Dark Road to Darjeeling

“When Freddie was still in England?”

“Yes. They sent him to school at fifteen and he made up his mind not to come home again.”

“I remember. He called upon my father,” I commented, deftly omitting Father’s response to his visit. “But surely fifteen was rather late to leave it. Oughtn’t he have been sent much earlier?”

“Oh, yes, most folk here send their boys back home at age six or seven for schooling. Freddie made do with Grandfather Fitz’s library and the odd bit of tutoring here and there.”

He pressed his lips together again, and suddenly I became more interested in what he was not saying.

“And you never went home to England?”

“Never. My home is here,” he said simply. “I am a planter. Tea is all I know and all I care to know. Aunt Camellia left the place in my hands when she went to England to fetch Freddie home. It was the happiest time of my life,” he said, his tone touched with something more than wistfulness.

“When was that?” I spoke softly. He seemed to be slipping into a reverie, and I had watched Brisbane question enough people to know that in such a state all a subject requires is the gentlest nudge to reveal rather more than he might have preferred.

“Two years past. Freddie was in trouble—gambling, I am afraid. Aunt Camellia had almost persuaded Grandfather Fitz to cut him off entirely, but he was still the heir. Aunt Camellia hoped he would learn to love the business if he were brought home and made to apply himself. So she went to England to persuade him to return with her. She failed. She returned home without him, and it took only a little more persuasion to convince Grandfather Fitz to withdraw Freddie’s allowance until he had proven himself worthy of the inheritance. Grandfather Fitz issued an ultimatum. Freddie was to marry and return to India as soon as possible if he held any hope of inheriting the estate.”

“That is why he married Jane so hastily,” I murmured.

Emotions warred upon his face. “I confess, I did not think them well suited,” Harry Cavendish said. “I like Jane—immensely. But she is so different from what Freddie was. There is something fine about Jane.”

“Yes, that’s it precisely. She is simple and plain and good. Like water or earth,” I agreed.

“That is why I am glad you have come, you and Lady Bettiscombe, particularly. A lady should have the comfort of old friends about her at such a time.” Whether he meant during her widowhood or confinement, I could not say, but it was a pretty sentiment either way.

The conversation turned—rather naturally, I supposed—to tea then, and the coming harvest. The picking was very likely going to commence in a day or two, and I could see from his rising excitement that tea did indeed flow through his veins. But as we spoke, I sensed again an undercurrent of melancholy in him. It was nothing I could have pointed out to another, no peculiarity of manner or speech, but it was there, hovering just behind his eyes, some fear or sense of loss. And as I listened to him enthuse about the harvest, I wondered precisely how far this charming young man would go to become master of the land he loved.

After breakfast I excused myself to the garden where I found Miss Cavendish still busily decapitating plants. She was dressed in a curious fashion, her costume cobbled together from bits of native dress, traditional English garments, and a pair of gentlemen’s riding breeches. It was a thoroughly strange, but eminently practical ensemble, I supposed, and when she bent, I noticed her chatelaine still jangled but there was no telltale creak of whalebone. She had forgone the corset, and I envied her.

The garden itself was a glory, neatly planned and beautifully maintained. At the heart of it was a pretty arbour covered in climbing roses just about to bud. As lovely as it was in spring, I could imagine how enchanting it would be in full summer, with the heavy blossoms lending their lush fragrance to the air as velvety petals spangled the seat below.

“You must be quite proud,” I told Miss Cavendish. “Have you a gardener as well to help with the heavy labour?”

“Half a dozen,” she answered roundly. “It is a planters’ obligation to give employment to as many folk as possible, like young Naresh there,” she added with a nod toward a youth who had just come into the garden pushing a barrow. He responded to his name with a broad smile, and I was startled to see how handsome he was. One does not expect a young Adonis to appear in the guise of a gardener’s boy. He was tall for his age, perhaps sixteen or seventeen and very nearly six feet tall, and his features were regular, with a wide smile and a shock of sleek black hair. He looked like a young rajah, and as we regarded him, he gave us an exaggerated, courtly bow before he departed.

