Dark Road to Darjeeling (23 page)

I returned to the Peacocks to find the place in a flurry of activity. Miss Cavendish was instructing the maids and cooks in preparing an array of food for the festival, and when I saw her, she greeted me with a look of self-reproach.

“Lady Julia, you must forgive my neglect of you! I always
forget how much work goes into the festival,” she explained, wiping her brow with a handkerchief.

“It looks as if it will be a wonderful time,” I told her, my mouth watering at the tables groaning with bowls and platters, each carefully covered with cheesecloth or muslin that had been weighted at the edges with beads to keep flies from the food.

“It always is,” she assured me. “Quite different to what you will have been used to in England,” she added somewhat stiffly, “but it is very important to the pickers and one likes to keep them happy.”

I glanced at the lavish display and smiled. This sort of excess would not be simply to keep the pickers happy. It spoke of extravagance and celebration, and the English clearly indulged as much for themselves as their pickers.

“Shall we simply eat ourselves into oblivion or will there be entertainment as well?” I asked.

“Plenty of entertainment,” she assured me. “The natives will dance and sing, although if you are not accustomed to their harmonies, it sounds like the music of the devil. And there will be conjurers and fortune-tellers, of course.”

“I met with one—the old woman who sits at the crossroads.”

She gave me a look of mystification. “What old woman at the crossroads?”

“The one with the leper’s clapper and the begging bowl. She dresses in veiled white and keeps her grandson with her to interpret for she has lost her tongue to the disease.”

Miss Cavendish continued to look puzzled, and I persisted. “She has been there most days when I have passed the crossroads. She is not entirely in her wits, I think. You must know her.”

Miss Cavendish shook her head. “I daresay she is passing through. This valley is remote, but some travellers prefer it to the other ways into the Himalayas. There are no brigands in the
valley proper, only on the road beyond, and if the woman is alone save for a little boy, she would naturally wish to be safe.”

“Perhaps,” I said slowly. I had no sense of the traveller about the woman. She had seemed a fixture of the place, content to sit day after day at the crossroads, collecting her alms and dispensing her curious words.

“No matter,” Miss Cavendish said briskly. “I daresay she will pass on her way soon enough, and if she does not, we will give her money to go. We have no leprosy in the valley, and we do not want it.”

She hastened off to return to her preparations and I trailed slowly up to my room, wondering about the mysterious old woman in white and if she was some odd apparition come to haunt only me during my stay in the valley.

I need not have concerned myself that she was an apparition, for as our merry party left the Peacocks the next day for the festival, she was in evidence, sitting at the crossroads with no sign of the little boy. I hoped all was well with him and would have stopped to ask, but the granny merely waved me on my way, turning from me as I passed. She behaved as if I had somehow offended her, but I could not imagine how.

I was walking with Portia and Plum, but Portia was far too occupied with fretting over leaving Jane to pay attention, and Plum waved off my concerns when I related quickly the story of the strange old woman.

“Julia, she is a poor beggar woman. Leave her in peace,” he said flatly. I opened my mouth to remonstrate with him and snapped it shut instead. Nothing about the day was turning out as expected. I had thought to go with my husband, but he had gone ahead to help Harry with some of the preparations, the putting up of booths and such, while Miss Cavendish and most
of the staff had hurried on with handcarts full of food and drink. Mary-Benevolence remained behind to attend to Jane, and Portia was only reluctantly persuaded to leave her. Plum seemed prickly and out of sorts and rather eager to pick fights, and I made up my mind to get as far away from him as I could at the festival.

