A MALE CLERK MET THEM in the outer office. “Mrs.
Grenville-Smith, the Inspector would like to speak to Miss Pritchard alone.”
“I can’t allow that,” Jeannie said. “Miss Pritchard is a minor, under my protection. Tell the Inspector if he needs to question her, it has to be in my presence.”
Faced with this determined memsahib, the young clerk looked flustered. “But I must insist . . . ”
“And so must I,” said Jeannie. “You will please tell the Inspector . . . ”
Sophie stood up, smoothed down her skirt, put up a hand to straighten her hair. “Jeannie, it’s all right. I don’t mind. I’ll talk to him. You’ll wait for me here?”
“Yes, of course, but Sophie . . . ”
“I’m eighteen,” said Sophie. “I’m not a child any more, Jeannie. I’m able to do this.”
“Miss Pritchard, I’ve asked you back today, because I have a few more questions.”
Sophie waited. Her chest was so tight with tension it was hard to breathe.
The Inspector made a show of shuffling some papers on his desk. “In examining our files we have come across some interesting connections. Miss Pritchard, I believe you are familiar with the name Alexandra David Neel?”
Alexandra? Sophie gave a start of surprise. What had Alexandra, in her mountain hideaway, to do with any of this? But the inspector, steely-eyed and impassive, was waiting for an answer. “Yes, of course,” she said.
“And you are aware that she is a close friend of Mrs. Grenville-Smith? That in fact they have known each other since their youth?”
Why is he asking me this?
“You are aware of that, Miss Pritchard?”
Sophie nodded.
“Answer aloud, if you please.”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“And were you aware that in Paris Madame David-Neel associated with known anarchists — was in all probability herself an anarchist?”
Sophie’s stomach twisted. Nausea rose in her throat. It’s not enough to accuse Darius. He’s drawing Alexandra into this. And Jeannie is Alexandra’s friend.
When Sophie remained silent, the Inspector gave her a narrow look. “You prefer not to reply? Then I must assume the answer is yes. So, Miss Pritchard. One more question and you can go.”
Sophie waited, holding her breath.
“Are you familiar with the name Mrs. Annie Besant?”
“No,” she started to say. Then she remembered. Tea with Major Bradley, the conversation turning to Indian politics, and the demands for home rule. A rabble rouser, Tom had called Annie Besant. A potentially dangerous woman, the major had said.
“I may have heard her name mentioned.”
“I’m sure you have, Miss Pritchard. “Her name is all over the newspapers, with her plan for a Home Rule League. If you tell me you don’t know the woman, then I say you are being less than truthful.”
Suddenly she was angry. No longer frightened and indignant but seized by a rage that made her heart pound in her rib cage, her face grow hot and flushed.
“Inspector Grey. I don’t lie. My parents taught me at all costs to tell the truth. So I am telling the truth when I say that whatever absurd conspiracies you may have imagined — or invented — there is no substance to any of them.”
She knew her voice was rising, growing shrill, and she struggled to control it. She must speak coolly and deliberately.
She must sound as serenely self-confident as Jeannie did in her haughtiest memsahib moments.
She said, “Jean Grenville-Smith is a woman of impeccable reputation. To suggest that she has anarchist connections is insulting and ridiculous, and whatever you may have against Mrs. Besant, she has never been an associate of Mrs. Grenville-Smith’s. In fact, the two have never met.”
She was running out of breath; her heart went on thudding painfully in her chest, and she could feel her voice growing hoarse and scratchy. But she had to finish. “And Darius Mehta? He is a brave, loyal friend, and a scholar. I doubt that he has much interest in politics, let alone any involvement.”
“And you assure me, Miss Pritchard, that neither he nor you had previous knowledge of this plot to bomb the monument? You’re asking me to believe that you based your warning on some sort of intuition?”
“Yes,” she said. “As I have already told you . . . ”
“Yes. So you did. The gardener, and the fuse no one else saw. And have you had these . . . inklings . . . on other occasions?”
She hesitated, torn for a dreadful moment between her need to save Darius, and her fear of what official secrets she might reveal.
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes. As one does.”
“I see,” said the inspector, who by his expression clearly did not see at all. “Does one, indeed? Then if I asked you to tell me which batsman is going to score the most runs in next Sunday’s test match, you could tell me?”
“Of course I couldn’t.”
“Then Miss Pritchard, I find it difficult to believe you did not obtain the information in some more conventional way.”
She had tried for so long to smother her anger at the pride and arrogance and casual injustices of the Raj. And now to face the accusations of this cold eyed, mean spirited little man . . .
“You have it all wrong, Inspector. This web you are trying to spin — and I can’t imagine your reason — there is not a thread of truth in any of it.”
And then, appalled at what she was about to say, even before the words were out: “My father when he was alive was a cabinet minister, and my mother was the daughter of a Viscount. When I discover who your superiors are, I mean to report you as a liar and a bully.”
Inspector Smith had the look (as Sophie was to remember later) of a stoat unexpectedly bitten by the rabbit he had meant to seize in his jaws.
Only when she was back in familiar surroundings did Sophie realize the depth of her exhaustion. She felt as drained as if she were recovering from an illness. Tom, seeing her shiver, stirred up the sitting room fire.
“You were very brave,” he told her, “to face that interrogation alone.”
“Oh, Tom,” she said, “I was not brave at all. And I did something really foolish.”
Tom set down his Scotch whisky and water and regarded her with raised brows.
“I told him that my father was a cabinet minister and my mother was a Viscount’s daughter. I said I would report him to his superiors. Was that awful of me, Tom?”
“Not a bit of it,” said Tom. “Men like him are easily cowed by titles, and when you have to deal with them, you use whatever weapons you have at hand. I dare say Inspector Smith looked you up in Debrett’s Guide to the Peerage and found your father in the parliamentary records, and when he saw you were telling the truth, he asked himself how many important people he had managed to offend.”
“But Tom, couldn’t I be charged under the Defense of India Act?”
“My dear child, for what?”
“I threatened an agent of the Raj.”
Tom laughed. “Your agent of the Raj is a little man, Sophie, of no importance, with ambitions beyond his abilities, and he’s concocted this conspiracy theory in the hope of promotion. I think you have thoroughly routed him.”
“But what of Darius? He’s still in prison.”
“But not for long. There was never any real evidence against him — he was merely the first link in Inspector Smith’s confabulations. Now Smith will back down, and Darius will be released. He has you to thank for that, Sophie.”
“But I was the one who involved him in all this. I was the first link in the chain.”
“Which, from what you’ve told us,” said Jeannie, “went on to involve me, and Alexandra, and probably Tom, and — heaven help us — Annie Besant. So we all of us thank you, Sophie Pritchard, for standing up to the bully. You’ve saved us a good deal of embarrassment.”