Free Keeping Bad Company by Caro Peacock

him walk away, his shoulders slumped, and felt an unreasonable anger against India and everybody in it for doing this to us.
    The weekend passed without a visit from Tom. I rode in the park with Amos on the Saturday, walked with Mrs Martley. Although she didn’t realize it, our walk took us to some of the places in the park where Tabby’s urchin friends congregated. I hoped I might see Tabby at least, even if she wouldn’t talk to me, but there was no sign of her. All the time I was wondering about Tom’s meeting with Mr Griffiths. I hoped that Mr Griffiths would do a better job of cheering him up than I’d managed. Soon after eleven o’clock on Monday morning, Tom’s call from the bottom of the stairs told me that had not happened.
    â€˜Libby, are you up there?’
    His voice was sharp and urgent. He came rushing upstairs, hat in hand, face white.
    â€˜Tom. What’s wrong?’
    It was in my mind that he and Mr Griffiths must have quarrelled, but his next words were much worse.
    â€˜He’s dead, Libby. Griffiths is dead.’

SEVEN
    I took him to my own room upstairs and sat him down on the couch.
    â€˜What happened?’
    â€˜He’s killed himself.’
    â€˜No!’ Then, uselessly, ‘Are you sure?’
    â€˜I found him, Libby.’
    â€˜Tell me.’
    If Tom had been less shocked, he might have tried to spare me the details. As it was, he poured the story out, trying to come to terms in his own mind with the reality of it, still hardly believing.
    â€˜I told you I was going to call on him over the weekend. I went on Saturday afternoon. His boy, Anil, came to the door and told me Griffiths sahib was sorry but he had a visitor and couldn’t see me. He sent down a message inviting me to come to breakfast with him this morning at eight o’clock. That surprised me a little, that he hadn’t suggested I should call on Sunday instead of Monday morning, but I thought he might have overstrained his heart and wanted a day to rest. We’d quite often have breakfast together back in Bombay. We’d talk about anything and everything – Persian poetry, or the letters of Cicero, or some bird he’d seen, or politics. You never knew. That’s one of the fascinating things about him. Was, I mean.’ He swallowed a few times and went on. ‘Would you believe, I was looking forward to it. You’d helped convince me that I’d got myself into a stupid state about the committee. I hadn’t told them anything about Griffiths they didn’t know already so I didn’t have to feel badly about facing him. I even thought I’d tell him how awful some of the members were and we’d have . . . have a good laugh about it.’
    He drew a long breath and sat with his hand to his eyes. I took out the Madeira bottle I keep in my desk cupboard for clients and poured him a good glassful. He drank it at a gulp.
    â€˜Sorry, Libby. As I said, I was looking forward to seeing him. I was ringing his bell just after eight. I expected Anil to come down and let me in. When he didn’t, I thought he was preparing breakfast upstairs and hadn’t heard. I tried the door and it was only latched, not locked, so I pushed it open and went upstairs. We never stood on ceremony. I went into that big room with the bookcases and called good morning to him. No reply, and no sign of Anil either. No smell of coffee. I suppose that should have struck me as odd. Then I thought perhaps he’d overslept and Anil was in the bedroom, helping him dress or shave. So I just picked up one of his books, sat down and started reading. I got interested in the book and it was probably ten minutes or so later that it struck me that things were very quiet. No sound of anybody moving. So I thought maybe he’d had to go out early and had taken Anil with him. He might have forgotten he’d invited me, though that wouldn’t have been like him. So I stood up