by Tessa Harris
“What are you doing?” cried the head keeper after him. But Thomas did not reply. He was already halfway down the stairs, the rag tied over his nose and mouth. By now the elephant was weakening. It had collapsed on its side just by the main doors, and although it was still bellowing, it was rapidly losing its strength. Its life was ebbing away as the flames advanced, sucking the oxygen from the air.
Thomas looked to the source of the fire and managed to make out a water pump in the corner. Dodging the flames, he took off his coat, and winding it ’round the metal handle, he began pumping water furiously. Seconds later he realized he was not alone. Three stable hands joined him and began to fill leather buckets.
“Quick, men. The h-hay,” he stuttered through his coughs.
The stable hands passed the pails in a human chain, dousing the blaze as fast as they were able. The flames began to retreat, hissing like snakes as they did so, enabling more men to move in with beaters. Soon the fire was under control.
Hauling himself up the stairs, his face gray with soot, Thomas made it back to the gallery and staggered out through the door, gulping down lungfuls of air. The keeper was waiting for him.
“Open the main doors,” Thomas ordered.
“What?”
“The elephant may yet be saved. Do as I say!”
The keeper sprang into action. He nodded to his men, and together they ran down the steps to the great doors. It took two lads to lift the huge bolts and heave them open. Thomas arrived just in time to see the unleashed smoke billowing out in thick clouds, but the flames were all but extinguished. After a moment, the keeper wrapped a damp cloth ’round his face and entered. He did not have to venture far into the building to find the elephant. Its huge bulk stretched across the doorway. It lay on its side, struggling to breathe. Its massive sides labored up and down, and now and again its trunk twitched. It was in a bad way, but it was alive.
Falling to his knees, the keeper leaned over one of its ears and spoke softly to the creature, patting its sooty hide as he gave it encouragement.
Thomas was heartened by the sight, but he had more pressing matters. He cast around the chaotic scene to see Lydia, who was sitting on a crate, being tended to by one of the stable hands. She was supping small beer.
“My love,” he called to her. He ran over to her and knelt beside her, taking her by the hand. She winced, and he saw her bleeding wrists. “They must be dressed,” he told her, examining her wounds.
She shook her head. “You must see to the professor,” she told him firmly.
“But your wrists!” protested Thomas.
“’Tis nothing. Please.” She waved one of her hands. “The professor needs you, Thomas,” she urged him.
Oliver Carruthers was lying on a bed of hay on the back of a cart in the courtyard. His heavy lids were closed and his skin gray beneath smutty patches. Thomas ordered an Indian youth—he assumed he was an elephant attendant—to take down the side so that he could examine Carruthers properly. His pulse was weak, and he was breathing out his distress in short, panicky breaths.
“He go die, sahib?” The Indian was peering over his shoulder.
The doctor knew that the professor’s lungs would be suffering the aftereffects of the choking smoke. Rest and soothing linctus would be the only remedies in the days ahead.
“With good care, he will live, yes,” he replied with a nod, adding: “Call for a carriage.” He knew the sooner the professor was transported back to Hollen Street, the greater his chances of survival. He would follow on immediately.
Meanwhile, Thomas returned to the stable to find the keeper dousing the elephant with water from a nearby trough. With a large mop, he was lovingly swabbing its sooty flanks. The animal clearly found it rejuvenating and responded by halfheartedly lifting its enormous head. Its trunk slithered before it on the floor, coiling, then straightening like some monstrous snake. Thomas knelt down by its massive shoulder, next to the keeper, and patted the animal.
“Will he live?”
“He’s a strong old beast,” replied the keeper. Another Indian lad, standing on the other side, sluiced its trunk with another bucketful of water. Just as Thomas allowed himself a smile, the elephant suddenly snorted and lifted its head again, this time higher. It endeavored to right itself by planting a great front foot on the ground. Huffing through its trunk, it tried in vain to heave its great hulk off the cobbled floor, but as it raised its head and shoulder, the lad at its back let out a scream and yelled something in his native tongue.