“Silly boy,” Miss Cavendish said, flapping her hand. “Still, I do not ask of them what I cannot do myself and I do like to keep my hand in. Very wholesome for the body, fresh air and exercise, you know,” she added with a quick glance in my direction. I had little doubt she thought me entirely too refined. My hands were soft and white and my corset prevented all but the most restricted movement.

“Indeed,” I murmured. “I cannot imagine there is a garden in all the valley half so fine as yours.” The praise, thick as it was, seemed to go down smoothly. She unbent from her clipping and gave me a grudging nod.

“Well, that is true. Now, mind you the Reverend Penny feather keeps a very pleasant garden at the Bower with a rather nice collection of orchids, if one likes that sort of thing,” she added. I had little doubt she did not. Orchids were clearly too exotic and showy for her liking.

“The Reverend Pennyfeather? Have you a church in the valley then?”

“Not as such. The Reverend gave up a very nice living in Norfolk to come here and take up his late brother’s tea garden. He thought he would make a go of it, but of course there’s more to tea planting than putting a bush into the ground and calling it done,” she advised me, her blue eyes snapping. “I have offered him good advice, and to his credit, most of it he has taken. But he does not keep a firm hand upon his pickers, and they take advantage of him in terrible ways.”

“Really?” I asked. I bent and began to gather a few of the fallen blossoms. She nodded in approval.

“Mind you do not miss that bit of vine. It wants cutting back. What was I on about? Oh, yes, the Reverend Pennyfeather. Far too soft with his people. Pickers are like one’s children. One must be fair and firm, at all times, no matter the provocation.”

“Provocation?”

She flapped a hand. “They are the blackest devils when they think they can get away with something. They prune or pick too slowly, so one must pay them overtime wages. The women will weight the baskets with a few stones or other plants so their baskets will weigh out heavier than the next. Even the children will come at you with a bucket of caterpillars, demanding to be paid for picking them, even though it will be the same bucket they presented for payment the day before.”

Her litany of complaints was extensive, but her tone was fond, and it was apparent that she did view her pickers as part of her own extended family, albeit as somewhat backward children. “Still, one does one’s best for them. We give them firewood and sound bungalows and medical care, and they respect us for it because we demand they keep things up properly. No unswept yards or untidy vegetable plots or sickly animals. The Reverend, on the other hand,” she added, lowering her voice to a confidential tone, “is as soft with his pickers as he is with his own family. That daughter of his fairly runs wild, and she’s two years past putting up her hair. She ought to have been married off by now.”

“Is the Reverend a near neighbour?” I inquired, tucking the errant bit of vine into the trug.

“Near enough.” She gestured toward the gate. “Out that gate and down the path, you will find a crossroads with a Buddhist stupa. Straight on, the road leads to the Bower, the Penny feathers’ tea garden. The right branch leads to a cluster of cottages, and farther on the pickers’ houses.”

“And the left?”

She stilled, then snipped savagely at a rosebush, destroying a perfectly beautiful bloom, whether by emotion or inattention, I could not say.

“The left leads up to the ridge. There is an old Buddhist monastery up there.”

“How interesting! I shall have to explore one of these days.”

Miss Cavendish straightened, her lips pinched as tightly as a miser’s purse. “There is no call to do that. The monastery has a tenant now, and it is best to give him a wide berth. And mind you are careful if you do go out exploring. We’ve a tiger loose just now—a man-eater.”

Brisbane might as well have come with me if he was so interested in hunting tigers, I thought bitterly. But before I could pursue this, she moved on to the wayward bough of a deodar. “That will completely block this path if I do not lop it off. I must have the saw for that. You will excuse me,” she said, striding away to retrieve her tools and leaving me to stare after her.

I found Portia in the drawing room, wrapped in a fur robe and attempting to read. It was dank and chill, with neither fire to warm it nor sunshine to light it.

“Why are you not sitting in the morning room? It faces east and the shutters are open and a fire has been lit,” I pointed out. “I almost didn’t find you mouldering away in here.”

“That is the point,” she told me. “I am hiding from Morag.”

“What did you do now? You didn’t muddy the hem of your riding habit again?” I asked, shuddering at the memory of Portia’s last infraction.

