Ryman, Rebecca (27 page)

"Looted?
By thuggees?"

"So
Gupta concludes." He dabbed his mouth with the corner of a napkin, tossed
it carelessly on the tray and leaned back.

"But
you obviously believe otherwise?"

He
smiled very grimly. "Yes. I believe otherwise. Gupta writes that he was
badly wounded but nobody was killed. Either the thuggees are getting soft or
Gupta is a bloody liar!"

A
cold prickle touched Olivia's heart. The thuggees, she had heard, were a fanatic
religious band who believed they could murder by divine sanction. Until a
decade ago, when John Sleeman became Commissioner for the Suppression of
Thuggee and Dacoity, they perpetrated widespread slaughter across northern
India using lassos to rope in victims as expertly as any cowboy on the range.
The one virtue thuggees were not known for even now, when thousands had been
apprehended and condemned to death, was mercy; nor had they ever believed in
half measures.

"Why
should Gupta lie?" Olivia asked. "You have always considered him a
loyal retainer."

"Why?"
he barked, his anger surfacing again. "For the oldest reason in the
world—thirty pieces of silver! Loyalty, my dear girl, is a highly negotiable
commodity among natives, more so when they close ranks against what they
believe to be a common enemy, the British. Gupta is a
bania,
a caste
loyal only to mammon. When the price was right, he reverted to type."

"Was
the opium worth much?" She did not ask who the donor of the thirty pieces
of silver might be; she already had a fair idea.

"A
hundred thousand pounds in profits from Canton, if a tenth of that here. But
the opium is insured." He waved it aside angrily. "What we stand to
lose with those hongs is face, and credibility. In this race, time is money,
and we've also lost time." He snatched up some papers to make rapid
calculations.

Olivia
had learned from him already a great deal about Bengal's thriving opium trade,
the only remaining and inviolate Company monopoly. With tea also thrown open to
private enterprise since 1833, it was now opium—and the Company's massive land
revenue collections in India—that provided its shareholders in London with
their rich annual dividends. The Company supervised strictly the cultivation
and sale of opium in India, although illicit trading also thrived. In theory,
British merchants operated in Canton under licence from the Company, but in
practice foreign traders in opium also flourished, cocking a snook at the
Company's rules. Indeed, many British traders also evaded the rules neatly by
taking out foreign naturalisation papers and sailing under alien flags. In the
China Coast trade, opium and tea were inseparable. Even though opium was
contraband in China, it was the only commodity against which tea could be
purchased from the hongs, powerful Chinese merchants. Many believed, including
Sir Joshua, that without these charmed twins of trade, the very Empire would be
hard pressed to exist. Annual trade figures told their own story: In the last
year the Company's revenue from opium was nearly three and a half million
pounds sterling; in England alone more than fifty-six and a half million pounds
in weight of tea had been sold. Each shipload of opium that Templewood and
Ransome dispatched to Canton therefore translated into tea and, consequently,
into enormous sterling profits at home and in domestic Indian markets. So
Olivia could understand the extent of her uncle's fury.

"Can
the police do nothing to identify the . . . culprits?" she
asked. If
Raventhorne
had
engineered the theft, it seemed monstrous that he should
be allowed to get away with it.

Sir
Joshua's laugh crackled with contempt. "Old Slocum will go through the
motions, but he will discover nothing; he never does. Not one native will
squeal. They never do."

"But
weren't there European escorts with the consignment?"

"Two."
His lips curled with greater contempt. "What makes you think thirty pieces
of silver are unwelcome to John Company's officers on starvation wages in their
army? Both claim to have been away from the scene answering calls of nature
when the ambush occurred. Our own twenty mercenary soldiers naturally tell
twenty different stories." He sank into an incensed silence.

Not
wishing to throw salt on substantial wounds, Olivia considered it best to steer
the conversation into more agreeable channels. "How did you find Arvind
Singh's note, Uncle Josh? Was it encouraging, do you think?"

He
roused himself and his expression appeared to clear. "Yes, I would say
so." He adjusted his gold-rimmed half-moon glasses, opened a folder and
withdrew a sheet embossed with the Kirtinagar crest. He nodded in some
satisfaction as he read it through again. "Yes, definitely encouraging,
I'd say. It was good of you to carry it back with you."

"Then
he accepts your proposal?"

"Not
yet, but it will come. It's too early for a full-mouthed bite, but he's
certainly sniffing at the bait. He said nothing more to you, did he, by any
chance?"

Olivia
had already given her uncle a fair (albeit abridged) account of her weekend.
She shook her head and examined her nails. "No. But Arvind Singh didn't
strike me as a man greedy for money, Uncle Josh."

"Greed
is a matter of degree. The language of money, my dear, is sweet—and Arvind
Singh is as hungry to hear it as anyone. He desperately needs funds for that
irrigation project. He would give his right hand to start right away, and his
coal will not yield profits for years. We offer him immediate gains. Oh, he's
greedy all right, only the price he wants is higher. But there's a long way to
go still, a long way for us." He closed his eyes and massaged his lids
with his finger-tips, suddenly weary.

The
lines of fatigue on his face were very obvious and Olivia filled with concern
for him. "Aunt Bridget is right," she said gently, leaning forward to
touch his hand, "you do need a
holiday, Uncle Josh. A few days in
Barrackpore will work wonders. I hear the fishing there is excellent."

"Barrackpore?"
His eyes shot open and he frowned. "Don't be absurd, Olivia, I can't
possibly leave station now with this police investigation pending! Bridget will
have to go on her own with you girls."

