Authors: Kim Wright
“Really, Trevor,” Emma said. “Geraldine and I can handle at least this one small task on our own.”
“But I wish to go with you,” he said and then quickly amended the thought to add “and I need to go with you as well. For I have a strange feeling that in Bombay all roads lead to the Khajuraho temple.”
Chapter Ten
The Tucker House
August 29
, 1889
12:32 AM
It had been an exhausting day followed by an equally exhausting evening, but it seemed that none among them could find sleep.
In her room, Emma rose and wandered fretfully over to the bookcase, selecting at random a handful of books grouped together, all written by a woman named Flora Annie Steel. Settling into the armchair and switching on – with great caution – the lamp on the nearby table, she began to skim each in turn and soon saw that the admirable Mrs. Steel employed, one might say, certain similarities in her plots.
The heroine was always an Englishwoman. Young, fair, virginal. Her counterpart was always an Indian man. Dark, brooding, throbbing in unspecified places with vaguely described passions. Few paragraphs were spent in explaining what forces might have pulled these two unlikely lovers together. What was it Mrs. Tucker had said earlier that day? Something along the lines of how Emma must be careful because native men always craved white women. Apparently among the Raj this assumption was too embedded to require analysis. As Emma flipped through the books she could see that Mrs. Steel had envisioned a world in which Indian men were constantly seizing British girls - kidnappings which always seemed to stop just short of rape, for any number of events, from sudden thunderstorms to the arrival of cavalries, conveniently colluded to protect the virtue of Mrs. Steel’s heroines.
Emma frowned and slid down in the chair, pulling the last book closer to her face. It didn’t seem to her that a cloudburst, no matter how poetically described, would be enough to deter a true rapist, but by the end of each book it was further revealed that the man once thought to be Indian was truly English. He had been somehow abducted from away from his true family in infancy and raised among the natives and then someone or something – perhaps that persistent rainstorm? – would wash off the dust and reveal that his skin was white. Problem solved. The unsuitable man is proven suitable after all. The potential rapist becomes the perfect husband and thus our story ends.
It was an absurdity, Emma thought, tossing the last book aside. An abomination. Although, when one stopped to really think of it, reading these books was a bit like finding the boy who stirred the ceiling fan. The eccentricities of the Raj all seemed horrid at first but were they really any different than the sort of things which went on every day in London? In romances by British authors, a young woman might be seduced by a stable hand only to learn that he was, in fact, truly the lord of the manor. Forced to take on a disguise for some improbable reason or stolen from his crib twenty years earlier by gypsies.
Emma looked up. The great fan, which she had learned was called a punkah, was still at night, which was a relief. At least no small boy was forced to spend the night crouched in the courtyard. Besides, the air was much cooler in the evening, just as everyone had promised it would be, and almost absurdly fragrant. She rose from her chair and walked over to the door, pushed it open, and walked outside, through the garden, feeling the breeze against her naked arms and ankles. Other lamps were on in other rooms. Geraldine’s certainly, and then a row of lights from the windows on the other side of the garden, representing, she supposed, the rooms of three of her comrades. Apparently only one among them could sleep.
She wondered which room was Tom’s.
Such thoughts came often to Emma, no matter how much she tried to suppress them, and on the heels of that image came an even less welcome one. The memory of Tom and Amy sitting close at one end of the dinner table, oh so very clearly enjoying each other’s company while she was stranded at the other end, saddled with the impossible Michael Everlee. Even she had to admit Tom and Amy were well matched. Both fair and quick to laugh, much like impish children poking at each other in church. Yes, they were a natural pair, while she…
She matched no one.
Perhaps I should search for my own Indian prince, Emma thought. Or at the very least a stable boy with suspiciously good grammar. I should go back to my room this very instant, to my bed, and pick up another book for instruction on how to find him.
Instead, she folded her arms across her chest and looked up at the unfamiliar sky. The sky that had sheltered Geraldine and Anthony all those years ago and it occurred to her that the young Gerry had been much like the characters in all of Mrs. Steel’s books – inexperienced and easily duped. Only where those heroines were unable to see the hero that lurked beneath the skin of the common man, Gerry had been unable to see the opposite. That her dashing young officer was about to dash off. That her lover had loved another woman first and better. That the romantic twist of fortune which had brought them together would be, in the end, a cruel twist. That the man she viewed as a hero was merely a cad.
Is this the gist of all romances? Emma wondered, as the trees whipped around themselves and jasmine filled the air. Is the plot of all love stories really so simple? That a woman is never able to see who or what a man truly is… not until the very end of her story?
***
It was a heavy volume, but Tom was glad he had packed it.
The Means of Death.
An ominous sounding title and one guaranteed to cause alarm in any unfortunate stranger who happened to be sitting beside one on a train. But the book had a full section on poisons and that was all that mattered. He had read through the list twice since retiring to bed and now his eyes were blurring as he struggled to focus on the small print.
He hated this sort of feeling. Exhaustion, accompanied by the knowledge that when one is this tired it is nearly impossible to sleep. He pushed to his feet and walked to the door which led out into the garden. He was tempted to prop it open to the evening breeze but at least half of the toxins listed in the tropical chapter were borne by animals and not plants. In other words they were poisons capable of traveling on their own, danger that moved, death carried in fangs and barbs and stingers and so – nice night or not – he could not bring himself to open his door.
But through the large glass plate he could see Emma.
