easily argue that it belongs to her descendants.”

“What would happen if I did attempt to return it?”

He stroked his jaw thoughtfully. “It would sit in the Italian courts for the next hundred years, most likely with the Vatican, Borgia descendants, and you battling out your claims.”

“Me?” I stared at him in shock. “Why would I have a claim?”

He gave me a wicked smile. “Because possession, my love, is nine parts out of ten under the law. And the statutes which govern the return of stolen property are so vague as to be almost indecipherable. Depending upon the jurisdiction and how the piece changed hands, the original owners would have lost all claim to it. In fact, they would have lost claim simply because of how much time has passed. No, if the Vatican wanted it returned, they would have had to make a claim long before now.”

“So it is
mine?
” I breathed.

“If you want it,” he said, his voice cool and dispassionate. “Consider it a wedding gift from your father-in-law.”

“A most generous gift,” I observed.

Brisbane gave a short, sharp laugh and there was no mirth in it. “Doubtless he cursed it first. Make no mistake. The emerald was a gesture of the most theatrical sort, designed to both distract and confuse.”

“Will you go back to the monastery?”

“There would be no purpose to it, I assure you. He did not spend half a minute behind those walls once he vanished. He has a gift for disappearing,” he said, his handsome mouth twisted a little with bitterness.

I put the jewel aside. “There is something else,” I told my husband.

I handed him the book wordlessly, and it was a long moment before he spoke.

“Good God,” he breathed.

“Yes, that was rather my reaction. You realise that this is evidence that points to one man as the murderer of Freddie Cavendish.”

Brisbane passed the book back to me. “We have no proof of it.”

“What more proof do you require?” I asked, brandishing the book. “Tell me the man who would not kill to protect his family. And this book could destroy those whom he loves.”

Brisbane hesitated and I pressed the point. “You do not wish it to be so because the evidence came from Black Jack. What if it did? He did not manufacture what is between the covers. The source does not taint the evidence itself. Freddie gave this to him because it was the means by which Black Jack could make money if he engaged in a little polite blackmail.”

“I do not like it,” he said simply.

“There are things neither of us have liked in this investigation,” I returned tartly, “but we must learn to live with disappointment.”

The tiny muscle began to jump in his jaw. “Very well. We will return it tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” I agreed. And then I blew out my lamp, leaving him to undress in darkness.

The next day we made a late start owing to a variety of domestic difficulties, not the least of which was Brisbane’s reluctance to go. He invented any number of distractions to keep himself busy until I finally pointed out that as I was in possession of the book, I did not require him to accompany me.

He fixed me with a black look. “You would go alone, wouldn’t you? Even to confront a murderer.”

“Well, it would not be the first time,” I pointed out helpfully.

We arrived shortly after luncheon, a time when we expected to be received with alacrity, and we were. Lalita showed us into the Reverend’s study and he rose, smiling welcome through his spectacles.

“How delightful to see you both! Sit, sit,” he urged, lifting piles of sermons and books about orchids from the chairs. He shooed away a pretty grey cat and smiled ruefully at the mess. “I am a trifle untidy but, as I say, a bit of mess helps a man to think.”

We seated ourselves, and I saw from Brisbane’s closed expression that he was as uncomfortable with the errand as I.

I decided to come straight to the heart of the matter. I had wrapped the book in brown paper, but now I unfolded it from the parcel and laid it upon the Reverend Pennyfeather’s desk.

“This is Cassandra’s,” he said, touching the cover but not opening the book.

“Do you know what the album contains?” I asked softly.

His smile was gentle. “I believe I do, if this is the album that has gone missing.”

“And do you know where it was?”

“I have my suspicions,” he said, his smile fading. “But they are un-Christian, and I do my best to turn loose of them.”

“It was given to us by the White Rajah,” Brisbane put in. He watched the Reverend with the sharp eyes of a predator, but the astonishment writ on the clergyman’s face was genuine.

“The White Rajah? However did he come by it? One of the maids—”

“It was given to him by someone else, someone who gave it to him with the intention of harming your family.”

