Authors: Kim Wright
But the falling muslin had instead exposed scenes of remarkable clarity and undeniable detail, almost an instruction manual for the sexually illiterate. No wonder the Memsahibs had been offended. The wall even had bells attached, a long stretch of small ones which tinkled with each breeze, drawing the listener’s attention in the direction of the sound, where her startled eyes would find phalluses of every shape and size as well as grand, swirling caves of color evidently meant to represent the recesses of a woman.
The men and women in these scenes did not merely gaze upon each other with lascivious intent, but had moved together in close congress. This scene before Trevor and Emma just now, for example – the tilework was so fine that there was little doubt of what the man and woman were doing, even though their position struck Trevor as most improbable. Improbable bordering on impossible, but everyone claimed the Indians were a lithe race, capable of contortions Caucasian bodies simply could not follow. The strangest thing of all was that their faces were fully turned toward the observer, as if daring him to watch or even challenging him to enter into the debaucheries. Trevor had the disconcerting notion that the woman, in fact, was giving him a wink of invitation.
“These walls go beyond even the fertile imagination of Mrs. Steel,” Emma said with a shaky little laugh. “The mosaic work is remarkable, would you not say?”
“Indeed.”
“So you would agree they are art?”
“I would agree that they are remarkably well crafted. But art is different from craftsmanship, wouldn’t you say? Different in intent?”
“I am not at all sure,” Emma said thoughtfully as Trevor pulled the muslin back into place. There were four large panels of it, the wall being somewhere the length of a train car. Emma had never been good at estimating measurements. She stood back as Trevor worked to cover the pictures, chewing on her bottom lip. “At least seeing the wall explains why everyone is so upset about this temple, why God-fearing Englishwomen refuse to even come down this street. But do you think it also explains why Anthony Weaver did?”
“Possibly,” said Trevor, above the persistent fluttery noise of the bells, for each tug of the curtain set off a fresh concert. “But the old duffer doesn’t strike me as a connoisseur of pornography. No, I think it was something else that pulled him toward this temple.”
***
The Weaver House
10
:50 AM
Rayley and Davy had finished dusting the Weaver house for prints, paying special attention to the kitchen and the doorknobs in the occupied bedrooms. They were now taking a small break in the back garden.
Or rather Rayley was taking a small break and Davy was compulsively watering the plants.
“Can’t help it, Sir,” said Davy. “Me mum would have my head if I stood by and let a patch of peas go to ruin.”
Rayley nodded absentmindedly, although the boy’s perpetual industry made him slightly ashamed of his own need to rest. “That odd tree-like plant in the corner. That’s the one you took samples of for Tom, I assume?”
“Yes, Sir. Never seen anything like it.”
“Nor have I,” said Rayley. “While everything else in the garden is easily identifiable. The poor woman certainly tried to recreate her own little patch of England, did she not? Of course, the very fact that tree stands so nakedly visible seems to exonerate it, for it seems that only a fool would use a poison from his own garden to murder his wife.”
“Something else, Sir,” said Davy, putting down his ladle. “If you’ll follow me to Sang’s room…”
The two men moved back into the shade of the house where the bedroom which had held the manservant seemed the coolest and most inviting of the three they had dusted, partly because of the cheerful colors and partly, Rayley assumed, because the furnishings were designed to counteract the challenges of the environment. Davy walked straight up to a brass stand, and pulled off a dropcloth to reveal a large and ornate birdcage made of rattan. Three onion-shaped domes were perched on top in a reasonably effective imitation of the local architecture.
“See here, Sir,” he said, replenishing the bird’s level of food and water as he spoke. “Yesterday when I fed the bird something about the situation niggled at me but I couldn’t think what.”
“How the bird survived two weeks without food?”
“Well, obviously it didn’t, Sir. Someone has been coming in to attend it, most likely the English woman in the sari. No, something else seemed wrong in the situation, and then last night as I was going to bed it hit me. There are two water bowls in this cage, two feeding dishes, two of those little mirrored amusements. Which makes me wonder –“
“If there used to be two birds?”
“Just that, Sir.”
“Even if there were, I’m not sure it means anything,” said Rayley stepping forward to better observe the little songbird, who stared back at him with shiny dark eyes. “Pets die.”
The bird tilted its head, as if offended by the crassness of his comment, and Rayley found himself smiling at it. “What do you think, my good man?” he crooned. “Did you once have a little friend?” And then, glancing about, Rayley added. “You know the longer I am in this house the more I feel some sympathy for Michael Everlee.”
“Don’t see how you can, Sir. At least not after the way he acted towards you last night.”
“Going into someone’s home when they are not there,” Rayley mused, “gives you a rather unique vantage point into their character. You’ve noticed the same, I’d wager. And as I study this room, I am becoming increasingly convinced that it was Michael’s when he was a boy. Look here, at these small divots notched into the doorframe. Meant to earmark the growth of a child, are they not?”
“Most likely,” Davy said, ashamed he had not noticed. His mother had kept the same sort of record for him and his three brothers, their vertical progress throughout the years each documented against a different wall of the kitchen. “But the marks stop rather low, don’t they, Sir?”
