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evidenced by the fact I asked you here today. The Scotland Yard chaps are going to expect us to
deliver them something when they disembark on Thursday. And these bodies are now going into their
tenth day on ice.”
Morass raised a bushy eyebrow but said nothing.
“In other words, they’re decomposing,” Seal said irritably. Could the man deduce
nothing at all? “And it’s safe to venture that the extremities are going first. I suppose you know what
that means?” Without pausing for a response, which he knew was unlikely to come, he answered his
own question. “It means any possibility of collecting useable fingerprints is dwindling daily.”
“Fingerprints?” Morass said with a frown.
“Impressions, usually in wax or ink, taken from the tips of –“
“No, I know what they are, but why the devil should they be of use in this case?”
“I don’t know,” Seal admitted. He had begun to pace but Morass was still seated, lightly
twirling his tumbler of gin. “But if the Scotland Yard fellows ask for them and we don’t have
them….if we have in fact let the window of opportunity pass and they arrive to find the bodies too
deep in molder…”
“Why do you fear Scotland Yard so much?” Morass asked, delicately fishing a wayward
lime seed from his drink and tossing it into a nearby bush. The two men were seated on a distant
section of the Byculla Club terrace. They had been greeted with a reasonable degree of courtesy
when they entered and had even been offered luncheon, which they readily welcomed. Morass may
have come from the military side and Seal from the Viceroy, but civil servants, no matter what their
branch or level, accept food whenever it is offered. But both of them, for separate reasons, had noted
that they had been escorted to a highly undesirable table. Seated nearly in direct sun, far from the
umbrellas where the other diners were clustered. We shall let you in, the table location seemed to
suggest, because the paperwork you carry demands it. But we shall not make you welcome.
“I do not fear the Yard,” Seal said.
“So it is more a matter that you hope someday to join it?”
“What if I do? Only a fool would want to remain here, in this godforsaken outpost of
civilization.”
Morass smiled, but only a little, and his amusement was largely concealed by the
profusion of facial hair on his broad splotched face. The Byculla Club hardly seemed like an outpost
of civilization to him. On these grounds, flowers bloomed. Fountains tumbled. Ladies sipped their
own gin and tonics, dubbed a Bombay Splash in their honor, as if changing the name somehow diluted
the alcohol. A cellist played in a corner of the terrace and across the great lawn long-suffering
nannies watched as toddlers and dogs dashed about. A man could see Bombay and the Byculla Club,
Morass reflected, as either the pinnacle of civilization or the nadir of self-important silliness,
depending on his perspective. Depending on where he had come from, or – perhaps even more
telling – where he hoped to someday end up.
“So you’ve invited me here to help you fingerprint the two bodies?” Morass finally
asked, which made Seal stop mid-pace and turn toward him. “I cannot imagine what benefit that
would provide, Yard or no Yard, seeing as how the two bodies in the kitchen are the victims and not
the accused. Anthony Weaver is the man whose fingerprints we might need, and he is penned up at the
jail.”
“I know that,” Seal said.
“Besides,” Morass continued. “From what I’ve read about fingerprinting, which I will
admit is not much, the practice is most helpful when one is trying to prove that the accused touched a