Dark Road to Darjeeling (15 page)

“Surely there is somewhere,” I persisted. “Somewhere you can go and forget all that has happened here.”

His face suffused with hope for a moment, but it was a feeble flame that flickered and died almost at once. “No, I can never forget. Wherever I go, whatever becomes of me, I cannot forget that I killed Freddie Cavendish.”

At this dramatic pronouncement, he burst into tears and let his cup fall to the floor, and I continued to hold his hand, thinking hard. It was not the first time I had held hands with a murderer and likely would not be the last.

He sobbed for a long while and I waited for him to finish, contemplating my situation. It did not seem so very dangerous, so I made no attempt to escape, but merely passed the time in counting tiles upon the fireplace.

When at last he had concluded his weeping, he mopped his face with a rather soiled and disreputable-looking handkerchief. “I haven’t said it aloud before,” he said by way of apology. “It is a dreadful thing.”

“Dreadful indeed,” I agreed with him. “Tell me, did you intend to kill him?”

A look of purest horror contorted his features. “No! Freddie was a friend, a good one. I never had the first thought of
harming him. The case was an easy one. Percival’s bite had not penetrated deeply. The only real danger was infection. I thought it best if he stayed quiet and rested in his room. Jane and I insisted. Truth be told, Freddie was a bit lazy,” he added with a faint smile. “We did not have to work overhard to persuade him. He had stacks of books and letters from England, and everyone in the valley came to visit him at some point or other.”

“Then what happened?” I urged softly.

“Then Susannah died,” he said, burying his face once more. “For a week after, I could not sleep. I could not eat or think. I could only close my eyes if I had a dram.” He turned to me, pleading for understanding. “I thought I should go out of my mind with grief. And when I could not sleep, I began to have hallucinations. I knew the only way to stop it was to drink myself into oblivion and that is what I did.”

“And Freddie?”

The emotion left his face and his voice dropped to a dull monotone. “I treated him whilst in that state. I do not remember it. But I know I did.”

“What did you do for him?”

“I changed his bandages. It ought to have been a simple thing,” he said flatly. “But the bandages I wrapped about his wound were dirty. They were doubtless the source of the infection that killed him.”

I felt slightly queasy at this, but I pressed on, ever so gently as I retrieved his cup and poured a fresh serving of tea. “How can you be sure?”

I passed him the cup and so tight was his grip upon it, I thought it might shatter. “Freddie was in good health generally, but he had had a bout with fever the fortnight before. His constitution was weakened even before the bite from Percival. The wound was healing slowly, much more so than I should have
expected. I could see he was not sound. Any further claims upon his health would have been…fatal,” he finished softly.

“And you believe the soiled bandage was just such a claim,” I concluded.

He nodded, then sipped at the fresh tea. It had steeped longer now, and I had little doubt the brew was twice as strong.

“You do not have to finish it,” I told him.

“It is vile,” he said, laughing, and for the briefest of moments I could see the man he had been before tragedy had marked him so indelibly.

“I am no monster,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “I am weak and stupid, but I have done nothing out of malice. You are safe enough with me,” he said, somewhat awkwardly.

I touched his hand again. “I have no doubt of that.” I paused, then rushed on, impulsively. “Dr. Llewellyn, I know you believe Freddie’s death was a terrible accident, but was it possible for someone else to have tampered with Freddie’s bandages?”

I never knew what prompted the question. It sprang from my lips before I had even thought it, but as soon as I spoke the words, I liked the taste of them. Something about Freddie’s death was too convenient, too easy to lay at the feet of this benighted creature. But I could well imagine someone of cruel intention and malicious imagination using him to advantage.

He thought a long moment, then shrugged. “I suppose. I know several others changed his bandages whilst I was indisposed,” he said, his tongue lingering upon the last word with bitterness. “Jane, Miss Cavendish, Mary-Benevolence.”

I did not like the mention of Jane, but she had no motive to kill her own husband.
Or did she?
came the thought, unbidden and unwelcome. What if she had come to India with Freddie and realised she had made a terrible mistake? She clearly still loved Portia. If she helped Freddie upon his way, she would have
money and freedom. There was nothing to stand in the way of her reunion with her beloved, and the more I thought of it, the more chillingly possible it seemed.

