Authors: Kim Wright
Hurry it up, Abrams,
Trevor thought.
Miss Hoffman shall be back from wherever she has gone soon enough and then your interview with Adelaide will abruptly end.
And just with that thought, Trevor’s foot moved. It skidded from beneath him but he managed to right himself, although the task required him to flap his arms in a ludicrous manner. But just as he regained his footing, he slipped again and he realized, to his horror, that it was not that he was slipping…The entire hill was in motion. He felt the vibration before he heard it, but then, in an instant, a shout rose up from the people above him and Trevor saw one of the school girls sliding toward him, bouncing through the rubble on her bum and shrieking at a volume that could awaken the dead.
They were caught in a rockslide.
He reached for the schoolgirl to slow her descent – she looked rather like a child sledding without a sled – and in the process once again lost his own footing. The two of them tumbled inelegantly down the hill, Trevor struggling to shield the girl and absorb the worst of the jolts of the descent. He was dimly aware that they were not the only ones in motion…at least a half dozen people had been upended to some degree and were shouting and screaming as they skidded to a dusty halt.
Then…a moment of silence. Trevor, lying flat on his back with the child clutched to his chest, looked into the bright blue sky and risked an exhalation. Had it stopped? Were they safe?
A second wave of shrieking, more insistent than the first, answered those hopeful questions in the negative. Trevor cautiously craned his neck and looked up the hill.
The rocks were no longer sliding, this he could see. The people who had been carried with them were perched in their various positions along the dusty slope. But a new challenge was upon them in the form of a wasp nest which had evidently been unearthed in the slide. A swarm of creatures poured out, swirling in the reddish dust before pausing to taste the flesh of a pair of orphans who had come to rest near them.
Gently pushing the wailing girl aside, Trevor strained to see the rest of the scene. People from the tents were streaming out to go to the aid of those caught in the rockslide, while a few others were picking their way down from higher points on the hill. Tom had emerged from one of the dining tents with a knife in one hand and a tablecloth in the other. The logic of these items became apparent the moment he reached the girls who had been stung, for he slashed their clothing from them with a few well placed turns of his knife, thus releasing the wasps which had been caught within their pinafores. The winged tormenters flew free as he swiftly draped the tablecloth around both girls, who were clinging together in their misery.
Rayley was suddenly looming over Trevor saying “Are you all right, man?”
Trevor nodded shakily, his eyes and mouth both so full of dust that he did not trust his tongue to speak.
“I think so,” he finally managed. “See to the child.”
Rayley lifted the girl from Trevor’s chest and carried her down to the flat where, under shouted orders from Tom, a bit of a field hospital was being established beneath the tent awnings. Emma and Geraldine had evidently cleared one of the tables of its dishes and were beginning to aid the victims as they were being carried or otherwise assisted down the hill. Trevor sat up and gingerly felt his ribs, then took a minute to catch his breath and assess the situation. He was sore, but nothing appeared to be broken, and he suspected that the injuries of the others were similarly minor. Turned ankles, bruises, and, of course, wasp stings… but as long as no one was allergic to the venom, it would appear that the group would come through this little shock well enough.
“It’s positively Biblical, is it not?” said Rayley, who had returned and was now extending a hand toward his friend. Trevor took the hand and, with a wince, allowed the far slighter man to help pull him to his feet. “Massacres and rockslides and now we are beset with swarms of insects. How many disasters can one cursed piece of land sustain?”
Trevor rocked from foot to foot, trying out his joints and concluding that nothing was sprained. He would ache tomorrow, but it could have been far worse. “Is anyone hurt?”
“The child you rolled with is fine.”
“Hardly surprising, since she had the good luck to fall on the greatest pillow in Bombay,” said Trevor, patting his stomach.
“The stung girls appear to have gotten the worst of it,” Rayley continued, “but Miss Hoffman has reached the tent and managed to calm them. Tom is preparing to concoct some sort of paste of mud and cooking herbs which he swears will relieve their misery. The speed and resourcefulness of that boy never fail to amaze me. It makes you wonder what he could accomplish if he wasn’t an alcoholic.”
“An alcoholic?” Trevor said. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a term the Swiss use,” Rayley said. “For a person who doesn’t merely enjoy a drink, but who has to have it. Someone who is drawn to spirits the way an addict is drawn to his drug.”
Trevor weaved, once again
unsteady on his feet. He knew Tom liked his drink, but what boy his age didn’t? Rayley’s diagnosis, made so matter-of-factly and with so little apparent judgment, pulled him up short.
“Come now, Welles, surely you’ve noticed,” Rayley said amiably, “but I shan’t use the word if it offends you. And I suppose if any among us can afford to sacrifice a few brains cells to the whisky bottle and still perform brilliantly, it’s Tom.”
Trevor looked up toward the top of the hill, unsure of what to say next. It would appear that seven people had been caught in the rockslide and carried at least some distance, but they were all either on their feet and being assisted toward the tent or already receiving medical aid. Tom would smear his mud paste on the stung girls and the rest would likely be treated for no more than bumps, bruises and sprains. All things considered, they were damn lucky.
“Do you think it was an accident?” Rayley asked, in a lowered tone of voice.
“An accident? What else could it have been?”
