The maharani sat back, holding her glass of tea, and gestured towards her granddaughter. “You may continue.”
Anjali bowed her head towards her grandmother. “We realized if the diamond went missing but no one in the house left, then the house would be searched. So we hatched a clever plot to get the diamond out whilst we remained inside.”
“Clever?” The maharani gave her granddaughter an exasperated look. “It was the scheme of melodramatic children.”
“The ghost,” I said. I slanted a look at Lord Bhairav. “I presume that is the role you played?”
He grinned, baring teeth as beautiful as his sister’s. “I made a very good ghost,” he said, raising his arms into a menacing stance. “Were you not frightened by my spectral ball of light?”
“No,” I told him calmly. “But you terrorized the villagers to no end.”
He shrugged. “I gave them a good story to raise their hairs. They will talk of it for generations. Can you guess how I did it?”
“A glass ball with galvanic effects?” Stoker guessed. “Carried against a black robe so it would appear to be floating in midair?”
“Exactly right,” Lord Bhairav said. “But the construction of the orb was Anjali’s doing,” he added with apparent pride in his sister.
“Of course!” I exclaimed, turning to Anjali. “We spoke at length about Galvani and Volta when I visited the observatory. But your interest is not merely theoretical, is it?”
“My scientific studies,” she said modestly. “My speciality is electrical fields. Bhairav and I had to meet occasionally to discuss matters, and I could not always get away at convenient times. And, of course,” she added with a wry smile, “we did not want the villagers to note a man of Indian appearance upon the moors. So we met at night, a treacherous proposition for him since the moorland is full of dangers. I developed the orb as a sort of lantern to guide his way across the moors, but also to frighten the local folk should they see him. We could not risk anyone seeing him close and asking questions.”
Another piece of the puzzle slotted neatly into place. “You stayed with Nanny Burnham in her cottage on the moor, did you not?” I asked Lord Bhairav. “I heard someone moving about when I called upon her. She told me it was the cat, but the cat was sleeping on the hearth.”
“Nanny Burnham was forcibly retired by Mary Hathaway,” Anjali volunteered. “Not refined enough to teach her children, she said. So it was not hard for Effie to persuade Nanny Burnham to help us. All she need do was give Bhairav a place to stay hid during the day. His only problem was Nanny Burnham’s cooking,” Anjali added with a glance at her brother’s slender midsection. “He ate too much of her nursery fare and was growing fat.”
He grinned and patted his belly. “Nanny Burnham made a very delicious rice pudding and something called a jam roly-poly.”
“Damson jam?” Stoker asked hopefully.
“Raspberry,” Lord Bhairav told him.
“Even better.” Stoker’s expression was wistful. His fondness for natural science was rivaled only by his fondness for nursery foods.
“At long last,” Anjali said, picking up the thread of the conversation, “the Eye of the Dawn was retrieved from the bank vault and the time was at hand. Effie broke into the casket and took it, leaving behind a handkerchief marked with Jonathan Hathaway’s initials.”
“In order to implicate me,” Harry volunteered.
Anjali shrugged. “Anything to bring confusion to the matter would serve our purposes. Within the family there was dissension as to whether you really were Jonathan Hathaway. If Jonathan’s handkerchief were found, apparently dropped during the theft, then it was a certainty that Charles would insist upon a search of the house. But the diamond would not be there. It would have vanished, into thin air,” she said, fluttering her fingers.
“But everyone in the house would have lived under suspicion, most of all you,” I pointed out.
“I was never going to stay,” she replied. “A few days to let them search my things and find nothing. Then I would quietly disappear, remove my disguise, and become myself again.”
“And if anyone decided to circulate your description, they would be looking for someone considerably older,” I finished. “It would appear you thought of everything.”
“Except that without a clear resolution to the crime, without a proper solution, the atmosphere would have become poisonous,” Stoker objected. “Everyone would have been under suspicion, always wondering who might have taken it.”
Anjali shrugged again. “That is what I told Effie, but she did not care. She is very, very angry—with all of them, even Lady Hathaway. No one in that house understands or cares about her feelings, so why should she care about theirs?”
“I deplore her actions, but I also comprehend them,” I told her. “It is diabolical to set out to create an atmosphere of disharmony, of actual malice, within a household. But that is more Mary Hathaway’s doing than Effie’s. Charles has permitted it, and Lady Hathaway is too old and infirm to make an objection, even if she wished.”
“I am not surprised you understand,” Anjali said. She met my gaze with her own, level and without judgment.
“Effie Hathaway has a far twistier mind than I suspected,” Harry said in a tone of grudging admiration.
“Effie knew suspicion would fall, but she must have known it would always fall hardest upon Anjali, Jonathan—that is, you, Harry—and herself. Lady Hathaway would have no cause to steal her own jewel, and Charles and Mary would never suspect one another. And by causing a search to take place, it would clear the rest of the staff, ensuring they were not touched by her revenge upon her family.”
“And I might have swung for it with no consideration from her,” Harry said, turning slightly green.
“Hanging, I am informed, is no longer the penalty in this country for theft,” the maharani said by way of consolation. “Have another seed cake,” she urged. He shoved it into his mouth, still looking darkly at Anjali. I was rather impressed by the ruthlessness of the plot, but not surprised. There are few people on earth more capable of hatred than the female sex when caged.
“So, she plotted a course for restitution,” Stoker summed up.
I looked from the maharani to her grandchildren and shook my head. “It was indeed restitution for the theft committed so long ago, but this was about much more than that. I know you have the diamond and to you a wrong has been righted, but Effie was not driven by a desire to expiate the crimes of her family against yours. She has struck out against them as a tigress will turn on its tamer.” I addressed the maharani. “She does not seek to benefit you, Your Excellency. She seeks to wound them.”