The Game

by Laurie R. King

  “What a nifty title for a book—The First Flapper in Khanpur. When I write my memoirs, I’ll thank you for the name. Where are we going now?”

  “Shall we take a look at the native bazaar?” There would be no chance of stumbling across Holmes; he and Bindra would be long gone, on the first train out of Simla to retrieve the travelling show and make for Khanpur, questioning people about O’Hara all the way.

  “Oh, that would be fun! I wanted to go into those shops yesterday when we walked through with Mama, but she took one look at them and said they were too dirty and that we’d probably get robbed.”

  “I should think they look worse from the outside than they are.”

  “And do you know, it was funny to see you come into the tea shop this morning? We’d just been talking about you yesterday.”

  “Oh yes?” I asked, warily.

  “Yes, Tommy swore he’d seen a native that looked just like your husband, there in the bazaar, can you imagine? I mean, anyone less like an Indian than him, I can’t picture, and he was squatting down at the side of the road like they do, trying to beg some money off Captain Nesbit.”

  “It’s not likely to have been my husband,” I assured her mildly, squelching the alarm I felt at Goodheart’s unexpected perceptiveness, but she burst out laughing at the thought.

  “Of course not, silly, it’s just that Tommy was reminded of him, and so we were talking about you a little, telling Captain Nesbit about the voyage out, that’s all. Say, do you think we could find a sari in this bazaar? That one you wore on the ship was posatively dreamy.”

  “We’d be more likely to find a sheepskin coat than a silk sari, but we can look.”

  We found many things, from a dozen bright, rattly bangles for Sunny’s wrist to an embroidered cap for Tommy’s head, including two sari-lengths of silk for the girl, one bright green with a silver border, the other saffron-yellow with a heavy stripe of darker orange, along with their under-skirts and blouses. Next door lay a shop with a dusty display of necklaces in the window, a place dark and mysterious enough to have belonged to Kim’s Lurgan Sahib; with a squeal, Sunny dived inside.

  The shopkeeper was no teacher of spies, but we did make him a happy man. Something about his wares, which were rough to the point of primitive, appealed to the girl from Chicago. And I had to admit, she had a remarkable eye for the unlikely treasure, uncovering a shimmering breastplate of opals set in native gold that added five years and a lifetime of sophistication to her face. I was fingering a heavy necklace made of amber beads when she snatched it from my hand, turned me bodily about, and propelled me over to the only clean surface in the shop, a looking-glass. Standing behind me and craning to see around my shoulders, she pushed the silver amulet-charm I wore under my collar and fastened the amber around my neck in its place, chatting all the while.

  “I don’t know why you wear that funny old thing, it’s nowhere near as nice as some of the pieces you wore on the boat. There, that’s better,” she said, and exclaimed, “Oh, Mary, amber is so tasty on you!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Sunny,” I said, reaching behind my neck for the clasp.

  She slapped at my hands and urged me at the glass. “I mean it, Mary. Look!”

  I looked, and saw a pale-haired, scrubbed-looking woman transformed by a wealth of Baroque colour riding her collar-bones. The uneven stones of the necklace, graduated in size from cherry-pit at the top to a baby’s fist at the centre, were the deep and cloudy orange of good amber, with tantalising slices of shimmering clear stone twisted through them. It looked like nothing I would wear; that, in truth, was a great part of its appeal. Nonetheless, I reached up to unfasten the clasp, and handed it to the man. Sunny, however, grabbed it first and dropped it beside the bangles, the opals, and the other pieces under whose spell she’d fallen.

  “We’ll take all of these,” she told him.

  “We’ll take none of them,” I corrected her, and when she began to sputter in indignation, I turned to the man and started the age-old bargaining rituals of the East.

  In the end, I beat the price down so that the girl had the amber for nothing and saved a third of his original price on the opals. Pleased, she gathered up the heavy orange beads and pressed them into my hands. I protested, and tried to give them back to her, but when she started to look hurt, I thanked her, and subsided.

  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, lightheaded 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 tha
nks 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.”

  Not altogether a social visit, then. I wondered if the maharaja was aware of that.