As we arrived at the appointed site, I realised how easy a feat that would be. All of the pickers in the valley had gathered at the festival ground. The size of a small village green, it was the only truly flat space I had seen in the valley aside from the private gardens. It was bordered on one side by the road and on the other by a thick bit of jungle, overgrown with trees and vines that provided an impenetrable wall of green as a backdrop to the colourful gathering. Prayer flags and bunting had been strung from poles and tall deodar trees and tied with ribbons and bells, while long tables had been covered with vibrant cloths and heaped with platters and bowls of food, both English fare and the traditional foods of the Hindus and Nepalese of the valley. Another table had been set some distance apart and laden with offerings of thanksgiving to the gods, fruits and vegetables and a tremendous arrangement of tea leaves, as well as bowls of sand stuck with joss sticks scenting the air with jasmine smoke. The whole effect was one of colourful abundance and lively good fortune, and I said as much to Miss Cavendish when I found her arranging plates of plum cakes.

“It does look rather nice, doesn’t it?” she said, smiling in satisfaction. “Mind yourself when the feasting is finished,” she warned with a nod behind her. “That is when they fling great handfuls of coloured powder at one another. They do not throw them on the English, but it is quite impossible to avoid it.”

Just beyond where she stood there were great clay bowls heaped with powders in vibrant colours, a bowl of bright blue,
another of the sharpest pink I had ever seen, orange and green and yellow.

“For what purpose?” I asked her.

She pursed her lips. “Ask a dozen of the natives and you will get twelve different answers. It’s something they have always done, and it is quite harmless. They all go to the lake and bathe themselves afterwards, and anything that encourages their cleanliness is to be supported,” she finished, stacking the last cake. This last remark seemed a trifle unjust. From what I had seen of the local folk, they were cleaner than most English, preferring to bathe regularly and with great vigour.

I wandered off then, lured by the music and the dancing. An impromptu band of sorts had been formed with native instruments, various drums and pipes and flutes, with a few peculiar stringed instruments the like of which I had never seen. The music was odd and quavering, unlike anything I had encountered before, and I was sorry Brisbane was not there to hear it.

I looked around suddenly, wondering what had become of him. I spotted Harry Cavendish, laughing with a clutch of his pickers, but Brisbane was not with him. I walked the circumference of the festival ground, peering into each group before I realised I might have saved myself the trouble. Brisbane was easily the tallest man in the valley; only Plum rivalled him for height, and no one stood head and shoulders above the natives.

Just then Jolly strode in front of the band and raised his gong.

“The dinner is served!” he announced in English, and from the mad rush to the food tables at his next words, I suspected that was precisely what he said in Hindu and Nepali as well.

I made my way to the English table where I joined my siblings, the Pennyfeathers, and the Cavendishes. Dr. Lewellyn appeared at the last minute, his colour pale and his clothes a trifle unkempt, but his eyes darted around quickly, and his movements
were quick as a hummingbird’s. I made up my mind to watch him, even as I wondered where Brisbane was. The chair next to me remained empty, and I caught Harry Cavendish’s eye at one point and lifted my brows inquiringly.

He came to me and knelt beside my chair. “I am so sorry, Lady Julia. Mr. Brisbane asked me to deliver the message to you that he would not be here for the dinner, but hopes to join us for the dancing afterwards. The post just arrived by messenger and he wished to read his letters, some urgent business, he said,” Harry finished vaguely, and I smiled tightly.

“Thank you, Mr. Cavendish.”

He had the grace to flush. “I have failed abjectly in my mission. I ought to have found you straightaway and told you, but it quite slipped my mind.”

He left me then, and Plum jogged my elbow. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“That my husband is an unmitigated bounder,” I said through clenched teeth.

Plum pulled a face. “You will find no argument from me.”

“Do shut up, Plum.”

He spread his hands, his expression mockingly innocent. “I am merely supporting your view of the man. If you say he is a bounder, then I am forced to agree.”

“Yes, well, he is my bounder and I will not hear a word against him, particularly not from you,” I told him. The words were harsh and not entirely deserved. Plum had been remarkably restrained in his attentions toward Miss Thorne. She had been seated at the far end of the table, and I had not seen his gaze travel there more than once or twice during the course of the meal.