“God Almighty!” cried the keeper.
“What is it?” exclaimed Thomas. Leaping to his feet, he ran ’round to the other side of the creature to see what had so shocked the boy.
At first he thought it a pile of dirty rags, but then he spied the saffron yellow bursting from beneath the grime and soot, and saw the curved dagger. And there, lying flattened and broken, lay the body of a man, an Indian. Sajiv Lakhani had been crushed under the weight of the elephant.
Chapter 58
Professor Carruthers lay propped up on fat pillows that made his face seem even longer and thinner. A light sheen of sweat glistened on his skin. The patient did not open his eyes at the sound of the door, and Thomas assumed he was still sleeping as he set down his case. Mistress Finesilver followed behind him with a bowl of bread and milk and a spoon, which she put on the bedside table. She stood away from the bed, and arms crossed over her saggy breasts, she studied the professor, her head tilted to one side. A sudden cough broke the silence. It was dry and rasping, and it lifted the professor’s shoulders as he slept, then dropped them down again. He frowned but did not wake.
Mistress Finesilver remained unmoved. “’Course I never did like that Indian. There was something shifty about ’im. ’E only got what was coming to ’im,” she whined as Thomas opened his case.
“Thank you, mistress. That will be all,” Thomas told her, opening his case. Her mistrust of Sajiv had been evident from the start. Thomas only wished that he had heeded her unease and acted upon it sooner. He should have suspected that it was Dr. Carruthers’s stolen honey that had been smeared all over the dead servant’s face. Or that the khanjar had indeed been responsible for almost beheading Sir Montagu. Or that his slipper had made the bloody footprint in the study. Or even that Sajiv could easily have traveled from Oxford to Boughton to commit murder. The clues had been there, but he had been blind to them.
The housekeeper shot the professor another narrow-eyed look and tutted her disapproval, as if transferring the blame for all that had occurred onto his shoulders. As she did so, he stirred, and his head began to roll from side to side in a most agitated fashion.
“Perhaps you would care to fetch Dr. Carruthers?” Thomas asked her. In her present mood, it seemed she did not care to do anything, but she nodded and left the room.
Now it was Thomas’s turn to study his patient. He noted the professor’s complexion had improved. For the first time in three days, the color had returned, but Thomas also remarked upon a seeming restlessness and an excessive sweating that were new symptoms. A thin stream of mucus was running from the professor’s left nostril, too. It was as he reached for a kerchief to wipe his nose that Thomas realized what ailed his patient, on top of smoke inhalation. True, the cough remained, and would no doubt do so for a few more days, but it was the professor’s addiction to opium that was causing his various ills. They were the undoubted signs of withdrawal.
Thomas was bending low to feel the pulse when suddenly the professor grabbed him by the wrist. The quick-fire gesture made the doctor start. There was a strength in his grasp that he would not have believed possible in one so weak. He switched to the professor’s face, his eyes now open wide.
“Sir, I thought you were asleep!” he exclaimed, feeling his own pulse racing. “You are a little better?”
The professor pulled a face as he let go of Thomas’s wrist. “Better?” He shrugged as if the word were a bitter pill that he was trying to swallow. “I have
been trying to feel better about myself these past nine years, Silkstone,” he said, his voice cracking. Thomas gave him a cup of linctus from the bedside table, and he downed it, grimacing at the taste. He handed it back without giving the doctor a look. Instead he fixed his watery eyes straight ahead of him. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
Thomas frowned. The lingering melancholy that he had detected in the professor’s look when they first met clearly still remained. No doubt the opium had dulled his senses and for brief periods made him insensible to the terrible events of the past.
“Very profound,” said the doctor after a moment’s pause. “But if I might suggest, sir, contrary to what your sacred texts may say, you are fortunate in that you are not alone. Your brother—”
The professor broke him off. “Opium!” he croaked. “Please. I need some.” He raised his hands and held out his palms like a beggar.