The Reverend flushed deeply. “I recognise that the photographs are unorthodox,” he began.

“They are, by most standards, indecent,” I broke in.

He looked at the album as if it had grown poisonous fangs. “Cassandra told me they were life studies of Primrose, some classical nudes.”

“Some are,” I acknowledged. “But there are others.”

He pushed the book aside. “I cannot look. I must not.”

“No, I think it would be best if you did not,” I agreed. “But you must know that there are photographs in that album of Primrose engaged in acts of self-gratification.”

The flush of a moment before ebbed, leaving his complexion waxy and white. “I cannot believe this,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“They are beautifully done,” I hastened to add, “Cassandra is a talented artist. But one cannot escape the fact that they are still photographs of a young woman in a state of
dishabille
disporting herself in a very intimate fashion.”

“But why would she do such a thing?” he cried, his anguish thick in the little room.

I looked to Brisbane, but he said nothing. It had not been his idea to come, and he clearly did not intend to offer me assistance.

The Reverend covered his face with his hands for a long moment, but when he dropped them, he seemed to have recovered himself. “Cassandra has always had such different notions of what is right and proper. She was brought up to believe in a certain freeness of manner that I have never entirely grasped. She sees things that are natural and thinks that if nature made them so, they must be good. She sees God in all things and tells me my holiness is inferior to hers because God cannot be bound by the laws of man. She is like a child in the ways of morality. She simply does not understand. That is why I brought her here,” he said mournfully. “She sometimes does things that other
people do not understand, but still I love her, and because of that she stays with me.”

Questions trembled on my lips, but I had learned through experience that it is best to let a person speak without interruption at such times.

“I can well imagine her taking these photographs and excusing to herself as art. She would not think it a sin. Primrose, however…” His face darkened again. “Primrose knows. She is enough my child to understand the gravity of what she has done, and she is enough Cassandra’s child not to care. She hears her mother’s stories of freedom and easy manners, and she longs for such a life. She knows I had a mind to see her properly married next year, perhaps to a planter out of Darjeeling. Now it cannot be, and I would not be an honest man if I did not say that I believe she did this deliberately to make that impossible.”

He looked up suddenly. “But why would giving this to the White Rajah harm my family?” he asked, seizing upon Brisbane’s earlier remark.

Brisbane stirred himself to answer. “The White Rajah is not all that he seems. He is a deceptive man, a criminal, who makes it his habit to ensnare gentlemen into habits they cannot afford. When they cannot pay, he will take whatever they have of value, including information that might prove embarrassing to others.”

“For blackmail?” the Reverend asked.

“I am afraid so. He has not approached you?”

The Reverend shook his head. “Not for so much as a shilling. I thought him a kindly old man. He even gave me a contribution for the orphans’ fund I manage.”

“No doubt he was holding on to the album for an auspicious time, perhaps when your daughter’s engagement was announced,” I put in.

“When I would be all the more vulnerable and likelier to pay,” the Reverend said. “It is diabolical!”

We did not disagree. I exchanged quick glances with Brisbane, realising the sudden futility of our errand. Black Jack had given us evidence, but clearly not evidence that would aid us in finding Freddie’s murderer. The Reverend had no notion those specific photographs even existed, much less that they had been stolen for nefarious purposes. And thus, he had no motive for killing Freddie Cavendish.

We left shortly afterwards, the Reverend’s expressions of kindly gratitude ringing in our ears. I glanced at Brisbane.

“You were right. Black Jack did us no favours. You needn’t look so pleased.”

He flicked me a glance. “I am not pleased,” he said slowly. “In fact, I would have far preferred it if you had been right.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because once more the trail of Freddie’s murder is winding us back to the Peacocks,” he said. We fell into silence then and said no more.

We returned to the Peacocks in a dispirited mood. Brisbane was well accustomed to the ups and downs of investigations, the blind alleys, the trails that went cold. I, however, was not. I liked things to be straightforward and easily solved, and I reflected that my frustration did not bode well for me as a detective. I had just avowed to myself that I would learn to temper my impatience when Brisbane and I entered the Peacocks. Portia flew down the stairs, her eyes wide.

