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“Shall we tell you what we need?” Rayley asked, with a calm courtesy that he hoped
was contagious. “Or at least what we need to begin?”
“Of course,” Seal said.
“Inspector Welles shall interview the Secretary-General. Thomas Bainbridge will
examine the bodies, with me serving as his assistant. Davy Mabrey shall search the Weaver house
and we shall also at some point require access to the totality of the Byculla Club, where Mrs. Weaver
and Sang actually expired. The bodies were discovered in the foyer, I believe?”
Seal nodded. “The butler had just greeted Rose Weaver at the door, with her bodyguard
in attendance. She was scarcely a dozen steps inside the foyer when she collapsed. Sang seemed all
right at first – even was on his way to fetch her some water, and then he fell too. They hadn’t been
inside the Club long enough for anything foul to have occurred there, so of course my mind went to
poison, and of a type which acted slowly. Something which they had likely imbibed before leaving
the Weaver home.”
“Or on the carriage ride over,” Trevor said, noting out of the corner of his eye that
something Seal said was making Morass wince. Most likely the problem was that one detective was
taking credit for the theories of another, a problem which seemed to exist in every police station on
the planet.
“Did they pass anything unusual on the drive over?” Rayley was asking. “Were they
delayed in any manner on their trip?”
“It’s a five minute ride,” Seal said. “The driver said they make the trip at the same time
and along the same route every morning and that this day was not exceptional.”
“Any number of people might have known their route and timetable,” Davy said. “I have
always thought it a strange thing the way the royals and the posh fellows all stick to their patterns of
coming and going. It seems to leave them open to attack.”
“Quite right,” agreed Tom, shifting in his seat. “Their love of protocol makes them
sitting ducks.”
“But Mrs. Weaver wasn’t a target of any sort,” Seal said.
“Yet she employed a bodyguard,” Trevor said. “And an Indian one at that. Was there
any indication she felt threatened?”
Seal slowly shook his head. “The Secretary-General denied that the household had
received any threats, even though it would have been to his advantage to claim so. The bodyguard
was an old family regular, with them for years as I understand it, and announcing him as her
bodyguard was likely no more than an affectation than anything else. You shall soon see, Detective,
that the members of the Raj never hesitate to hire more servants than are needed, and to set them to
any number of silly tasks. It is a status symbol to have two men doing the work of one, you see.”
And the same is evidently true of your police force, Trevor thought, most pointedly
turning his head from Seal, to Morass, and then back. His sarcasm was evidently lost to the outsiders,
although a current of amusement ran through Rayley, Tom, and Davy.
“So you make nothing of her drive to the club,” Rayley said quietly.
Seal shrugged. “Rose Weaver was an old lady and merely set in her ways like they all
are. Why shouldn’t she drive to her club at the same time and down the same street every morning?
There’s no reason to think their brief journey between the house and the Club played any role at all in
their deaths. After all, the carriage driver was quite unaffected.”
“And he would be?” Trevor asked, bringing his pencil to his pad of paper.
“The young man who does a bit of everything around the place,” Morass answered.