Thomas looked at him, full of pity. “Sir, you must wean yourself off the poppy. It can have a most deleterious effect on a man,” he told him. As he spoke, he suddenly thought of the Indian servant. “Did Sajiv take it, too?” He recalled the pungent smell at the scenes of at least two of the killings.
“Sajiv,” repeated the professor. “Yes,” he croaked, grasping at Thomas’s wrist once more. “I gave him opium for his own pleasure. Now, please, I would have some for mine.”
Thomas struggled to free himself from the professor’s insistent mauling. “I cannot give you any, sir. I—”
“Sajiv!” Carruthers exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if his servant had just appeared to him in a vision. “What has happened to him? Where is he?”
Thomas took a deep breath. “He is dead, sir.” He recalled the blackened skin, crushed and mangled into an unrecognizable heap under the great weight.
The professor was silent for a moment; then his lips began to tremble. “How?”
“The elephant fell on top of him.”
The professor gasped, triggering a cough once more.
“He was crushed by the elephant?”
“Yes, sir,” said Thomas. Once she had felt able, Lydia had related to him Sajiv’s sorry tale. She told him how he alleged his own father’s end was the result of a betrayal by Farrell, Lavington, Flynn, and, to a lesser extent, the professor himself.
Carruthers closed his eyes for a moment. He seemed in pain.
“I know he committed all four murders, sir,” said Thomas, extricating his hand from the professor’s. The latter made no attempt to hold onto it.
“Then you also know why I was to be his next victim?”
“I understood that you took pity on him when he was a boy after he witnessed his father’s execution.”
Professor Carruthers blinked rapidly. “If only it had been that simple.” He groaned. “I took pity on the boy because I felt guilty. I was burdened by my past deeds, and they still weigh heavy on my conscience to this day.”
Thomas nodded. “What happened?” he asked.
The professor lifted his head slightly. “I was ashamed to acknowledge to you that I practiced medicine in India because I abused my position. Farrell approached me, you see.” He coughed once more. “He and his associates told me a miner had escaped with a huge diamond that he’d secreted in a wound in his leg. He’d been given protection by a merchant. They wanted to get their hands on the stone, and in return they would fob the trader off with some fanciful map of the lost diamond fields of Sumbhulpoor.” He paused for breath.
“And the merchant was Sajiv’s father?” asked Thomas.
Carruthers nodded. “Aye. Bava Lakhani.” He lingered over the name. “They asked me to cut open the miner’s leg to retrieve the diamond. I was to stitch it after. The miner could have escaped and no one would have suspected.”
“And in return you were promised a generous share of the sale of the gem?” pressed Thomas.
“Curse me, I was.” He groaned and rubbed his chest.
Thomas could not judge the man. The professor’s physical welfare was his utmost concern. “Sir, you must rest,” he urged him.
Ignoring his advice, however, the professor grew more vexed.
“They were coming for the miner.”
“Who, sir?”
“The nizam’s men. They were armed. There was no time.” His wiry gray head rose from the pillow. “Farrell wanted me to amputate the miner’s leg there and then.”
Thomas suddenly understood the professor’s dilemma. “And you refused?”
Carruthers thrust out his bottom lip. “I may have been a greedy fool, but I was not prepared to hack off a man’s leg and let him bleed to death.” He coughed once more. “Yes, I refused. I refused, and Farrell took a machete to him.” He paused to swallow hard.
Now Thomas understood. “So the miner died, but Farrell let the merchant take the blame for his death and the theft of the diamond.” Suddenly it was all fitting into place. “And the merchant was executed?”
“Pulled to pieces, then crushed by an elephant,” said the professor, the tears now flowing down his cheeks. “And I was responsible.”