“Dearest, where have you been? You will never believe it—Lucy Eastley has eloped!”

I stared at her in astonishment, but upon further reflection I realised I ought not to have been surprised. With Emma’s death, Lucy had nothing to hold her to Pine Cottage, and I had seen the expression of devotion upon her face when she spoke of her fiancé. And I had also seen the enormous sapphire that promised his intentions.

“Harry did not wait long,” I commented dryly.

“I did not wait long for what?” Harry asked, emerging into the hall from his study.

“Mr. Cavendish!” I cried. “You are here.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Where should I be?”

Before I could reply, Portia gave me a shove. “What on earth are you talking about? Lucy eloped with that fellow you met.”

“What fellow?” I asked, feeling the chill of certainty reach into my bones even as I asked the question.

“The White Rajah,” Portia supplied. “Lucy has eloped with the White Rajah.”

“It is not your fault,” Portia said, putting another compress to my neck. “How were you to know?”

“She never said his name,” I said, my voice muffled by my skirts. Seeing my pale face at the mention of the White Rajah’s name, Brisbane had bodily removed me to the drawing room and ordered whisky. Portia had stood by, chafing my hands and laying compresses upon my neck while Harry built up the fire.

“She never said his name and I assumed it was Harry,” I moaned again.

“You thought I was betrothed to Lady Eastley?” Harry asked.

I sat up, watching the room spin slowly. I took a sip of whisky and the room righted itself. “Lucy and I were discussing you. Then she began to speak of her betrothed, only I did not realise at the time that she changed the subject. Lucy can be so imprecise in her speech,” I added peevishly. “I thought you were her intended, Mr. Cavendish. I didn’t even realise she knew the White Rajah.”

“Their assignations were always conducted in secret,” Portia said rather unhelpfully. “She was afraid people might gossip about the difference in their ages. It is all in the note she left,” she added, brandishing the page at me.

I waved it off and watched as Brisbane took it, reading it over. “They met on board the ship,” he said after a moment. “The same passage during which Cedric died. She said she was flattered but aware of the impropriety when he followed her to the Valley of Eden. She made him promise not to tell anyone of their attachment and insisted their visits must be clandestine.”

“How revoltingly sentimental,” I said, feeling rather harshly towards Lucy. The truth was I could have throttled her with my bare hands. The stupidity of the girl astonished me.

I appealed to Brisbane. “Will you go after them?”

He lifted one broad shoulder in a shrug. “On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that he is not a very nice person,” I said, infusing my words with meaning. I did not want to disclose the White Rajah’s true identity without Brisbane’s blessing.

“I thought you liked him,” Portia pointed out. “Why do you want Brisbane to go after them? And why do you say he is not a very nice person?”

I looked at Harry. “Harry knows.”

Harry blinked. “I know he hosts the odd gambling night, but I do not go,” he said stoutly. “I have scarcely met the gentleman.”

“Then why do you leave the Peacocks at night?” I asked him bluntly.

He gave a sharp intake of breath, then recovered himself. “I will not answer that except to say that my business is my own and it does not touch this matter. You have my word upon it.”

He set his jaw, as if to challenge any contradiction.

“Very well,” I said, waving my hand. “You say you have no business with the White Rajah. He entices men into gambling and intoxicants.”

“Intoxicants? Now I am intrigued,” Portia said.

“A solution of cocaine, specifically,” Brisbane told her. “He has kept the good doctor rather well supplied.”

“As a doctor, I should have thought Llewellyn could keep himself supplied. There is no law against that sort of thing,” she observed.

Harry seemed relieved to have the subject diverted from his nocturnal wanderings. “Opium in its various forms might be a simpler matter,” he put in, “but anything more esoteric would be difficult to come by. I cannot imagine how the White Rajah could arrange such things.”

“I can,” Brisbane said grimly.

“God help her,” Portia said, “but it appears Lucy has chosen even worse the second time than the first. Has he any money or family?”

