Excerpt from The Strangler Vine by Miranda J. Carter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The bearers took a series of turns down muddy lanes barely wide enough for the palanquin until we arrived on a wide thoroughfare next to a noisy chaotic bazaar. A large cow stood moodily in the middle of the road like a rock in a fast-flowing stream forcing the waters to part around it. Around us a column of natives carried whole dead animals on long bamboo poles. Even inside the litter I could feel the crush and smell of bodies.

'William! See the fakir!' Frank cried, delighted.

The creature was sitting by the roadside, smeared in ash, wearing only a long white stringy beard that dangled past his stomach. But it was his hands that drew the eye. They were hideous: the fingernails had grown through the flesh of the hands and emerged through the knuckles, long and horribly twisted. Where I felt repulsion, however, Frank experienced only cheerful curiosity and an enjoyable shudder of wonder. Though I was a better messmate, a better shot, and blessed with stupid good health, I was gradually coming to accept that Frank—short, pale and prone to chills—might be better suited to India than I.

The palanquin came to an abrupt stop and began to shake alarmingly as if the bearers were trying to roll us out. We had come to stop at the corner, or what passed for a corner, of an even narrower lane.

'Bas you budzats!' Enough, you blackguards, I shouted. Awkwardly we climbed out, one after the other. A wave of hot smells assailed me: sweat, over-ripe fruit, heavy and sweet, and beneath, other ranker scents I did not care to identify. The road was soft and oozing, mud already specked my white breeches, native bodies surged and shoved, entirely too close. We were the only white faces. The harkara who had been running alongside the palanquin bowed and pointed down the narrow muddy lane. I spoke loudly and slowly: 'Up here?' Then, even louder, 'English-wallah live here?'

He nodded unconvincingly. Frank looked at me.

'If they are going to work for the Company, they should damn well learn our language. Up here?' I said again to the harkara, before Frank could start yabbering in Hindoostanee. He nodded and advanced up the lane at a loping trot.

'Will you come?' I said.

'No,' said Frank. He was already striding among the stalls, his breeches edged in mud, oblivious to the native press about him. He gazed about him; he was happy. 'I shall be looking at the caged animals and the druggist's stall. I think I saw a pangolin somewhere along here.'

I followed after the harkara, my boots sinking into the ooze. The dwellings started out as tumbledown mud-and-thatch hovels, then became more substantial, flat-fronted and flat-roofed, with cracked green shutters. The harkara stopped before one and pointed. I mopped the drops from my forehead, wiped the inside of my collar, straightened my jacket, pressed down my hair, checked my pocket watch—I was not supposed to wear it with my uniform, but it looked rather well around my cross belt—walked up to the dirty green door and knocked.

It seemed an age before I heard anything. Then came a number of wrenchingly slow footsteps, an elaborate coughing and throatclearing, a series of locks drawn back at what seemed like five-minute intervals, then, finally, a sleepy-looking elderly darwan pushed his nose between the doors and gazed at me. I stood to attention.

'I have a message for Blake Sahib,' I said. 'He lives here?' I ventured, a little louder. The man contemplated me quizzically but did not move and would not open the door any further.

'I must enter,' I said slowly and clearly. 'I have a letter from the Governor General's office.' I could not help thinking that the task would have been better done by a native clerk. The darwan and I regarded each other for a moment, and I was about simply to push past him when, with an air of utmost reluctance, he opened the door, inch by inch, to admit me. I stepped into darkness, my eyes taking a moment to adjust.

Excerpted from The Strangler Vine by Miranda J Carter. Copyright © 2015 by Miranda J Carter. Excerpted by permission of Putnam Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.