by Blythe Baker
I thought of the encounters I’d had over the previous eight months. Of the liars and murderers I’d met and fought. Lieutenant Collins would faint if he knew the kind of men I’d talked to.
I smiled and pressed myself against his side, bumping my hip against his. “There is no man on earth as gentlemanlike as you, Lieutenant. You may have an impossibly high standard.”
His eyes shined with pleasure at the compliment.
“Would a gentleman like yourself know anyone who works in the prison?” I asked, squeezing his arm. “I know it may seem silly, but I’d like to see where he was kept. Any connection to him may offer the closure I’ve been seeking.”
“I know someone,” he said, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “I cannot make any guarantees, but if you are truly insistent upon the idea, I could talk to him.”
“I am insistent.”
He gave me a grim smile. “How did I know you’d say that?”
“Because you are a very smart man, Lieutenant.”
Once again, his eyes shined, and I achieved what I’d set out to.
7
“Miss Rose, please reconsider.”
Lieutenant Collins was practically begging me to stay in the car.
“Your friend is inside waiting on us, Lieutenant. We shouldn’t keep him waiting.”
“He is not a friend of mine,” he corrected quickly. “I know him from my early days in the service, but we have not spoken in many years until recently.”
Lieutenant Collins had made it clear to me several times during the short drive from the bungalow where I was staying with the Hutchinses to the prison that the man allowing us into the prison was not a friend of his. He’d asked around, found someone with a connection in the prison, and realized he’d met the man on occasion in his youth. The guard was willing to allow us into the cell for only a few minutes as long as we stayed quiet and told no one.
“Well, there is a man inside waiting on us, and it would be rude not to show up.”
He sighed and grumbled something under his breath about being too nice—I suspected he was talking about his own propensity for doing things he did not agree with for my benefit—and walked around the car to open my door.
The guard met us at the gate. He was a wide man with a thick mustache, his stomach straining against the buttons of his brown uniform.
“Lieutenant,” he said, winking at Lieutenant Collins. He turned and bowed to me. “And the curious lady.”
“Miss Rose Beckingham,” Lieutenant Collins responded, his tone sharp and commanding.
The guard straightened and tipped his head to me. “Miss Beckingham.”
He led us down a wide, dim hallway with windows punched through the thick walls every twenty steps. Lieutenant Collins stayed close to me, hovering over me like he expected criminals to burst through the windows at any second.
The guard talked over his shoulder as we turned into a narrower hallway with a set of stone stairs that led deeper into the prison. “Civilians are not usually supposed to be inside the walls, especially women. So, I have to ask that you don’t tell anyone who let you inside.”
“Will we be in any trouble if someone catches us?” Lieutenant Collins asked.
The guard shook his head and then shrugged. “Not too much trouble. Just tell them who you are and why you are here, and they won’t report you.”
“They’ll care that I’m a Lieutenant?”
“No,” the guard responded, leaning around Lieutenant Collins to point directly at me. “They’ll care that her family was killed in an attack less than a year ago. Everyone here hated the monster who threw the explosive. They’ll understand why she wanted to come.”
I blinked and swallowed a small lump in my throat. First, Lieutenant Collins had mentioned how much he’d wanted to offer me his condolences after the attack. And now a stranger working in the prison had mentioned widespread indignation at the crime. For so many months, I’d felt alone in my grief, but being back in Simla, I was faced regularly with people who had been touched by the attack in some way. The tragedy occurred in their town, so of course they cared. Of course, they remembered. For the first time in months, I didn’t feel alone.
The cell was primitive. Dirt floor, stone walls, no windows. I could only pace five steps into the room before running into the far wall. Living in the space for more than a few hours would have sent me burrowing through the wall.
The man who had killed the Beckinghams deserved to be in a cell like this. He deserved far worse. But had they executed the right man? A large part of me wanted to believe they had because it was easy, because it allowed me to close that chapter of my life and move on. But I couldn’t dispel the idea that the culprit was still walking free.
