The Game - Laurie R. King [45]
I spent the afternoon immersed in Hindi grammar, deciphering the written letters and trying to make sense of the vocabulary. When my mind began to stutter, I rested it by conjuring coins from mid-air and practising the hand movements of deception, then relaxed with the headlines on that day’s Pioneer. Halfway through the afternoon, the hotel’s shoe-seller came with another selection of footwear, but I dismissed him—gently—after I had examined his ideas of footwear suitable for European ladies.
When he had left, I rang for a cool drink and a map of the country. With commendable promptness I received a pitcher of some sweet, mango-flavoured drink (with no ice) and a crisply folded map of India, which I spread out onto the floor. I sipped and studied and passed the afternoon without too much dwelling on the possibility of snipers’ cross-hairs following my husband’s back, but I will admit that my heart rose when I heard his key enter the lock.
“Thirty years,” were his words of greeting. “Thirty-two years since I was here, during which time the city has gone from Moghul backwater to capital city, and still the same shopkeepers cling to their corners.”
“You had success,” I noted.
“Indeed.”
“And yet your hands bear no parcels.”
“Certainly not. To walk out the door of this particular hotel in native garb would be noteworthy. Better to slip away as ourselves, and drop those identities behind us in the bazaar.”
“You found a bolt-hole?”
“One might call it that,” he prevaricated, and refused to tell me more. Which meant, I was sure, that the place in which we would transform ourselves would be filthy beyond belief.
“When shall we set off?”
“The cook tells me that the night watchman comes in just before midnight, and invariably visits the kitchen for a few minutes upon arrival. An ideal time to make our departure through the back.”
I rose briskly and walked out of the room.
“Russell, where are you going?”
“Holmes, I intend to bath, long and deep. Knowing you, it will be my last opportunity for some days.”
It was, as it turned out, an optimistic judgement.
We dined downstairs, Holmes on roast meat that was billed as beef and I on a dish largely rice, with bits of dried fish. We lingered over the meal, and even allowed our waiter to serve us with apple tart, which proved delicious once it had been dug free from the thick clots of Mrs Bird’s Custard. Coffee and a brandy for Holmes, and we retired up the stairs as if to our beds.
Instead, we prepared for our departure from India’s European community. Between the contents of my luggage that had survived our voyage and a judicious plundering of Holmes’ possessions, I put together a costume that would pass for an Englishman’s in the dark. My hair, as always, was a problem in disguise, and topees were simply Not Worn after sunset; in recognition of this Holmes had brought back with him from the bazaar a cloth cap not too unlike those worn in England by lower-class labourers and upper-class bloods.
We settled to our studies, planning on a couple of hours’ work before our midnight departure. But just past ten-thirty, a time when the floors vibrated with the motion of our neighbours and the hum of guests going past in the corridor was at a peak, a shudder of alarm ran through the building, a shout and a pounding on doors, one after another, working its way rapidly towards us.
We were on our feet in an instant, Holmes hurling objects into his half-packed travel case, me thrusting Nesbit’s papers into an inner pocket and stuffing my bound hair up under the cloth cap. When he saw that I was ready, he tucked the box of magician’s equipment under his arm and cracked open the heavy door, and then finally the cries of an Indian voice came clear:
“Fire! Oah, sahibs must leave in a hurry, we have a fire! No, memsahib, there is no time to gather your items,