“No,” I said firmly, and Dr. Llewellyn looked at me, startled.

I gave him a reassuring smile. “I was thinking aloud.”

He fell silent a moment, then burst out, “I apologise for yesterday. You were only offering kindness and I have lost the habit of it. I do drink,” he admitted. “Even now. When it has cost me everything.”

I thought of my own husband and his demons and the measures he sometimes took to elude them. “Sometimes forgetfulness is worth any price,” I told him.

He nodded, and I saw his shoulders sag with fatigue. I had no notion how long he had been drinking, but the state of his clothes spoke to a poor night’s rest, and his emotional outbursts had left him drained.

“I will leave you now,” I said, rising. “I will have Jolly send some food. Mind you eat it, and do not despair. I have a mind to save you yet.”

I left him with a determination akin to what the Crusaders of old must have felt. I did not believe Freddie’s death could be laid at his door, although his weakness for drink had certainly given someone the opportunity. For no other reason than the intuition of the feminine sex, I was certain of his innocence, and furthermore, I was certain that someone had deliberately exploited him to play the villain. There were simply too many people who stood to profit from Freddie Cavendish’s demise. Brisbane did not like coincidences, and neither did I.

Invigorated by my newfound certitude, I covered the distance to Pine Cottage swiftly and made my way to the front door. I
rapped softly so as not to disturb Emma, and after a long moment, the door was opened.

“Miss Thorne!” I said, with some expression of surprise. I did not expect to see the young woman at Pine Cottage, and even less did I expect to see her in native attire. Hitherto she had always been properly costumed with all of the dignity her position demanded, but now she wore the more fluid and colourful habiliment of her people, and the effect was striking. From the bright blue of her draperies to the armfuls of jangling brass bracelets, she looked like the very embodiment of one of the more glamorous Hindu goddesses.

But even as I admired her appearance, she was shaking her head. When she spoke, the voice was the same, but with a slightly different inflection, lighter and more lilting than I had heard before, and although the features were identical, there was some difference in her expression. Miss Thorne had always exhibited a cool and dignified detachment. Now she seemed somehow more comfortable and approachable. She smiled broadly, revealing small, perfect white teeth.

“No, lady. You mistake me for my sister, the governess to the Pennyfeather children.”

“Oh, how stupid of me! I did not realise she had a sister.”

“Yes, lady. We are twins,” she supplied. “I am Lalita.”

I wondered how their fates had been so different. They were both in service, but one wore native dress and was clearly a house servant while the other perched near the top of the domestic chain as a governess with starched petticoats and shoes that no doubt pinched. I looked to this girl’s feet and saw she wore gilded leather sandals.

Noticing my gaze, she laughed. “We are very different, my sister and I. May I show you in, lady?”

I hesitated. “I have come to see Lady Eastley. Is she at home?”

I meant the phrase in the social sense, of course. It was customary for ladies to send word by means of a servant that they were “not at home” even if they were sitting in the next room. It was a polite fiction to win a lady a bit of privacy if she felt indisposed or simply not inclined to be social.

I did not expect that Lucy would employ the formula with me, but Lalita shook her head. “She is not, lady. I am here to sit with Miss Phipps.”

“Oh. In that case I will not keep you.”

She did not seem in any great hurry to be rid of me, and she flicked her eyes upward in the direction of Emma’s room. “Miss Phipps sleeps now. She has had strong medicine and will not wake for hours yet.”

“Well, I have been walking some distance, and perhaps it might be nice to sit a moment,” I told her, seizing the opportunity to engage her in conversation.

She hesitated, doubtless over where she should put me. She could not offer the kitchen as it was below my station, and she could not join me in the sitting room as it was above hers.

“I will sit in the kitchen, if you don’t mind,” I told her. “I should like to take off my boots for a moment and I cannot do so in the sitting room.”

She smiled again and led the way to the kitchen. Like every other room in the cottage, it was small and cosy. It was fitted out as an English kitchen might have been, rather than in the Indian fashion with a separate cookhouse. Here there were many little conveniences arranged—enamelled egg whisks, copper bowls, pots of herbs, and a wire basket of eggs.

