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who read quickly, then shook his head.
“Or this rather painstakingly drawn chart,” Rayley continued. “The numbers make little
sense to us, but they most likely relate to the idea of poison. Dosages? It appears that someone trying
to figure out how to give enough of the serum of a certain plant to stop the heart, but not to stop it
immediately. Death on a certain timetable…was that what our killer was attempting to orchestrate?”
Everlee blinked but said nothing. Rayley persisted. “Do you have any idea why he
would write the word ‘laudanum’ with a question mark to follow?”
Now Everlee turned away, feigning a sudden interest in an indifferent landscape hung on
a wall. “Benson,” he said after a moment’s pause, “had promised me the utmost in discretion. It even
said as much on his business card. ‘Discretion is the better part of valor,’ it said, right there on the
card.”
“And you shall have the same level of discretion from us,” Rayley said, “as long as the
facts in question do not relate to the murder. I take it your mother was….ill?”
“Yes, ill,” Everlee said, turning back toward him. “She suffered from a nervous
affliction which required relief at the dawning of day…and sometimes in the evening as well.”
Trevor was glad that Rayley was handling the questioning. Not only was he better at this
sort of indirect and gentle grilling – even using restraint with a man who had so grievously insulted
him the very night before – but Trevor was not sure he could have kept the skepticism from his face.
Rose Weaver was imbibing laudanum both morning and night? If that were true, the real mystery was
how the woman could remain on her feet. Trevor had once taken a small dosage of the opiate from a
well-meaning dentist and had not only lost an entire afternoon, but had found himself in serious
discussion with a houseplant.
She must have had a full addiction, he thought. To have ingested laudanum on such a
steady basis and still have been able to socially function.
“And this was the medication she took every morning?” Rayley said. “As everyone in
the household was doubtlessly aware?”
"His chart….”
“Yes, the chart,” Rayley said, handing Everlee the notebook again. “Can you make heads
or tails of these columns of numbers?”
“I cannot say for sure…”
“I realize that. Tell me what you think.”
“I received a letter from my mother before I left England,” Everlee blurted in a sudden
rush of words. “It arrived on the same day I got notice of her death, which made it all the more
poignant to read, as I trust you gentlemen can imagine. In it she mentioned, somewhat in passing, that
one of her songbirds had been found dead in its cage the day before. She kept two of them, you see. I
showed the letter to Benson, of course, it being the last missive I would receive from her, and he
seemed to feel it was significant. Thought perhaps that whoever wanted to poison Mother might have
practiced on the little bird. And then we found the dropper…”
“The dropper?” Trevor broke in. “Where?”
Everlee began to pace. “It was against police orders…”
“God’s nightgown, man,” said Trevor. “We aren’t going to charge you with illegal
entrance into your boyhood home. You surely know these are not the sort of sins we’ve come to India
to prosecute, so please – put your pride or caution or whatever is troubling you aside, and tell us
whatever you know.”
“We went to the house the day we arrived in Bombay,” Everlee said in another rush of