City of Bells (30 page)

             
“For morning tea?”

             
“For medicine.”

             
“Ah,” said Emma.  “And how is that done?”

             
A few words from Felix and the women sprang back into action.  A small rectangular silver tray was produced and a singular cup without a saucer was placed on it.

             
“Nurse lays out tray and cup the afternoon before, when she leaves,” Felix said to Emma and Geraldine.  “Powder already in cup.  In morning, cook heats the water and pours over top.”

             
“The laudanum lies exposed in the cup from late afternoon until the next morning?”  Emma asked with dismay.  Anyone within the household would have the chance to tamper with it.  “Where was the medication stored?”

             
Felix pointed at a small drawer, evidentially the same one Davy had fingerprinted.

             
“And what was the purpose of the dropper?” Emma asked.

             
The boy frowned in uncertainty and she made the same pinching motion with her fingers that Trevor had demonstrated the day before.  “Go on tray with cup,” he said.  Now he did the pinching motion himself.  “Lady put in tea.”

             
“What do you make of this?” Emma asked Geraldine, who was keenly observing the tableau from across the kitchen.  “Say it back to me as you see it, so that we might help each other think.”

             
“The biggest revelation seems to be that the murder of Rose Weaver and Pulkit Sang might have been set in motion the night before their death,” Geraldine said.  “If so, we have been focusing on the wrong time frame.  Adelaide would set out the mixture before she left for the day.  A cup with laudanum powder and a dropper lay out on a tray in the kitchen all through the afternoon and night, providing ample opportunity for anyone within the household to add anything they chose.  And in the morning, hot water was poured over the powder, as indeed must have happened every day.  Rose was evidently the one who used the dropper, to put as much of the mixture as she required in her morning cup of tea.  She dosed herself, to put it another way.”

             
Emma nodded and turned back to Sang.  “What would happen to the cup with the laudanum mixture after Mrs. Weaver had her breakfast?  Who would wash the cup?”

             
Felix said something to the cook who said something to the maid.  The maid said something to the cook who turned and repeated it to Felix.  Emma waited.

             
“The cup would sit unwashed on its tray until nurse come back,” Felix said. “Only nurse touch cup.”

             
“But Adelaide’s fingerprints were the only ones not on the drawer knob,” Geraldine said.  “If they are telling us the truth it would seem hers would have been the only ones we found there.”

             
“Unless she wore gloves,” Emma mused.  “But would she be that clever?  Fingerprinting is scarcely known in Europe and Tom said even the ranking officers were hesitant to try the technique here.” She turned back to Felix.   “Ask them if, at times, the Secretary-General and Sang would take a dropperful of the laudanum as well.”

             
But this time the chain of translation was unnecessary. 

             
“Lady take in morning,” Felix said with confidence, not bothering to confirm this information with the women.  “Then Uncle in kitchen when he had his breakfast.  Just a “- and here he made the pinching motion which Emma was coming to understand was the new symbol for murder – “and then cup sit until Sahib Weaver come home.  He take also, if he please, and then nurse wash cup when she come in afternoon.”

             
Emma sank back uncertainly against the table while the nurse and cook stood watching her with wide solemn eyes.  “But it would seem this flies in the face of Trevor’s theory,” she said to Geraldine. “The theory we’ve all been working under, at least unofficially, for the last two days.  For if the killer knew that Anthony Weaver was customarily the last one to partake of the laudanum, he was likely not the target.”

***

The Khajuraho Temple

3:50 PM

             
“Come in, my dear,” Miss Hoffman said.  “There is no one here to frighten you.”

             
Adelaide slowly made her way into the kitchen of the schoolhouse.  It was a makeshift affair to be sure, for Hindu temples customarily do not have kitchens.  In fact, the entire operation of the school was a tribute to one woman’s unfailing ability to improvise, for Leigh Anne Hoffman had created a dormitory fit for a group of young girls from a high-ceilinged prayer room and classrooms from porches.  This kitchen had once been a storage shed and the working vegetable garden beyond it had been full of statuary.  After being assured by a visiting Cambridge professor that the art within the courtyard was mundane, Leigh Anne had used a rope and her own body weight to topple the Hindu deities, one by one.  The concrete bases where they once had stood surveying their realm still existed among the neat rows of peas, potatoes, beets, and carrots.  The girls now perched on them to water the garden, keeping their feet from the mud and looking like small goddesses themselves.