Within moments I was seated at the well-scrubbed worktable, easing my boots off and curling my toes. Lalita disappeared, then returned with a large china basin of cool water scented with rose
petals. She knelt and placed it at my feet, pausing a moment to neatly turn back my hems to keep them dry.

“How kind of you!” I exclaimed.

“These hills are difficult on English feet,” she laughed. “It takes a year to toughen them,” she added, displaying the layer of hard callouses upon her own feet. She bustled about the little kitchen and I sat, luxuriating in the refreshment my feet were receiving. After a moment, she presented me with a frothing drink. I sipped at it, tasting honey and spices floating upon a cloud of cream. A bright tang saved it from being cloying.

“Delicious. What is it?”

“
Lassi
. Yogurt frothed with honey and spices. Every woman blends her own, and mine is very special.”

“It is indeed. You seem quite skilled in the kitchen.”

She preened a little in satisfaction. “It is all I have ever wanted, to tend the cooking fires and to make people’s stomachs joyful.”

Now that I had her in conversation, I could see the differences between the girls plainly. Miss Thorne, for all her obvious beauty and her grave dignity, had forced herself in to the mould of a proper English governess. Lalita retained her Indian roots. Even her speech was different, more poetic and flowery in the lovely way of most Indians.

“And do you cook for the ladies here at Pine Cottage?”

“Sometimes. I was cook to Dr. Llewellyn and his unfortunate lady for some time.”

“I have just come from there,” I told her. A shadow passed over her face, and I wondered if she had harboured some soft feeling for her employer. “He is in rather a difficult state.” She said nothing, but her averted eyes told me more than enough. I pressed on. “I have promised to send food from the Peacocks. He has no one to care for him at present.”

Suddenly, whatever feelings she had kept buried burst forth.
“He has pushed aside all who would care for him. He wishes to die, and nothing can save a man when he is determined to die.”

Her face was flushed and she moved to the larder to fetch a ball of dough she had already prepared. While I watched, she rolled out the dough into small circles, filled them with a savoury mixture of meat and spices, and deftly closed them again with a fluted edge. The work seemed to calm her. It was rhythmic and even, like the pickers in the field, and I wondered if she had ever worked among them.

“Where did you learn to cook, Lalita? That smells divine.”

She relaxed a little, perhaps relieved to have the subject changed from Dr. Llewellyn and his misfortunes. “I learned at the Peacocks. There was a Bengali cook who was very knowledgeable and I learned much.”

“At the Peacocks! It is a small place, the Valley of Eden,” I mused. For some reason it struck me as exceedingly interesting that Lalita had once lived at the Cavendish estate, perhaps at the same time Fitzhugh Cavendish was paying out sums of money to her sister. If Miss Thorne had been his mistress as I suspected, perhaps providing Lalita with the training to be a cook had been a boon he had offered. Or perhaps it had been part of the price of her favours, I thought nastily.

“Small indeed,” she agreed, neatly pinching another little meat pie together.

“Where else have you cooked? For the Pennyfeathers?”

“I am their cook now, lady.”

I blinked. “I thought you worked for Lady Eastley and Miss Phipps.”

“Lady Eastley would like that, but I have refused a permanency here. So long as my sister is at the Pennyfeathers, so will I be there as well.”

I wondered briefly how Miss Thorne liked having her sister
working in the same establishment. On the one hand, there would be a sisterly bond, a camaraderie, from holding employment within the same household. On the other hand, for a governess to have a cook for a sister was something of a breach of decorum. A housekeeper perhaps, or a ladies’ maid, but not a cook. I wondered if Miss Thorne was acquainted with such niceties or if she overlooked them.

Lalita went on. “I come here only to help when Lady Eastley has need of me. She prefers to do much of the work herself as it keeps her busy. She has only a few staff,” she added with a little moue of disapproval. In India, English folk were expected to have enormous staffs, due in part to the religious restrictions that forbade certain groups from certain jobs, but also because the comparative wealth of the English meant they had an obligation to employ as many as they could. I had come to understand that any English household who kept less than the requisite number of staff would be viewed with resentment and suspicion by the native folk, and might even have difficulty in keeping them. It was no different in England, I reasoned, where the country estates were expected to provide employment for the local villagers and country folk rather than sending to London.