By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
There is no Christmas cheer in a British garrison in India in 1857. In the wake of the massacre of Cawnpore in which men, women and children were slaughtered, there is only despair. The atmosphere of the not-exactly-festive "A Christmas Garland" is made even darker by the killing of a guard and the escape of an Indian prisoner because the culprit is suspected to be John Tallis, a British medical orderly with no history of problems or violence.