             
“Come in,” Miss Hoffman repeated.  “Take up a knife, will you, dear?  And start on the onions.”

             
Adelaide entered slowly.  “You are just starting the curry?” 

             
It was an apt question, for the curries were usually made in the morning and allowed to stew down in a great pot all day.  The distillation of flavor was a slow process in India, just like everything else. 

             
Miss Hoffman shook her head.  “The soup for this evening is already on the stove.  This curry is for the morrow.”

             
“The morrow?” Adelaide said, picking up the knife and reaching for the cutting board.  “What happens on the morrow?”

             
“We picnic,” said Miss Hoffman.

Chapter Seven
teen

The Road Between Bombay and Cawnpore

August 31, 1889

8:20 AM

              After the monsoon of the day before, the landscape was intoxicatingly lush
.  It looks like the drawing of Eden in my childhood Bible,
Emma thought.   Flowers seemed to have arisen as if by magic from the rocky soil, their leaves revealing shades of green more varied than even the loveliest districts of England could boast.  Emerald upon sage upon grey upon moss, they turned in the breeze as if to welcome any pilgrim that passed.

             
According to the tales being shared by Emma’s fellow travelers, she concluded there were any number of hill stations out from Bombay, each of them an easy drive for those seeking to escape the city in summer.  Mahableshwar was the most popular for day trips, largely because of its terraced strawberry beds which offered not only large plump bites of sweetness but also beautiful views of the harbor.  Darjeeling, where the majority of the region’s tea was grown, was said to be very wet, indeed the wettest district of them all, and thus not so popular for outings.   It was ironic, of course, that the teas which the English held in such high esteem – indeed, the teas upon which some would say they had built their entire culture – came from India and yet the tea actually consumed in India was rarely considered to be up to the British standard.  Geraldine, who took this particular kind of investigation most to heart, had gotten to the bottom of the matter first.  The tea itself was fine.  It was the local water, laced with that ubiquitous quinine, that was responsible for the harsh taste of the brew.

             
It was far past strawberry season, so they were not going to Mahableshwar.  And since they wished to picnic in fair weather, they were not going to Darjeeling.  Instead they went…well, of course they were going to Cawnpour.  To enjoy the landscape, the change of climate, a variation from the daily routine.  Not only to picnic but also see the new plaque which had been laid out in memory of Roland Everlee.  And perhaps to catch a murderer on the way.

***

              “Do you wish to know the great joke of it all?” Amy Morrow confided to Emma, leaning in so close that her blonde ringlets – which had come through their electrocution ordeal remarkably unscathed – actually grazed Emma’s cheek. 

             
“And what, pray tell, is the great joke of it all?” Emma asked.  The two girls had been bouncing along in their pony cart for well over an hour, yet the promised hills of Cawnpore seemed to be staying precisely the same distance away, hovering on the horizon in a rose-colored mist.  There were perhaps forty people in their processional, turning Geraldine’s little picnic into more of an expedition.  Eleven pony carts in all, four of them simply to carry the food and some enormous sort of tent which Emma could only assume would be set up on their arrival to shield them from the natural elements.

             
To shield them…and to somewhat obliterate the entire purpose of going on a picnic.  But Emma had already gathered that logic was not the forte of the Raj. 