Thomas reached for the professor’s hand and patted it. “You cannot blame yourself, sir,” he said, knowing that he was guilty of avarice, not murder.
Carruthers switched his reddening eyes to Thomas. “That was why I offered the boy a home. I have lived with the memory of that execution all these years. I only took Sajiv as my servant to assuage my conscience. He was orphaned because of me. I don’t know when he found out that I shared the guilt. I cannot blame him for wanting me and all those who betrayed his father dead. He called Flynn’s servant a traitor because he used to be his father’s naukar.”
“Did you not suspect him when you saw that word carved on Manjeet’s chest?” Thomas pressed.
Carruthers blinked. “I should have had my doubts, yes, before he killed Flynn and Lupton. But he was like a son to me. I could not conceive that he could be capable of such . . .” He shrugged and sighed. “I suppose each one of us was a gaddar in our own way.”
Thomas understood the professor’s pain. He had been weighed down by guilt for all these years. That was why he tried not to dwell on the past. That was why he wanted to live in the moment. That was why he found solace in opium. He could not face his own demons.
“So you stopped practicing medicine and instead sought to heal your own wounds through the ancient texts?” suggested Thomas.
The professor looked Thomas in the eye and nodded. “The mind is everything. What you think, you become, Dr. Silkstone. That is what the Buddha said, and he is so right.”
Thomas had to agree that what the professor said was true. It did not matter if the words were spoken by the Buddha or by Jesus or by the Prophet Mohammed. It was a universal truth, common to all men. A man’s thoughts frame his character and therefore his actions. “I believe it to be so,” he replied, fixing Carruthers with a sympathetic smile. “And I believe you to be a good man.” He took his hand. “You have paid the price for your misjudgment, and now you must put the past behind you,” Thomas told him. “As the Buddha would say, I believe, ‘Concentrate the mind on the present moment.’ And in this moment, that means you must concentrate on getting better.”
With those words Thomas rose just as the sound of Dr. Carruthers’s walking stick could be heard tapping its way across the landing.
“How fares the patient this morn?” the old anatomist asked, bumbling into the room.
“I am happy to report he is on the mend, sir,” Thomas replied, taking his mentor’s arm and leading him to a chair.
“Then an extra visitor will not go amiss?” a familiar voice sang out from the landing.
Thomas’s head swung toward the door to see Lydia standing at the threshold. He hurried to greet her and swept both her hands up in his. He noted she was wearing long gloves to cover the ugly scabs left by the rope cuts on her wrists. He frowned.
“Have no fear for me, my love,” she whis
pered. “How is the professor?” She jerked her gaze over to the bed, where Dr. Carruthers was patting his brother’s counterpane.
“Physically he is stronger, but mentally . . .”
“Do I hear billing and cooing from the lovebirds?” The old anatomist cupped his hand ’round his ear and laughed. “Over here!” He beckoned Thomas and Lydia to join him. They seated themselves on either side of the foot of the bed.
“So, dear brother, this terrible mystery is over and we can all sleep easy in our beds again, eh?” He tapped his stick on the floorboards. “And to think we had a murderer staying under our very roof!” The old anatomist shook his head in disbelief.
“Are we not forgetting something?” asked Lydia.
“What might that be, my dear?”
Thomas knew exactly what she meant. He intervened. “The reason why four men were not just murdered, sir. They were tortured before they were cruelly put to death.”
“Ah!” Dr. Carruthers nodded. “You mean the map, dear boy.”
“Indeed I do, sir. The ancient Sanskrit map that holds the key to the untapped diamond fields.”
Lydia agreed. “That was the reason my bedchamber was ransacked, and the reason poor Professor Carruthers was subjected to his ordeal.”
The professor shook his head. “Not so, I fear, my lady.”
“Tosh, Oliver. What are you saying?!” huffed the old anatomist, slapping the counterpane.
His brother was, however, adamant. “There never was a map.”
“What?” interjected the old anatomist.
