Suddenly, it struck me that a busy Miss Cavendish might let fall some crumb of information that would prove useful to me in my investigation, so I set a deliberate smile upon my lips.
“Might I be of some assistance, Miss Cavendish? I know I have not your talent for order and method, but I am certain I can render you some service, and I should so like to see your system.” She hesitated, and I sweetened the pot, dropping my eyes modestly. “You see, I am a new bride, and once my husband and I return to England, I shall have to organise my own household. I should so like to know the proper way.” It was a thoroughly disgusting display, but effective.
She preened, and I said a fervent prayer of thanksgiving that she did not remember I had been married before—although if she had I could have told her quite truthfully that at Grey House I had scarcely known where the store cupboards were, much less how they were organised.
“Of course,” she said graciously. She outfitted me with a pinafore of my own, and a little notebook and pencil. “This is where we enter the quantities, the name of the supplier, and the condition upon arrival. Later I will make notes as the item is used, and if it is not satisfactory, the merchant will be informed,” she said, her lips thinning in severity. I did not imagine any merchant enjoyed finding himself in Miss Cavendish’s black books.
We set off to work then, and to my astonishment, I rather enjoyed it. Portia had always had an excellent head for such things, but I took real pleasure in making certain that the quantities were correct and the items stored properly. There were barrels of flour and gallons of lamp oil, boxes of crackers and biscuits to augment those made fresh at the estate, packages of sugar and tea—this last was thick with irony, and Miss Cavendish informed me that all of the tea grown on the estate was shipped out to Calcutta to be processed.
“We haven’t a factory here,” she explained. “No point in keeping the tea if we cannot process it to render it drinkable. Far easier and cheaper to buy it in from Calcutta.”
She moved on to a small cask of nails, eyeing them with suspicion, but I was still pondering her last statement. “Has there never been a tea factory in the valley?”
“Hm? No, never. It was always my father’s dearest wish to build one here, but of course they are prohibitively expensive.” She dropped her voice, as all people of a certain age always will when discussing money. “The equipment alone costs a fortune, to say nothing of the building. Of course, the investment would be worth its weight in gold. To be able to process our own tea would vault us into another stratum of production entirely, but it is not to be,” she said with a thin smile.
“Perhaps Harry will take up gambling and strike it lucky,” I said lightly. To my astonishment, her complexion took on a mottled shade and her movements became sharp and brittle.
“Gambling is a thoroughly unwholesome occupation,” she said severely. “I would not touch a penny if he came by it dishonestly.”
But would she scruple at taking money for the plantation if he married it? I wondered. It was entirely acceptable for a bride to invest in her husband’s property; half the women I knew had been married for their money, I thought. If Lucy married Harry and offered up the funds to build the factory, Miss Cavendish would lay the first brick of the foundation, I had no doubt.
And that, quite naturally, led me to wonder: had Miss Cavendish herself killed Freddie to wrest back control of the tea garden?
I paused and considered her, this brisk, competent spinster with her pinched face and her great ring of keys, the medieval chatelaine to her father’s castle. She must have deplored the entailment that left the property to her feckless nephew. She had been to England; she had seen him for what he was. To have him appear with a wife in tow must have rankled deeply. She had known no other home than the Peacocks, and Freddie would have been within his rights entirely to turn her out if he had chosen to do so. Morally, it would have been a criminal thing to do, but the moment her father died, she was dependent completely upon the goodwill of the nephew she scarcely knew anymore and the bride she had just met—a terrifying prospect for any woman, but how much worse for a woman like Miss Cavendish, so accustomed to control? And how easy to resume that control after Freddie’s accident. A bit of something unwholesome, to use her favourite word, and he would simply slip away, taking with him all of her troubles. True, he left Jane behind, but Jane need not be a bother unless she bore a son, and even then she might be malleable. She was content to leave the household in Miss Cavendish’s capable hands. No, Miss Cavendish could work with Jane, manage her as she did everything else, efficiently, ruthlessly. It was only Freddie who stood in the path of her happiness.
