came across the small lumpy envelope Nesbit had given us, containing the amulets. Holmes, I noticed, had taken his already. I took the other, fastening it around my neck, and went to the looking-glass to inspect it.
The silver charm looked like the sort of thing a tourist might buy, or a poor Indian. It was the kind of decoration sold at any of a thousand shops in the city, crudely worked but not unattractive. I rather liked it, in fact, and although I hadn’t intended actually to wear the thing, changed my mind. Its secret-society overtones, which I found somewhere between quaint and silly, nonetheless held a sneaking kind of reassurance. I clasped my hand around it, then laughed at my fancy and got out my books.
I spent the afternoon immersed in Hindi grammar, deciphering the written letters and trying to make sense of the vocabulary. When my mind began to stutter, I rested it by conjuring coins from mid-air and practising the hand movements of deception, then relaxed with the headlines on that day’s
When he had left, I rang for a cool drink and a map of the country. With commendable promptness I received a pitcher of some sweet, mango-flavoured drink (with no ice) and a crisply folded map of India, which I spread out onto the floor. I sipped and studied and passed the afternoon without too much dwelling on the possibility of snipers’ cross-hairs following my husband’s back, but I will admit that my heart rose when I heard his key enter the lock.
“Thirty years,” were his words of greeting. “Thirty-two years since I was here, during which time the city has gone from Moghul backwater to capital city, and still the same shopkeepers cling to their corners.”
“You had success,” I noted.
“Indeed.”
“And yet your hands bear no parcels.”
“Certainly not. To walk out the door of this particular hotel in native garb would be noteworthy. Better to slip away as ourselves, and drop those identities behind us in the bazaar.”
“You found a bolt-hole?”
“One might call it that,” he prevaricated, and refused to tell me more. Which meant, I was sure, that the place in which we would transform ourselves would be filthy beyond belief.
“When shall we set off?”
“The cook tells me that the night watchman comes in just before midnight, and invariably visits the kitchen for a few minutes upon arrival. An ideal time to make our departure through the back.”
I rose briskly and walked out of the room.
“Russell, where are you going?”
“Holmes, I intend to bath, long and deep. Knowing you, it will be my last opportunity for some days.”
It was, as it turned out, an optimistic judgement.
We dined downstairs, Holmes on roast meat that was billed as beef and I on a dish largely rice, with bits of dried fish. We lingered over the meal, and even allowed our waiter to serve us with apple tart, which proved delicious once it had been dug free from the thick clots of Mrs Bird’s Custard. Coffee and a brandy for Holmes, and we retired up the stairs as if to our beds.
Instead, we prepared for our departure from India’s European community. Between the contents of my luggage that had survived our voyage and a judicious plundering of Holmes’ possessions, I put together a costume that would pass for an Englishman’s in the dark. My hair, as always, was a problem in disguise, and topees were simply Not Worn after sunset; in recognition of this Holmes had brought back with him from the bazaar a cloth cap not too unlike those worn in England by lower-class labourers and upper-class bloods.
We settled to our studies, planning on a couple of hours’ work before our midnight departure. But just past ten-thirty, a time when the floors vibrated with the motion of our neighbours and the hum of guests going past in the corridor was at a peak, a shudder of alarm ran through the building, a shout and a pounding on doors, one after another, working its way rapidly towards us.
We were on our feet in an instant, Holmes hurling objects into his half-packed travel case, me thrusting Nesbit’s papers into an inner pocket and stuffing my bound hair up under the cloth cap. When he saw that I was ready, he tucked the box of magician’s equipment under his arm and cracked open the heavy door, and then finally the cries of an Indian voice came clear:
“Fire! Oah,
“Do you smell smoke?” he asked me.
I moved to the doorway and breathed in the air. “Maybe—yes, I’m afraid I do.”
I stepped out into the hallway, causing a frightened servant to dodge around me and urge the
With many twists and turns through the servants’ passages, we eventually came out at the side entrance of the hotel, where we stepped over the hastily abandoned bags of some late arrival and trotted down the dim alley, past the guest stables and garage until we came out on the next major thoroughfare. We slowed to a stroll among the night traffic, its pedestrians as yet unaware of the nearby alarms, and after a few minutes hailed a rickshaw. The puller did not comment on Holmes’ destination, which proved to be a brightly lit palace of the senses such as one found in any city of size. It catered to Europeans, although I glimpsed a pair of brown faces in the party of men going through the door, and the music that rolled out with the opening of the doors seemed a peculiar amalgam of West and East. The tune rendered by the weird and wailing native instruments was that of a popular song I remembered my father crooning, “A Bird in a Gilded Cage,” although I doubted that he would recognise it without help.
I was just as glad, however, that our path did not take us into the place, but around it. Holmes had clearly laid out this escape, and walked without hesitation down the side street and through a gateway into a yard lit only by a feeble oil lamp. He opened a door, taking my hand to guide me inside, and shut it behind him. I waited in the blackness as his bag hit the ground and his fingers sorted through the contents of his pocket before coming out with a rattling match-box. The box rasped open and with a scrape, light flared. He stepped across to where a handful of fresh candles lay on a tea chest, set the match to one, and dribbled a puddle of wax onto the chest to hold it upright.
We were in what I would have called a cellar, had we not entered it from street level. It was a dank and rustling space about fifteen feet square, with neither windows nor stairs, although the door appeared stout enough. Two walls were heaped with anonymous crates and barrels, on top of which lay a number of string-wrapped, dust- free parcels. The fruit of Holmes’ shopping expedition, I had no doubt.
He wedged a chip of brick under the edge of the door to discourage intruders, and took out his folding knife to slice through the twine of one parcel, tossing its contents in my direction. Most of the garments landed on the dirt floor—thus, I supposed, adding to the verisimilitude of my appearance. From another parcel he took a bottle about five inches in height, containing a thick, dark liquid. This he did not toss, but placed with a scrap of soft cloth on the top of one of the barrels. I removed most of my upper garments, uncorked the bottle, and set about turning myself into a Eurasian.
Without a mirror or adequate light, the walnut-based skin dye was a somewhat haphazard affair, and would need attention the next morning in order to pass close inspection. But for now, by night and heavily clothed, our faces and hands would give the necessary impression. When the dyestuff had worked its way into our pores, Holmes prised the top from one of the barrels, and we washed our skin in the water it contained.
Baggy
