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with a distinguished record of his own. If our sojourn to St. Petersburg has taught us anything, it’s that
Her Majesty takes a dim view of any crimes which involve servants of the Crown.”
“It’s a domestic affair,” Trevor repeated, his face flushed. “The murder may have
involved more celebrated people in a more exotic setting, but I assure you that the Weaver case is at
heart no more compelling than the story of that baker’s wife who lies bloody and bludgeoned above
us. Our duty is to the Queen and the citizens of London. Weighed against that, the fact that Gerry knew
this man a lifetime ago counts for nothing.”
“And yet,” Rayley said, gazing innocently up toward the water-stained ceiling, “for some
reason you have spent the last hour reading up on the legal system of the Bombay Presidency.”
***
Windsor Castle
3:30 PM
“Of course we are familiar with the Weaver case,” the Queen said.
So she is back to the royal “we,” Trevor noted with bemusement. During their recent
trip to Russia he and the other members of the team had traveled in close congress with the Queen and
her granddaughter - so close, in fact, that on more than one occasion they had stood witness to the
most un-royal sort of family rows. But if he had thought that such a sustained period of enforced
intimacy was to alter the nature of his working relationship with Her Majesty, it was evidently not to
be the case. Victoria seemed capable of passing through levels of formality as easily as she walked
through the rooms of Windsor Castle. The Queen had granted his request for an audience with a
promptness which suggested she had not forgotten his services to her family during the Russian caper,
but now that he was seated in her private office, her infamous hauteur had returned.
“The sacrifices made by Roland Everlee,” the Queen continued, “earned him the highest
honors that the Crown can bestow. Posthumously awarded, of course, but he is still regarded far and
wide as the very example of British honor. And thus the murder of his widow, even so many years
after the fact, would most naturally be brought to our attention.”
Victoria shifted in her seat. Short and plump, she never seemed wholly on balance atop
her enormous chairs, and more than once Trevor had indulged the whimsical notion that the Queen
might actually tumble from her padded cushions and roll across the floor. Now she looked
impassively at Trevor and added, “Perhaps the better question is, why has a Scotland Yard detective
taken interest in such a matter? Are the streets of London so silent that you must search halfway
across the globe to find a forensic challenge?”
She had them there.
“A friend brought the case to my attention,” Trevor admitted. “She is connected to both
the victim and the accused. Or at least she was connected to them long ago.”
“We presume you refer to Geraldine Bainbridge?”
Trevor looked at the Queen with surprise.
“You came before me last year with this ill-formed notion of a forensics unit,” she said.
“Requesting funds for a science that my advisors assured me was hardly a science at all… and yet I
personally financed you. Since that date your unit has provided service beyond reproach, proving that
my support of your work was not in vain. But do you imagine I would have invested so much in an
ordinary detective named Trevor Welles without a bit of intelligence of my own? I would venture I
know as much about you as your own mother does. Your mother who, if memory serves, is named
Edith and resides in Shropshire. A lovely piece of country, albeit a bit remote.”