“Not much to see,” Lieutenant Collins said, bending at the waist to poke his head through the short doorway.
“I only want to look around for a few minutes.”
His eyes cast quickly around the room like he couldn’t imagine what could be left to see, but then he backed into the hallway and stood up. The door was low enough that, because he was so tall, he could not see into the room without bending forward. It offered a semblance of privacy.
With nothing but a flickering lantern hanging from the wall next to the door, the edges of the room disappeared into shadow. I paced the short length of each wall, eyes trained on the floor for something. Anything. I had no idea what I was hoping to find or where whatever it was would be hidden. Had the idea to come here been foolish? The man who had stayed in the cell—probably one of hundreds over the years the prison had been operating—was dead. What kind of answers could I hope to find in a room no larger than my closet at the bungalow?
Then, I saw a light. Only a flicker, really. Just a glimmer on the far wall that connected the cell I was in to the next one. I moved towards it, hands outstretched, feeling the rough, crumbling wall until my fingers found a hole in the stone. I gasped.
“Rose? Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” I said quickly, hoping the Lieutenant would stay outside for a few more minutes. I needed time to explore without being conscious of his eyes on me.
He sighed but stayed where he was in the hallway, pacing back and forth past the door.
I knelt down and put my eye level with the hole in the wall. Through the hole, which was no more than four fingers tall and two fingers wide, I could see into the adjoining cell. I ran my finger along the hole, trying to understand what it could have been used for, and felt a notch partway in. I reached into the groove and pulled out a small bundle of beads. Only when I turned around and held them up to the candlelight did I recognize them as prayer beads.
“Where did you find that?”
I jumped and clutched the beads to my chest. Lieutenant Collins was bent forward, looking at me through the door, his eyes narrowed.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, stepping into the room and standing to his full height. The lantern was affixed to the wall at his shoulder-height, so harsh triangles of shadow covered his eyes and nose, turning his usually kind face menacing. “What is that?”
“A mala, I think,” I said, turning the beads over in the palm of my hand, counting them. “I recognize them from the servants in the Be—” I barely stopped myself from saying the Beckingham household— “the Bombay house,” I corrected. “They are Buddhist prayer beads.”
The Lieutenant snorted and shrugged. “Even criminals have faith, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” I said, turning the beads in my hand again, running my fingers along the string. “Though, refraining from violence is the first precept of the Buddhist religion.”
Lieutenant Collins blinked. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying.” I held the beads up in the air between us as though they would finish the sentence for me. “If the man convicted of the bombing was in fact a devout Buddhist, it seems unlikely he would have committed murder, no matter what views he might have held of the Br
itish Raj.”
Lieutenant Collins pursed his lips. “Those beads could have belonged to anyone who stayed in this cell. We have no way to know—”
I rushed past Lieutenant Collins, ducking through the door and into the hallway. He scrambled to follow after me. “Rose, where are you—?”
A huff of air burst out of his chest when he ran into my back, as he was surprised by my sudden stop only a few feet away.
“What are you doing?”
I leaned down to look through the bars. The man inside the next cell looked like a frightened animal, huddled in the corner. His eyes were wide, reflecting the dim candlelight that made up his world. He stared at our legs, unable or unwilling to meet our eyes.
“Hello,” I said, lifting a hand in greeting.
The man flinched at the sound of my voice.
“Do you know who these belong to?” I asked, holding up the beads.
“Rose, this is not what we discussed,” Lieutenant Collins said, looking up and down the hallway for any sign of a guard. He was so visibly uncomfortable that a guard may have been a welcome sight to him.
The Indian prisoner looked at the beads, and though he said nothing, I caught recognition in his eyes. It was not the first time he’d seen them. When he glanced towards where I knew the hole in the wall was, my suspicion was only confirmed.
“Do you know Hindi?” I asked, turning to Lieutenant Collins.
