Mr. Thornfield had risen, for I could hear his boots striking the carpet. “This is a Company affair. Sack dies mysteriously, my shame is aired for all to see, I throw myself upon the mercy of the Director and face some sort of court-martial and five or ten years in gaol, and—”
“And you still miss Sahjara’s entire childhood, emerging broken by hard labour with a ruined constitution.”
“Is that worse than perennial torment?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t be here, and she needs you.” Mr. Singh sounded three shades beyond exhausted. “I need you, for God’s sake.”
Mr. Thornfield sat, breathing hard.
“Mark me,” Mr. Singh said carefully. “That you want to go to gaol for a crime we both committed long ago, simply to save the rest of us, is both typically thickheaded and typically noble. However, you are not thinking this through. Who was your accomplice when you committed the deed?”
“You were,” Mr. Thornfield said testily.
“Now. Supposing the Company doesn’t actually want to tar and feather you? The white prodigy raised in Lahore who journeyed back on their commission and was rushed through Addiscombe to do so, they were so eager?”
“Well—”
“Why, yes, Charles, I believe the Director would find a scapegoat if he didn’t want to sully the papers with ill repute of the Company.”
Mr. Thornfield thought this over, shifting in his seat.
“I wonder who might suit.”
After a longer pause, Mr. Thornfield admitted, “You are rather brown.”
“How brown am I, Charles? Take a good long look now.”
“Darkish, though a sight short of black.”
I did not know what they had done, of course; but my heart gave a rabbity leap at the thought of Sahjara without either of them. As self-sufficient a child as she was, she fed off love as if she were a walking siphon, and both Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh quietly, almost without gesture and never with words, delivered the substance to her in staggering quantities.
“All right, throwing myself upon my sword is out,” Mr. Thornfield said pettishly. “Your advice is loathsome, Sardar, and it dis-endears me to you.”
“So often the way with advice,” Mr. Singh muttered.
“Well, I think it’s deuced unfair, really.” Mr. Thornfield lightened the tone. “Sack seeing me at the funeral by accident when I’d no idea he was in England at all seems like cheating.”
“It is regrettable, though it does not entirely explain his swaggering into our home with such complete confidence. Thankfully we have both been upon our guard—”
“Of course we’ve been on our guard! But the die is cast. And a sight too soon after arriving here, if you ask me.”
“Undoubtedly.” I heard the sound of a vesta being struck. “I meant to take up cricket.”
Mr. Thornfield snorted, then guffawed, and then the pair of them wheezed together as I leant against the wall, smiling.
“Oh, I don’t know what to do.” Mr. Thornfield sighed as the laughter faded.
“Fight back,” Mr. Singh said. A chair creaked. “The same as we always do.”
“And to think that if the good Sam Quillfeather hadn’t posted me, we should never have known John Clements had died at all. It’s a hard push whether to be grateful or vengeful.”
My back was already against the wall, thankfully, or I should have fallen as the fear seized me—Sam Quillfeather, the policeman who questioned me after Edwin’s death? Sam Quillfeather, the inspector who had drawn unspoken conclusions over Vesalius Munt’s?
“It’s a lucky chance,” Mr. Singh agreed. “Enough to make me wish to meet him one of these days. Considering your new arrangement, doubtless I’ll make his acquaintance quite soon.”
My vision swam; I was in a crazily tilting corridor lit the colour of blood.
“You’ll like him—he takes more care with his profession than any man I’ve ever seen. Makes a point of keeping his investigations utterly quiet unless he has the evidence necessary to prove a party’s guilt, not like these boorish peelers who bully their way to solutions, pissing on every water pump they see. Certainly of all the lads going in for medicine at Charing Cross, I liked him best, for he’d no business being there and I felt as if neither did I. I was still sweating curry, and here’s this mad chowkdar* twenty years my senior taking desultory anatomy lessons. The mind reels, Sardar, that such wonders exist.”
“I’d be less shocked at a courteous tax collector.”
“Imagine if he had taken the tiger by the tail and joined the Royal College instead of merely brushing up on his tibia versus fibula.”
“Incredible. A constable who also just happens to be a doctor of