“No, worse. I caught the clasp of my bracelet on the lace of my gown last night. There is a tear,” she said, scarcely daring to speak the word aloud. “I distracted her with the state of my shoes last night and managed to get the gown out of sight before she noticed. I daren’t tell her.”

I suppressed a sigh. Portia’s own maid had fallen ill between Port Said and Aden, and it was decided she should return at once to England and that Portia would share my Morag for an extortionate rate of pay and an extra day off per week.

“She is particularly difficult at present,” I admitted. “She’s being fey and Scottish and keeping herself to our rooms so as to avoid seeing or speaking to any of the natives. She’s afraid if she talks to them, she’ll be infected with devils.”

Portia tipped her head to the side. “That could prove useful.”

“Not as useful as this,” I said, quickly relating to her all I had discovered. Granted, it was not much, but at least I had confirmed that the charming Harry Cavendish might have a very excellent motive for murder and that Camellia Cavendish herself might have an eye to keeping the estate.

Portia listened thoughtfully. “Well done, Julia. That is quite a bit of information to gather in a single morning.”

I preened a little until she pierced my satisfaction with her next words. “Of course, I have done a bit of sleuthing myself and have discovered a tasty titbit that has eluded you.”

She paused for dramatic effect, and I resisted the urge to yank her hair.

“Jane and I were discussing the neighbours this morning.”

“Yes, I know,” I said impatiently. “The Reverend Pennyfeather. Miss Cavendish told me of him.”

“Did Miss Cavendish also tell you about the inebriate doctor who suffered a great tragedy when his wife was attacked and killed by a tiger a few months ago?”

I blinked at her. “She mentioned a tiger in the area, but nothing more. How dreadful!”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “Apparently the poor woman was carried home still alive, but without a face.”

I made a noise of revulsion, but Portia went on. “It took her hours to die, hours. And she was conscious the whole time, screaming.”

“Enough!” I put up a hand. “What a frightful way to die.”

“She is not the only one,” Portia advised me. “A fortnight ago it snatched a child, and apparently everyone is in rather a state because the picking will commence soon and everyone must be out in the fields instead of huddling close to their bungalows. The local folk believe it is some sort of magical tiger on account of the colour of its coat.”

I furrowed my brow. “I thought all tigers were orange with black stripey bits.”

“Not all of them,” Portia said. “This one is black as coal. They say at night, you cannot see anything of it at all save for its eyes which sparkle like jewels in the moonlight.”

If Portia had meant to frighten me out of my wits she could have scarcely made a better job of it, and I prayed fervently that Brisbane was not engaged in a tiger hunt. The danger quite took my breath away. “I have heard all I care to hear upon the matter of tigers. Another subject please.”

Portia gave me a smile pointed with mischief. “Very well, dearest. Did Miss Cavendish tell you about the kindly pair of English sisters who have taken the lease on Pine Cottage, the pretty house down the lane? Oh, they are delightful girls, Julia, and you will remember them well.”

“Remember them? I cannot think of any of our acquaintance who have gone to India—” I broke off in horror, my mind whipping back to the conclusion of our second investigation, when our cousins had quite literally got away with murder.

Portia gave me a triumphant smile. “Yes, pet. Our near neighbours are none other than Miss Emma Phipps and Lucy, Lady Eastley.”

This news took a bit of digesting. I had never expected to see Emma and Lucy again, and to encounter them in so remote a corner of the world was little less than astounding.

“Are you certain?” I asked Portia, knowing the question to be a stupid one.

“Perfectly. Some time ago, Camellia Cavendish undertook a journey to England to bring the wayward Freddie home to do his duty. On the return journey, she formed an acquaintance—”

“With Emma and Lucy,” I finished. “It must have been Lucy’s wedding trip, just after they left us at Bellmont Abbey.” Emma and Lucy had played significant roles in our second investigation, a case that had shaken the very foundations of our father’s ancestral home. Lucy I believed to be innocent, but I was firmly convinced of Emma’s moral culpability, even if no legal guilt could be attached to her. They had left in the company of Sir Cedric Eastley, Lucy’s fiancé, who had managed to marry and subsequently widow her during the course of their journey to India.