His shoulders sagged. How many more favors could I ask him before he decided my friendship wasn’t worth it? Hopefully one more, at least. “Passably. Only enough to get by.”
“That’s fine,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him down with me, so we were both looking into the cell. “Ask him if he has seen these beads before.”
The Lieutenant obliged—I noted his Hindi was considerably better than simply passable—and the prisoner glanced up, nodded, and then returned his eyes to the floor. “What else do you want me to say?”
“Ask him if they belonged to the man responsible for the bombing,” I said.
Once again, the Lieutenant repeated my question in Hindi, but this time the man responded. A short answer, but still, it was progress.
“He says no,” Lieutenant Collins said, standing up. “They aren’t the beads of the bomber.”
My heart sank as disappointment replaced the hope that had been blooming in my chest. Perhaps, the attack had been a random happenstance. Maybe my desire to connect it to the international ring of assassins I’d been investigating with Monsieur Prideaux was just another way to distract myself. From what, I didn’t know. But finding trouble had become a habit of mine, and maybe it was time to focus on something else.
Just as I was preparing to give up and leave, I heard a faint voice from inside the cell. Lieutenant Collins sighed and closed his eyes.
“What did he say?” I asked, grabbing his arm like a starving woman begging for a slice of bread.
The words came out of him reluctantly, mumbled through clenched teeth. “He said the beads belonged to the man accused of the bombing.”
When I bent down, the man was closer to the cell bars than he had been before, the dim light illuminating the dirt caked around his feet and ankles from the floor. He looked wild.
“Do you not believe the man was guilty?” I asked. Lieutenant Collins repeated the question, his voice flat.
The prisoner shook his head and spoke. Lieutenant Collins interpreted. “The man I came to know was a devout Buddhist who protested his innocence every day until his death. He claimed he was falsely accused of the crime. His only crime was being nearby at the time of the explosion. He was a witness, but the police arrested him as the culprit. I believe his story.”
“Neither of these men can be trusted,” Lieutenant Collins said, shaking his head. “Of course, criminals will claim they are innocent.”
I ignored him, giving him another question to translate. “Did the condemned man ever say if he knew who had truly committed the crime?”
The answer came quickly. The Lieutenant said, “He saw the bomber, but the police would not accept his description of the man since they believed he was himself the culprit.”
“What did he look like?” I was practically clinging to the bars, and Lieutenant Collins pulled me back, his hands on my shoulders.
The prisoner dragged a hand over his face, the skin around his eyes stretching, making his eye sockets look sunken in. He spoke and, again, the Lieutenant translated. “A skeleton devil.”
I furrowed my brow and looked at Lieutenant Collins, waiting for him to translate the rest. “What else did he say?”
The Lieutenant shrugged. “That is it. He didn’t say anything else.”
“That’s it? No hair color or eye color? Height, weight?”
Lieutenant Collins asked the man something, and the man shook his head. Apparently, skeleton devil was all I would get out of him. I didn’t want to admit it, but the description was incredibly unhelpful.
“I can’t imagine you found what you were looking for,” Lieutenant Collins said as we left the prison, the guard who had let us in escorting us out. “What were you looking for anyway?”
Could I tell Lieutenant Collins that I was beginning to believe the man executed for the bombing had not been the true villain? What would he think of me then? Would he continue to help a woman he believed might be crazy? Probably not.
“I wasn’t looking for anything specific,” I lied. “Just more information about the man.”
He nodded, holding open the door that led to the gated area around the prison. The guard seemed relieved to have us outside the prison walls and ran ahead to unlock the gate.
“If I may be bold, Miss Rose,” Lieutenant Collins said once we were back on the streets of Simla, the prison gate closed behind us. “I do not believe the man is worth any more of your time. The law has dealt with the likes of him, and you would be better served to live your life without another thought for him.”