             
In the carts ahead, a group of Miss Hoffman’s schoolgirls chatted like magpies, squirming about and pulling the ribbons tied on each other’s hair in a manner that cheered Emma, simply because it was so very normal.  Everyone else in the large party seemed vaguely ill at ease.  Miss Hoffman, sitting across from the girls and defiantly wearing her gardening ensemble, had not said a word since their departure and Mrs. Tucker had brought along a great mass of knitting to distract her during her journey, although how she could keep her stitches straight amid all this jostle, Emma had no idea. Even Amy’s grandmother and Geraldine seemed uncharacteristically subdued.  Emma turned to look at the carriage behind her, which held a smattering of the men, but the squeaking and rattling of the cart was so pronounced that it was impossible to overhear what, if anything, they were saying.

             
“The great joke of it all is that I always claimed nothing which happened at the Byculla Club could ever shock me,” Amy said with a breathless laugh.  “But I was proven wrong, wasn’t I?”

             
“In a most spectacular fashion,” Emma said with a smile.  “I think it is marvelously sporting of you to come out today at all.”

             
“Oh, but if I had stayed in Bombay I was at greater risk of dying from boredom,” Amy said.  “Can you imagine the old ladies in a circle on Granny’s porch, all of them staring at me as if they expected that I might somehow take flight at any moment, and sending the servants for cup after cup of tea?  I needed some diversion.  Something other than the visits from Tom, that is.”

             
Visits?  The plural form of the word was certainly informative.  But before Emma could answer, Amy leaned in again for another whispered confidence.

             
“What is truly shocking now is that our missionary friend has come in trousers.”

             
“Miss Hoffman has a penchant for men’s clothing,” Emma whispered back. “And for providing her own manner of jolts to society.”  It seemed rude to be gossiping about the woman right in front of her face, but the jangle of the carts blanketed all other noise and besides, Miss Hoffman appeared to be quite oblivious to anything happening around her.  She was staring into the distance with a pensive frown, as if she were trying to sort out a difficult mathematics problem in her head.  “But they are quite practical for our situation, are they not?”

             
“Without question, but they set her apart in a way that I suspect does not serve her larger aims,” Amy answered.  “The Raj does not like unconventional women.  If we do anything other than fawn over our men and breed their babies, they squawk as if we were letting down all of England.”

             
“I should think the Raj would welcome Miss Hoffman’s work at the school,” Emma said, “no matter what the woman chooses to wear.  She is, after all, helping to cover up any number of sins.”

             
“You mean the erotic wall?”

             
“I mean the half-breed girls.”

             
“Ah yes, of course,” said Amy, craning her neck to consider the cart just ahead.  “Some of them seem nearly as English as we do.”

             
“I should have come to visit you.”

             
“You have been busy.”

             
“Not nearly so busy as Tom, and yet he has managed to make the trip…”

             
“Three times,” Amy said promptly.  “You don’t mind, do you?  Tell me the truth. ”

             
The truth?  The truth is that I like this girl
, Emma thought. 
She is direct and funny and pretty and brave and perhaps that’s the worst of it, that I can perfectly understand why he would want to drive out to see her.  Why he would be willing to sit among that flock of nervous old ladies just for the chance to hold her hand.  Hold it in that way he has, which is somewhat like a doctor and somewhat like a lover, that gesture he makes which simultaneously takes your pulse and strokes your palm.

             
“I do not mind in the least,” Emma said.

             
“Because I have the impression that you and he are rather like sister and brother.”

             
Well, that was a dash of cold water to the face.  Emma stiffened.  “He told you that?”

             
“Not at all,” Amy said.  “It is merely what I gathered upon observation.  But tell me if I am wrong and he shall find the door bolted the next time he calls.  There are far too many men in Bombay for the pair of us to find ourselves at odds.” She giggled.  “It would be as silly as fighting over a strawberry while standing in the middle of a strawberry field.”

             
“You aren’t wrong,” Emma said, turning her gaze once again to the men’s cart.  Tom was leaning back against the back wall, a broad hat shielding his face, his legs stretched before him and his arms folded across his chest.  Sleeping, she supposed, even though the cart swayed and the sun rose and the animosity among the travelers was nearly palpable.  None of that concerned him.  He could sleep anywhere, through anything.  It was one of the things about him that she most envied. 

             
“You aren’t wrong,” she said again.  “Tom and I are indeed like brother and sister.  In the most bizarre sort of family, that is.”

