It was tantalizing to think there were probably only two people in the world who knew what had happened on the night Mr Griffiths died, and I’d been standing the width of a doorstep away from one of them. There must be some way of speaking to Anil, but I couldn’t think of one. By next morning I’d decided to forget that approach for a while and try some other way. I walked to Piccadilly and took the omnibus to the City of London. The house where Mr Griffiths had lived so briefly looked just the same, with no sign of any new tenant. Perhaps the men from the Company were still keeping it locked up. I walked past and glanced down into the basement. The porter was outside, filling a coal scuttle with his back to me. I was glad about that, because I wasn’t sure whether I believed his story about sleeping too deeply to have heard anything on the night of Mr Griffiths’s death. If he’d been bribed to say nothing, he was in the enemy camp and would certainly be suspicious of a second visit from me. The house on the left looked a long time empty, with shutters over the windows. The one on the other side was inhabited, with a maid in a mob-cap cleaning the downstairs windows. She gave me a long look as I passed, glad of any distraction from her work. The place had a buttoned-up look about it that was useless for my purpose. I needed to find somebody who might talk to a stranger.
Then the gods sent me just what I needed in the shape of two Dandie Dinmont terriers. They came down the steps of a house opposite, along with a Dalmatian, the leads of all three of them in the hands of a middle-aged woman. Just stepping out of her front door on a calm spring day, she managed somehow to look windswept. You could tell she was a country and not a city person. She wore a cape of rusty-looking black wool, a plain bonnet with the ribbons tied unevenly and ankle-length black boots. I liked the look of her, and the dogs even more. When she turned right and walked briskly along the pavement, I fell in behind them, not close enough to be obtrusive but keeping them easily in view. They seemed to be making for a small square with a few plane trees. I was relying on one of the great laws of the natural world: that two terriers of any breed can’t go more than four hundred yards without causing trouble. I was wrong. By my reckoning it was closer to five hundred yards before it happened.
They’d almost reached an open gateway into the square when a manservant with a spaniel approached from the opposite direction. The well-trained Dalmatian pretended they didn’t exist, but the two terriers set up a barking like stones rattling into a tin bath. The manservant can’t have been concentrating because the spaniel twitched the lead out of his hand and made straight for the terriers. By now they were racing in circles on their leads, spinning their owner like a top and tangling with the Dalmatian. She almost fell and, in saving herself, dropped one of the leads. The spaniel and the liberated terrier turned into one sphere of fur that whirled and growled while the other terrier yelped blue murder, struggling to join in the fight, and the Dalmatian started barking. Both the woman and the manservant were yelling at their dogs without effect. As soon as I saw how things were developing, I’d started unfastening my cloak. I hurried up to the spinning dogs and dropped it over them. It brought them to a halt just long enough for the manservant to grab the larger dog. He lifted the spaniel, still swaddled in my cloak. The terrier, clinging with its teeth to the hem of it, was snatched off its feet. I moved in and caught it. It came away, still snarling, with part of my cloak lining in its teeth. One of its ears was bleeding.
‘Crispin, you worm,’ the woman said to it.
I untangled the lead from round the terrier’s legs and restored it to her.
‘I don’t think he’s badly hurt,’ I said.
She inspected the ear. ‘Nothing that can’t be cured.’
The manservant, standing at a safe distance, had unwrapped the spaniel which also seemed largely undamaged. He held out my cloak. I fetched it and walked back to the woman.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Your poor cloak.’
I told her not to worry about it, though part of the hem and lining were torn. I only hoped it would be worth the sacrifice.
‘It really was uncommonly resourceful of you,’ she said. ‘How lucky you came to be there. I’m so sorry. It’s London, you see. They’re not used to it.’
So I’d guessed right. By the time we were back at her doorstep, with me leading the combatant terrier and she the other two dogs, I’d learned that her name was Miss Sand, she was from Kent, spending time in London nursing her sick brother, a lawyer, that he was on the road to recovery and not a moment too soon for her. She’d learned from me my name and the fact – which was true – that I had a friend who bred Dandie Dinmonts.
‘You positively must come in for a sherry,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
The maid who opened the door to us was sent for sherry, dilute carbolic and cotton gauze. They arrived on a tray together and the girl went away with my cloak to brush.
Miss Sand poured generous glasses of what turned out to be good dry sherry, tucked the terrier under her arm and efficiently bathed its ear. I asked if she liked this part of London. As much as she liked any of it, she said. It was quiet at least.
