Ryman, Rebecca (53 page)

"They're
having such a lovely summer in Norfolk, Cousin Maude writes. The Broads are
chock-a-block with boats and the banks are very lively with Sunday
picnickers." Lady Bridget heaved a wistful little sigh. "Maude says
she went to Kew for a friend's wedding and the Gardens were bursting, simply
bursting, with summer flowers."

Picking
at a piece of toast and scrambled eggs, Olivia said nothing.

Lady
Bridget lowered the letter she was reading. "I wish you hadn't missed
luncheon, my dear. You do look, well, feverish. Are you sure you are well
enough to be out of bed?"

"Yes,
of course." Olivia smiled. "I'm just a little tired."

"Even
with all that sleep? Perhaps it's that draught you took. They
do tend to
deplete the energy entirely." She returned to her letter.

It
was almost four in the afternoon. Nine hours of sleep following her furtive
return from the
Ganga
had not refreshed Olivia. Her body felt languid
and ached in secret places, a throbbing reminder of the night that had unfolded
for her the meaning of love. The memory flooded her cheeks with crimson; in her
eyes there were far-away, vacant glints that made her stare without seeing
anything.

But
yes, I do love you . . .

Olivia
stirred; the secret she had concealed in her bosom for so long no longer needed
to be hidden. "Aunt Bridget, there is something I feel I must tell you . .
."

Her
aunt looked up. "Yes dear?"

"There
is someone I... I have become . . . attached to." She swallowed and
steadied her voice. Beneath the table her nails cut half moons into her palms.
A trickle of sweat dripped between her breasts. It felt strangely cold. "I
. . . have not been as ... as honest with you as . . ." She swallowed hard
again and stopped, her courage so strong only a moment ago suddenly ebbing.
Help me, God,
help
me!

Lady
Bridget leaned forward and covered her hand with her own. Oddly enough, she was
smiling. "I know, darling," she breathed. "I know. You don't
have to spell it out for me—I'm not exactly
blind!
Just the other day I
was telling Josh how strongly I
sensed
something in the air. Otherwise
why on earth should the dear boy be sending you all those letters?" She
laughed happily and squeezed Olivia's hand hard. "Take your time, dear,
take all the time in the world. You can tell me when you're good and ready.
I've waited so long, I can wait a little longer." Her eyes suddenly shone
with tears and, filled with emotion, her voice quavered. "You have no
idea, my child, no idea at all how much what you have to say will mean to me,
oh how
much!"
She sniffed damply, dabbed her eyes with a hanky and,
lips trembling, returned to her letter.

Olivia
stared at her aunt, bewildered; she could not imagine what she could possibly
be talking about. But then the penny dropped—Freddie Birkhurst! Olivia almost
laughed out her incredulity; her aunt actually believed it was to
Freddie
she
was referring? On the strength of those tiresome letters he had been sending
and which she had been consigning to the waste-paper bin unopened? Why, it was
laughable! But laughable or not, the inadvertent touch of farce had provided a
note of anticlimax and,
already ebbing, her courage deserted her altogether. For the first time Olivia
was struck forcefully by the sheer enormity of the announcement she had been
about to make, and by the grim seriousness of the consequences it would no
doubt have on her family.

They
had to be told, of course, and soon, very soon. She could no longer continue to
live under conditions of such gross duplicity. But the words with which she
dropped her indubitable bomb-shell had to be carefully chosen. Tact would be
needed to soften what would certainly be a blow of monumental cruelty to them.
There would be scenes, terrible scenes, with melodrama and fainting fits and
tearful vituperations. Olivia's heart dipped, but at the same time her intentions
hardened; whatever the consequences, they had to be faced, if not today then
tomorrow. Naturally, there would be a scandal. Oh, how Calcutta would love that
scandal! And, also naturally, she would have to move out of the Templewood
home. Where would Jai take her—to the Chitpur house? The
Ganga?
Wherever
it was, he would want her to be with him. Limp with renewed longing, Olivia
shivered with happiness thinking of those telltale tears at the moment of
parting, that desperately anxious promise he had extracted.
But yes, I do
love you . . .
Her throat went tight; yes, whatever the consequences,
however bitter and insufferable, she would not be able to hold on to her
beloved secret much longer.

