The Girl from Cobb Street (29 page)

She didn’t understand. She’d read that when the monsoon came, it went on for hours, for days, for weeks.

‘It’s the
chota bursat
,’ Dr Lane explained when she reached the Infirmary. ‘The little rains. They arrive ahead of the real monsoon but they fall for only a few hours.’

‘It was for only a few minutes, I think. But it was wonderful while it lasted. For once my skin stopped burning.’

‘It’s good that you made the most of it—it will get even hotter now. You should stay home for a few days. This week isn’t too busy. Two more patients left before you arrived.’

She started to protest but Dr Lane was adamant. ‘The heat will be worse than ever until the monsoon breaks. Stay home and listen for the honk of the wild geese. They’ll be coming from Siberia. They’re a kind of advance guard for the cool weather.’

He was right. The thermometer climbed rapidly during the morning and once again the clouds piled high, dark and threatening. Daisy left the Infirmary to find a sky filled with a thunderous beauty, a pyramid of clouds banked one on top of another, and air she could almost touch, dank and heavy, a grey blanket of rolling warmth. By the time she pedalled up the pathway to the bungalow, she was once more exhausted.

If she’d thought herself uncomfortable on previous occasions, it was nothing to the wretched time she had that night. She tossed and turned constantly, her body sweating, her skin itching from the misery of prickly heat. Once or twice she got up and walked around the bedroom, thinking she might cool herself by doing so. But nothing worked. She lay on top of the unmade twin and waited for dawn. Everything around was still. Even the dogs had fallen silent. Every living creature seemed to be waiting in deathly quiet for the crash that would signal the monsoon proper.

She’d fallen into an uneasy doze when she heard the noise. A dragging sound, the same dragging sound she’d heard before. So the noise hadn’t been in her head after all. It had been real, it had existed. What was it? She padded quietly to the door and opened it the smallest chink. A shock was waiting for her. She almost slammed the door in fear but something kept her where she was, kept her from crying out. Standing within touching distance was a stranger, an Indian. He was looking ahead and didn’t notice the slight opening of the door. And he was not that strange. He was the very same man she’d seen in the garden the first night she’d slept at the bungalow. He had to be a friend of Rajiv’s, but what was he doing in her house in the early hours of the morning? And why had Rajiv denied that he knew the man? All her old suspicions came alive. Keeping her hand as firmly as she could on the doorknob, she put her eye to the gap between the door and the frame. The man was walking away towards the side door. That would make sense, that was the way to Rajiv’s quarters. She dare not open the door wider in case he turned and saw her. But as she watched, he disappeared. She was sure he’d not even reached the side entrance, but he must have done, else how could he have simply disappeared? She held her breath for a moment, then slowly opened the door a fraction wider. There was nothing to see. A little wider, and still she could see nothing and no one. Taking courage, she walked out into the passage and through into the sitting room. It was empty.

She padded back along the passage to Gerald’s room. She must wake him and tell him what had happened. He needed to know they were playing host to strangers. But there was no sign of him. Had Gerald been woken by the same noise and followed the Indian to Rajiv’s quarters to find out what was going on? If so, he would be back very soon. But the side door hadn’t opened, she was sure and, when she walked up to it, she saw it had been locked from the inside. So there were keys in the house after all. And no one could have passed that way. But then, where had the man gone? And where was Gerald?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

S
he was not going to find out in the middle of the night. She could do nothing except wait for morning and hope Gerald would be back to solve the puzzle. But when she rose the next day, hot and unrefreshed, it was to find he was still absent. She went out onto the veranda and scanned the empty garden.

Rajiv appeared noiselessly at her side. ‘Sahib Gerald at camp,’ he said indifferently.

‘When did the sahib leave?’

Rajiv shrugged his shoulders. Either he didn’t know, or wasn’t interested enough to tell her. The image of the unknown Indian came unbidden into her mind, and she was tempted to ask him about his friend and at least clear a little of last night’s mystery. But she knew she would get nothing from him. Instead she reeled off a list of items that were needed from the market. That would keep him busy and out of the house for an hour at least. A plan had begun to form. She would go to his quarters—never mind what Gerald said—go there and try to discover just what was going on. Whatever it was, it was suspicious, and Rajiv was involved. She would get the proof against him that she’d once wanted. And when Gerald eventually returned, she would be able to surprise him with her resourcefulness. She looked forward to that.