At length we finished the feast and settled in for a recitation of poetry by the children, most of which escaped me entirely
as it was rendered in Hindi or Nepalese, and then the dancing began in earnest. The musicians struck up a lively tune and the natives all began to dance. The entire valley population seemed to have turned out, save for Jane and the Phipps girls, all kept at home by indisposition. And Brisbane, I thought bitterly, who was doubtless using the time to engage in some investigative sleuthing. The least he could have done was told me, I reflected. I could not have gone with him; it would have been far too obvious if both of us had been absent, but I might have at least enjoyed a discussion of his plans.

I fumed and fretted through the beginning of the dancing, although the music was oddly infectious. Everyone joined in the singing or dancing, the workers left their pots and pans aside, and even the leprous old granny crept near, tapping her clapper in time to the music. There was something oddly grotesque about this, but also entirely pathetic and I found a sudden rush of pity for the woman, a stranger in this valley, sickly and condemned to a terrible, wasting end. It was the first time I had seen her stand, and she was taller than I thought, although she leaned upon a sort of staff, as bent and gnarled as her back. She must have been an imposing woman at one time, and the sight of her ruin was difficult to bear.

I turned back to the festival, tapping my toe in time to the music, and determined to enjoy myself. I was lucky, I told myself firmly. I had my health, and a gifted and brilliant husband—difficult as he might be. I had family and wealth, and no right to feel sorry for myself when so many of the people in this valley had so little and still managed to be joyful.

Just then, a scream rose high above the music. I thought it was the singing at first, for the music often sounded somewhat primitive to my ears, but the second cry was definitely a scream, pitched high with hysteria. The crowd turned as one to the
direction of the cries, and then began to surge. I turned to see what the trouble was, and to my astonishment, found myself face-to-face with a tiger.

That it was the same beast that had torn the pretty face from Dr. Llewellyn’s wife, I had no doubt. There could not be two such tigers in so small a valley. Its coat was black as pitch, I thought at first, but as it moved, I saw that it bore stripes, shadows upon shadows, creeping from the green darkness of the jungle.

These were the things I thought as I watched the tiger advance slowly, with the most graceful movements I had ever seen. It was perhaps thirty feet from me when I first saw it emerging from the jungle, moving ever closer, crouched near to the ground, huge amber eyes fixed upon me. The pickers were crying and sobbing from fear, but I heard them only distantly. It was as if cotton wool had been stuffed into my ears.

But suddenly, through the thickness in my head came the voice I knew best of all.

“Julia, do not move,” Brisbane ordered.

I could not see him. The only creatures within my line of vision were the tiger and the old granny, still leaning upon her stick. She was the only one who had not panicked at the sight of the beast, and I applauded her courage even as I felt mine desert me.

And then, several things happened at once. First, the tiger sprang—without warning or preparation, it launched itself into the air, directly at me. Almost simultaneously, the granny flung off her veils and pulled a short club from her belt. Then a single shot rang out, cracking the air like the coming of doom. There was a spray of sparks, and the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder filled the air. The tiger gave a hideous scream and turned once in the air. It fell to the ground, landing hard, with one paw upon my shoe, its ebony claw piercing the soft kidskin.

I turned and saw that nothing had been as I had imagined it. The little club was not a club at all; it was a howdah pistol, the largest bore pistol ever made, capable of felling a fully-grown tiger with a single shot.

And holding it, still draped in the white veils of the leper, was my husband.

I stared at him a moment, then felt the earth begin to tilt.

“I think I am going to faint,” I said in a firm clear voice.

And that is precisely what I did.

I was roused to the pungent odour of Miss Thorne’s smelling salts.

“Do not try to rise,” she told me, capping the nasty vial. “You must keep quiet for a moment.”

I might have expected to have been attended by Dr. Llewellyn, but when I turned my head, I saw him vomiting quietly into the bushes. My head was resting in a lap cushioned by white veils.