She appeared almost as a ghost – a slender form in a white muslin nightdress, the folds of which billowed in the wind. She is not like me, he thought. She fears nothing. She walks among the dark garden like a shadowy Eve, confident in her majesty. And the sight of her there made him curse out loud, although he could not have said why.
***
Thanks to Rayley’s time studying with the French, who had developed fingerprinting to a fine art, the entire team had gotten quite adept with the brush and silica dust. But yet Davy still practiced.
He knew he should be sleeping. Tomorrow would be there soon enough and it would hold innumerable challenges, just as today had, and likely as many surprises. He should be sleeping... but he couldn’t, and so instead he was standing at the door looking out into the courtyard garden, pressing his thumb against the glass at different angles and then lifting his own print, over and over. Davy had noticed Emma, of course. Both of the ladies’ rooms across the way had remained lit and it had given him comfort to know that someone else was also awake, that he was not truly lost in this great night alone.
His evening with Detective Abrams had been strangely pleasant. After having been tossed from the Byculla Club, the two had begun to laugh. They had laughed in the carriage and made rude jokes about the people they had met during the cocktail hour, especially Michael Everlee and his attaché. Rayley had made a special point of mocking the Benson chap, with several plays on the title “attaché” which Davy did not quite understand. But the words were French and thus presumably smutty and Davy never felt more like one of the fellows, an equal among men, as on those rare occasions when Detective Abrams would drink and talk of France.
And so he had laughed, even at the jokes that missed their mark, and they had stopped the carriage and gotten out at some corner. Had bought curries from a street vendor and eaten as they walked, staining their hands and shirts, singing as they had made their winding way back to the Tucker House. It was not far. Bombay might be large, but this peapod of English within it was not, and so they were back in their rooms within an hour of leaving the Byculla. If being thrown from the club had stung his pride, Rayley had hidden it well. But when they had parted in the courtyard, each to go his separate ways, he had slapped Davy on the shoulder and said “Thank you, man.”
And Davy had said “It was nothing.” It was not until he was in his room with the door closed that it struck him. He had forgotten to say “Sir.”
***
Although he knew the particulars well, Rayley once again read the reports of Cawnpore. He knew that to turn these pages and to run his fingertip over this print was to risk nightmares, or perhaps not sleeping at all, for he was a sensitive sort. Certain images took hold of him and haunted him for far too long. It was perhaps his singular failing as a policeman. He could still recall the faces of each of the Ripper victims, the expression that had flitted across Isabel Blout’s pretty features as she slipped from his grip on the Tower, the stupefied shudder of surprise which had shaken that big Russian as he had died in the courtyard of the Winter Palace. Rayley suspected he would carry these memories with him up until the moment of his own death.
Which was unfortunate, for of all the skills an investigator needed, chief among them was the ability to forget. Not the facts, for history does indeed repeat itself, and criminal history cycles through more quickly than any other kind. But one needed to forget the emotions which came with the facts, and this Rayley could not do.
Nonetheless, he read.
The mutiny had started, more or less, in the fall of 1856, prompted by pockets of Indians who had seemed to simultaneously decide, without consultation, that they were tired of British rule. The cities remained relatively unaffected and thus the officers living within those cities remained relatively unconcerned. But in the small country stations where a handful of English ruled over armies of natives, incidents of violence escalated throughout the winter and into the spring. It was said that in the country no white woman made a move without poison in her pocket, even if she was merely walking outside to draw water or tend her garden. Better to have the means to die quickly than to fall into the hands of the rebels. There was an occasional shot fired. A stone thrown through a window, a challenge to military authority. Yes, two reported rapes. But these were isolated events, and India was a large country. No one but a handful of men – Roland Everlee and Anthony Weaver evidently among them – saw the potential for the violence to become widespread.
And the truly strange thing is that when it did, the mutineers appeared to have no plan. They chose Cawnpore, a middling sized station, seemingly at random. It was relatively unguarded, since the majority of the men had been drawn to other parts of the district that were thought to be in greater danger. The station quickly fell under siege and remained that way for weeks.
Rayley could only surmise that for those trapped within the walls of the city, waiting for help must have felt like hell. They were half-starved, lacking all medical care, shot at if they dared to move near a door or window. But those within Cawnpore, terrified though they might be, must have considered themselves the lucky ones. The stories from the countryside just outside the station walls were far worse. Women hacked to death, thrown from windows to slowly die of their injuries in the heat. Children hoisted on the points of swords, babies run through with rapiers. An old man set fire to in his sickbed, a woman strangled while in the very process of giving birth.
Help was only two days away, but they didn’t know it. Three boatloads of English attempted to escape Cawnpore at night, by the river. One hundred twenty-five men, women, and children. Two boats were overtaken at once, the occupants slaughtered on the spot, until it was said the river ran red with blood. The majority of the bodies, most dead but some reportedly still living, were thrown down the Cawnpore well.
The boat which escaped was captured less than a mile up river, by a different branch of the rebellion. Its passengers, almost exclusively women and children, were not killed but were rather taken hostage and kept in a large schoolhouse. Perhaps a bit of hope flourished among these survivors. They had certainly seen what had happened to the others but as the days went by and they were still alive, it is possible they began to convince themselves that redemption was at hand. Their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers were returning from their various posts, spurred on by reports of the horrors. They must have thought that the rebels intended to use them as bargaining chips, a way to force the hand of the Raj into granting at least some of their demands.