She saw Rajiv trundle his old bike along the path and out of the garden, a large basket tied to the handlebars, but she made herself wait. It was a long ten minutes. When she was sure he wouldn’t return to the house on whatever pretext, she left the veranda and took up a position just outside her bedroom. Before she trespassed in Rajiv’s accommodation, she wanted to be sure she’d got things right. She stood in the exact spot the man had stood, a few inches from her bedroom door and facing away towards the side entrance. There was nowhere else he could have gone except through that door, but how had it locked itself after he’d passed? It was preposterous, yet somehow it had happened. She started towards the door leading to Rajiv’s quarters but almost tripped on a piece of rush matting that had rucked slightly. Another accident waiting to happen, she thought, and bent down to prod the matting into place. It remained annoyingly bunched, and she knelt to push it back more forcefully. She saw that the matting had been cut into a square, hardly perceptible in the overall spread, but at close quarters its outline was clear. Perhaps there had been a misjudgement when the rush matting had first been laid and this was an infill putting right the mistake. Something about it, though, was too neat, too symmetrical. She stopped pushing, and instead flicked at the recalcitrant piece of flooring. It came up easily and when she flicked some more, the rest of the square peeled back and revealed an exactly matching wooden square with an iron ring sitting in its centre. She was stunned. Was there a cellar she’d been unaware of? Was this where the man had disappeared?

Her heart was beating rapidly and she was sweating profusely, as much from excitement as from the airless room. She wiped her hands dry on her dress, thankful that this morning she’d chosen to wear an old cotton brought from England, since it looked likely to get a great deal more dirty. She tugged at the ring and the square of wood came up easily. The trapdoor, for that was what it was, was evidently in regular use. The Indian had been here before. The talk about ghosts when she’d first seen him in the garden had been to confuse her, to discourage her from asking more questions. And it had been Rajiv who’d been behind it.

A narrow ladder stretched down into darkness. She would need a light if she were to venture into that black void. Scrambling to her feet, she hurried back into her bedroom. The kerosene lamp would have to do. It gave only a half-hearted glow but it was sufficient for her to find her way down the ladder, step by step, to the solid floor beneath. She held the lamp as high as she could, swinging the light in an arc. Even by its muted glimmer, she could see that she was in an enormous space, equivalent she thought, to the entire floor area of the bungalow. She must be below ground level for the air was remarkably cool. But why had the Indian been here? As far as she could see, there was no reason. It was an empty space, leading nowhere. She realised guiltily that she’d been half-hoping for a tunnel, and scolded herself for her childishness.

Edging forward, she held the lamp high and to the front of her. Its swinging beam flashed from wall to wall. They had been fashioned from mud and straw, she saw, and left roughly finished, unlike the whitewash of the rest of the house. Halfway along one side, a dark shape loomed into sight. It appeared to be growing out of the floor of beaten earth. She went slowly towards it and once it was fully within the lamp’s beam, saw with relief that it was nothing more than a stack of boxes: large, rough-looking crates, coffin shaped, and piled one on top of each other. Behind the first stack was another, and behind that, another still. The boxes were made from coarse plywood and she could see marks stencilled on their sides, though there was nothing she could make sense of. She tried to lift the cover of the box nearest her but it was nailed fast. The top box of the second stack was similarly hammered down, but passing on to the third, she managed to dislodge one of the wooden covers. Very carefully, she settled the lamp on the uneven floor—it would be disastrous if she lost the light—and manoeuvred the lid to one side. Her hand trailed inside the box, and discovered it was filled with straw. It looked to be a disappointing end to her adventure. Standing on tiptoe she plunged her hand further into the box, and this time her fingers touched metal. Cold, heavy, sharp-edged. Using both hands, she pulled the object out and laid it on the floor. The lamp was retrieved from its resting place and she held the wavering light over her discovery. She could not prevent a gasp from escaping, for there was no doubt. She had found a rifle.