“The instant we return to London I am divorcing you,” I told him. But my rage at his deception evaporated when I looked at his face. I had not seen him so affected since…well, ever, I realised with a start. The naked emotion upon his face was too much for me to bear and I turned away.

Portia was weeping openly. “I thought I was going to lose you,” she managed through her tears. She kissed my hand and put it to her cheek.

“I am fine,” I said, pushing off Brisbane’s lap and fighting off a wave of dizziness.

“You are not fine,” Plum said flatly. “You need rest now, and plenty of it. We must get you back to the Peacocks.”

He helped me up and I looked back to see Brisbane rising more slowly. His veils and robes were something of a hindrance, I thought nastily.

“I will arrange to dispose of the tiger,” Harry put in. “Go home now, all of you.”

He waved his arms to indicate the whole of the valley. The natives were staring at Brisbane with a combination of shock and awe, and several of them clutched their children a little more tightly at the thought that the monstrous tiger that had roamed so close to them was dead. A few raised their hands to Brisbane to bless him, but he did not acknowledge them. He seemed not even to see them, and I noticed as he replaced the howdah pistol into his belt that his hand shook ever so slightly.

When we arrived at the Peacocks, Morag busied herself by tucking me into bed with a hot brick and a glass of whisky, muttering all the while about heathens and their wicked ways.

“It is hardly their fault they have tigers,” I murmured as I slid into sleep.

“If they were good people, God would not have sent them tigers,” Morag retorted, and those were the last words I heard.

I rested until the evening when Morag brought a tray with my supper, Portia hard upon her heels.

“How are you feeling, dearest?” she asked, shooing Morag from the bed. She had a mind to fuss over me herself and uncovered the dish of blancmange upon the tray.

I looked up at her. “Blancmange? I loathe blancmange. You know that.”

“It is just the thing when you’ve had a nasty shock,” she said, putting the spoon into my hand.

Personally, I preferred Morag’s approach of a large whisky and said so.

“It is proper invalid food,” Portia insisted. I poked the blancmange with a spoon and watched it wobble.

I turned to Morag. “What is the rest of the household having for dinner?”

“Roasted capon with
pommes dauphine,
” she told me, mangling the French. “
Petit pois,
and a nice macaroni cheese after the fish course of
trout amandine.
”

“I will have that,” I said thrusting the blancmange at her. “And wine.”

She bobbed a curtsey and took the offending blancmange away.

Portia gave me an offended look. “I do not think you are taking this seriously, Julia. You suffered a tremendous shock today. You must have a care for your health.”

“Portia, it was terrifying, but it was over almost before it began.”

“If it had not been for Brisbane,” she said with a shudder. She did not finish the sentence, and she did not need to.

“Yes, well. Brisbane was there, although why he was wearing that ridiculous disguise is something I intend to take up with him as soon as possible.”

“Be gentle with him,” Portia advised.

I folded my arms over my chest. “Be gentle? He has been masquerading as a native woman with leprosy since his arrival, and did not trouble to take me into his confidence.”

“Do you tell him everything?” she countered. “Ah, I thought not. Your expression betrays you. The pair of you are supposed to be partners. Why do you not work together?”

“Pride, I suppose.” I explained swiftly about Brisbane’s reluctance to include me in the investigation, and my own convic
tion that if I could prove my worth, he would accept me fully as a partner in detection.

“But, Julia, have you never considered how insulting that must be to him?”

I stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Do not take that icy tone with me,” she reproved. “I merely mean that you have never considered the matter from his perspective. Until you stand upon the ground he stands on and survey matters from his vantage point, you will never be able to fully enter his world. And frankly, if I were a professional and some meddling dilettante thought she could do my job as well as I could, I would be mightily put out!” I said nothing, and she went on, her voice gentle and low. “Brisbane is a professional man with an excellent reputation and wide experience. He has built a career for himself using only his wits, and although most of our acquaintance deplore that fact, I esteem him for it. You have seen where he came from—you have met his relations, you have walked through a Gypsy camp. When his father abandoned them, Brisbane and his mother had nothing. He ran away and made himself the man he is today with no help from anyone. Whatever he has accomplished, whatever he has achieved, it is a testament to the man himself. He, more than anyone I have ever known, has created himself. He is steel, Julia, forged in fire. I admire him for it, but I have never made the mistake of thinking I could be his equal simply because I am clever and observant.”

