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“Not a waste of time at all,” he repeated. “For I have no doubt that all our suspects with
all their separate motives have most obligingly gathered themselves before us tonight. We must take
advantage of our seating at dinner to overhear the local gossip, to interview while making it appear
conversational. And do not trouble yourself, lad,” he added, with a glance toward Davy. “Whatever
business drove the English woman in Indian dress to the Weaver house, she clearly didn’t finish it.
My guess is that you shall see her again, very soon.”
***
“In this heat, a sari seems a quite sensible mode of clothing,” Emma said.
“Oh don’t let anyone overhear you,” giggled her companion, a giddy but quite friendly
young woman named Amy Morrow who had attached herself to Emma at the moment of their
introduction. Apparently any new visitor to the Byculla Club was a novelty and thus an automatic
source of entertainment. “People will think you’ve gone native and that will never do. Shall we have
another peg?”
“Peg?”
“It’s what we call the drinks,” Amy said with another giggle that shook her blonde curls.
“Because they’re so strong that the old people claim each one is a peg in your coffin.”
“Thank you for saying they are strong,” Emma said, laughing back despite herself. “For I
am quite dizzy and I feared it was the heat.”
“No it’s the gin, I assure you,” Amy said. “And let us do have another. One has to make
one’s own fun here in Bombay, you see.”
“And even dull things are more fun if you’re tipsy.”
“Just the point.” Amy shifted on her cushion and looked around the room with a
charmingly wrinkled nose. “From the outside, our social life perhaps appears to be acceptable. We
have our theatricals and parties and balls and each dinner, even the mundane ones, have eight
courses. You shall see what I mean when we are called in to dine. There will be this great gong and
we shall enter to find, each of us, a servant standing directly behind our chair. A man whose sole
purpose is to assure that our water glass is refilled after each sip and that each course of food is
simply upon us, poof, like some sort of Biblical miracle. And it disappears just the same. No, not
like the Bible. That’s quite the wrong comparison. More like a magician with his tricks.”
Emma laughed again. For all her curls and fripperies, Amy had a witty mind and seemed
more than willing to share her observations, which might be pertinent. Trevor had said many times
that when it came to crime solving, gossips were of far greater use than policemen.
“A servant behind every chair,” Emma mused. “Can you imagine what the cost would be
in London?”
“Labor is cheap here,” Amy said. “And so we dress up the natives in all manner of
livery and have them march about in any number of mindless tasks. It consoles us. Makes us think we
are important, or, better yet, home. And so our events are very grand, but somehow they are never
very gay.”
“You do sports?” Emma asked. “I understand they are popular among the women of the
Raj.”
“Oh, of course,” Amy said. “Archery, badminton, tennis when I’m here with Granny in
the city. In the provinces the women even try their hand at hunting and fishing. Otherwise we get so
bored. The men go to work and we…don’t go anywhere. So we shoot birds, or we paint them. It
doesn’t seem to make much difference. “
“And any social life revolves around the clubs, I take it? These little enclaves of