Dark Road to Darjeeling. Deanna Raybourn

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      “You cannot let the cook attend Jane,” remonstrated Harry severely.

      To my astonishment, Miss Cavendish turned on him fiercely. “What choice do we have? If the child dies and you did nothing to prevent it, what will people say?”

      The colour drained sharply from his face and when he spoke, his voice was a dry whisper. “Of course. I didn’t think. I will fetch her.”

      He turned and ran toward the stairs, returning a moment later with a tiny woman who stood no taller than my elbow. She was dressed in typical Hindu fashion, her arms bared, but she wore a rosary at her belt and when she approached us, she crossed herself. Her hair was white as the snows of Kanchenjunga, and I put her at something over sixty years of age. Her arms, though, were sinewy and brown, and her hands supple and strong. Her step was firm and her eyes bright and clear.

      “You have need of me, lady?” she asked her mistress, and to my astonishment, her English was spoken with the slightest trace of an Irish brogue.

      Miss Cavendish nodded toward the closed door. “Mrs. Cavendish. It is the baby.”

      Mary-Benevolence shook her head. “Too soon. You wish that I should look at her?”

      “Yes.” Miss Cavendish looked at us all anxiously, then took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, collecting her courage. “Do whatever you must to save Mrs. Cavendish and her child, should they be in danger.”

      Mary-Benevolence gave her an inscrutable look. “And if I can save only one?”

      “Save them both,” snapped Harry. He turned on his heel and left, but Miss Cavendish nodded toward Mary-Benevolence to second the commission. The little woman disappeared into the room and we were left alone then, the four of us.

      “If I may offer a prayer for the health of Mrs. Cavendish and the child,” the Reverend murmured.

      Plum and I had little religion, but it suddenly seemed right and good that we should pray for Jane, and I felt a rush of gratitude toward the man as we bowed our heads. When it was done, he took his leave of us, and Miss Cavendish resumed her usual brusque manner.

      “I must go to the kitchen. Without Mary-Benevolence to oversee them, the staff will have done precisely nothing toward supper. And there ought to be beef tea for Jane and some hot milk.”

      “A moment,” I said, catching her attention. “I am curious about your cook.”

      Miss Cavendish gave a little sigh. “My father was devoted to his Irish mother. In her honour, he opened the Buddhist temple on the ridge to an order of nuns from Donegal. The sisters were unsuited to the life here and eventually abandoned the place, but for a while they ran the only school in the valley. Mary-Benevolence was taught to read and write and to speak English there. She also converted to Catholicism, but it was from her mother that she learned the art of midwifery. She delivered all of the babies in the valley until the doctor came.” At the mention of the man, her expression hardened. “And it seems she may have to do so again.”

      “Has he always been an inebriate?” I asked.

      “No. He has not. He was a lovely gentleman, very quiet, devoted to his wife. Oh, he liked a drink from time to time, but when she died, he seemed unable to gather himself up again.” Miss Cavendish’s eyes were coldly unsympathetic. “He has a duty to the people of this valley, a duty he neglects in order to nurture his own grief. He would find a better remedy for his pain if he applied himself to his responsibilities,” she finished, thrusting her way past me towards the kitchens.

      “Cold comfort there,” Plum observed, raising his brows after her.

      “Yes, but she does have a point. Pain, grief, loneliness, they are quicksand. They will consume a man if he does not lift a finger to extricate himself.”

      “If you struggle in quicksand, you die faster,” Plum corrected.

      I waved an impatient hand. “You know what I mean. If a man in peril uses his wits and his natural ingenuity, he may save himself. But a man who gives up has already perished.”

      The words cut too near the bone, I think, for Plum fell into a reverie, and we said nothing more of significance as the hours ticked away. From time to time we could hear voices from within Jane’s room, and once a terrible, prolonged sob. But at length Mary-Benevolence appeared, her face drawn but smiling.

      “The child lives, and the mother as well,” she told us. I clutched at Plum’s arm in relief, and he squeezed my hand in return.

      “Is it born?” he asked.

      She shook her head. “No. The pains have stopped and they both rest. She must not rise again until the child is born. Peaceful repose, that is what is required now.”

      “Of course,” I told her. “We will do whatever we can to take care of her.”

      Mary-Benevolence bowed her head. “I will bring her some refreshment to build her strength, and then she will sleep again. No visitors tonight, I think.”

      “I understand,” I told her, suddenly happy that Jane’s care rested in the hands of this tiny, determined woman. “Thank you for all you have done for her.”

      She looked at me in surprise. “But it is my duty. She is Mr. Freddie’s wife and she carries his child. She belongs to this house and to this valley now.”

      With that, Mary-Benevolence padded away and Plum and I exchanged glances.

      “I suppose we can do nothing more tonight,” he said. “I think I will take a tray in my room and go straight to bed. It has been exhausting doing nothing,” he added with a smile. I did not reprove him for his levity. Such relief after so much worry was disorienting, it left one light-headed and peculiar.

      Plum hastened to his room while I wandered slowly after, stretching the muscles that had stiffened after hours of sitting in the hall. And as my body stirred to life, so did my mind, and I saw what I ought to have seen hours before: it was entirely possible that Freddie Cavendish had not been murdered at all.

      The Fifth Chapter

      Henceforth I deal in whispers.

      —Untimely Leave

      Rabindranath Tagore

      I lay awake late into the night, pondering the implications of Freddie Cavendish’s death. If he had been treated by the doctor, perhaps it was simply mischance, a professional lapse of judgement that caused his death, and nothing more. We had seized upon Portia’s insistence that Freddie had been murdered, but what was there in the way of actual proof? A few vaguely unsettled letters from Jane that might well have been the product of a mind overwrought by grief and her condition. We had seen firsthand the kindliness of the Cavendishes. They had neither the warmth nor the affection of the Marches, to be sure, but they were dutiful and seemed to take every proper care of Jane as the possible mother of the heir to the Peacocks. True, Miss Cavendish seemed unwilling to relinquish the role of chatelaine, but I found it hard to fault her for it. She had ruled the household with a firm hand for decades, and it would be difficult to turn either her keys or her responsibilities over to a newcomer. Jane, for her part, had always left domestic arrangements to Portia and busied herself with her pottery and her music. СКАЧАТЬ