“Yes, Charles, we kept horses and hounds once, but now . . .” Mr. Singh trailed off, exasperated.
“It’s not about the money!” A pause occurred, and Mr. Thornfield’s voice was calmer thereafter. “No, no, this blasted huge draughty English house is . . .” I bristled. “This house is wild and weird and cold, bloody cold and wonderful. Sahjara loves it, and I am finding it ever more charming that my bollocks clack against my teeth when I piss.”
“Are you? My bollocks have not yet quite got accustomed to making the leap past my kidneys.”
“But now Highgate House is ours, you understand that Sack will never stop,” Mr. Thornfield ended in a much lower tone. “I told him I inherited it, but he must not have believed me. He must have thought we still have the trunk, that I bought the estate. What else could explain it?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Singh confessed. “The fact of his being here was, I agree, the greatest mystery of all.”
Briefly, I heard only the crackling of the fire; when Mr. Thornfield spoke next, it was almost too deep and too soft to catch.
“Sardar, if I have arrived at the point where I think experimenting with Sahjara’s brains is reasonable, then perhaps it’s best if—”
“No,” Mr. Singh said calmly.
“No?” Mr. Thornfield’s voice grew ever more serrated. “You don’t even—”
“No, you are not embarking upon a crazed quest to murder Augustus Sack, who has assured us that the entire scandal will come out via any one of a dozen solicitors if we so much as touch him. Neither are you murdering a dozen solicitors.”
“So the scandal comes out? Who is affected?” Mr. Thornfield had risen, for I could hear his boots striking the carpet. “This is a Company affair. Sack dies mysteriously, my shame is aired for all to see, I throw myself upon the mercy of the Director and face some sort of court-martial and five or ten years in gaol, and—”
“And you still miss Sahjara’s entire childhood, emerging broken by hard labour with a ruined constitution.”
“Is that worse than perennial torment?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t be here, and she needs you.” Mr. Singh sounded three shades beyond exhausted. “I need you, for God’s sake.”
Mr. Thornfield sat, breathing hard.
“Mark me,” Mr. Singh said carefully. “That you want to go to gaol for a crime we both committed long ago, simply to save the rest of us, is both typically thickheaded and typically noble. However, you are not thinking this through. Who was your accomplice when you committed the deed?”
“You were,” Mr. Thornfield said testily.
“Now. Supposing the Company doesn’t actually want to tar and feather you? The white prodigy raised in Lahore who journeyed back on their commission and was rushed through Addiscombe to do so, they were so eager?”
“Well—”
“Why, yes, Charles, I believe the Director would find a scapegoat if he didn’t want to sully the papers with ill repute of the Company.”
Mr. Thornfield thought this over, shifting in his seat.
“I wonder who might suit.”
After a longer pause, Mr. Thornfield admitted, “You are rather brown.”
“How brown am I, Charles? Take a good long look now.”
“Darkish, though a sight short of black.”
I did not know what they had done, of course; but my heart gave a rabbity leap at the thought of Sahjara without either of them. As self-sufficient a child as she was, she fed off love as if she were a walking siphon, and both Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh quietly, almost without gesture and never with words, delivered the substance to her in staggering quantities.
“All right, throwing myself upon my sword is out,” Mr. Thornfield said pettishly. “Your advice is loathsome, Sardar, and it dis-endears me to you.”
“So often the way with advice,” Mr. Singh muttered.
“Well, I think it’s deuced unfair, really.” Mr. Thornfield lightened the tone. “Sack seeing me at the funeral by accident when I’d no idea he was in England at all seems like cheating.”
“It is regrettable, though it does not entirely explain his swaggering into our home with such complete confidence. Thankfully we have both been upon our guard—”
“Of course we’ve been on our guard! But the die is cast. And a sight too soon after arriving here, if you ask me.”
“Undoubtedly.” I heard the sound of a vesta being struck. “I meant to take up cricket.”
Mr. Thornfield snorted, then guffawed, and then the pair of them wheezed together as I leant against the wall, smiling.
“Oh, I don’t know what to do.” Mr. Thornfield sighed as the laughter faded.
“Fight back,” Mr. Singh said. A chair creaked. “The same as we always do.”
“And to think that if the good Sam Quillfeather hadn’t posted me, we should never have known John Clements had died at all. It’s a hard push whether to be grateful or vengeful.”