“Probably when he left for school in England,” Rayley said softly, stooping to ponder the highest mark. “He was but a little lad when they shipped him off. And a box of tin soldiers I noticed in the window seat stands as further proof that a boy once claimed this room. One thing does not entirely fit, however… I can’t claim to know much about the particulars of wedded bliss, but isn’t it odd that the room of the child should be located between the rooms of the husband and wife?”
“Not as odd as the notion that a servant sleeps between them,” Davy said. “And besides, we only know that the Secretary-General and Mrs. Weaver keep separate rooms now. In their younger days they may have been more…companionable.”
“True,” Rayley said. “It may help to consider the family not as they are now, but as they must once have been. Mrs. Weaver was what, in her early seventies, when she died? And her son claims to be thirty-two. Which means the lady had one child, and that he was born unusually late in life. The only reminder of her dead husband, and thus presumably very cherished. I am surprised she would send him to England for schooling at all.”
“And look, Sir, at the tiles on the hearth,” Davy said. “Do you notice anything odd in them?”
“They feature the animals of India,” Rayley said. “Rather plainly drawn and thus adding credence to my theory this was once a nursery.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Davy. “But this particular elephant, last tile to the right, has five legs.”
With an indulgent chuckle, Rayley paused to inspect the creature. “See what I mean, then? When you consider the young Michael, awakening in this sunny room, looking out into that garden, and then he might -“
A thud from the hall stopped him. Rayley looked up at Davy over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes shooting a warning. But Davy had heard it too and was already moving not toward the sound but rather toward the door which led out into the garden.
Clever
, Rayley thought.
If the girl with the dropper has indeed returned, as Trevor predicted, she will not elude us this time. With me approaching directly and young Mabrey waiting outside the door, we shall find out who she is and why she has come.
***
The Khajuraho Temple
11:05 AM
“It is tea,” Miss Hoffman was saying, holding out a cup. “Cured locally and thus perhaps not entirely as you expect it to taste, but tea nonetheless.”
Geraldine accepted the offering, noting that while the china on the tray was fine – and the tray itself was silver and surprisingly well polished – none of the cups matched.
The orphanage is full of casts offs
, she thought.
Things as well as people.
Mrs. Tucker had explained to her that travel in India was so difficult that when a family received a post to a new station they would generally leave everything they owned behind them and purchase new items when they arrived. The result was presumably an abandoned trail of furniture, clothing, and niceties left all over India, some of which had apparently ended up piecemeal at the girls’ school.
“And do put your feet on this stool, my dear,” Miss Hoffman added, as she handed a cup to Emma. They had all four reconvened on the portico for their refreshment, which had been served by a silent young girl with honey-colored skin and blue eyes.
“I know,” Emma murmured. “Scorpions and snakes. The twin curse of the subcontinent. They venture even here, into the temple?”
“Especially here in the temple,” said Miss Hoffman. “They crave the coolness of the tiles, just as we do.” She looked archly at Trevor as she passed him the last teacup. “I saw you making note of our Catherine’s unique coloring, Detective. Quite striking, is she not?”
“Lovely,” Trevor said.
Miss Hoffman settled back in her seat. “Half breeds often are. One of the reasons I shied at Miss Bainbridge’s use of the word ‘orphanage’ is that the majority of our girls are not orphans, at least not in the literal sense of the word. In most cases one of their parents, or sometimes both, is still alive. The unfortunate truth is that many British officers take Indian wives for the duration of their service here. A handful of paperwork is produced and sometimes there is even a ceremony which the women do not understand. But the men generally never intended to bring their dark-skinned, barefooted consorts back to England, and when their tour of duty is over they simply abandon them. I have heard of cases of women and children literally left wailing on the dock as the men they depended on sailed out of sight. It is a problem the Raj is loathe to admit. The women are disgraced, sometimes to the point where they take their own lives, the native culture being peculiarly unsympathetic toward females who have lost their men. The offspring of these sham unions, if they are lucky, end up in a place like this.”
“And what becomes of these children as they grow?” Geraldine asked.
Miss Hoffman shrugged and placed her teacup on a bright tile table. “It depends on the particulars of the girl. Catherine, as you noticed, is quite fair, which bodes well for her chances. We introduce them about, sometimes manage to marry them off to the junior officers. The younger, randier men who might be willing to ignore a bit of Indian blood if the girl has been raised to British standards. For others, we try to educate them well enough that they might become nannies, nurses, that sort of thing. It is a source of status among the Raj to have light-skinned servants.”
`
“You say ‘we try,’” Geraldine said. “Who is this ‘we’?”
“I suppose it is more accurate to say that I try,” admitted Miss Hoffman. “The school enjoys a few regular patrons, monies which come in anonymously. We are not a fashionable cause, but I daresay there are some in Bombay who are prompted by conscience to keep a roof over our heads.”
“You mean the fathers of the girls,” Trevor said. “Who feel guilt over the fate of their abandoned daughters.”
Another shrug. “Possibly. As I said, the donations are anonymous.”
“A light skinned woman in a sari was seen at the Weaver House just yesterday,” Trevor said. “When the officer noticed her, she ran.”