“I have always thought Emma somehow induced his apoplexy,” I confessed to Portia. “They were so desperately poor all their lives, and with all that lovely Eastley money as an inducement, it would have been difficult to resist the temptation. And Sir Cedric himself so upright, so controlling. Emma would never tolerate watching her beloved younger sister abasing herself for such a man.”

“Of course we have no proof that she is a murderess,” Portia reminded me thoughtfully. “But it does make one wonder.”

“It seems entirely too coincidental that we have a suspicious death and a suspected murderess in the same vicinity.” The more I meditated upon the idea of Emma as villainess, the more I liked the notion. It was tidy.

“But what possible motive could she have for killing Freddie Cavendish? She would not inherit his estate, and we have not yet established that it is even an estate worth killing for. It may be burdened with debts and mortgages for all we know.”

“Perhaps it has nothing to do with the estate at all,” I mused. “Perhaps Freddie slighted her somehow.”

“I wonder. Of course, I suppose it is a tremendous coincidence that two sets of our relations should have met on the same boat. What must the odds be?”

“Rather good, I should think. Consider, Portia, it is not Australia. Criminals and poor men do not venture to India to make their fortunes. One must have connections or wealth in order to establish oneself in India—either good birth or money, and preferably both. What is more natural than ladies, of whom there would have been a limited number anyway, striking up conversation and comparing their acquaintance only to find they have distant cousins in common? It would have made a bond between them. Remember, dearest, we are a prodigiously large family with a very good name. I should think there are hundreds of people who could claim connection with us and who would not hesitate to do so in order to gain a social advantage.”

“True enough,” she agreed. “I once had a dressmaker tell me she was bosom friends with Lady Bettiscombe and dressed her exclusively. It was tremendous fun revealing to her that I was Lady Bettiscombe. The poor dear had to go and lie down with a vinaigrette from the shock of it.”

“And think of the tedium on a long passage. What is more natural than to talk of England and the connections left behind? We must question Miss Cavendish, but discreetly,” I told her. “And we must pay a visit to Pine Cottage.”

Before we ventured to call upon our cousins, I wanted a chance to speak with Jane. I found her in a little dooryard, scooping grain and overripe fruits into a basin.

“Let me,” I said, taking up the weighty basin. She gave me a grateful look, straightening and pressing her hand to the small of her back. “Are you very uncomfortable?”

“Not usually. I was desperately sick the first few months. And if I am not careful in what I eat, I have acute indigestion. But it has only been in the past fortnight or so that bending and walking have become such a chore.”

“You should be in bed,” I scolded. She paused and drew in a great draught of the crisp mountain air.

“Perhaps. But it does feel so good to be up and about. Come through. We must feed Feuilly. I ought to have one of the staff do it, but the hierarchy is so complicated, it is simpler just to do it myself.”

She led me through an arched gateway into a part of the garden I had not seen before. If I had expected a pig or a little goat, I was entirely mistaken, for out of the bushes strode a peacock, trailing his train of feathers behind him. But this was no ordinary peacock, for he was enormous, and bore the scars of battles, I observed from the marks upon his beak and legs. This creature was a warrior, like something out of myth to guard a rajah’s treasures.

“Oh, my,” I breathed. Jane began to scatter grain and fruit from the basin. I watched him peck elegantly at her offerings before I turned to Jane.

“What did you mean about the hierarchy?”

She smiled, her lovely Madonna smile of old, although now it was tinged with fatigue and perhaps with something of melancholy as well. I wondered if it was a sort of catching disease in these remote mountains. “I am surprised you haven’t heard. One scarcely has to set foot upon Indian soil to learn of the servant problem.”

“I thought obliging staff were one of the pleasures of living in India,” I offered.

“Oh, they are obliging, certainly, but they have the most curious system for the dividing up of responsibilities, most of it based upon religious persuasion. Here are Bengalis, Sikkimese, Nepalis, Bhutanese, Lepchas, all with their own beliefs and special diets. We have to keep three cooks just to ensure everyone is fed!”

“Are there so many?” I asked, looking around the deserted dooryard.

