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At least in Paris they had gotten their man. Armand Delacroix had been convicted and executed
with a sort of emotionless efficiency one rarely associated with the French. But Rayley had nearly
lost both his life and his sanity in the course of the investigation, and he still bore evidence of the
strain. His hands revealed the slightest of tremors as he adjusted his spectacles and looked down at
the papers in his lap. Initially Trevor had wondered if having two full detectives on the forensics
team would lead to conflict or an unclear chain of command, but now Trevor was beginning to think
his worries had flowed in the wrong direction. Rayley had been uncharacteristically deferential and
unsure of himself since his return, proving that the events in Paris had shaken him to the very core.
The third official member of the team was bobby Davy Mabrey, who had also first come to
Trevor’s attention during the Ripper case. It had been Davy’s great misfortune - or fortune, depending
upon how one looked at it –to discover both bodies on the night of the infamous double murders. But
there wasn’t much of an art to merely finding bodies, especially when they happened to be lying in the
middle of the street. What had truly impressed Trevor had been Davy’s ability, even when
surrounded by a hysterical East End mob, to keep the crime scene pristine. Only a handful of
Scotland Yard detectives and inspectors truly grasped the significance of forensics, so discovering a
bobby with a natural instinct to preserve physical evidence had been a great gift. Trevor had
immediately made Davy his assistant and the lad had been at his side ever since. Davy had further
solidified Trevor’s estimation with his ability to draw remarkable levels of detail from witnesses and
victims alike. That class of Londoners who might have been intimidated by the likes of Trevor and
Rayley had no problem telling their tales to a working class bobby, who stood no higher than a
schoolboy and whose wide eyes and rosy cheeks made him appear far younger than his twenty-one
years.
“Shall we open another bottle of wine?” Tom asked.
“Of course,” said Trevor, wryly noting that the corkscrew had already been in Tom’s hand when
he paused to ask.
If Scotland Yard provided half of the members of the Tuesday Night Club, then this elegant
home in Mayfair provided the other half. The unofficial members of the team included Geraldine’s
grand-nephew Tom, who was within a year of finishing his medical training. This fact always made
Trevor wince a bit, since Tom had likewise been within a year of finishing on the day they’d met, and
Trevor knew he was largely to blame for this extended hiatus. Trevor’s ultimate hope was that Tom
would join them on a permanent basis as the forensic unit’s designated coroner, but even acting in his
present volunteer capacity took so much of Tom’s time that it was uncertain when, if ever, he would
return to the ivied walls of Cambridge. The truth of the matter was that they needed him. Tom was