City of Bells (33 page)

             
She must confront her blackmailer and finish this, once and for all.

***

              “That is it?” Michael Everlee asked, his voice flat with disbelief.  For the famed well of Cawnpore looked precisely like any other well.

             
“Here is the plaque,” said the old man from the Byculla Club, some chap named Norton who had yammered incessantly as they had made their slow climb up the unreliable steps.  He said it eagerly and pointed a shaky finger toward a brass plaque, already dulled by dust.

             
“Indeed,” said Everlee, looking about.  The well had been engulfed in a snarl of green vines, which had grown up from the center and spilled down the sides. 
It resembles a hand,
he thought. 
A long-fingered green hand reaching out from below the earth to choke everything within sight.

             
“Are the bodies…” Everlee asked weakly, and then broke off.  The other two men looked at him expectantly.  They were both older, but he supposed he surpassed them socially and that is why they held back in respectful silence.  Or perhaps they mistook this shiver of fear that had overtaken him for a deeper emotion.  Grief, most likely, or nostalgia for a man he had never known.

             
“Are the bodies of the victims still in the well?” Everlee finally managed.  “Or were they removed?”

             
“Oh, extricated and given a proper Christian burial, of course,” Norton said in confidence, although Seal had begun talking at the same time.

             
“My understanding is that this is a burial site as well as a shrine,” he was saying, before he broke awkwardly off in deference to the older man.

             
“Their families would certainly claim them, man,” Norton said in an offended tone.

             
“But in many cases whole families perished, “Seal responded.  “And thus there was no one to demand the return of any remains.  Cawnpore happened in the midst of a military emergency,” he added, with a guilty look in Everlee’s direction, as if the young politician from England had come to India to pass judgment on them all.  “And in times of war, the reclaiming and identification of bodies can be a dicey business, even civilian bodies.”  Then his eyes nervously fluttered toward the infuriated Norton, who clearly did not like the notion that they were standing above a hole crammed with skeletons, the slight frames of women and children among them.

             
Everlee waved his hand dismissively, as if to indicate it did not matter either way, and both of the men fell silent.  It was hard to say which of them was correct – most likely Seal, since experience had taught Everlee that the darkest explanation was generally the one that was also closest to the truth.  But he was shaken by the image, bodies piled upon bodies, fusing throughout the years into one undignified and inhuman mass of calcium and rubble, an finger sticking out here and there, a vine poking its way through a lonely eye socket, some wayward pocketwatch or wedding ring the only remaining evidence of what had once been an individual life. 

             
The vines,
he thinks, stepping closer to the well and steeling himself to look into the leafy green pit. 
They grow to cover all these things that we cannot bear to look upon.  Cannot bear to remember.

             
“Would you care to lay flowers?”  Norton inquired.  He no doubt meant to speak respectfully, but his deafness had rendered him incapable of discriminating between levels of volume and the question came out in a shout.  “We have brought them, you know.  Wreaths waiting down in the carts.”

             
“No,” said Everlee, stepping back, his hand grazing a plump green leaf as he retreated.  “It would appear that nature has provided all the tribute that Cawnpore will ever need.”

***

              The dropper hovers. She glances around but no one is watching her.  This time she does not bother to calculate the dosage or worry about whether the bitter syrup of the suicide tree will bring death within minutes or hours. 

             
She squeezes and then sits back with a satisfied sigh. 

***

              They ate informally, at various times and places around the cluster of tents.   Miss Hoffman’s girls started with their familiar curry, but then slowly began to branch out to the other dishes.  They were tentative at first, approaching the unfamiliar foods from the side, as one might approach a sleeping animal, and sampling only a spoonful.   But soon they were enthusiastically gobbling down the salads and terrines, carrying their heaping plates out to the lawn where their headmistress had put down blankets for their use.

             
“So at least we can rest assured that there is nothing wrong with the curry,” Rayley said drily, observing the scene.  “Or any of the other dishes, for that matter.   It is a heartwarming thing to observe the appetites of the young, is it not?”

             
“We must find a way to cut Adelaide out of the herd,” Trevor said, glancing about.  “For it seems Miss Hoffman has temporarily relaxed her vigilance.  I don’t see her at all, do you?”

             
Rayley shook his head and looked up the hill where small parties of people, in straggling groups of two or three, were at last beginning their pilgrimage toward the well.  He had imagined some sort of maudlin ceremony, for he had seen a great pile of wreathes in one of the carts and his brief stint at the Byculla Club had been enough to convince him that its membership contained its fair share of pontificators and preachers.   But it would seem that the viewing of the plaque was to be as disorganized and sporadic as the eating of the midday meal, with each mourner making the climb in his or her own time. 

             
Trevor was likewise surveying the scene, but his attention was focused on the whereabouts of the other members of the Murder Games Club.  Tom and Emma, he noticed, were sitting around a small table which also held the pretty little Amy Morrow.  Geraldine was among a larger group at a larger table and as Trevor continued to watch he noted that Michael Everlee and Henry Seal were pulling up chairs and preparing to join them.  From the ostentatious way in which both of the men brushed the dust from their pant legs, Trevor could only conclude that their own climb was behind them. 

             
Morass was right,
Trevor thought. 
They fit together perfectly. Trying so hard to seem important.  Clinging to their titles and insignia.