".
. . would you, dear?"

Her
aunt, still suffused with happy anticipation, had asked a question, which she
had missed.

"I
was wondering, dear, if you would take a cup of tea to Josh," Lady Bridget
repeated with a smile of knowing indulgence. "He's been so dreadfully
preoccupied all day."

Olivia
came back into unpleasant reality with a jolt. Uncle Josh! She shot with
involuntary anger at the mere mention of his name. With Das's sworn deposition
in his possession, of course he was "dreadfully preoccupied"!

Bearing
a teacup and a sour taste in her mouth, Olivia finally tracked him down in the
rose garden, where he was busy at work, pruning. She stared in suspicious
surprise; if Sir Joshua's interest in his home was cursory, in his opulent
gardens it was nonexistent. They were, to him, his wife's preserve and
responsibility. The sourness in her mouth increased; it was his machinations
that had brought death to two men, and a third, wholly innocent, had been
almost tarred, feathered and lynched in the frame-up, yet he could sit there
casually trimming rose-bushes?

"Aunt
Bridget has sent you some tea," she announced coldly.

Sir
Joshua waved aside the tea and bent to pat Clementine's head as she blissfully
trapped an earth-worm. "Did you know, m'dear, that roses existed twenty
million years ago?"

"No."
Olivia handed the unwanted teacup to one of the attendant gardeners and ordered
that it be returned to the pantry. Had he been drinking again?

"See
this?" He seemed not to notice her coldness. "Bridget imported these
last year from France. The
Rosa multiflora
—floribunda to us. Some call
it primrose. Spectacular, eh?"

Olivia
made no response, surprised even more by his horticultural knowledge than by
his sudden inclination to share it with her.

Sir
Joshua stalked down the path towards a riot of blood red flowers. "The
Rosa
chinensis,
m'dear. I brought this from Canton years ago. Oddly enough, they
now call it the Bengal rose. I understand they're growing it in Europe with
considerable success." In gathering bafflement Olivia trailed after him,
certain that he had indeed been at the bottle again. He went down on a knee to
gingerly part two branches of a bush heavily studded with thorns. "The
Prunus
spinosa.
In other words," his oblique glance at her was strangely sly,
"the black thorn. You see, Olivia, in strict botanical terms, thorns are
only modified branches. The sharp point at the end pricks, of course, and often
its poisons can be lethal...," he jabbed one hard into the ball of his
thumb and a pin-point of blood bubbled up, "... but it is also easy to
remove, see?" With a finger-nail he scraped the thorn clean off the stem.
"Of course, it does attempt to leave a scar, but that heals remarkably
fast, with surprising efficiency." He stood up, wiped his hands on a
handkerchief and smiled. "So you see, m'dear, nature poses problems sometimes,
but then she also readily provides the answers."

Olivia
decided that he
had
been drinking, but at the same time her pulse
skipped a beat: He was trying to tell her something! What? Renewed fear
assailed her; could he be up to some fresh trickery? Boldly she asked, "I
hear that Mr. Slocum has returned from Kirtinagar—has there been any further
news from there?"

"Only
what was expected. Arvind Singh will not press charges." He shrugged.
"That is his privilege, of course."

His
volte-face alarmed her even more. And why was he not
concerned about
Das's damning deposition? "In that case, the prime suspect will go free?
He will not be charged?" Her heart beat hard in painful hope.

"He
will not be charged, no." He bent down to lift a fat, furry caterpillar off
a leaf and tossed it aside. "But he will not go free."

"Oh?"
Her stomach gave a sickening lurch; she studied his determined face. His mouth
was set and he breathed heavily, as if with unusual effort. Uncaring of how odd
he might consider her questions, she followed close on his heels as he strode
into his study. "So, there
have
been some unexpected new
developments, have there?" Oh God, she had to know!

He
lifted his coat off the back of a chair and started to thread his long arms
through the sleeves. "New, yes. Unexpected? No, I would not say so."
He fell silent. For a long, agonising moment Olivia despaired of him telling
her more, but then, all at once and abruptly, he did. "Remember that
fellow Das whom your aunt cannot abide?"

