Jane Steele(106)

“Here, a bit more claret will restore you.”

Crimson liquid splashed before me. “Mr. Thornfield was delirious afterwards, you say?”

“He had suffered a large wound which went untreated for a full day after taking a literal bloodbath, so that is hardly surprising.” My eyes shot up to the political as I realised Augustus Sack was actually enjoying my distress. “Thornfield was on the brink of death for a fortnight. I was busy planning terms of the treaty with the Director, but Clements was with him for much of it. The illness was an ugly one, Miss Stone. Fever visions, night terrors—often you could hear his screams, before Clements had managed to calm him.”

If Mr. Thornfield had been the one to relate the story, I should not have been able to bear it; seeing his face, his attempts at a wry brow, his guilt like a gouge through his breast, his natural stoicism—all should have conspired to tear me in two. Learning the details from an utter villain, however, one I knew had ordered a child kidnapped and starved, that was a simple matter of endurance. Mr. Sack could smirk knowingly all afternoon, relate any repulsive tragedy which had befallen Mr. Thornfield, and I could sit there, blithely picturing my knife in his guts.

“Tragic, no doubt, and yet I cannot fully sympathise when the man so unnerves me,” I owned, downing half the claret. “Thank you. Mr. Sack, I feel much restored.”

I had puzzled him, for he beamed in approval whilst his eyes narrowed to cruel slits. “Forgive me—I should never dream of upsetting a lady of your myriad charms intentionally. Where was I?”

“Mr. Thornfield was ill, but . . . I have heard nothing to indicate he was mad?”

“Ah, yes!” The portly diplomat settled himself back in his chair. “I first knew Charles Thornfield as a strapping young medico with a head of hair so black it was nearly as blue as his eyes. After the battle, he was finally brought back to our camp by a Bengali company, and the wretch was so covered in dried gore that an orderly shaved his head. When he could walk again, and speak a little, after three weeks’ time, the new growth was white as goose down. The entire camp was unsettled by it—they thought him possessed by a devil. And perhaps it was something to do with the circumstances in which he found his lady love, but he developed the most extraordinary aversion to touch thereafter. Clements clapped Thornfield by the bare arm one afternoon whilst he was shaving and nearly got a razor in his eye. He began wearing gloves soon thereafter, even when the Director demanded his services in the second Sikh conflict. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a man performing surgeries whilst wearing gloves, Miss Stone? Madder than a full March moon, and he has never fully recovered.”

“Clearly not,” I said, half smiling. “Not if he couldn’t manage to puzzle out that his closest friend kept the trunk under his nose all that while.”

“You most eloquently return us to the topic at hand, Miss Stone.” Mr. Sack tapped all ten fingers of his hands together. “I confess to having been testing you—I know it was early days for you at Highgate House when I was present, but nevertheless I could not help but wonder whether a connection formed between you and Charles Thornfield. How foolish would I have been to take into my confidence a confederate of his, sent to sound me out? But now I see that you, like him, are merely a thief.”

His words, warm at the outset, deepened to a sickly-sweet growl.

I glanced at the time and then at the window, where scattered snowflakes drifted to their sooty demise. No one, I realised, knew I was here save Sack and the grey-moustached clerk who had shown me in; suddenly I wanted someone else present, anyone else.

Draining my wine, I shrugged. “I am not accustomed to being called names, Mr. Sack, but you can see my dress and the necklace for yourself, so I can hardly contradict you. Anyhow, I have already made my full confession. What do you want from me?”

“I should think that obvious, Miss Stone.” Mr. Sack’s lips thinned, a predator’s expression in a piggish countenance. “I want the trunk. What do you want?”

“A satisfactory recompense for having delivered it to you. And to know all that you do about the circumstances of Clements’s and Jack Ghosh’s deaths, for I must understand whether forces continue to threaten my welfare. Did you send Ghosh to Highgate House after you were driven off yourself? Mr. Thornfield suspected as much, I overheard.”

Augustus Sack snorted in contempt. “Jack Ghosh had his uses, but I should never have sent him alone, Miss Stone, not into that household—I should have been a fool for trying. An armed guard of Company officers to search the place whilst the occupants were locked in the cellar, on the other hand? I was organising just such a campaign.”

Then I was only just in time.

“Ghosh acted on his own recognisance?”

Mr. Sack tilted his head back and forth, considering. “He has been in this office on many occasions and could easily have found Mr. Singh’s correspondence, so that is the most likely explanation. He was a brute and a snoop and the world is well rid of him.”

The words were delivered so carelessly that they seemed altogether true. The waters I had dived into were far murkier than I had imagined.

“What about John Clements? You said you no longer suspected Mr. Thornfield of murdering him—why?”

“Poison simply doesn’t seem our dear Charles’s style, does it?” The diplomat sighed. “Clements had been looking into the circumstances surrounding David Lavell’s unfortunate murder in Amritsar, but my late colleague hadn’t the intellect God bestows on sheep. He was low over the project, over his lack of progress. Then he saw an old love of his briefly, and he sank further into melancholy. Honestly, Miss Stone? I believe he took the soldier’s way out. Now you will tell me where the trunk is.”