And Freddie had been removed, I reflected, watching her strong, masculine hands sorting through the sacks of nuts that had come from Calcutta. She scooped up a handful to peer closely at them. She seized one and dropped it to the ground, cracking it sharply under her heel.
I must have started, for she gave me a brisk nod. “It was rotten,” she said. “I’ve no use for it.”
I smiled and returned to the work at hand, feeling suddenly rather sorry for Freddie Cavendish.
Resting next to my luncheon plate was a note from Cassandra Pennyfeather, reminding me of my promise to pose for her and encouraging me to come that afternoon with my sister. I ran Portia to ground and waved the note at her. She refused flatly, but after I pointed out that if she wanted me to clear Jane she would have to cooperate whilst I pursued other suspects, she relented. “But I do not see what use the Pennyfeather woman will be. She is the most self-absorbed creature I have ever seen.”
“Never mind,” I told her. “There will be servants, and if we are invited to stay for tea, we will see the rest of the family.” And perhaps the enigmatic Miss Thorne, I added silently.
We made our way to the Bower upon foot, and as we passed the Buddhist stupa, I amused Portia with the story of the leprous granny with her odd pronouncements.
“Perhaps she killed Freddie,” Portia said darkly. “Perhaps there was an ancient grudge and she enacted her vengeance upon him.”
“Don’t be such an ass,” I said, pushing her down the road toward the Bower. I feigned irritation, but it was good to see a bit of whimsy about her. She had grown serious of late with worry, and I feared sometimes for her health. There were a hundred things that could carry off even a strong constitution in India, and Portia’s no longer seemed hearty to me.
At last we arrived at the Bower—a pretty house, quite a bit smaller than the Peacocks but built in a similar fashion, doubtless to house an estate manager and his family back in the day. The gardens were beautifully maintained by loving hands, a flourish of orchids punctuating the pretty swathes of English blooms and more exotic Indian cousins. We mounted the wide steps of the front verandah, but before we could knock, Cassandra herself flung the wide double doors open. “Welcome!” she cried. “My models, how good of you to come.”
Gone were the exuberant draperies and lorgnette and Percival was nowhere in evidence. Instead, she had donned a serviceable black gown and her hair had been gathered into a tidy snood. She wore a long pinafore streaked with unsavoury-looking substances and I saw with a start that her hands were black.
“A hazard of the art,” she said with a rueful smile as she brandished her hands. “It is from the silver nitrate, a chemical I use to make the photographic paper sensitive to light. Unfortunately it leaves me with hands as dark as an Ethiop queen!” she finished with a laugh. “Come through, come through,” she beckoned.
Portia and I exchanged glances. The languid creature from the garden party and pooja had entirely vanished, and in her place was a woman of great energy and purpose, her spirits so high as to be almost giddy. Clearly, Cassandra Pennyfeather was a woman devoted to her art.
She hurried us through and into a large room at the rear of the house. It was fitted with tall windows with a clever arrangement of shades and shutters so she could control the amount of light. Along one wall stood a long table with
an evil-looking assortment of bottled chemicals and the various impedimenta of the photographer’s arts. The other end of the studio held a variety of draperies and bits of furniture and props, as well as a screen.
“Come and see,” she urged. “It is terribly interesting, I think.” She walked us through the collodion process, detailing the many steps involved in the wet-plate method throwing about various technical terms with a genuine ease. It was a messy and complicated endeavour, with dripping chemicals and heavy equipment, but Cassandra seemed thoroughly happy.
“It’s a ruinous endeavour,” she said, but her smile belied the words. Portia had wandered off to peruse the photographs hanging upon the walls, but I was fascinated by the intricacies and absorbed every detail. “I have destroyed more gowns and linen than you could possibly imagine, but I cannot think of a more perfect undertaking—to capture a moment in time and preserve it forever. It is the pastime of the gods,” she concluded, “not least because so many things must be done perfectly in order to ensure the slightest chance of success.”
