The Game

While she was making arrangements for the delivery and payment, I opened my fingers and gazed at the necklace. A gift from a rich girl to a new friend she imagines to be comparatively poor, although she is not. A rich girl whose brother is the subject of that friend’s suspicions, a girl whose brother may have tried to kill the friend and her husband. A rich girl who was even now being used, with cold calculation, by her friend.

Amber, when warm, gives out a faint aroma, the odour of slow time. I put the spilling double-handful up to my face, and inhaled its trace of musk, laced with the tang of betrayal. Sunny Goodheart gave me the necklace because it looked pretty on me; I accepted the gift because it would remind me of consequences.

We took lunch at one of the restaurants facing the Mall, and afterwards walked up for a look at the shivering monkeys on Jakko before I led her back to their hotel. There we found that Thomas had sent a telegram to Khanpur, and had already received a reply: Yes, I should be welcome to join the party. I told Sunny I would have my bags brought to their hotel first thing on Monday morning, trusting that the porters would have settled down from their insurrection and would be willing to take to the road, and before anyone could ask where I was staying, I invented an almost-missed appointment and hurried away.

My steps dawdled through the shambling lower bazaar, however, my fingers playing with the warm beads in my pocket as my mind went over and over the episode in the shop. It was the thing I liked least, in all the requirements of this odd investigative life which I had entered when I became the partner of Sherlock Holmes: the need to use and manipulate the innocent.

At times, the means by which we reached our end left a most unpleasant taste in my mouth.

I spent all of Sunday wandering the mountains above Simla, ostensibly asking questions about Kimball O’Hara, but in fact merely enjoying the glimpse of a new world. I hiked the lanes past native dwellings stacked on top of each other, around furniture shops and blacksmiths spilling out into the road, dodging mountain people with huge tangles of firewood or anonymous bundles across their shoulders, balanced on their heads, or worn in long kirta baskets slung between their shoulders. Craftsmen sawed and hammered, infants tumbled, and schoolboys played a Himalayan version of cricket. A mountain of immense deodar logs had been built outside of the town, and on its peak sat a lone monkey, looking very cold. I was more of a stranger in this remarkable land than the simian was, and I prized every moment of the experience. Particularly when, once away from the centre of the town, the beggars became thin on the ground, and I could look the residents in the eye without fearing the outstretched hand.

I found no word whatsoever of O’Hara, and got back to Viceregal Lodge when the sun was low against the western hills, footsore, light-headed from the long exertion at that altitude, and yearning for many cups of hot tea. The tea was provided within moments, and as the man was leaving, he said, “Madam, the durzi and the shoemaker are at your convenience. When you wish to see them, please ring.”

I had forgotten all about them, and frankly was not looking forward to the interviews, since I did not expect that anything they had produced would be wearable in any but a last resort. But obediently, when I had drunk my tea and scrubbed away the worst of the day’s dust, I rang the bell and prepared my words of polite thanks.

But the durzi was a magician. Open-mouthed, I looked over the wares he spread out on the chairs of the anteroom. Two of the blouses appeared identical to one I had given him for copying, but three others, while cut to the same size, had clever details of cuff and front that the original had not. The four skirts he proffered were similar variations on a given theme, and my thanks and praise had no element of polite sham. And then, with a curious air of humble pride, he had his assistant produce the last garments.

“Nesbit sahib requested that I make this as well,” the old man told me. “He said, ‘If the lady does not wish it, that is of no matter, but it is best she have the choice.’?”

What he spread out on the stuffed sofa was a classic salwaar kameez, only far, far more formal than anything I’d seen on the streets. Voluminous trousers, gathered at the ankle into stiff, embroidered cuffs, matched the knee-length tunic, which was worked with intertwined patterns of beaded embroidery along the neck and down the buttoned placket, as well as following the two long seams that ran up the front and down the back. With the shirt and trousers came a breathtaking Kashmiri shawl woven of whisper-fine wool and heavily embroidered with silken arabesques, so beautiful my rough hands could not keep from caressing it. The old durzi’s eyes warmed at my response and he told me it was his wife’s work, then demonstrated how it was worn. The ensemble was even more stunning than the sari Holmes had bought in Port Said, and every bit as graceful, with the inestimable advantage of leaving its wearer able to walk, sit, and even stretch out her arm for something without the risk of sudden nudity.

I embarrassed him with my praise. And when he had left and the shoemaker come to show me what he had done, I vowed to appoint Geoffrey Nesbit my permanent lady’s maid. Three offerings, all as comfortable as an old pair of moccasins; one formal pumps, one sturdy oiled leather hiking boots, the other a close facsimile of my leprous shoes, only in a deep and delicious shade of brown. He had even brought a small leather handbag that matched the black pumps.

Riches.

I spent the evening trying on and gloating over my new wardrobe, and slipped between my lavender-scented sheets with a smile on my face, while Holmes, bundled against the cold, lay somewhere on the road west of Kalka.

First thing on Monday morning, the Goodhearts and most of the hotel staff were gathered in the forecourt of the grandest hotel in Simla, overseeing the loading of enormous quantities of luggage from door to tongas. Why hadn’t they left the bulk of their things in Delhi, or shipped them ahead to await their side-trip? But I didn’t ask, merely offered to take one or two of the trunks in my tonga and meet them at the railway station. I ended up with three, along with four hat- boxes and a rolled carpet.

Similar activities at the Simla station made me glad that one of my trunks had vanished into the Red Sea, and by the time we had gone through the same rituals in Kalka, shifting to the larger-gauge train (Mrs Goodheart wouldn’t hear of allowing the porters to do it unsupervised—one would swear she had the Kohinoor amongst her bags), then twice in Umballa, from train to hotel in the evening then back again the following morning, I was thoroughly sick of every trunk, bag, and hat-box in the collection, and tempted to stand up with the small bag holding my new clothes, comb, and tooth-brush, forswearing the burdens of civilisation.

But the maharaja’s own saloon coach had been sent down for our use, and an appropriately princely train car it was, all sumptuous glitter and spotless carpets, overhead fans and electric lights, its staff in spotless white and wearing the red turban with white device I had seen on the docks in Bombay. The car had its own baggage compartment, which meant that once we had picked our way past the Umballa platform’s sleeping bodies, which eerily resembled corpses sheeted for burial, we were not required to oversee the shifting of anything more complex than a tea cup for the rest of the day. I settled into my armchair with a sable-lined travelling rug over my knees, and prepared to be pampered. Mrs Goodheart, having spent the past twenty-four hours labouring heroically to maintain Yankee order in the face of Oriental chaos, collapsed onto a softly upholstered sofa, where she allowed Sunny to prop up her feet and slip off her shoes under cover of her own fur rug. After a spate of fussing, dabbing wrists and forehead with cool scented waters, and downing a mighty slug of purely medicinal brandy, she retreated into sleep, her snores rising and falling with the beat of the train over the tracks.

Sunny came to sit near me at the window, giving me an apologetic smile.

“Your mother is finding India a challenge,” I observed.

“She’s not used to letting other people do things for her.”

I lowered my voice so that her brother, seated at the other end of the car with a book, might not hear us. “I’d have thought your brother could help a little more.”

“He’s pretty preoccupied,” she replied, which was both an agreement and an excuse.

“By what?”

“Oh, it’s something to do with the maharaja. I don’t really know, but Tommy’s hoping to get the maharaja interested in one of his pet projects. His backing, you know?”

“Ah. A business venture.”

“Not really. I think it’s something to do with setting up a school in the States. But like I said, I don’t really know. Just that Tommy’s got a lot of hopes hanging on it.”