I took a deep draught of my whisky to avoid explaining to my sister that the White Rajah, in fact, had family in this very room.

Harry answered. “We do not know anything much of him here in this valley, but I daresay he has connections somewhere. We will hope for the best for Lady Eastley’s happiness. Many a woman has been the making of a man,” he added.

He lifted his glass to their happiness and as he drank off his toast, I realised that Lucy Eastley had just become my husband’s stepmother.

“I will go,” Brisbane said suddenly. I blinked at him, not entirely certain if the whisky had sharpened or blurred my vision. But he seemed resolute. “Perhaps there is time yet to stop it. If Lucy is not a good rider, I may be able to catch them up before they reach Darjeeling.”

I followed him to our room where I watched as he flung a few necessities into a bundle just small enough to fit into a saddlebag. I flinched as he tucked the howdah pistol into his belt and slid a knife into his boot.

“Precautions only,” he said with a
froideur
I did not like.
“There are still a few brigands on the road into Darjeeling, but I do not expect trouble.”

“I have reconsidered. I do not want you to go,” I said suddenly. “Lucy Eastley is a stupid girl. If she does not know he is only marrying her for the Eastley fortune, she deserves him.”

He pulled on an oilskin coat. “The weather may turn in a day or so. Mind you watch the sky if you go out,” he said.

“Will you take Plum?” I asked, knowing well enough what the answer would be.

“No. There is still possibly a murderer at large here, and I will have you kept safe,” he told me. I did not argue. I merely sat upon the bed, holding my knees.

“This is the first time we have been parted,” I told him.

“You left Calcutta without me,” he pointed out. There was no softness in his manner toward me, nothing that I could seize upon to bring him close to me again. I regretted our quarrel, deeply. But I could not bring myself to speak first to make it up with him, and with no olive branch from him, matters stayed as they lay between us.

“I will return in a few days. A week at most,” he informed me. “Be safe.”

He paused as if he would kiss me. His eyes held my gaze, then dropped to my mouth. And then he was gone, quick as the snap of a conjurer’s cape. It was done then, I told myself coolly. He had taken himself off to pursue his father, and I was left to continue the investigation into Freddie’s death on my own. Something good and fine that had bound us together had been broken, and such things were seldom mended. I roused myself and took out my notebook and began to write.

During my ruminations, it occurred to me that although I had not been correct about the object of Lucy’s affections, I had cer
tainly plucked a nerve when I had confronted Harry about his late-night activities. Broaching the subject with the man himself had yielded no results, but it occurred to me that with a little deft handling, I might be able to unearth the information I wanted from another source.

I went in search of Miss Cavendish and ran her to ground turning out the linen cupboard.

“I am so glad I found you,” I told her truthfully.

She counted under her breath for a moment, then put a tick mark in her linen book. “Thirty-nine pillowslips. There ought to be forty-five,” she murmured, and I wondered guiltily where Brisbane had got the linen for his disguise.

“I am certain they will turn up,” I said, rather mendaciously. “May I help? If you count, I can tick things off in the book. It will be so much faster.”

In truth, it would save her mere seconds, but perhaps she wanted company, for she handed me the linen book and the pencil and began to count washstand covers.

“I was terribly startled at the news of Lucy’s elopement,” I told her.

Her lips thinned and her hands stopped moving. “I feel somehow responsible,” she said shortly.

“You? Whatever do you mean?”

She held her mouth tightly, as if trying to hold back the words, but they burst forth in a rush. “I introduced them on the ship. He was so kindly and so harmless, I thought. And she was so unhappy. I thought they might amuse one another, innocently, of course. With such a difference in their ages…he is old enough to be her father!” she exclaimed, pursing her lips in disapproval.

“I am quite certain you have nothing with which to reproach yourself,” I told her firmly.

She was not mollified. “I would like to believe you, Lady Julia.
But it does not escape my attention that Lady Eastley was your relation, and a far nearer one to you than I. Perhaps you and Lady Bettiscombe and Mr. March will feel that I have been derelict in my duty at introducing her to a person to whom I myself had not been properly presented. He did not even provide me with a letter of introduction,” she finished on a high, strangled note.

