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the street.”
But Trevor was all business. “Rayley, I want you to go down to the shipyard and see to
our paperwork. Show them the Queen’s letter, for with any luck we can arrange passage on this
evening’s departure. Now that our business is concluded, it is best we leave Bombay at once. And I
will send a message to the jail informing Tom and Geraldine of these latest developments, and Emma,
you must explain the situation to Mrs. Morrow. You need to return to her house to pack your things
and those of Geraldine no matter what, and besides….somehow I suspect she and her granddaughter
shall play further into this matter before all is done. I shall accompany Inspector Seal to the station
house to make my final report, and Davy, you take the news to Michael Everlee. If I read the man
right, he is undoubtedly as eager to depart this country as the rest of us.”
“The news, Sir?”
“That his stepfather is being set free. His purpose here in Bombay is done.”
“But the rest of it, Sir? The bit about how he came to live with the Weavers and the truth
about who Leigh Anne Hoffman truly is?”
“Use your discretion.”
“My…discretion, Sir?”
“Absolutely.” Trevor picked up his woven dome hat, the one he had bought merely two
days before but which was already stained with sweat and streaked with dust, and nodded briskly at
Seal. “Let us hurry with our paperwork, you and I,” he said. “And give us until sunset before you set
your wheels of justice into motion. It’s just as Emma says, but if we try, we may still be able to
extract some small sliver of good from this hopeless mess.”
***
The Belvedere Hotel – Bombay
12:50 PM
“You are telling me I have a sister?”
Michael Everlee was blinking back tears. He strained toward Davy with such intense
hope that for a moment the boy faltered.
“Yes,” he finally conceded. “Two of the five children of the Sloane family were rescued
on the day of the Cawnpore attack. You were an infant and your sister was nearly six years old.”
And now he will ask, Davy thought. He will ask the inevitable question, which is how
one of the children ended up being adopted by the Weavers, to live a life of privilege, and the other
was deposited at an orphanage, to fend for herself.
But Everlee asked no such question. His face, in fact, was glowing with joy.
“I always knew I wasn’t their proper son,” he said, leaping up to resume his
characteristic pacing. “Not really. For I displeased them, you see, in a dozen small ways. Oh yes,
Officer, they gave me all the finer things, but they …they never really cared for me. Even as a child I
knew that I was there to serve a need, to be the required heir and proof of something – although
precisely what my presence was meant to prove, I never understood until today. They sent me off to
England as early as they decently could, and there I stayed.”
“Your last name gave you certain privileges,” Davy said mildly, hoping his voice was
devoid of reproach. For neither he nor any of his brothers had gotten past primary school and he had
never set foot within the walls of Parliament.
“They worked to set me forth with their agenda,” Everlee said, “but I never fit the
prototype of what they wanted in a son. As you have likely noticed, Inspector, I have certain