  We sat at the window, chatting idly, with the mountains looking over our shoulders as the musical names unfolded beneath us: Sirhind, Ludhiana, Jullunder, Amritsar. At this last, with a lot of jolting, the prince’s car separated from those continuing on to Lahore and points west, leaving us for a while on an empty siding (empty of trains, that is: there appeared to be a small village living on the tracks) before we could join with a north-bound train. Batala, Gurdaspur, Pathankot, up into the mountains again, the people along the snow-speckled rails again showing the rounder features of the mountain folk. Flat roofs gave way to peaked, sandals to boots, bullock carts to loads carried on the back in long kirta baskets. The snow-laden mountains drew near, the trees grew in height, the windows radiated cold.

  A luncheon was brought to us, and Mrs Goodheart woke and put on her shoes, Tommy laid aside his tracts, and we ate the uninspired cutlets and two veg, Mrs Goodheart sighing, Tommy distracted, and me thinking wistfully of Bindra’s curries and the large, greasy, chewy puris we had used to scoop them up.

  “Miss Russell.” I blinked and looked across at Tommy Goodheart. “That is right, isn’t it? You prefer Miss?”

  “Generally, yes.”

  Mrs Goodheart raised her head sharply. “I thought you were married?”

  “I am, I just—”

  “A lot of married women keep their names, Mother,” Sunny explained.

  “But—”

  Her son ignored her confusion. “Your husband and I spent a lot of time together, but I’m afraid that you and I never had much of a conversation. You’re English?”

  “I live in England and my mother was English, but my father was American. From San Francisco.”

  Mrs Goodheart said doubtfully, “I don’t know any Russells from San Francisco.”

  “His family was from Boston originally,” I admitted, and saw the woman’s eyes go bright.

  “The Boston Russells? Well, well. I wonder if I ever met your father? I went to any number of parties there, when I was young.”

  “I doubt it,” I said firmly. “His parents moved out to California when he was very small. So yes, I regard myself as English. Proudly so, particularly at the present.”

  As I hoped, Goodheart took the bait of distraction. “Are you referring to the Labour Party’s victory?”

  “Yes. Extraordinary, isn’t it? I’ve heard it called a bloodless revolution.”

  He was launched: For the first time, he betrayed a degree of animation, and the rest of the meal was dominated by his questions about the English working classes (about whom I knew little, other than farm labourers and London cabbies) and whether or not I had met MacDonald or a dozen other men, most of whom, indeed, I had never heard of. Then one name caught my ear.

  “Yes, I believe I’ve met him,” I said. “At a fancy-dress party in a Berkshire country house, just before Christmas. He was dressed, let’s see—oh yes. He was in a very chilly costume, that of a pyramid builder,
complete with red-paint whip marks on his back.” And a very unsuitable costume it had been, too, for the man was pudgy and his back showed acne beneath the paint.

  “Strange place to find him.”

  “He was probably experimenting with subversion from within,” I told him, keeping my face completely straight.

  “I suppose. Odd, that your husband didn’t seem all that interested in politics.”

  “Well,” I said, “he’s on the conservative side. I wouldn’t call him a reactionary, exactly …” This was by no means the first time I’d had to deny Holmes in the course of a case. And as before, no cock crew.

  Goodheart’s face was, as always, remarkably difficult to read, but I thought his interest was piqued. If so, it would be understandable: A woman abandoned—even temporarily—by her considerably older husband, who then expresses an interest in radical politics, might be worth cultivating. I still couldn’t tell if he knew who Holmes actually was, but if this young man had indeed tried to murder us in Aden, separating myself from Holmes in his mind might stop him from pulling another balcony down on my head in Khanpur. Mrs Goodheart, however, was not pleased at what she perceived as the intimacy of our glance. She fixed me with a sour gaze, and demanded that Thomas search out a deck of cards. I subsided and went back to my window.

  At long last, the train slowed, and sighed, and came to a stop. Noses pressed against the windows (all except the proud Thomas, who nonetheless watched with great interest), we waited to see what manner of royal vehicle would come for us. Sunny was hoping for camels and elephants, although I thought a Lagonda or Rolls-Royce more likely—and less crippling, considering we were still more than fifty miles from Khanpur city.

  What came for us was an aeroplane.

  Chapter Fifteen