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hold innumerable challenges, just as today had, and likely as many surprises. He should be
sleeping... but he couldn’t, and so instead he was standing at the door looking out into the courtyard
garden, pressing his thumb against the glass at different angles and then lifting his own print, over and
over. Davy had noticed Emma, of course. Both of the ladies’ rooms across the way had remained lit
and it had given him comfort to know that someone else was also awake, that he was not truly lost in
this great night alone.
His evening with Detective Abrams had been strangely pleasant. After having been
tossed from the Byculla Club, the two had begun to laugh. They had laughed in the carriage and made
rude jokes about the people they had met during the cocktail hour, especially Michael Everlee and his
attaché. Rayley had made a special point of mocking the Benson chap, with several plays on the title
“attaché” which Davy did not quite understand. But the words were French and thus presumably
smutty and Davy never felt more like one of the fellows, an equal among men, as on those rare
occasions when Detective Abrams would drink and talk of France.
And so he had laughed, even at the jokes that missed their mark, and they had stopped the
carriage and gotten out at some corner. Had bought curries from a street vendor and eaten as they
walked, staining their hands and shirts, singing as they had made their winding way back to the Tucker
House. It was not far. Bombay might be large, but this peapod of English within it was not, and so
they were back in their rooms within an hour of leaving the Byculla. If being thrown from the club
had stung his pride, Rayley had hidden it well. But when they had parted in the courtyard, each to go
his separate ways, he had slapped Davy on the shoulder and said “Thank you, man.”
And Davy had said “It was nothing.” It was not until he was in his room with the door
closed that it struck him. He had forgotten to say “Sir.”
***
Although he knew the particulars well, Rayley once again read the reports of Cawnpore.
He knew that to turn these pages and to run his fingertip over this print was to risk nightmares, or
perhaps not sleeping at all, for he was a sensitive sort. Certain images took hold of him and haunted
him for far too long. It was perhaps his singular failing as a policeman. He could still recall the
faces of each of the Ripper victims, the expression that had flitted across Isabel Blout’s pretty
features as she slipped from his grip on the Tower, the stupefied shudder of surprise which had
shaken that big Russian as he had died in the courtyard of the Winter Palace. Rayley suspected he
would carry these memories with him up until the moment of his own death.
Which was unfortunate, for of all the skills an investigator needed, chief among them
was the ability to forget. Not the facts, for history does indeed repeat itself, and criminal history
cycles through more quickly than any other kind. But one needed to forget the emotions which came
with the facts, and this Rayley could not do.
Nonetheless, he read.
The mutiny had started, more or less, in the fall of 1856, prompted by pockets of Indians
who had seemed to simultaneously decide, without consultation, that they were tired of British rule.
The cities remained relatively unaffected and thus the officers living within those cities remained
relatively unconcerned. But in the small country stations where a handful of English ruled over
armies of natives, incidents of violence escalated throughout the winter and into the spring. It was
said that in the country no white woman made a move without poison in her pocket, even if she was
merely walking outside to draw water or tend her garden. Better to have the means to die quickly
than to fall into the hands of the rebels. There was an occasional shot fired. A stone thrown through a
window, a challenge to military authority. Yes, two reported rapes. But these were isolated events,