hibiscus, bougainvillea—marched the length of the drive, and near the house a fountain splashed and glittered. The rush and stink of the town was cut off as if by an invisible wall, and I felt my skin relax against my already-damp dress.
The bungalow was worthy of its grounds, simple and white, its verandah set with rattan chairs and tables, the entrance hall-way an expanse of linen-covered walls and gleaming dark flooring of teak or mahogany. The servant’s soft sandals made slight noise as we crossed to a doorway. He stood back to let us enter, said, “I will bring tea,” and left us.
The room was a light, open space looking out onto the garden. Its simple furniture was a far cry from the Victorian stuffiness, mounted animal heads, and heavy draperies that I had expected from a Raj household. The house’s silence seemed another carefully chosen furnishing of the room, its texture broken only by a rhythmic creak of machinery out-of-doors and the rise and fall of a voice from somewhere deeper in the house. It was a one-sided conversation—over the telephone, I decided, since it paused, resumed, and paused again. Tea was brought and poured, the servant departed without a sound, and I carried my cup over to examine the objects on the wall.
Near the door was a collection of framed photographs, groups of men with horses and dead animals such as one sees in the social pages of
The other photographs were of similar occasions, several showing the blond man, although in most of them his face was at least half obscured by hat or hand. Beside one of them hung a plaited horsehair thong with a single claw nearly as long as my hand, which I thought might be from the tiger shown dead in the picture. Mounted above this shrine to the masculine arts were two spears, or rather, one long spear and the remains of a second, consisting of a broken head and about eighteen inches of shaft. The viciously sharp iron heads on each were stained, probably with dried blood.
I moved on to the more customary art-work on the next wall, and found it pleasingly light, almost feminine in its sensibilities. Half a dozen watercolour sketches of the Indian countryside alternated with ink drawings, crisp black lines on the white paper showing simple scenes of village life—a woman with a large jug balanced on her head, a man and bullock ploughing, a child and dog squatting beside each other to stare down a hole. The drawings especially were striking; I thought they would not look out of place among a display of Japanese art. I took another sip of my tea, which could have been chosen to set off the room, its clean, slightly smokey aroma blending with the room’s faint odours of lemon and cardamom.
And, suddenly, of horse. I had not noticed the distant conversation cease, nor heard anyone approach, but between one breath and another there was a third person in the room, the compact, blond-haired man of the photographs, moving to greet the equally startled Holmes.
“Thank you for coming. I see Hari has brought you tea. Did he give you the Indian or the China?”
“The Indian,” Holmes answered, “and very nice indeed.”
“Good. With Hari, one can never be sure. I am very pleased to meet you, Mr Holmes. We did, in fact, encounter each other long ago, when you visited my father’s camp in Himachel Pradesh, but you won’t have remembered. I was seven; my last tour with him before I went home to school.”
Holmes held the man’s hand for a moment as he studied the man’s features, and then his mouth twitched in a brief smile. “He was a district officer and you were in short trousers. A boy with a thousand questions about . . . turquoise and rubies, wasn’t it?”
Our host’s face opened in a grin. “I should have known you would forget nothing. And you must be . . . Miss Russell, I’m told you prefer? I’m Geoffrey Nesbit.”
His hand was cool and strong, and I thought, as he turned to face me fully, that Holmes’ act of memory was less impressive than inevitable: Even as a child, this would have been a difficult person to forget.
Nesbit was one of the most beautiful men I have ever laid eyes on, the thin scar running down his jaw line merely serving to emphasise his looks. Neat, blond, and sun-burnt, he was not the kind who usually stirs me to admiration, but his green eyes shone with intelligence and humour, and he watched with the quiet attentiveness of a cat, missing nothing. Like a cat, too, he appeared ageless, although the skin beside his eyes and down his throat testified to an age near forty. He reminded me eerily of T. E. Lawrence, another small, tow-headed, and youthful man who looked at the world out of the corners of his eyes, as if in constant dialogue with an amusing inner voice.
Nesbit was dressed in an odd combination of garments, jodhpur trousers beneath a long muslin
He poured himself a cup of tea, taking it black with sugar, and urged us back into our chairs, sitting down on the other side of the low, intricately carved table. He settled into a third, legs stretched out, ankles crossed.
“How is your brother?” he asked Holmes.
“Improving. I had a telegram yesterday night, he sounded himself.”
“I am glad. The world would be a lesser place without Mycroft Holmes. And a great deal less secure.”
Which observation declared, as surely as an exchange of Kipling’s whispered code-phrases, that this man knew well that Mycroft Holmes, who described himself as an “accountant” in the Empire’s bureaucracy, kept ledgers recording transactions considerably more subtle than pounds and pence. The suspicion was confirmed with his next words.
“When we have drunk our tea, we shall take a turn through the garden.” His raised eyebrow asked if we understood; Holmes’ curt nod and my reply answered him.
“We should love to see your garden,” I told him. And, clearly, to talk about those things the walls were not to hear. It was difficult to press one’s ear to a key-hole when the speakers were surrounded by open space. And the sad fact was, there were some things with which servants were not to be trusted.
So we drank our tea and passed a pleasant quarter of an hour hearing Nesbit’s suggestions about what to see during our stay in the country. He particularly urged us north, even though the weather would still be cool, and suggested one or two of the hill rajas who might show us an entertaining time.
“Do you shoot, either of you?”
I suppressed a wince: The last shooting party I’d joined had nearly ended in tragedy for the duke who was our host and friend.
“Some,” Holmes replied. “Russell here is a crack shot.”
“Of course, it’s pretty tame compared to some sports—even going after tiger from the back of an elephant pales once you’ve tried pig sticking. Or tiger sticking, although that’s harder to come by. You ever ridden after boar, Mr Holmes?”
“Er, no, I’m afraid not.”
“Is that what the Kadir Cup is about?” I asked, adding, “I noticed the photographs.”
“Yes, that’s it. Held annually, near Meerut, just north of here. Pig sticking is the unofficial sport of British India. Great fun. Though not, I fear, for the ladies.” He smiled at the thought. I smiled back, automatically plotting how I might go about learning to stick pigs—until I caught myself short. I didn’t even like fox-hunting, much less what sounded like a rout fit for overgrown adolescent boys, scrambling cross-country after a herd of panicking swine. Still, it brought up the obvious question.
“With what does one stick the pig?”
In answer he nodded towards the weaponry on the wall. “That’s the spear I took the Cup with last year.”
“The broken one?”