Lieutenant Collins’ advice seemed sound. I could imagine myself fawning over him the way Miss Dayes did with Mr. Clarke. We would attend polo matches and hold hands during shows at the theater. It didn’t matter what would come next—whether I’d stay in Simla to be with him or head back to London alone—because for once, I would be living for myself. I’d be enjoying the time I had while I had it, not focused on finding the next clue or speaking to the next witness.
The advice seemed sound, but that was because Lieutenant Collins didn’t know what I knew.
The man responsible for the bombings was not a devout Buddhist who had suddenly turned radical. It didn’t make sense, and in the preceding months, I’d learned that when things didn’t fit together, it was because a key piece of the puzzle was missing. And I intended to find it.
8
Finding Elizabeth Hughes was easier than I would have imagined. Mrs. Hutchins actually held the answer. I found her in the sitting room—where she could be found most times of the day—with a fan still held firmly in her hand, her feet propped up on a tufted footrest.
“You asked Lieutenant Collins about a general the other day at lunch,” I said, broaching the topic clumsily. I usually tried to be more subtle, but I didn’t have time for subtlety.
She furrowed her brow and then her face smoothed, recognition replacing the confusion. “General Hughes? The man who committed suicide?”
I nodded and Mrs. Hutchins frowned. “Sad, sad story. I was shocked to hear of it while still in Bombay.”
“But you said you did not know the man?”
“Correct,” she said. “But of course, I’ve done my neighborly duty and sent along my condolences to his family. He has a daughter not much older than you, Rose. She must be beside herself with grief.”
“Elizabeth Hughes,” I said, acting as though Mrs. Hutchins had jogged my memory. “I saw her in town yesterday, I believe. It was impossible at the time for me to speak with her, but perhaps I should send my condolences, as well.”
“Yes, El
izabeth,” she said, nodding slowly. Then, she smiled. “I sent a large bundle of white flowers bigger than me. They were extraordinary.”
“They sound it. Do you still have her address handy? I’d like to stop and pay my respects, as well.”
“There was a ribbon, as well,” Mrs. Hutchins said, still thinking about the grandeur of her condolences. “A purple satin ribbon that she could reuse if she so wished. It would look wonderful on a dress.”
“I’m sure she appreciated that,” I said in a breath. “About the address. Do you remember it or know where I could find it?”
After describing to me the basket she had selected for the flowers and the most opportune time of day to send flowers so the recipient is most likely to be at home—mid-morning, after breakfast but before lunch—Mrs. Hutchins finally answered my question.
“Mr. Barlow will have that written down somewhere, I’m sure,” she said with a dismissive wave. “He arranged the entire thing.”
Mr. Barlow was drinking coffee in the dining room next to a day planner and the half-eaten breakfast left behind by his employer, Mr. Hutchins. I apologized for interrupting him and asked him for the woman’s address.
“Are you familiar with Miss Hughes?” he asked, turning back several pages in his planner and marking a page with his finger.
I shook my head. “Not yet, but I thought I would reach out to her and try to make a connection.”
Mr. Barlow lifted his chin, looking down at me over the length of his nose. “How very thoughtful of you.”
I smiled at him. “We both lost loved ones in similar ways, so I thought it would be nice to offer emotional support.”
“How so?” he asked, his lip curled back like he had just smelled something distasteful. “Your family was killed in a terrorist attack and her father killed himself. Forgive me, but I fail to see the similarities.”
I leaned back, startled by the bluntness of the question. Mr. Barlow, who had been so quiet and reserved through the entirety of the train trip to the mountains, seemed oddly engaged in this conversation. It felt crazy to even consider, but Mr. Barlow looked suspicious, like he was trying to catch me in a lie or back me into a corner so I would make a confession of some kind. His usually sagging frame was rigid and tense. He looked like a hunting dog moments before it would dart into the trees after its prey. Did he know that I was investigating the circumstances of both Elizabeth’s father’s death and the Beckinghams’? Was it possible he could know I thought the man’s suicide may have actually been a murder committed by the same hands that threw the bomb through the Beckingham’s car window?