Again
alert, he sat up to gather a sheaf of papers and start reading. Olivia knew
that she was being dismissed.

If
you do not wish to go to Barrackpore, you will not. Take my word for it.
It was while
Olivia was supervising the nightly ritual of having the mosquito-net tucked
around the mattress on her bed that she suddenly remembered Jai Raventhorne's
parting sentences to her. Quickly sending away the ayah, she sank down in a
chair to think, the sick feeling inside her stronger than ever. Who better than
Raventhorne could have given her that assurance? And what more substantial
proof could one need of his complicity in this spiteful and petty act of
vandalism?

There
were many in India, Olivia conceded to herself, who had grave reservations
about the opium trade. But she doubted personally if Jai Raventhorne's aversion
was based on any lofty principles of morality. His motivations were purely
vengeful. Whatever compassion she might have recently felt for that miserably
deprived urchin of Kinjal's tale died. However wronged he might have once been
by the divinities, now he deserved only censure.

"The
trouble with cucumber is," Lady Birkhurst remarked as she nibbled a scone
and avoided the sandwiches, "that it makes one repeat. Would you agree,
Lady Bridget?"

"Er,
yes. Yes, of course."

"Tomatoes,
on the other hand, do not." As endorsement she chose a sandwich from a
second plate. "At least, not that I've ever noticed. Have you?"

"Er,
no. Not at all."

"The
seeds are a nuisance certainly. They stick between the teeth, which is
embarrassing at parties where they
will
give you those coarse bamboo
splints that make discreet toothpicking such an impossibility, don't you
think?"

Trying
bravely to make the best of a one-sided
conversation, Lady Bridget again
hastened to agree. Lady Birkhurst's marked preference for the sound of her own
voice to the exclusion of others was, Olivia considered, a distinct advantage.
Her single choice of topic, however—food, the passion of both her life and her
conversation—was becoming dreary. They had now been at the splendid mansion on
the Esplanade for almost an hour and the matter of gustatory delights or
otherwise still prevailed with unflagging energy. Sitting to Lady Birkhurst's
right, Olivia listened in glum silence, having long since abandoned her
monosyllabic contributions as unnecessary. Her aunt, hawk-eyed and eager, sat
opposite her across the low onyx-topped table with burnished brass legs.
Freddie, hair slicked back and collar as stiff and starched as his face,
perched on a window seat conversing in low tones with Estelle. He did not look
comfortable; his face brightened only when he cast longing glances at Olivia,
who carefully did not return them.

"I
am not at all certain," Lady Birkhurst was saying, suddenly deserting her
favoured subject, "that I approve entirely of Freddie's domestic
arrangements. He has too many servants and his control over them is deplorably
inadequate." She had a habit of talking about her son in the third person
even when he was present. Freddie didn't appear to mind; in fact he beamed.

Lady
Bridget looked visibly relieved to be once again on familiar, well-trammelled
territory. "Oh, I quite agree that to have too many is to invite
trouble." She avoided her daughter's eye. "Especially in a bachelor
household." Her emphasis on "bachelor" brought colour to
Olivia's cheeks, but her aunt was not to be thwarted now from the course she
had charted for herself. Turning to Freddie she pronounced, "Tight control
is the answer, Mr. Birkhurst. I trust you do see to that at least
sometimes?"

Freddie
continued to beam. "Certainly. I give them my instructions and then, well,
let them get on with them."

"And,
of course, you do keep a strict account of your daily disbursements?" Lady
Bridget's eye glinted.

"Most
definitely, Lady Bridget. At least Salim, my bearer, does. On the first of the
month I hand him one thousand rupees and between him and my cook, Rashid Ali,
the house runs like clockwork."

Lady
Bridget paled. "One thousand rup—?" Words failed her. Picking up her
fan she waved it vigorously across her face. "Dear me, dear
me,
Mr.
Birkhurst. I run my household on
half
that!"

Catching
Estelle's eye, Olivia quickly averted her head to suppress her impending
giggles. Estelle coughed, thrust a biscuit into her mouth—making the most of
her mother's diverted attention—and got up to examine with apparently consuming
interest the exquisitely appointed drawing-room with its gilded mirrors, Louis
Quinze chairs, ebony and walnut cabinets, brocade drapes and finely woven
French tapestries. Forced to remain where she was, Olivia merely continued to
look demure in her pressed blue linen (with white belt), her lashes lowered
modestly, but within her hating every moment of the pointless charade.

Lady
Birkhurst listened closely to Lady Bridget's earnest dissertation on the need
for vigilance with a native staff, then snorted. "My son has very little
sense of money, Lady Bridget," she commented drily, signalling for the
cake stand to be passed around. "He believes it grows on trees and can be
depended upon to provide two healthy cash crops a year." She raised her
lorgnette and withered him with a look. "What Freddie needs is more
occupation."

Nominally,
Freddie was head of his father's thriving businesses but it was known that he
seldom attended his office. The Farrowsham Agency House was run very
competently by a dour, canny Scotsman called Willie Donaldson, who made no
secret of the fact that his theoretical superior was paid his handsome sinecure
to leave well enough alone rather than participate in the firm. A much-favoured
joke of Calcutta was that Freddie and Willie scarcely saw each other because
the former went to bed when the latter woke up to go to work, and vice versa.
But in spite of his short-comings, Freddie was astonishingly popular in
station, and not only with mothers of marriageable daughters, for two reasons:
He was generous to a fault and he was so good-natured that it was almost
impossible to give him offence. He grinned sheepishly at his mother.