Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 151, Nos. 1 & 2. Whole Nos. 916 & 917, January/February 2018

“She dances every dance, mostly with her fiancé, she enjoys a glass of lemonade and perhaps an iced cream kept chill with snow from the Himalayas and then, the moment she has been waiting for has come — her captain takes her out onto the terrace. There they can enjoy the night air, the moon hanging low over the Hooghly River, the scents and sounds carried on the breeze from the nearby spice market, and there she asks him when they are to be married. He has warned her he is to be sent out on manoeuvres in the New Year, away from civilisation and up into the wilderness of the Northwest Frontier. She’s not quite certain what that is, but it sounds a jolly dangerous sort of place, all deserts and crags and ferocious tribesmen lying in ambush, armed with jezails.

“He’s silent. Ill at ease. She waits. ‘Harry, my love...’ ”

Tom turned to the doll with a raised eyebrow and an “Am I getting this right?” expression before he went on: “Disaster! Halting, deeply ashamed, Harry tells her he has no intention of marrying her in the next few weeks. Even worse — bit between his teeth now, he unburdens himself. He is at base an honest young man, unused to deception, and he can no longer deceive her. He has formed a relationship, he confesses, with a young Indian woman. He has installed her in quarters built for the purpose in his back garden — the zenana

... many of the single men had one such... and if all had gone to plan he would have renounced the girl before Rosa’s arrival and sent her packing in the traditional manner. But he’s fallen deeply in love with his Indian bibi and will not give her up. And now he has a further tie: They have a young son whom he adores. This behaviour, whilst frowned upon, happens all too frequently in the masculine world of Imperial India.

“But Rosa doesn’t understand this. Virginal, unworldly Rosa. No one has ever hinted to her that such an arrangement might be possible. She learns in a few short sentences that, not only has her fiancé deceived her, he is proposing to abandon her for a native woman with whom he has been living in sin for some years.”

“But why did he ever ask her to marry him in the first place?”

“Different world, Ellie. There was a silly old rigmarole much repeated in army circles: Captains may marry, Majors should marry, Colonels must marry. Promotion. Simply that. A talented young officer would know where his duty lay if he wished to take the next step. He would have been sent back on leave for the express purpose of finding himself a suitable wife. That is: a girl of impeccable family and, for choice, one who had a private income that could supplement his army pay. If she could also have the looks of an angel, our captain must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven.”

“Rosa must have guessed as much.”

“She was deeply in love. Captain Harry was a very handsome man, by all accounts. Though I expect she came to realise she’d been used. But, for now, Rosa’s life is over. She rushes howling from the ball like a demented Cinderella. And her prince does not follow her. Sympathy and condemnation are handed out in appropriate measure to the two parties by the establishment, but nothing good can ever come of this shameful rejection.”

“She came back to England?”

“Oh yes. But she came back a changed woman. Heart and — I think probably—” He shot a hesitant glance at the doll, seeking forgiveness for what he was about to say: “mind were broken.”

“Did she ever marry?”

“No. She spent her remaining years as a spinster. But not a recluse. Rather the opposite in fact; she threw all her energies into living. Champagne... dancing at the Savoy... The Great War... Woman’s Suffrage... And she didn’t hug her grief to herself. Not Rosa’s style at all. She shared it with the world. She set it to music and danced to it! And the revenge she took on the hapless captain is the reason we’re sitting here, swigging our punch and talking hesitantly in front of her.”

Tom pointed to the doll. “Rosa Blandford made this doll with her own clever hands in her own image. This is Rosa! This is her face. What’s more, we’re seeing Rosa just as she appeared on that glittering Christmas night in Calcutta all those years ago. The dress is made from the fabric of the ball gown she wore on the fateful evening. The hair,” his words slowed, “is Rosa’s own hair!”

“Good Lord!” I said faintly.

“The tears in her eyes are indeed diamonds — they were taken from the engagement ring she no longer could wear.”