Frantically, she delved into the case again and brought out another gun, and then another. The crate was filled with firearms and the remaining crates, identical in size and lettering, must contain the same. Suddenly the adventure died. Suddenly it all made sense, horrible, gut-wrenching sense. These were the missing arms, the guns from the regiment. It had to be them, and they were here in this house. They must have been stolen and hidden by Rajiv and his accomplice. She’d been right about the servant all along. It was clear he intended to make money by selling arms, almost certainly to the protesters she had seen. This was what Grayson feared.

She felt herself paralysed by the dreadful knowledge, and had to pinch herself hard. The first thing to do was to get out of this cellar. Rajiv would be back very soon and he mustn’t discover her here. He mustn’t know that he’d been found out. She would get word to Gerald who would know how to handle things. She moved with a new decisiveness, packing the guns back into the straw, trying to push them as far down as she could, and then replacing the crate’s covering in the same position she’d found it. She must not leave a trace of herself, not a sign that she’d been there. She scurried up the ladder as swiftly as she could, but only just in time. As she lowered the trapdoor and replaced the matting, she heard the creak of Rajiv’s bicycle being wheeled to the kitchen. Had she thought of everything? The lamp—the lamp must be returned. She emerged from her bedroom just as he was gliding towards her from the side entrance.

‘How was the market. Did you get everything?’ She tried to speak as evenly as she could though her breathlessness made it difficult. Was it her imagination or was he looking at her oddly?

‘No fresh dates. Water melons coming later.’ His tone was brusque, uncongenial as always. He couldn’t suspect anything but her heart was still beating far too fast and she was sweating profusely. No wonder he looked at her askance. The sooner Gerald got back, the better.

When Rajiv had disappeared into the kitchen, she sat down and tried to think. Weeks ago she’d dismissed the notion that the servant was behind the dangerous incidents she’d faced. But the more she considered the matter, the more she wondered if she’d been doubly mistaken. That he was indeed her tormentor. He had been disagreeable from the first. He’d not wanted her here, not because of his intense loyalty to Gerald as she’d thought, but because her presence in the bungalow tore his plans to shreds. It must have come as a severe blow to him when Gerald announced that a memsahib was coming from England and would be around the house day and night. Perhaps he’d been planning to move the stolen guns when Gerald was at work, maybe even sell them from the bungalow. The house was isolated enough. But her arrival on the scene had put paid to that idea, and he’d been forced into working by night. They were the sounds she’d heard: weapons being shifted in and out of the cellar. Thinking back, she could see there had been a regular pattern to the noises. Twice a week, guns had arrived and guns had been despatched. It must have been very heavy work, and that might be why there were so many crates still stacked below.

She had been a problem for Rajiv from the start, she could see, a nuisance that had to be got rid of. And he’d done his best. He’d tried to scare her, hoping perhaps that if he made her fearful enough, she would go to Simla with the other women. He’d been the one to pretend a ghost, the one to lock her door, the one who’d encouraged the snake into the bathroom and then deliberately ignored her calls for help. But his ploy hadn’t worked. She hadn’t packed her case as she should have done and the attacks had escalated. His final attempt had been to tamper with her juice, no doubt mixing oleander seeds with the goji berries. Who, after all, could have a better opportunity? How easy it must have been. Oleanders grew everywhere in the garden and she’d discovered from Dr Lane’s medical dictionaries that just a few could cause headache and nausea and even induce a coma.

Rajiv was thoroughly wicked. She wondered how Gerald would take the news that his loyal servant had plotted against his wife, even tried to kill her since she’d come close to tragedy several times. He wasn’t just wicked though. He was clever as well, to have pursued such a successful vendetta. Her thoughts slammed to an abrupt halt. Could he be that clever? She’d suffered ‘accidents’ while she was not at home. It seemed unlikely that Rajiv could be everywhere, and could he really have planned things so meticulously? She’d rejected the idea he had an accomplice, someone working with him to frighten her away, but now she had a face to conjure with—the Indian she’d seen last night. He could easily have followed her to the temple. He could have found his way to the top of that crumbling edifice and levered a stone into free fall. But could he have tampered with the saddle in the regimental stables? He would have found it next to impossible to gain entry to the cantonment. Every gate to the camp was guarded and unless he had a valid reason for being there, he’d be turned away. Was there someone else then, beyond Rajiv and his friend, someone she didn’t know of? A man who could move easily around the locality, whose time was his own, and whose presence would not be questioned.