Jane Steele(113)
Her mouth worked again, but now pain warped the derision, and she paused before speaking. It was an expression I knew well and, though kissed by madness thanks to my mother, I did not think I lived in its embrace as Garima Kaur did, that obsessive desire to right the single great wrong which has swept your life off its course. We could have been sisters otherwise, for our propensities; we could have been friends.
Her silent shock confirmed my suspicions, albeit superfluously—I had only to recall the single thread connecting the dead men to know I was right.
Mr. Sack was the one who had first stimulated my interest, when he had said of John Clements, 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.
Half a clue is as useless as none at all; but then I recalled a scrap of conversation which illuminated a dark landscape.
Poor old Johnny, with that puppyish way he had about him, Mr. Thornfield had said to Mr. Singh the night I had eavesdropped on them. Remember when he used to sniff around your secretary as if she were Cleopatra?
Garima Kaur, of course, was that secretary—a woman loved by a British political she used and despised, a woman capable of copying her employer’s penmanship and imitating his voice even in a language she loathed, writing, Your Company has raped my entire culture in systematic fashion. Mr. Singh had remained in Lahore throughout the First Sikh War guarding Sahjara, I was certain, for it fit all I knew of him, but his secretary—the loyal princess with the accomplished knife hand—had made at least one delivery to David Lavell in Amritsar, and she had left him with a gash through his neck.
“I think you may have tipped Jack Ghosh as well,” I mused, “but I’m not entirely certain of that. Did you?”
“Yes.” She had recovered her poise, though the sunken pits of her pupils were glassy. “I contacted him through Clements—he was staying in the village. I waited until Sardar and Charles were guaranteed to be absent, and then I sent him word they were away from home.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“To be rid of him. I could have finished him for us. And to be rid of you.”
“I don’t . . .” I faltered. “God in heaven. Why should—”
“I removed the jewels from Sardar and Charles’s keeping, yes, having heartily approved their taking them.” Her voice was as smooth as a river stone and twice as cold. “They were keeping it unguarded, in a child’s trunk. I was on my way to meet Sardar when I glimpsed Sack leaving the house in a sort of ecstasy. Sahjara confirmed she had shown him her dolls—I was forced to act quickly. I buried the trunk in the depths of the warehouse the Thornfields shared with Sardar, wedged between cracked jades and silks from poor dye lots, where no one would ever look. When Ghosh took Sahjara . . .” She directed a series of guttural curses in an unidentifiable tongue at the sloped ceiling. “They ran off like puppies, did not tell me what was troubling them, or I could have given them the trunk. Her mind was forever altered, and I love that little girl as if she were mine. How could I not vow to kill Jack Ghosh? I waited for years, until the perfect opportunity arose. I meant to do it with my own blade—after he had finished you, of course, but that did not go as planned.”
“Yes, but as for myself—”
“I said, I love that little girl as if she were mine!” she screamed.
The air turned to ash between us—thick and hot in our throats, as if a volcano had erupted.
“Oh,” I breathed, comprehending.
She laughed miserably, the scar across her brow raised in disbelief. “In an English way, you are quite clever, Miss Stone; but in an English way, you are also very stupid. When Sahjara was sent away, my heart broke—she was all I had left of my friend Karman, and oh, Karman was like a shaft of God’s light striking earth. Lavell wasn’t fit to clean her boots with his spit, and the instant I heard of her demise, I slaughtered him in Amritsar and was back in Lahore before anyone there so much as knew he was dead. He would have alternately ignored and bullied Sahjara, that precious girl.”
“Her father would have mistreated her. But not Sardar Singh,” I murmured, understanding still more.
“Not Sardar—Sardar is a good man. When she was sent to England, he used to tell me to have patience, tell me that we would all be together again soon. For a while, Miss Stone, I thanked God for my new home here at Highgate House. I was teaching Sahjara Turkish, Pashto, how to sharpen a sword and how to balance accounts. Then Charles hatched a truly foul idea with Sardar—and in English, no less, though they did not know I minded them.”
“He wanted an English governess. I’m so sorry.”
“No, you aren’t,” she growled, gesturing with the knife’s tip. “You adore the pair of them, and they love you back, they . . . they can see you.”
A sob escaped her, and she panted, clutching the knife’s handle so hard I thought her fingers must break.
“It was bad enough not to work with Sardar any longer—passing the time with him on long journeys, going over inventory, dining with his sister,” she seethed. “As his confidential secretary, I negotiated for him, flattered for him, foresaw every difficulty and prevented it happening at all. Here I was sent to the servants’ wing, none of my efforts with Sahjara were given more than passing praise, Sardar lost all interest in my company, there was no meaningful work to distract me, and then they determined to advertise for a white governess. I wrote to Mr. Sack the next day.”