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not some random curry was the vehicle of the poison. It is admittedly strange that one drawer in a
kitchen should be utterly empty.”
“We can ask her, but we dare not trust her answer,” Emma said. “I feel like Davy,
jumping ahead in the order to make my report, but I noticed today that when Davy was asking the
questions and Miss Hoffman was translating, that the cook and the maid always began their answers
with the same two syllables. Something that sounded like the English words ‘thick high.’”
“Do you have any idea what this means?” Trevor asked.
“Yes, for I asked one of the schoolgirls. Your pretty Catherine, in fact. The words mean
something along the lines of ‘As you say’ or even ‘Amen.’”
“So Miss Hoffman was nudging the cook and housekeeper toward certain answers,”
Rayley said thoughtfully.
“Interesting, but perhaps not as damning as it sounds,” Trevor said. “It is very hard to
ask questions with utter impartiality, as we all know through our own experience. One of the key
things the Yard teaches trainees is how to avoid our natural human tendency to lead the witness. Miss
Hoffman has no such training and may have been phrasing her questions badly through sheer
inexperience.”
“You need not always be so quick to defend her,” Emma said.
“I am not defending her, I assure you,” Trevor said, looking at Emma directly. “She is a
complex creature, and I find her likeable one moment and disagreeable the next. In that sense, she is
much like the accused, Anthony Weaver, who seemed to also have a strange split in his manner. Calm
and rational one moment, then swept up with agitation.”
“Just as a man in an enforced state of opium withdrawal might be expected to behave,”
Tom said smugly.
“Wash the devil and hang him to dry,” Trevor said. “I suppose it is incumbent upon me
to concede the point. I shall interview Weaver again on the morrow, or perhaps you’d like to give it a
crack this time, Rayley. And Emma, are you suggesting that we need to interview the cook and the
maid yet again? Do you believe Miss Hoffman misled them to any significant degree?”
“Obviously it is hard to say,” Emma replied, and then added. “But she and I had an
interesting encounter later in the garden. She did not know that Pulkit Sang was dead, and the
information seemed to sadden her. Genuinely sadden her, I mean, far beyond the automatic statement
of regret when you learn someone has died. She said she had met him when she first took Adelaide to
the Weaver home and that Sang had treated them with great courtesy. Something that I gather has been
a rare experience for both women.”
“We shall see Miss Hoffman again soon enough,” said Geraldine. “And Adelaide as
well. I have persuaded them to join us at the Byculla Club picnic which is scheduled for Friday.”
“Picnic?” Trevor said. “A chance to observe the complicated citizenry of the Byculla
Club is always welcome, and this might be our one crack at Adelaide and her fingerprints. But I am
not sure we all have time for a picnic. You go, Geraldine, and you too Emma and of course Davy.
You can report back to us if – “
“But I think we should all come,” Geraldine said. “This is no ladies’ outing to the berry
fields, Trevor. They are going to Cawnpore. A new piece of the memorial is being dedicated. A
plaque commemorating the exploits of Roland Everlee and the very subject was mentioned at dinner
last night, do you remember? They keep talking about how marvelous the memorial will be upon
completion, although at the rate things move in Bombay I doubt any among us will live to see it. In the
meantime, they seem to be quite content to affix plaques to heaps of rubble and mutter at how this