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Chapter Twenty-One
Bombay Jail
September 1, 1889
9:20 AM
Rabbits do not like beer. Davy had to wrap the protesting creature in a folded bedsheet
while Tom forced a plunger full of beer down its throat. For a time there was no change. It hopped
around the small holding cell within the jail – the room Tom had turned into his makeshift laboratory
– with a palpable relief for having escaped his oppressors. But gradually the hops became more
diagonal. Less enthusiastic. And precisely four minutes after the beer had been flushed into its
unwilling body, the rabbit lay dead.
“All right,” Tom said, making notes in his leather-bound book. “The beer was the
vehicle of death, at least that much is clear.” His voice faltered for just a minute, remembering the
plump hand of Morass offering a glass to him, and how close he had come to accepting it. “Now on
to the fingerprints.”
“You finish the autopsy, for I can handle those,” Davy said, gazing with dismay at the
lifeless form of the rabbit. He had kept a brood as pets as a child. “Detective Abrams has offered to
go to the school to print Miss Hoffman, Adelaide, and the other students, which means there won’t be
nearly so many left for me. Seal has sent round a contingent of men to round up the other picnickers
and bring them here in groups of five or so. “
“What fun we all shall have,” said Tom, looking around their cramped quarters with
resignation, for the morning had not gone especially well so far. Mrs. Morrow had offered a room to
Emma and Gerry, but when the men arrived at the jail, they were told the barracks were full and that
they would be forced to sleep within cells in the attached jail. Rayley had fussed in his usual manner
– the other three could go to any boarding house in town, he had said. There was no need for them to
take up such ludicrously unsuitable lodgings on his account.
But Trevor had stood firm. Any establishment which would not welcome Rayley would
not enjoy profit from the rest of the team.
And so they now occupied six adjacent cells of the Bombay military jail. Four cells
would serve as bedrooms, one as an interrogation room and fingerprinting lab, and the sixth as a
morgue. The body of Hubert Morass rested in it now, the corpse stretched on the narrow cot and
staring up at the ceiling, much in the manner of a prisoner awaiting his fate.
Meanwhile the jail’s sole living occupant, Anthony Weaver, was being moved to the
infirmary to make room for the needs of Scotland Yard. Both Tom and Davy froze in their tasks as the
man was shuffled out. He was not handcuffed. Apparently Weaver’s jailers had concluded that
anyone so old and frail was hardly an escape risk. He slowly turned his neck to peer into the room
where the two young men were toiling as he passed, his watery blue eyes scanning the cell with acute
interest.
And Tom and Davy each returned the stare, for this was the first time either of them had
actually seen Weaver. Tom considered him first in his role as a doting nephew – how could this
shuffling old man ever have captured the heart of his wonderfully vibrant Aunt Gerry? - and then as a
doctor. Weaver did have the air of a man who was slowly loosening his hold on life, a man whose
fingers were being pulled from their earthly grip one by one. Cancer, Dr. Tufts had said. Cancer