I stood there triumphant, with dirtied fingernails and an eroding key.
It fit, and the door creaked open.
I began the search with the bedrooms, but soon thought better of this and ran for the attic; up, up, up I went to the place where I had read Mamma’s letter so long ago. When I reached it, I took in the steep-roofed chamber, all its draped furnishings like censorious guards.
A large wooden crate which had not been there before rested under the round window.
The lid came off easily and revealed paperwork—written in Punjabi, but the neatly lined columns indicated records. I scattered them to the floor, heedless of the mess I was making. I had not tossed many aside before I found a thin piece of wood, and I clawed the false bottom from the crate.
Reader, no dolls rested within.
There were jewels, however—set jewels and loose ones, sapphires wrapped in velvet and topaz tumbling loose, an emerald bracelet which spanned wrist to elbow and a ruby tiara which would have caused the Queen of Sheba to swoon. There were ropes of pearls, golden chains, and the effect was nearly laughable in its opulence: so I did what I always do at inappropriate times, and I laughed.
“I shouldn’t celebrate prematurely, Miss Stone.”
I turned, electric with fright; there stood Garima Kaur, her once-handsome face set, holding a curved and long-bladed knife in her hand.
THIRTY-ONE
I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers.
Her words were free-flowing, practically accentless save for the same familiar lilt Mr. Singh owned, which made my very marrow quiver.
“I had supposed you didn’t speak much English?”
This amused the housekeeper, but the twitch of her lips was not even hinted at in her eyes. Where Mr. Quillfeather appeared affably cadaverous, all appendages and hooked nose, Garima Kaur looked as if her flesh had shrunk too tight to fit her, the sleeves of her drab housekeeper’s black loose around her pale brown wrists. Save the unsightly scar, one might wonder if she were a shade casting an illusion which only appeared to be human skin.
“Having deceived far better minds than yours, I cannot fault you for thinking so. Do not worry, do not worry,” she parroted, and then laughed, her lips stretched over her teeth. “I speak six other languages and worked with Sardar from the time we were both fifteen; he and Charles spoke Punjabi half the time, English the other—I could only have avoided learning your ugly tongue had I stuffed my ears with cotton.”
There were things about her I had slowly gleaned, reader, and things I had only just come to understand; I had not, however, expected her capacity for deception to exist on so global a scale, and could not help but admire her.
“And you never let on that you were fluent?”
“Why should I want to deal with every loutish ferengi* Sardar traded with?” she spat. “They only wanted to rob us, as you do now—Charles was raised better, but the exception proves the rule, as you say. Take the knife from your skirts and leave it in the trunk, covering all up again.”
Of course she knows about the knife, for we had been speaking English as she drifted the corridors all that while, and I never thought twice about it. Peering at her cruelly curved blade, I dropped my paltry weapon in the tangle of treasure at my feet; against a Sikh fighter, it may as well have been a berry spoon.
Lacking even that token means of defending myself, however—every hair on my crown stood on end. I returned the false bottom and the papers to the crate, fitted the lid, and then turned to face my captor.
“Please.” I raised my hands in supplication, “I mean you—”
“Surely you are not about to tell me that you mean me no harm,” Garima Kaur interjected, and again the shift of her mouth did not affect her cavernous eyes. “Do you really mean to suggest that you intend to leave that fortune in this garret and walk away from Highgate House?”
Deliberately, I exhaled. “There are half a dozen East India Company soldiers in the village sent by Mr. Sack, ready to raid the premises—it’s time this was ended.”
Conversely, her eyes burst now to life, as if I had turned up a gas lamp.