‘A relative of mine knew the gentleman opposite,’ I said. ‘The one who died.’
I liked her and had decided not to lie to her.
‘How dreadful. The man who killed himself? Did you know him?’
‘I met him twice. Did you see him at all?’
‘No, but then he’d only just moved in, hadn’t he? Somebody said he’d come over from India.’
‘Yes.’
‘He was lonely perhaps, poor man. If my brother had been well, I’m sure he’d have gone across and left his card. Not that it would have helped much, I suppose.’
‘Did he get many visitors?’
‘Not that I saw, but then our sitting room and my brother’s bedroom are out at the back.’
So I’d sacrificed my cloak in vain. Then she sipped her sherry and thought about it.
‘Except for the Indian man.’
I nearly spilled my sherry.
‘Indian man?’
‘Yes. It was quite extraordinary. A brougham drew up and this Indian got out, quite like any gentleman paying a visit, except he was dressed all in white and had this – what is it you call it? – turban round his head.’
‘And he went into the house opposite?’
‘Yes. Another Indian, only a boy, opened the door to him. It looked as if the Indian man was giving the boy a card in quite the normal way. Then he waited on the step for a few minutes and the boy opened the door again and let him in.’
‘When was this?’
‘The Saturday night. It was on the Monday morning that we heard the poor gentleman was dead.’
‘Late at night?’
‘No. It can’t have been late because it was still quite light. Half light at any rate.’
‘Did he stay long?’
‘I don’t know. I looked out about half an hour later and the brougham was still there, but my brother wanted to play cards so I didn’t see when it went. My brother said if the gentleman opposite came from India, he might have an Indian butler. Are there Indian butlers?’
‘Did you see the man again?’
‘No. Of course, there were a lot of comings and goings from the house once they’d found the poor gentleman, but I never saw the Indian man again.’
‘Nor the boy?’
‘No.’
Miss Sand was looking surprised at my questioning. Not wanting to be trapped in explanations, I turned the conversation back to dogs and escaped as soon as politely possible. She thanked me again and urged me to call on her if I was ever near her village in Kent.
I took the omnibus back, wondering what to do with this unexpected piece of information. There was no reasonable doubt that the Indian man who’d called on Mr Griffiths and the unexpected arrival at his funeral pyre were one and the same man. A second Indian gentleman, living in the cottage once occupied by Mr Griffiths and employing his servant boy, would be too much of a coincidence, so the same man again. And a man who had a great deal of explaining to do. The certainty that McPherson, or one of his agents, was responsible for Mr Griffiths’s death was beginning to crumble. Above all, I needed to know more about that household out at Richmond and couldn’t see how to set about it. With nobody else available, it looked as if I’d have to do the job of observing it myself. I walked into Abel Yard turning over various desperate ideas, like disguising myself as an elderly woman selling apples, wishing heartily that Tabby were there to take on a task she did so much better. Then, for the second time in the day, the gods were good. There she was, standing just inside the gateway talking to the urchin leader, Plush.
Goodness knows what the conversation was about. Both looked guilty when they saw me and Tabby was a hair’s breadth from bolting.
‘I need you,’ I told her. ‘I have a job for you.’
She followed me reluctantly to the bottom of my stairs. I guessed that if I started questioning her about where she’d been, she’d be away as quickly as a cat. The best hope was to hold her interest.
‘There’s a young Indian boy I think may have been kidnapped. He’s in a house out at Richmond with an Indian gentleman. We need to find a way of speaking to him on his own.’
A glimmer of interest in her eyes, though her face was still sullen. She was wearing her respectable grey dress but her standards of cleanliness had slumped; hair dull and dirty, shoes scuffed.
‘We’ll get the next coach out to Richmond and I’ll show you what’s to be done,’ I said.
We stayed long enough for her to wolf down the cold beef sandwich I brought her and to collect her cloak from her cabin. That was my suggestion, because her appearance meant we’d be riding on the outside of the coach. When we got down at Richmond the sullen expression was still in place.
‘That’s the cottage over there,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go any closer, because they might recognize me. If you . . .’
A carriage went past at a walk. It was an ordinary brougham of the sort that might come from a livery stables. Nothing remarkable about it at all, except for the flash of white from inside. A white turban.
‘Oh confound it.’
I turned away as quickly as I could, hoping the person inside hadn’t noticed us. We watched as it went on then passed out of sight near the cottage.
‘He’s going home,’ I said. ‘I wonder where he’s been.’
‘That the man what’s kidnapped the boy?’