She reached for a stack of towels, the keys jangling at her belt.

“Miss Cavendish, Lucy Eastley is quite old enough to make her own decisions about whose acquaintance to cultivate and where to present her affections. Besides, one does not normally rely upon letters of introduction in so informal and confined a setting as a ship. I myself shared a table at dinner with a dentist,” I added, hoping to offer her some comfort.

Instead she looked aghast. “A dentist! Oh, my.”

“Precisely. But he was a very gentlemanly fellow, and we had the most interesting discussion about stamps one evening. He is an amateur philatelist and I promised to send him some postage stamps from our more exotic travels. He was thoroughly delightful, and I should never have made his acquaintance were we not thrown together on board the steamer. I suspect it was precisely the same for you.”

“It was,” she replied with some relief. “I was travelling alone, you see. I was feeling very low as I had not been able to persuade Freddie to return with me, and I so hated to disappoint Father. I am afraid I rather seized upon the friendship of anyone who was kind to me.”

She applied herself assiduously to the counting of tea towels then and I gave her a moment to compose herself.

“And now it transpires that that fellow is a debaucher, providing games of chance and insalubrious drugs to people like poor Dr. Llewellyn. You would think a character so defiled would leave its mark upon the face,” she said stoutly.

“It does not work that way, unfortunately,” I told her, thinking of the most accomplished jewel thief I had once known. She had the face of a chocolate box Madonna and larceny in her heart.

“Indeed it does not. I do not mind telling you I was deceived in Lady Eastley as well. She gave me no indication that she was betrothed, nor that she intended to leave this valley so soon…so soon—”

She sniffed hard, holding back emotion.

“Emma’s loss has been a difficult time for you,” I sympathised. She withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose resoundingly.

“Yes, well, we all have trials to bear.”

“And uncertainty can only make the situation worse,” I put in gently. “It must be a terrible strain upon the nerves not knowing what will happen.”

I meant the birth of Jane’s child and the infant’s affect upon the disposition of the estate, but Miss Cavendish clearly had other matters upon her mind.

“It seems as if everything is breaking down,” she said, her hands twisting in a bundle of clean antimacassars. “The old ways, the good ways, are being flung aside, and soon the rules will no longer apply and a man will think he can marry just anyone.”

There was a sudden brittleness to her movements, and I realised she had been holding in a tremendous amount of worry over more than just the birth of Jane’s baby.

I said nothing for a moment, my mind working furiously to assemble the pieces.

“Harry,” I said suddenly, feeling the familiar rush of certainty when a deduction had fallen into place. “He has been courting someone unsuitable.”

Her lower lip trembled, but she did not weep. She merely blinked hard, holding back the violent emotion within herself.

“I suppose you would think her suitable, your own marriage is so unorthodox,” she said, although not as unkindly as she might have.

“I do think that sometimes the rules might be bent for exceptional people,” I hedged. There were a handful of candidates for Harry’s potential bride, and I nocked my arrow towards the likeliest. “It is Miss Thorne, is it not?”

“She is a half-caste,” Miss Cavendish said sharply. “Her blood is impure, neither fish nor fowl.”

“Surely that is not her fault,” I said gently, thinking of the
mesalliance
that had resulted in her mother’s birth.

Miss Cavendish gave me a piercing look. “No, but neither is it something to be spoken of openly. Such things used to be kept quiet, within the family, as they belonged.”

“But in so small and remote a place, you cannot expect there would not be talk. This valley is no different to any tiny village in England. Everyone here must know everyone else’s secrets, or at least a fair few of them.”

“They talk about him,” she said, pressing a loving hand to a piece of embroidery at the end of a pillow slip. “Father was a good man, no matter what you might think of him, no matter what others might say. He treated his pickers fairly, and what happened with Miss Thorne’s grandmother, well, that was an aberration. It says nothing about the man himself,” she told me, lifting her chin defiantly.