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tears. She sipped for a moment at her whisky before answering.
I dont find your response at all strange, Mr Sandilands. I too am able to make an instant judgement about people. I know within minutes whom I am going to like, respect and trust. And you are very perceptive! That song always makes me cry. It has many memories for me. It was taught to me by my first singing master I had a very old-fashioned English country upbringing and he was a young Russian émigré fleeing from the Revolution. He was the penniless son of a Count from Georgia. She laughed. Nothing very special about that; as far as I can see everybody in Georgia is a Count and all penniless and he was trying to accumulate enough money to pay for a passage to America. He was the first glamorous man to come into my life. I was fifteen and ready to fall in love. I fell in love. He went to America. And that was the end of it. At least, not quite the end, because I still sing that song and I still weep.
Her steady gaze had held his while she spoke and Joe was the first to look away.
Your singing master? he said hesitantly. His name was not Feodor Korsovsky by any chance?
She laughed again and shook her head. No, my singing master was a tenor. But I would have liked to meet Feodor Korsovsky. He might have
you will think me very odd to say such a thing, respectable married woman that I am
he might have known, have heard of my tenor, might have been able to give me news of him. Korsovsky was much travelled. He had spent some time in America, I understand. Mr Sandilands, I was
again her intense feelings were clear in her direct look, I was waiting eagerly to meet him. I am devastated that such a talent has been silenced. I will do anything I can to help you catch the man who has done this.
And the man who shot your brother also? said Joe. Mrs Sharpe, forgive my mentioning your previous sorrow but we have reason to believe that the two killings may have been carried out by the same person. They were ambushed in the same place, shot by the same calibre bullets. Can you think of any connection, any connection at all between your brother Lionel and Korsovsky?
She turned from him to the mirror and rubbed absently at a scar running the length of the right side of her face. I have given it much thought. I have no answer for you. What connection could there be but that they were travelling on the same road? There are bandits even in this part of India, you know, Mr Sandilands. Three years ago the train was stopped by a boulder on the line. Five dacoits walked along the line of carriages shooting passengers and robbing them. Carter caught them and there has been no trouble since then but others may try. On the tonga road perhaps.
Faced with his silence, she shook her head and agreed with his thoughts. No, its not likely, is it? I believe, and you will know the truth of this, that no attempt at robbery was made. Very well, heres my serious theory: political killings. You have heard of Amritsar?
Joe nodded. The shooting down of over three hundred peacefully demonstrating Indians by British troops three years earlier in the town of Amritsar had been a scandal that had reverberated throughout India and Britain.
Amritsar is not all that far from here. Someone may be seeking revenge on the British. Any British. My brother with his fair hair would have been an obvious target and Korsovsky looked British from a distance. And last month, she hesitated, wondering how wide Joes knowledge of the Indian political scene might be, last month, you may have heard that Mahatma Ghandi was sent to jail. For six years. On what many consider to be a trumped-up charge. He has many friends in Simla, Mr Sandilands, amongst whom he counts no less than the Viceroy, Lord Reading, and Lady Reading. There are both English and Indians who might try to voice their disapproval of such a sentence in a telling manner.
But Ghandi
I dont find your response at all strange, Mr Sandilands. I too am able to make an instant judgement about people. I know within minutes whom I am going to like, respect and trust. And you are very perceptive! That song always makes me cry. It has many memories for me. It was taught to me by my first singing master I had a very old-fashioned English country upbringing and he was a young Russian émigré fleeing from the Revolution. He was the penniless son of a Count from Georgia. She laughed. Nothing very special about that; as far as I can see everybody in Georgia is a Count and all penniless and he was trying to accumulate enough money to pay for a passage to America. He was the first glamorous man to come into my life. I was fifteen and ready to fall in love. I fell in love. He went to America. And that was the end of it. At least, not quite the end, because I still sing that song and I still weep.
Her steady gaze had held his while she spoke and Joe was the first to look away.
Your singing master? he said hesitantly. His name was not Feodor Korsovsky by any chance?
She laughed again and shook her head. No, my singing master was a tenor. But I would have liked to meet Feodor Korsovsky. He might have
you will think me very odd to say such a thing, respectable married woman that I am
he might have known, have heard of my tenor, might have been able to give me news of him. Korsovsky was much travelled. He had spent some time in America, I understand. Mr Sandilands, I was
again her intense feelings were clear in her direct look, I was waiting eagerly to meet him. I am devastated that such a talent has been silenced. I will do anything I can to help you catch the man who has done this.
And the man who shot your brother also? said Joe. Mrs Sharpe, forgive my mentioning your previous sorrow but we have reason to believe that the two killings may have been carried out by the same person. They were ambushed in the same place, shot by the same calibre bullets. Can you think of any connection, any connection at all between your brother Lionel and Korsovsky?
She turned from him to the mirror and rubbed absently at a scar running the length of the right side of her face. I have given it much thought. I have no answer for you. What connection could there be but that they were travelling on the same road? There are bandits even in this part of India, you know, Mr Sandilands. Three years ago the train was stopped by a boulder on the line. Five dacoits walked along the line of carriages shooting passengers and robbing them. Carter caught them and there has been no trouble since then but others may try. On the tonga road perhaps.
Faced with his silence, she shook her head and agreed with his thoughts. No, its not likely, is it? I believe, and you will know the truth of this, that no attempt at robbery was made. Very well, heres my serious theory: political killings. You have heard of Amritsar?
Joe nodded. The shooting down of over three hundred peacefully demonstrating Indians by British troops three years earlier in the town of Amritsar had been a scandal that had reverberated throughout India and Britain.
Amritsar is not all that far from here. Someone may be seeking revenge on the British. Any British. My brother with his fair hair would have been an obvious target and Korsovsky looked British from a distance. And last month, she hesitated, wondering how wide Joes knowledge of the Indian political scene might be, last month, you may have heard that Mahatma Ghandi was sent to jail. For six years. On what many consider to be a trumped-up charge. He has many friends in Simla, Mr Sandilands, amongst whom he counts no less than the Viceroy, Lord Reading, and Lady Reading. There are both English and Indians who might try to voice their disapproval of such a sentence in a telling manner.
But Ghandi
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