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processional. She had abandoned her customary sari for the trip, although whether this decision was
hers or that of Miss Hoffman, no one could say. Nor had Adelaide joined her mentor and teacher in
wearing trousers, but was rather garbed in a shapeless grey dress far too large for her, the most
unattractive and unremarkable of all possible outfits. She sat among the youngest students, looking
like a governess or someone’s spinster aunt, gazing out into the countryside and ignoring the little
girls, who squirmed joyfully about the cart like a litter of puppies.
We read her all wrong, Davy thought. The sari, which seemed such a bizarre choice
the first time we saw her, was not an attempt to make a political statement or spit in the face of the
Raj. For a woman who spends most of her time on the streets – not within the English district, but
in the true heart of Bombay – the sari is an attempt to avoid notice. And here today, among the
members of the Byculla Club who would find a sari so intriguing, she had opted not to wear it at
all. She has instead taken up disguise as a nanny, has swathed herself from head to toe in British
broadcloth. The woman’s goal is singular: to blend in as well as possible anywhere she goes. To
avoid attracting the eye, to be remarkably unremarkable.
She has spent her life in hiding, Davy continued to mull, and I would wager that it
began long before Rose Weaver died. I wonder what the deuce has happened to this Adelaide to
leave her with such a distrust of society. Something, obviously. Something very bad.
***
“You know,” Trevor said to Rayley, struggling not to shout even though the clanking of
the carriage was enough to reduce all conversations to an exercise in lip-reading. “it occurs to me
that our little group may have been unconsciously guilty of the same offenses as those of the Raj.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Welles?”
“Perhaps we have been too quick to dismiss the Indian role in all this, to assume that the
dark skinned men about us are simple creatures with simple motives, a kindly race meant to be patted
on the head like a pack of spaniels.”
“You are being quite obscure. And your example overreaches. I for one have never
patted an Indian like a dog.” Rayley leaned in. “So tell me what you’re going for.”
“We have entertained the idea that the poison was meant for Rose. We have entertained
the idea that the poison was meant for Weaver. But we have never discussed the possibility that the
draught was intended for Pulkit Sang. What if he were not an accidental victim but the true target all
along?”
Rayley paused to chew the notion over. “What could be the motive?”
Trevor shrugged. “Can’t say, but we haven’t come up with a convincing motive for why
someone would kill Rose or Weaver either. Because he was a servant, we have leapt to the
assumption that he had no private life, no history, and ignored the possibility he might have had
enemies of his own. I keep thinking about what that Dr. Tufts fellow told Tom about the English
sharing medications with their household staff. If it were known that Rose, Weaver, and Sang had all
on occasion imbibed a few drops from the laudanum mixture, any of the three could be the intended
victim.”
“Or all three.”
Trevor’s brow puckered. “Why? What offense might they have shared in common?”
Rayley looked at the hill in the distance. The not-so-far distance now and he shivered
as he pondered the sad ruins of what had once been a mighty fortress. The ruins which now held
nothing more than plaques and statues and a well, a well which had thirty-two years ago had been
stacked high with bodies. The bodies of men, women, and children, the dead and the dying, all left to