The woods loomed before me, the thicket from which Edwin and I had burst, all the starkly bare-limbed beeches and the forbidding pines near to the edge of the ravine, and I did not want to die where Edwin had, could not stop my skin from crawling when I felt his unmoving stare pinned to my face.
“Then you know I have faced hardship,” I insisted. “I will tell you more, something I have never deliberately told anyone: I am your equal in infamy. I have murdered—more than once. I can lie for you, only tell me what your reasons were.”
“You suppose a false confession will save you?”
This, of all strokes, was surely deliberately arranged by God to needle me.
“It isn’t fal—”
“Never mind. I will tell you anyhow what my motives were,” Garima Kaur added, and I could sense the gathering snow as the avalanche gained speed, hurtling towards the ravine. “I killed David Lavell because had he never existed, we should all be at peace. I maintained ties with John Clements because thereby I kept my finger on the pulse of the activities of Augustus Sack and Jack Ghosh. I killed John Clements because, imbecile though he was, he knew enough about my movements to grow suspicious after I forged the letter. And I forged the letter because—”
“Garima! And can that possibly be Miss Stone?”
I could have collapsed at the sound of that voice—indeed, I staggered, and Garima Kaur gasped.
We turned as one animal to see Sardar Singh. He seemed puzzled but delighted at the sight of me and said something in Punjabi to Garima Kaur, who had clearly masked the knife in the fold of her skirts upon the instant she heard him call from behind us.
She answered readily enough; but I, much closer to her, could see that her hands shook, and knew that what had previously been a perilous situation was now absolutely a deadly one.
“Miss Stone!” Mr. Singh exclaimed. “What a happy moment I seem to have chosen for a long winter’s walk. I have passed many a frank hour in Charles’s company since you departed, but had hardly hoped you would return after you sent no forwarding address. Welcome home—or so I hope you think of it.”
Garima Kaur aimed a painted puppet’s smile at him even as her eyes flooded with tears.
Not long after my mother’s death I had a nightmare I actually remembered, the screaming sort which led Taylor to single me out in the Reckoning: a creature came to the doorstep of our cottage, and I knew without seeing, as one does in dreams, that it was a rabbit, and I picked up the small animal thinking to pet its fur. Only after I had lifted it did I realise that it had already been skinned by a hunter, and begun to be butchered as well; deep knife marks were scored along the spine, and only half its head remained, as if the brains had been reserved to tan the pelt. Though it moved as if alive, nuzzling my chest, I knew it must be in unfathomable pain, and I awoke shrieking about needing to kill something because in the dream I had no proper weapon.
I had not thought of that nightmare in years; but Garima Kaur’s expression brought it immediately to mind.
“Mr. Singh,” said I, stepping two paces away from her.
“Whatever is the matter?” he asked, frowning. “Have I interrupted you?” These questions were followed by what I assumed was the Punjabi equivalent.
Garima Kaur waited to see what I would say, her attention flicking rapidly between us.
For the first time in my life, I decided that truth was preferable.
“She speaks English,” I announced. “Very well indeed, and she has the treasure—look in the garret of the cottage, under the false bottom in the crate of records.”
Several expressions fought for supremacy on Mr. Singh’s face, the winner proving disbelief. “Miss Stone, I cannot imagine—”
“You don’t have to; you can find it yourself. She wanted to protect your sister’s fortune, but now there are Company soldiers in the village, Mr. Quillfeather is keeping them at bay, and she killed David Lavell in Amritsar all those years ago. I know you won’t mourn him, but she’s the reason Sack was here—she sent him a letter in your name.”
Garima Kaur’s fleshless face reacted not at all to my betraying her secrets, but she swayed slightly. I had told only a fraction of what I knew, and only what I thought Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield might forgive. Slanting my gaze, I willed her to understand me.
I will never tell them you killed John Clements, nor that you sent Jack Ghosh—not if you and I can both survive this.
Sardar Singh stood there motionless, taking in my words with eyes wide; I saw the exact moment when he believed me, for he flinched. Then I remembered that—unlike Mr. Thornfield, who seemed to expect trouble to find him magnetically—Mr. Singh had always known that the key to the conundrum lay in how Mr. Sack came to be at Highgate House in the first place.
The fact of his being here was, I agree, the greatest mystery of all.
“Garima, is what Miss Stone says accurate?”