Rushing past them, Patrick hurried to the ticket counter. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” he called out the to man behind the glass.
The man pointed to a sign listing all the railway’s destinations. “Where to?”
“No, I’m not buying a ticket.”
He blinked, and started to turn away.
“Wait!” Patrick called, fishing in his pockets for some change and slamming it down on the counter. At the sight of money, the man seemed more willing to listen. “I’m looking for a young woman. She came through here yesterday with an older gentleman and maybe three other men. Do you remember her?”
“No,” the man said, sliding the money through the opening in the glass. “But you can check with the porters, perhaps they can help you.”
Patrick went down the line of porters waiting to load and unload trains as they passed through the station. No one seemed to remember seeing a pretty young English woman no matter how much he paid them.
“Sahib!” The raspy voice of an old, blind beggar-man called out to him. “Sahib!”
Patrick tried to ignore it, but the man grew more and more persistent.
“I know the girl you speak of,” he said.
Taking one look at the man’s blue-clouded eyes and the flies crawling in and out of his nostrils, Patrick dismissed him.
“She dropped a few coins into my bowl,” the old man explained. “As she did so, she took my hand, saying she would pray for me. She was an English woman, but her hands were calloused like a man’s.”
Patrick stopped in his tracks. “What else do you remember?”
“She smelled like jasmine,” the old man said. “And a woman that kind-hearted could not help but be beautiful, Sahib.”
The jasmine water perfume! Patrick dropped to his knees beside the man. “Do you know where she went?”
“Assam, Sahib,” he said. “After the train to Assam, I did not smell jasmine anymore.”
Grinning, Patrick reached into his jacket and pulled his wallet. He crammed a fistful of five-pound notes into the old man’s twisted brown hand. “Take this. Here is twenty pounds. Go home and feed your family.”
“Thank you, Sahib.” The beggar smiled, missing most of his teeth.
Dusting off the knees of his trousers, Patrick went back to the counter and purchased a ticket on the next train leaving for Assam. He had no idea where that was, but if there was a possibility that Linley was headed there, so was he.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Linley fell to the floor of the train and slid across the filthy carpet.
“Oh!” she cried.
Schoville, who had been sitting in the seat beside her, now lay sprawled across her. Her father, Reginald, and Archie bounced in their own row of seats, knocking their heads together.
“Oh!” they all cried, trying to upright themselves in the chaos.
“Are you all right, Button?” Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin asked.
Linley pushed Schoville off of her and scrambled to her feet. She could hear the other passengers’ screaming, the shouts of the train employees as they ran from car to car, and something else—a sound so horrible that her brain could not register it. But the sound did not come from inside the train. It came from outside her window.
“I asked if you were all right, Button,” her father repeated himself, giving her a hard shake. “Can you hear me?”
She nodded, her head still reeling. “I—I’m fine, Papa.”
Schoville helped her back into her seat. His nose bled, and the bright red fluid trickled down his chin. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face and hands. “What in God’s name happened? Did we derail?”
“I don’t know,” Archie said. “But I will go check.”
Before he had time to get up from his seat, a disheveled train employee stopped at their compartment. “I apologize, but we have had an accident,” he explained. “The train has hit a herd of elephants, and we can go no further.”
“Hit a herd of elephants?” Linley asked. So that was the noise she heard—the dying cries of an elephant. “How incredibly tragic.”
“Yes, Memsahib. Very tragic.”
Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin leaned forward in his seat. “So what will we do now?”
“We will reverse to the last station we passed,” the man said. “The locals will not remove the carcasses from the tracks, Sahib. They mourn them.”
Linley thought of those poor elephants and her mind flashed back to the woman at the Derby. She saw her twisted body thrashed beneath the horse’s hooves. She heard the bellows of the elephants just outside her window. She remembered every vivid detail, one accident blurring with another, and she thought she would be sick.
“Excuse me!” she cried as she pushed past the train employee. Linley ran to the lavatory and slammed the door behind her, making it just in time to retch into the toilet. She heaved for a few moments, sobbing. This was a bad omen. She braced her hands on the wall in front of her. A very bad omen.
When she caught her breath, she staggered over to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. Her hands trembled.