The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [254]
The motive had been a very simple one. He had merely been looking at things the wrong way round, and it had taken the sight of Hira Lal's earring to set his brain working clearly. Now, suddenly, it was as though he had been presented with a mirror, and facing it, could make sense at last of something that had hitherto confused him because it had been written backwards…
Biju Ram had no interest at all in Anjuli-Bai, nor had he recognized, in Pelham-Sahib, the little boy who had once been the butt of his cruel jokes. He had meant to kill Ash for precisely the same reason that Janoo-Rani had meant to kill Ashok – because he had interfered, and was interfering, with a plot to assassinate the heir. It was as simple as that – and he had not seen it because he had been blinded by a preconceived idea.
Knowing that Biju Ram had been in the late Rani's pay for many years, and that it was she herself who had appointed him a member of Jhoti's personal suite, Ash had persisted in thinking of him as the Nautch-girl's creature – and Jhoti was the Nautch-girl's son. So, if it came to that, was Nandu. But then, if rumour was true, Nandu had murdered his mother and later (this at least was true, for there were a number of witnesses to prove it) he had quarrelled violently with Biju Ram. The enmity between them had reached such proportions that when Nandu had refused to allow his young brother to accompany the bridal party to Bhithor, Biju Ram had taken it upon himself to incite Jhoti to defy the order and escape, and had then metaphorically burned his boats by personally accompanying the runaway.
Taking all these events into consideration (and bearing in mind that Biju Ram was, in truth, about as trustworthy as a scorpion) Ash had decided that his old enemy was involved in a plot to have Nandu either murdered or deposed and replaced by Jhoti – who on account of his age would for some years be only a puppet ruler, and therefore could be used by the plotters to further their own ends and feather their own nests. It had seemed a reasonable assumption, since it fitted in with all the known facts – except one that Ash, from his knowledge of Biju Ram, should not have missed: that Biju Ram had always known on which side his bread was buttered, and that the moment – it became clear that Nandu, and not the Nautch-girl, was going to be the real power in the state, he would have lost no time in changing his allegiance.
Looked at in this light, the pattern altered like the design in a kaleidoscope when the tube is twisted. The same pieces were there, but in a different order, and Ash saw now why there had had to be a loud and public quarrel, and why Jhoti had been refused permission to leave Karidkote and then allowed to escape. And why no one had been sent after him to fetch him back.
‘I should have seen it before,’ thought Ash bitterly, which was true enough, for the reasons were perfectly clear and would have been all along if only he had taken the trouble to question the evidence instead of accepting it at its face value. It was no consolation to realize that others had been equally gulled, for he, of all people, should have known better – and if this was what falling in love did to one, then perhaps there was something to be said after all for the official view, so infuriatingly expressed by his Commanding Officer and Major Harlowe when he had wanted to marry Belinda, that any junior officer who allowed himself to ‘lose his head over a petticoat’ was no use to the army and had better retire from active service and grow