***

              “I know that you have been to India,” said Mrs. Morrow to Geraldine.  “But have you ever before traveled to Cawnpore?”

             
“I have not,” Geraldine answered, peering toward the other side of the pony cart, where Emma and Amy were apparently in deep conference on some vital matter.  Their parasols were tilted sharply against the sun, one rose colored and the other turquoise, forming two agreeable spots of color among the drab garb of the older ladies, as if they girls themselves were wildflowers pushing their brave way up amid a group of rocks. “I left Bombay the year before the rebellion, you see, at the insistence of my fiancé.”

             
It was a slip.  She never used the word fiancé, not even when thinking of Anthony in the private chambers of her own mind.  And the bright-eyed Mrs. Morrow was on the tidbit of information at once, like a bird spotting a morsel from a great distance.

             
“I believe I may have heard,” she said delicately, “that you were Anthony Weaver’s betrothed before he married Rose?”

             
Coming from another woman’s mouth, it might have been a dreadfully presumptuous question, but Gerry did not mind.  It would be a relief to be able to speak freely about the matter, to confess to one sympathetic soul what had truly brought her to India.  Of course Mrs. Turner was listening too, despite the silly ruse that she was absorbed in the task of her knitting, but Geraldine decided there was very little reason to demur.  They were three women of a certain age, were they not, crammed together in a miserable pony cart on their way to a half-built memorial?   It was likely they had all suffered their share of disappointments and tragedy throughout the years and that the others were in no position to judge her past mistakes.

             
“I came on the fishing fleet,” she said.  “I trust you are familiar with the term?”

             
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Morrow with a chuckle.  “It brought me here as well.”

             
“Then you recall what it was like to land among this city of bachelors and find yourself beset upon at once.  I had experienced very little courtship back in England, and certainly not courtship at such a breakneck pace.”

             
“One of the girls who came over with me,” said Mrs. Morrow, “was actually proposed to as she made her way down the gangplank.  A man on the dock declared himself on his very first sight of her.  Of course, she was uniquely blessed by Venus, but still –“ She tilted her chin.  “To be pursued so avidly is simultaneously flattering and insulting, is it not?  And also a little frightening, especially for a girl used to the way things work back in England. “

             
“When the men came down to greet our ship it was madness,” Geraldine said.  “The image I most recall is that the
Weeping Susan
also carried a large crate of Devonshire apples.  I wondered at it when we started and even though we were caught in the doldrums –“

             
“The doldrums!” exclaimed Mrs. Morrow with the unfeigned horror of a woman who had survived many voyages in equatorial waters.

             
“How ghastly for you,” said Mrs. Turner, putting down her knitting at last.

             
“Indeed it was,” Geraldine said automatically.  “But even as we drifted, with our supplies of tinned food dwindling every day and the passengers near panic, the captain still would not let us eat the apples.  He said they were of great value, you see, although none of us really caught his meaning at the time.  We could not understand that for men stranded in an unfamiliar environment, even a brief taste of the familiar can become the most fiercely desired luxury of all.  When we finally managed to make it to Bombay, the apples were delivered and uncrated even before the passengers disembarked.  I can still see that scene, the men snatching at them with such animalistic fervor, even though the prices the captain demanded were scandalous, and then walking along the dock, munching the apples and looking up at all of us.  This cluster of girls and women, standing together at the railing wondering if we had made a dreadful mistake.”

             
Now Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Morrow both chortled with genuine mirth.  “English men grow tired of tropical fruits and tropical women soon enough,” Mrs. Morrow said.  “But if you were caught in the doldrums, I am surprised the apples survived the trip.”

             
“Oh, they teetered on the very edge of ferment,” said Geraldine, laughing too.  “Although I suppose the same could be said for a few of the women.  But it hardly mattered.  You could be considered unremarkable, even homely, back in London, but once you crossed the equator a definite magic took place.  You were suddenly the loveliest woman alive.  Some of the girls were….what did we call them?  Memory fails me.”