‘Probably, yes.’
Her grammar had slipped too, but at least she was showing some interest. I explained the nearest thing I had to a plan.
‘We need to know if he has a regular routine for going out and coming back, and whether the boy ever goes with him. There’s at least one Indian woman in the house, probably two. Do they ever go out and are there any servants apart from the boy? Once we know that, we can work how to approach him.’
She nodded. I seldom had to explain anything to Tabby twice.
‘So we’ll go home and I’ll book a place on the first coach back here for you tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘The sooner you start, the better.’
She gave me a cool look.
‘What do I need to go back for? It’s here I’m supposed to be, isn’t it?’
‘But you’ve got nowhere to stay.’
Looking as she did, there’d be no room at an inn for the likes of Tabby.
‘I’ll find somewhere. Any road, I’ll be watching all night as well, won’t I?’
‘The day should do. They must sleep sometimes.’
‘No point if I don’t.’
I was going to protest and insist on taking her back with me, but it struck me that this would be the certain way of losing her again. By the look of her, she’d gone back to her old habits, sleeping in whatever nooks or crannies she could find. At least this way I knew approximately where she was and what she was doing.
‘Very well, but I want you to come back and report to me tomorrow evening. Will you do that?’
A brief nod.
‘And whatever you do, don’t approach any of them directly and try not to be noticed.’
Another nod. I put a couple of half-crowns into her hand for food and the fare and began walking back to the inn for the coach to town. After a few dozen yards I turned to look back at her, but she’d already disappeared.
My brother arrived the following evening, heavy-eyed. He’d spent his spare time at the Suters’ house, reading Mr Griffiths’s manuscript.
‘I can hardly believe it, Libby. It’s not the man I knew.’
‘You knew an old man. He was younger then.’
‘Not so very young with that business of the princess. About twenty years ago.’
‘He was thirty or so. That’s not so old for a man to fall in love,’ I said.
‘It would have been treason, encouraging mutiny in the Company’s army.’
‘Would it, legally speaking? It’s not the same as the British army.’
‘Pretty much the same thing. At the very least, gross disloyalty.’
‘To a Company that had behaved very badly.’
‘They were hard times, Libby, not like now.’
‘I wonder. In his place, would you have behaved very differently?’
He stared at the fire. I waited, dreading his answer would widen the distance between us. It came as a relief.
‘Probably not, in some ways. I hope I’d have tried to stop the war, as he did.’
‘Good.’
‘But it’s the business with the woman that’s surprising. I can’t believe he let himself be led by the nose like that.’
‘She was beautiful and wronged. That’s a powerful combination.’
‘Even so.’
I looked at him while he went on frowning at the fire. So my little brother hadn’t fallen in love yet. He’d learn.
‘That aside, what did you make of the business of The Merchant and The Soldier?’ I said.
‘The Merchant’s Alexander McPherson, that’s obvious.’
‘And The Soldier?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s why it might be interesting to look through the Company army records. Have you had a chance yet?’
‘When I’ve almost worn my eyes out on Griffiths’s pamphlet? There’s a whole shelf of army records. It will take weeks. Does it matter?’
An impression of a soldierly-looking man on a grey horse seemed too shadowy to mention.
‘Mr Griffiths seems to imply that The Merchant and The Soldier may have been in some sort of conspiracy,’ I said. ‘At least, there’s a hint that it might have been more than coincidence that they were in the principality at the same time.’
‘Griffiths was as good as accusing them of stealing the prince’s jewel collection.’
‘The collection that the thieves missed in Bombay and that McPherson has probably brought with him to sell in London.’
‘We don’t know it’s one and the same. A man like McPherson would pick up jewels all over the place.’
‘What about that hawk? We know some of the prince’s pieces were in animal shapes.’
‘There are a lot of jewels in India.’
But Tom said it without much conviction.
‘I have it on good authority that McPherson is depending on those jewels for his financial survival,’ I said. Tom opened his mouth to ask how I knew so I pressed on quickly. ‘Any hint that they’re not legally his to dispose of might have a disastrous effect on his credit. No wonder he and his cronies wanted to stop Mr Griffiths’s pamphlet going into circulation.’
‘To the extent of killing him?’ Tom said.
He didn’t sound so sceptical about it now. It was ironical that he was working himself round to a position just as I was close to abandoning it.
‘Except I’m not sure now that McPherson and his friends did kill him,’ I said.
‘So suicide after all?’ Tom said.