             
“All the particulars of our little story seem to be visible and accounted for,” Rayley said, breaking into his thoughts.   “Save for Miss Hoffman, Hubert Morass, and Davy.  Where would you imagine that unlikely trio might have gone?”

             
“There appear to be only three things to do on this outing,” Trevor said.  “Eat, urinate, and view the well.  If they were doing the first, we could see them.  The second task is one I doubt they would undertake together.  So we can only assume they have climbed beyond that rise there and are headed toward the well.”

             
“Shall I follow?” asked Rayley.  “Things might go better with Adelaide if we do not both beset her at once.”

             
“Let’s do the opposite,” Trevor said.  “I shall climb and you shall stay.  You have a gentler interrogation style, one more suited for a skittish creature like Adelaide.”

             
“Very well,” said Rayley, pushing to his feet.  “But don’t forget she has already outrun me once.”

***

              “Would you like a beer?” asked Morass. 

             
“I dare not,” said Leigh Anne Hoffman.

             
“Come now,” he said, straining his neck to look in all directions, using the exaggerated pantomime of a comedic actor.  “No one is here to see to see the missionary take communion with the sinner.  Your students are below, gobbling every bit of food which is not bolted down, and the worthies of Bombay are above us, laying wreathes and loudly lamenting the passing of an era.  I suspect no one is looking for the likes of you and me.”

             
“You are probably right,” she said with a shrug.  “One of the bonuses of being utterly expendable to society is plenty of free time.”

             
He laughed, showing his small, yellowed teeth, and scooted a bit over on his flat rock to make room for her.

             
“Have you eaten?” she asked.

             
“Not yet.  I shall make my way down to the tent in due time.”

             
If you try to walk downhill in your state you shall likely begin to tumble and roll all the way back to Bombay,
she thought.   Morass was clearly drunk, but exactly how drunk was hard to say.

             
“I have brought a bit of my curry,” she said, sitting down beside him and beginning to unwrap a bowl from its canvas cloth.  “Do you like curry, or are you one of those English who are determined to stay English no matter what?”

             
“I like it well enough,” he said.  “But I’d bother you to taste it first if you don’t mind.”

             
“So we’ve come to that.”

             
He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “It weren’t as if you and I were ever friends.”

             
He had a point.  She steadied the bowl, which was perched on her knees, and them further unwrapped a small napkin which had been tucked inside the canvas,  extracting a spoon.  She shook the spoon in his face for emphasis, dragged it through the top of the curry, and popped it in her mouth.

             
They sat for a moment.

             
“See?” she said.  “I live.”

             
“So you do,” he said, taking the spoon from her hand and the bowl from her knees.  “And as we share a bowl, I suppose we must also share a glass.”

             
“Then this is a communion indeed,” she said.  “When was the last time you were in a church, Inspector Morass?”

             
The question amused him and he leaned back, roaring in laughter. 

             
“Hush,” she said suddenly.  “I hear someone.”

             
“I tell you, no one is about.  Drink your beer.”

             
She accepted the cup and took a sip, then wrinkled her nose.

             
“The missionary is not much of a drinker.”

             
“Not much of a drinker of beer.  But you are right.  We are a pair of outcasts and thus we must – Wait.  That sound again.  I tell you, someone is watching from those bushes.”

             
With a sigh, he placed his bowl of curry on a rock and pushed his sizable frame to his feet.  Lumbered over to the small patch of scrubby bushes which so alarmed her and made a great show of pushing the branches first one way and then the next.

             
“We are quite alone.”

             
“I am a foolish woman,” she said, as he returned to the flat rock and resumed his place.  “The events of the last few weeks have made me see danger in every shadow.”   She handed him back the glass.  “But you are right in saying I have no head for spirits.  You must finish the beer alone.”

***

              Adelaide had watched as Miss Hoffman had stepped back from the kettle with a ladle and poured a measure of curry into a bowl.  She had watched as the woman had wrapped the bowl in a cloth, selected a spoon and napkin, and ventured away from the collection of picnickers, heading toward a copse of trees halfway up the hill.   It was not unlike her friend to choose to eat alone – Miss Hoffman was the most solitary and secretive of creatures – but something in her manner today had alarmed Adelaide.  And when ten minutes or more had passed without the woman returning, Adelaide’s worry grew more pronounced.   She rolled away from her sprawl on one of the blankets and, with a hand in each pocket, began to walk toward the trees.

             
But she had taken no more than a dozen steps when he intercepted her.  The small man with the large eyeglasses whom she had first seen in the Weaver’s garden.  She had escaped him then, but there was no escape now.

             
He approached her with a slight smile, an extended hand of friendship.

“
              Adelaide?” he said.  “My name is Rayley Abrams.  Is there some chance we could find a quiet place to talk?”

***

              To call it a path was a joke.  Now that he was halfway up the hill, Trevor could better understand why the others had been picking their way so slowly.  For the carpet of loose rubble made every step a treacherous business.   He paused to wipe his brow and to survey the scene below.  Rayley had managed to get Adelaide out of the group and the two now sat apart from the others, in chairs that he must have hastily pulled inside the folds of a supply tent.  They were positioned in a literal tete-e-tete, their foreheads nearly touching as they strained towards each other.