Rayley was now looking at him with a worried frown, the skin above his eyebrows puckered. “I say, Welles, you seem rather vague. Are you sure you didn’t bump your head in the descent? Let us at least get you out of this sun.”
“Where’s Davy?”
“What?”
“I see all the others, but….do you truly think someone could have started the rockslide?”
Rayley squinted up the hill. “It’s possible. The rocks were so small and loose that every single souls who has climbed the hill has returned complaining that he all but lost his footing once or twice. It seems that if someone wanted to give a couple of the larger boulders a kick, they could easily set off a cataclysm of this magnitude. “
“But why?”
“Ah, but that’s the eternal question of this entire case, isn’t it, Welles? We have crimes aplenty but with no apparent motive for any of them. I imagine that if we could find the why of the matter, the who, what, where, and when would follow in short order.”
Trevor slowly turned, feeling the traitorous pebbles crunch beneath his feet and counting out loud. “There are thirty-six people within sight. And we started with…”
“Thirty eight.”
“You’re sure?”
Rayley nodded. “I counted during the ride in the cart. I had to have something to do.”
“Davy is still missing. Who else?”
“Hubert Morass.”
“Damn. You’re right, of course you are. What sort of mischief might the two of them have gotten into?”
“They aren’t necessarily together and Morass has most likely passed out,” said Rayley. “I’ll go up the hill the back way and look for them, and you go down to the tent and let Tom give you a quick look-see. I still think you may have struck your head.”
“Thank you for your confidence in my powers of reason,” Trevor said drily. “I was a bit stunned at first, I will admit, but I believe I am beginning to regain my senses. Let us both go up the back way and see if we can find – ah, but here he is now.”
For Davy had broken over the crest of the hill and was moving swiftly toward them. He was picking his way effortlessly through the rubble, Trevor noticed with chagrin - the surefootedness and the balance of the young would always be a bit of an unintentional affront - and on those rare times when he did slide, the boy righted himself with ease. He arrived in front of them within seconds and Trevor’s ego was partly mollified by the fact that at least Davy at least had the tact to appear breathless.
“Did you hear the landslide?” Rayley was saying. “We’ve accounted for everyone except you and Morass.”
“I know, Sir. Know where he is.”
“Catch your breath, lad,” Trevor said sharply, for Davy’s eyes were wild with emotion. “Has something happened to Morass? Has he fallen?”
“I’ll get Tom,” Rayley said, turning toward the tent.
“No need, Sir,” said Davy, wiping the perspiration from his brow as Trevor. “Yes, Morass has fallen, or was pushed…”
“Pushed?” said Trevor.
“Yes, Sir, but it wasn’t in any rockslide. He lies at the bottom of the Cawnpore well.”
***
It took them quite some time to get the body of Hubert Morass up from the well. Fortunately there were plenty of ropes in the pony cart and adequate manpower to pull the man’s sizable frame from its resting place, but there was no way around the fact that someone would first have to climb down the well and attach the ropes to his body. Davy volunteered at once and Tom insisted upon going with him.
“I must do a quick postmortem on the spot, for any evidence we get from the body we’ll have to get now,” Tom said grimly. “The corpse undoubtedly will be disturbed by the process of pulling it up. What am I saying? Distrubed, my ass. We’ll break half his bones in the process.”
“Yes,” Davy said. “Tom and I will carry down our kits and get the bulk of it, won’t we, Sirs? Before we risk trying to move him.”
And so both of the young men stood still while ropes were tied beneath their armpits and crossed behind their backs, forming a sort of harness. Trevor wandered over to the well and looked down, only to see the startling visage of Hubert Morass lying flat atop a virtual bed of moss and tangled vines. Flat on his back in his white linen suit, with his florid face upturned to the sky, he was without question the most peaceful corpse Trevor had ever beheld. He looked, in fact, like a character from a child’s story book, some friendly troll or gnome of the forest, caught napping in a leafy bower. It was a scene of such tranquility that it was easy to forget that just below Morass’s resting place lay dozens more bodies.
“Would you like a drink before you descend?” Trevor said quietly to Tom.
“You’re not offering me his beer, I’m hoping,” Tom said, and his laugh was just a little too loud, which for the first time betrayed his nerves. “For that dreadful sludge was most likely the vehicle of his death. Or at least whatever was in it drugged the man enough to make him easy prey.”
“No I’m not suggesting you drink up the evidence,” Trevor said, for the large tin jug had been set aside as part of the investigation. “But I wager that someone here has a flask if you need to steady your nerves.”
Tom shook his head, so resolutely that Trevor wondered if Rayley had been right about his blithe charge of alcoholism. Trevor glanced toward Rayley to see if he had made note of the exchange, but Rayley was preoccupied in checking the knots in Davy’s harness and did not return his glance. It would be a delicate business, dangling two men into a well of such legendary depth… even without factoring in what this particular well held and the fact the whole bloody place seemed cursed. Trevor was only glad that Emma and Geraldine were not here to witness the process. After Morass’s body had been discovered, the women, the injured, the servants, and the older men had been dispatched back to Bombay. Michael Everlee, although young and relatively able-bodied, had elected to depart with the ladies. Two pony carts and five men remained behind to complete the task of retrieving Morass’s body from the well.