He started running his fingers through his hair, then clamped them together on the top of his head as if he feared his brain might explode. I told him about the visit of the Indian man the evening before Mr Griffiths died.
‘It’s the same man we saw by the river, it must be,’ I said. ‘And he’s got Anil with him.’
‘Anil wouldn’t have left Griffiths willingly,’ Tom said. ‘The boy was devoted to him. I can’t believe he’d see Griffiths killed and go away with his murderer.’
‘So did this man take him away by force?’
‘I don’t see any other way. If you’re sure it was Anil . . .’
‘I am.’
‘. . . then I’d better go out to Richmond tomorrow and insist on talking to him. At the very least, he’s a beneficiary under Griffiths’s will and I should speak to him about that.’
‘I don’t think you should do that until we know more,’ I said.
I was about to explain about keeping the cottage under observation when several thunderous knocks sounded on the door at the bottom of the stairs and feet came clumping up. Tabby arriving to report. I wished I’d had a chance to prepare Tom beforehand. After another perfunctory knock on my study door she stamped into the middle of the room, oblivious of Tom.
‘I think he might of killed him.’
Even I was stunned. Tom stared at her, mouth open. She was even more dishevelled than when I’d left her the day before, the hem of her skirt trailing, hair flopping down with wisps of hay clinging to it.
‘Who?’
‘The boy. The Indian boy you wanted to talk to. I reckon they killed him last night, after they seen us together.’
‘Explain, Tabby,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. ‘In order, please.’
I dared not look at Tom. Tabby took a deep breath.
‘I did like you said. By the time I got near the house, the Indian man had gone in and the carriage had gone off somewhere. There’s a tree near their garden. You can see the side window from there. The man was inside. I could see him from the white things he was wearing. He was walking up and down and looked as if he was talking to somebody. When it started getting dark, a woman inside lit a lamp. Foreign, she was. Dark, like the man.’
‘Young or old?’
‘Old. Before it got really dark, the man came out and walked round the house, as if he was making sure nobody was watching. I saw him first and got behind the tree. Then the boy opened the front door to him and he went inside.’
Tom, leaning forward, snapped a question.
‘The Indian boy, you mean?’
She gave him one of her stares, then looked at me to see whether she should answer.
‘He’s my brother,’ I said. ‘So was it the Indian boy?’
‘He looked Indian and he was wearing one of them things on his head, like the man.’
‘Did the man say or do anything to him?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘Did the boy look scared?’
She shook her head. ‘Just ordinary.’
‘What happened then?’
‘They drew the curtains so I couldn’t see inside no more. I seen there was a woodshed at the back of the house, and I thought if I had to stay somewhere for the night, I might as well stay there. So I pushed the logs about to make a space to sit and left the door a bit open so I could see out. I’d see anybody if they came out the back door. If anybody came out of the front door, I’d hear it open. Anyway, quite a bit after that I heard them quarrelling inside.’
‘Who was quarrelling?’
‘The man and the woman. She was the one you could hear most of, but she was talking foreign. She sounded annoyed. He was answering but his voice was lower.’
‘And the boy, could you hear him?’ Tom said.
This time she condescended to answer him.
‘He never said anything. Not the whole time.’
‘So why do you say you think he was killed?’
‘After they’d been arguing for a bit, there was this sort of wooden-sounding crash, as if somebody had been knocked downstairs. Then everything went quiet. A bit after that, they put the lamps out. In the morning, as soon as it was light, the man came out and walked all round the house again, looking out for something. The woman was inside, standing at the window. No sign of the boy. The man had to open the door for himself.’
‘And on that evidence, you conclude that the boy’s been killed.’
Relief at this unconvincing conclusion had turned Tom sarcastic and pompous again. She glared at him.
‘You should wait for the end of it. I went on watching, then I heard the front door open and a carriage drawing up outside. Still early, it was, nobody about. The Indian man goes up the path and says something to the driver, then they both go inside. A bit later, the driver and the Indian come out and they’re carrying a big wooden box between them. They push it in on the floor of the carriage, then the Indian man gets in with it, the driver gets back up and they drive off.’ She turned to me. ‘I left it too late to get up on the back, so I don’t know where they went to.’
‘Big?’ said Tom. ‘How big?’
He didn’t sound sarcastic any more.
‘Big enough to put the boy in easy,’ Tabby said. Then, as an afterthought, ‘If they folded him up a bit that is.’
Tom looked at me, simple appeal on his face. I couldn’t think of anything to console him.
‘I’m afraid she’s sometimes right,’ I said.