I burned with shame. “I confess, I never thought of it in those terms.”

Her smile was one of absolution. “I know you have not. You only saw a bit of danger and intrigue and thought you would like to have it for yourself. But you must open your eyes to the rest of it. To the tedium and the hard work and the dedication
it requires. You cannot play at being a detective, Julia. To do so demeans the work of one who does it seriously.”

I traced the embroidery on the coverlet with my finger. “I understand what you say, Portia. But I do have talents and advantages to bring to an investigation that Brisbane does not. I can help him.”

“You can and you should,” she agreed. “But never forget that for you it is a game. For Brisbane it is his livelihood, and men are defined by such things. A woman’s importance comes from who she is, a man’s from what he is. It has always been so, dearest. I do not say that it is right or that it will always be so, but you must be awake to the truth of it now.”

She departed then and I was left to stew over what she had said. It rankled to think that my sister could so easily find fault with my behaviour and take it upon herself to lecture me, but I realised I had done Brisbane a grave wrong.

Morag brought my dinner tray and I picked over the food, thinking of everything Portia had said. I
had
played at being a detective. Brisbane himself had warned me against it during our first investigation. He had told me it was a dirty and dangerous business and I had pressed on, nearly getting myself killed in the process. But it had not deterred me from wanting to involve myself in his cases again, I reflected. I had inserted myself into the matter of murder at my father’s country estate and untangled a misdeed long-buried at Brisbane’s home in Yorkshire. It had been there that I had met his aunt and discovered the truth about his past. I had heard from her the tale of the beautiful Gypsy seeress who had been Brisbane’s mother and who had died with a curse on her lips. I had learned too of the aristocratic wastrel who had been his father. It had not been easy for Brisbane to lay the ghosts of such dramatic and useless parents, but he had done so, and he had crafted himself a rich and pro
ductive life. Portia was quite right. It was a testament indeed to the character of the man, and I was deeply proud to call him my husband.

Such were my reflections when the man himself appeared shortly after I had finished my tray. He appeared in his formal evening clothes of stark black and white, the sharpness of the contrast showing his dark handsomeness to best advantage. I gave him a gentle smile and he came to sit beside me upon the bed.

“Feeling better?”

He took my hand and pressed it to his lips.

“Yes. I only needed rest and food. I am quite recovered.”

He said nothing, but his eyes spoke for him and they were eloquent. I had seen the look upon his face when he killed the tiger, and I knew he would have taken the animal apart with his bare hands to have saved me.

“Shall I thank you formally for saving my life?” I said, rather more lightly than I felt.

He shuddered. “Do not speak of it, I beg you. I am rather surprised though,” he added with a sharp look. “I expected a haranguing for not confessing my disguise earlier.”

“I never harangue,” I said flatly. “Although I own, I am curious. Why the disguise? And where in heaven’s name did you acquire the child? Rather an elaborate prop, if you ask me.”

He began to undress, first untying his neckcloth, then shrugging out of his evening coat and unpinning his collar.

“The boy is from a village just outside the valley. I paid his family a handsome wage for his services for a few weeks. I should probably return him tomorrow,” he mused, rubbing a hand over the shadow at his jaw. “He went into the fields to talk to the pickers for me, gathering information while they gathered tea. He knows a variety of songs and tricks and kept them amused. I knew they would never speak to someone they viewed
as an Englishman and an outsider, but a winsome child might loosen their tongues. I was right, as it happens. He discovered quite a few titbits, whether they will prove significant I cannot yet say.”