“Here is something,” Portia called. She was standing before one of Cassandra’s images, and it was only when I came to stand at her side that I saw it was a photograph of Freddie Cavendish.
Cassandra joined us, and for a moment the three of us stared at him in silence. He had been photographed as one of the Greek gods, Hermes, I surmised from the helmet perched upon his curls and the talaria at his ankles. His expression was one of guarded mischief, fitting for the prankster of Olympus. I said as much aloud.
“You knew him?” Cassandra asked, only mildly surprised.
“He was a distant relation to our mother,” I supplied. “The connection was not a close one.”
“Very likely for the best,” she remarked with a sigh.
“You did not like him?”
The clear white brow furrowed a little. “It is not that I disliked him. I do not dislike anyone.” Portia and I studiously avoided exchanging glances at this pronouncement, but I knew it would provide meat for our gossip later. “But I thought him rather pointless.”
“In what way?” Portia inquired.
Cassandra gave a short laugh. “In every way! He made nothing of himself.”
I tipped my head to regard her. “How interesting you should think so. I would not have taken you for an admirer of ambition,” I said with some amusement.
She smiled. “But I am American. I admire effort and authenticity. I was reared to believe that there is no greater divinity than art and the free expression of it. Freddie had no art.”
“Do you mean to say you despise those of us who do not paint or wield a sculptor’s tools?” Portia asked, her tone a trifle cool.
“Certainly not. But I think everyone carries within them the seed of the divine artist. One must only find the proper means of expression. Art is merely the voice of the soul, speaking the language of God. No, Freddie was a creature without art in his soul, unlike his wife.” She paused and her face was suffused with warmth. “Now that lady is a kindred spirit! She hasn’t created anything for some time, of course, but she understands the expressive spirit.”
“I imagine she is the only one in the valley who does,” I ventured.
Cassandra shook her head. “No indeed! You are quite wrong, I am happy to say. My husband and Miss Cavendish are devoted to their gardens, and Harry is an artist in his tea garden.”
I struggled to understand. “You mean he expresses himself freely as the manager of a tea plantation?”
“Precisely! He is authentic,” she added. “There is nothing hidden there, no pretense or façade. He is free to feel, which is the most important thing. It is my mantra, in fact.”
“Your what?” Portia demanded.
“Mantra,” Cassandra repeated, saying the word slowly and with exaggerated vowels. “It means a sort of motto one takes in the East. By repetition, one is able to incorporate it into one’s daily philosophy.”
Portia was staring at her in open amazement, and I hurried to satisfy the demands of politeness. “How interesting. And your mantra is ‘free to feel.’”
“Yes. I say it often to myself to impress upon my heart the truth of it. Do you not find it true as well?” she asked, her face earnest.
I returned her smile. “We are English. I’m afraid freedom to feel is a notion quite foreign to us.”
She laughed aloud then. “I have been married to an Englishman for almost twenty years. I am perfectly familiar with your failures of expression,” she said fondly.
“I am curious,” I began, seizing upon the point, “how you came to meet and marry the Reverend.”
“We do not make an obvious pair, do we? He came to my family’s compound in New Hampshire to study with my father, a rather well-known metaphysician.”
“You mean he was a sort of theologian?” I hazarded.
“Exactly that. His movement grew out of the Transcendentalists. He and some like-minded friends created a compound to rear their families, a place where they could put into practise their philosophies. It was called New Utopia Farm. It was modestly famous for a little while, and Geoffrey came to study the movement under my father’s direction.”
“And he found you,” Portia surmised.