Her
heart stopped. "Yes?"

"Well,
I'm told he's missing."

"Missing?"
Her tongue, dry and sluggish, could hardly move. "Is that of any . . .
significance?"

Carefully,
Sir Joshua unfolded his silken cravat, walked towards the mirror hanging over a
tallboy and started to arrange the tie meticulously around his neck. "No,
except that he isn't missing. He's dead." Cravat draped to his
satisfaction, he patted it firmly into place.

Olivia
almost stopped breathing. "Dead? How do you know?"

"Instinct.
Pure and simple intuition." He turned, smiled vaguely and pinched one of
her cheeks. His fingers were like ice; she was faintly startled to note that
they also trembled. "You see, my dear, Raventhorne has killed him. I would
have been surprised if he hadn't."

This
time her breathing did stop. "Why?" she whispered, shocked at his
apparent unguardedness, the fluency with which he spoke of matters that he,
more than anyone else, must want to keep secret. In her mounting trepidation
she suddenly saw that today his mood was also utterly alien. The faint whiffs
of alcohol her nostrils picked up were hardly enough to warrant such
recklessness.

"You
see, Olivia," he said in a tone pleasantly conversational, ignoring her
question, "he has killed Das and concealed
the body. Slocum will not find
it in a thousand years." His stare bored through her like a drill;
mesmerized, she could not pull her eyes away. What he insinuated was clear,
horribly clear.

"And
. . . you can?"

"Oh
yes," he said softly, "oh
yes.
I know the native mind down to
its last trick, m'dear. And Raventhorne's mind . . .," he smiled,
"... I know it as if it were my very own."

Frozen,
Olivia asked mechanically, "What will happen then, when you find the
body?"

He
stood absolutely still for a space, lost to her, blind and deaf to the world.
"Then," he said, squaring his shoulders, "Raventhorne will
hang." He walked to the door and called out to her as he left, "Tell
your aunt I will not be home for dinner." Disconsolate at being abandoned,
Estelle's puppy sat and whined at the door he closed behind him. Olivia did not
hear it; she remained where she was, impaled with dread. Her uncle knew more
than Jai suspected!

Lady
Bridget sat in the verandah, still happily immersed in her mail packet. Behind
her the gardeners hand-sprinkled water over huge chrysanthemums that looked
like floor mops, and sugar candy-pink clouds sailed across the sunset. In the
driveway Sir Joshua was dismissing his carriage and asking for his giant bay
gelding to be saddled instead, chop, chop! Slipping quietly into the chair
opposite her aunt, Olivia stared blindly at nothing.

"Flora
Langham writes of her holiday in Brighton, where she says she met this most
gifted
man," Lady Bridget's face was serene with contentment.
"Apparently, he plays the piano like a dream—she does too, you know—and he
paints wild flowers. I sense a little romance brewing there and oh, I
am
pleased!
Flora was quite the nicest, most devoted governess Estelle had, not at
all
like
that silly Perkins woman who just would
not
learn to do the ringlets
right . . ."

Olivia
heard nothing. Her mind was frantic with conjecture, her thoughts chasing each
other in endless circles. She must do something, but what? And
how?
It
was not yet dark, and the servants would see her if she went over the wall
behind the vegetable plot. She had to warn Jai without delay, but her uncle
already had a headstart. Oh God, oh
God . . .!

".
. . to the flour mill. Sarah, as wilful as her daughter was to be later,"
still lost in her nostalgia, Lady Bridget laughed, "refused to give heed to
Croakie's warnings—she was our nanny, you know, dear,
dear
Miss Croker.
Well, of course Sarah lost her footing and of course she went crashing down
into the vat,
our Sarah did, all arms and legs and flapping pigtails!" She laughed again
at the cherished memory. "And, my goodness, she did look like a ghost,
quite a
hoot!
It took poor Croakie hours, simply
hours,
to scrub
it all off. Father roared with laughter but Mother was very cross indeed. She
always was a tomboy, you know, your mother. If the stork hadn't blundered,
Father always said, Sarah would have been born a boy. Always up to mischief,
like the time when . . ."