“You do not see them, but believe me, they are about. And it is not just that there are dozens of them, it is that the Hindu house servants will touch neither porcelain nor food cooked by anyone who isn’t Hindu, so the servers at table must not be Hindu, but it is a Hindu of the lowest caste who empties the porcelain chamber pots, which I confess makes no sort of sense to me at all, but everyone else seems to take as perfectly ordinary.”

“Why do they refuse to touch porcelain?”

“It is made from animal bones and the cow is sacred here,” she explained. “If they were to touch porcelain made from the wrong sort of bones, it would defile them.”

“It must be difficult to have the running of such an establishment,” I soothed.

She gave a short laugh. “Yes, and I thank God and his angels every day the lot does not fall to me.”

“But you are mistress of the Peacocks, are you not?”

The melancholy smile returned. “In name,” she said softly. “But the truth is that Aunt Camellia is much better suited to the job, and I am content to leave it to her. I do not wish to become attached to this place,” she finished in a low voice. Before I could question her further, she nodded briskly toward Feuilly.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he? I loathe him.”

I gave her a sharp look and she continued on. “I know I oughtn’t. But he cries and shrieks at the most inconvenient times.”

“Ah, I shall have to tell Morag the house isn’t haunted after all. She thinks the Peacocks is thick with ghosts.”

I meant to jolly her out of her seriousness, but the mention of ghosts seemed to sadden her. “I think it may be. In Grandfather Fitz’s estate office, you can still smell his tobacco and boot leather.”

“To be expected,” I told her firmly. “He has been dead a short time, I gather.”

“A year, almost. He died when Freddie and I came. Aunt Camellia said he was only holding on until he saw Freddie settled. As soon as we arrived, he let go. Of course, it made the servants instantly suspicious of me,” she said with a shaky laugh. “They think I brought some curse to the house that the master should die so soon after my arrival.”

“Superstitious nonsense,” I told her. The peacock crept closer, then paused and gave a shudder, as if to lift his tail. But the effort proved too much and he left his great tail to drag behind like some travesty of a royal masque.

“Your peacock looks despondent,” I observed.

“I know. And his melancholia is affecting us all. I cannot sleep for his shrieking and crying.”

“Why do you not get rid of him then? You are expecting, Jane. You ought to have your rest. Or does he not belong to you?”

“Oh, he is mine well enough. One of the few things here that is,” she added, bitterness lacing her words. “But he was a gift and I cannot bring him back without giving offence.”

“A gift from whom?”

She tossed a handful of juicy cherries at the peacock. It approached languidly, as if it merely deigned to eat. “There is a gentleman who lives up at the monastery on the ridge. He is something of a recluse, but he was kind enough to send Feuilly. He thought the bird would be a diversion in my mourning.”

My interest quickened. “I believe Miss Cavendish mentioned him, although she gave no name.”

“He is called the White Rajah out of deference for his lifestyle.”

“The White Rajah! How extraordinary.”

Jane shrugged. “It was common in the early years of the English presence in India for bachelor gentlemen to sometimes go native. It seldom happens now, of course—not since they all started importing wives from England and establishing their little outposts of Britannia across the country. But there was a time when it was quite a widespread practise to adopt Indian ways. This fellow wears a turban and jewels and speaks perfect Hindustani and Bengali and plays the sitar. He is quite a character.”

She tossed another handful of jewel-bright fruit to the peacock. “He must have been in India forever, although he is something of a newcomer to this valley. He simply rode in one day and took up residence in the monastery, treating the whole thing like a great, wrecked palace. He never stirs a foot from the place, but the gentlemen in the valley go up, naturally, and I understand he is a most genial host. I called upon him myself out of the grossest sort of curiosity.”

“Curiosity?” I eyed the peacock as it crept ever nearer my shoes.

Jane shrugged. “Oh, you know how stories get started. He is a rather mysterious person, clearly a gentleman and possessing some wealth but no one knows much about him. Everyone wants to discover the truth, so they put about stories of a great tragic love affair or a cursed inheritance. It’s nonsense, of course. He is most likely a younger son of a good family sent out to make his fortune in India and fallen into the habits of secrecy and eccentricity.”