“He did, much to my father’s dismay. You see, at New Utopia, we were reared to think freely, to behave freely. It was very like a new Eden, a place of innocence and free expression. We grew and ate healthfully from our own land, none of the adulterated mess that is sold by city grocers! We ate only fruits and vegetables and fish. We went about unclothed in the warm weather and we thought nothing of it. Men and women worked together, women tending the fields when it was needed and men caring for the children. If there was a need, it was filled by whomever was nearest, not by virtue of one’s sex. Women kept their own names, and there were no formal marriages, only liaisons that lasted for so long as the pair wished. Children were raised by all and loved by all, in innocence.”
Only several centuries of good breeding prevented us from gaping at her openly. “How natural it all sounds,” I managed in a slightly strangled voice.
“It was! Yes, you understand completely. It was completely natural. And Geoffrey came and he was so different from the boys on the farm. He was educated and so much older than I, so serious! I thought he was a dear. So I cast off the teachings of my parents and I married him and took his name and left New Utopia,” she finished. “It was shocking to my family, of course. They expected me to stay at the farm and live there as a member of the compound. But we had been taught to think freely, and to follow our hearts, and my heart led me to Geoffrey.”
“And what if it leads you away again?” Portia asked. I poked her hard in the ribs, but she did not even flinch.
Cassandra shrugged. “It might. I warned Geoffrey of that very thing when he married me. ‘Geoffrey,’ I told him, ‘I am a wild creature, a daughter of Eve, and I will stay with you in love so long as I am able.’ He seemed content with that, and I have not been led from him yet,” she finished, quite seriously.
Portia and I said nothing; there was simply no possible response to that extraordinary statement.
Cassandra, who had fallen into a reverie, collected herself briskly. “Shall we begin? I have thought of nothing else since I invited you to sit for me, and I have changed my mind. You are not the daughters of Zeus. I wish instead to photograph you as Philomena and Procne,” she announced, presenting us each with a filmy sort of white draped garment. She waved vaguely toward the screen. “You may change behind that if you are bashful.”
Portia and I exchanged glances and hastened behind the screen. Cassandra rolled her eyes at our collective modesty, and given her history of practising nudism, I was not surprised. In the end, I would have been far better changing in the middle of the room, for Portia took the opportunity to pinch my backside.
“I cannot believe you agreed to this,” she hissed.
I rubbed at the spot she had pinched. “I am already turning
violet, I can feel it,” I returned waspishly. “Besides, she might know something more. She is certainly not shy about talking. Perhaps she will be ‘free to feel’ the need to tell us something pertinent to Freddie’s death.”
Mollified, Portia changed and after a few minutes’ struggle with the intricacies of Grecian dress, we emerged, costumed as Bronze Age princesses.
Cassandra tipped her head to the side. “Almost,” she pronounced. She proceeded to wrench our hair free from pins, sending it tumbling over our shoulders. “Much better. More natural and sensual.”
She presented us each with crowns to wear, lightly woven diadems of gilded leaves to indicate our rank, muttering to herself as she did so. “Now to find the birds,” she said, moving to rummage through a trunk.
“Who were Philomena and Procne?” I asked Portia, sotto voce.
But Cassandra heard me and peered up over the edge of the trunk. “Sisters, princesses of Athens. Procne’s husband raped his sister-in-law, Philomena, and then cut out her tongue so she could not speak of it. But Philomena was a gifted weaver and wove the story with her loom. Her beloved sister understood, and created a terrible revenge for her husband.”
“Do I want to know?” I murmured.
“She cooked their infant son and served it to her husband upon a golden plate.”
“Dear heavens,” Portia said, clutching my arm. I sighed, knowing another bruise would be forthcoming.
“The husband pursued them with an axe to take his revenge, but the sisters prayed to the gods who were merciful. They turned Procne into a nightingale, whose cry sounds like the name of her baby son, and Philomena became a swallow, a bird without a voice.”
She bent to rummage once more in the trunk, producing a pair of stuffed birds for us to hold.
“If she brings out a stewed child, I am leaving,” Portia warned me.
But Cassandra only hinted at the tragedy by finding a golden plate to rest near the loom, the merest suggestion of Procne’s crime.
Dark Road to Darjeeling Page 17