“And you disguised yourself to ensure his protection?” I surmised.

“And yours,” he said quietly.

I blinked. “Mine?”

He sighed. “Julia, you have the most unnerving habit of doing precisely what you oughtn’t. Sitting at the crossroads was a way of keeping track of your movements without relying upon either you or your notebook to find out where you had gone.”

I felt under the mattress, but he held up a hand.

“It is still there. I always replaced it after I read it.”

I mouthed a profane word and he shot me a devilish smile. “Later. In any event, I was able to let you go about your business without any interference from me.”

“How stupid I was! I ought to have known you would never permit me to wander about on my own with a potential murderer on the loose,” I mused.

“Yes, you ought to have. I did it for your own good,” he said.

“You spied upon me!” I protested. “I would have been perfectly happy to apprise you of my whereabouts if you had only asked.”

He began to unpin his cuffs as he gave me a reproachful look.

“Very well. I might not have told you everything,” I conceded. “But it seems a mean trick to put on such a disguise just to keep your beady eyes upon me.”

“Not just you,” he corrected. “The crossroads is the centre of activity in the valley. Sooner or later everyone passes, or at least almost everyone.”

“Not the Phipps girls,” I said with a note of triumph.

“Not the Phipps girls,” he conceded.

“And you would have to admit it was useful of me to call upon them and eventually discover Lucy’s liaison with Harry. It may very well prove the pin upon which this entire case hangs.”

“Perhaps,” he said slowly. “As I said, it is too soon to tell, although I will have to wrap matters up as quickly as possible. Now that my disguise is revealed, there is very little I can do unobtrusively. I shall have to take the opposite course and question people directly.”

“Detection by intimidation?” I asked.

He stripped off his shirt. “Something like that.”

“Do you think…that is…” I hesitated and he looked at me curiously. It was unlike me to have difficulty in speaking my mind. “Portia pointed out that I may be a trifle overzealous in my eagerness to share your work. But I think I could be helpful here. Do you think with your direction, I might be able to offer you some assistance?”

By way of reply, he crossed the room and applied himself to the marital affections so thoroughly I could only think afterwards it was an affirmative. I lay, sated and drowsy, one of his heavily muscled arms draped over me, various thoughts passing as lightly as thistledown through my head.

“Brisbane?” I asked sleepily. “How long have you been here?”

His voice was muffled by the pillow. “Hrrmm?”

I poked at one muscular shoulder. “I asked how long you have been here. I first saw the old woman at the crossroads before your actual arrival at the Peacocks. You must have come into the valley shortly after we did.”

“Before actually.”

I poked him again, harder this time. “Before? How?”

He sat up, stretching. “I left Calcutta the day after you did, but I reached Darjeeling several days before you.”

I thought rapidly. “Of course. The little railway that Portia would not countenance.”

“Yes, quite an efficient little system. I finished my business in Darjeeling and struck out on the road into the mountains before you even arrived in the town.”

“What business?”

“Investigation, of course. That much of what I told you was true. I made enquiries, both in Calcutta and Darjeeling, but I did not wait for replies. I dropped enough fleas in ears and coins in pockets that I could afford to leave and have the information sent by letter.”

“Which you received earlier today,” I finished. “What did you learn?”

He yawned broadly. “The disposition of the Cavendish estate. It is as we suspected. If Jane’s child is a boy, it will inherit. There are no provisions for any children other than legitimate sons in the direct line.”

The thistledown thoughts drifted in my head again. And then one of them caught and snagged and I sat bolt upright in bed, flinging off his arm.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep. Brisbane was always rather slow to wake after such exertions.

I sprang out of bed, snatching up my dressing gown and flinging it about myself. “You lied to me. You were not the leprous granny, at least not all of the time. On at least one occasion I saw you directly after I saw her. There was not time for you to have divested yourself of your disguise and reached the Peacocks before me.”