9308-3953

“He told me he drives by here sometimes, simply to observe the temple,” Trevor said.
“Said he did it on the morning of his wife’s death. Were you aware of that?”
She wasn’t. It showed on her face. “I have never seen him here,” Miss Hoffman said
slowly. “Other than the one time months ago, that is, when he came looking for a servant.”
“You wouldn’t,” Trevor said. “I doubt he ever left his carriage. So let us resume with
our history…Secretary-General Weaver makes his request and within days Adelaide had her first real
position, which I gather required little more than sitting beside an old woman and listening to her
complaints. But Mrs. Weaver has now been dead for almost two more weeks. Why would Adelaide
have gone back to an empty house where her services clearly were no longer required?”
“I have no notion,” Miss Hoffman said, still fussing with the wayward lock of hair.
“Perhaps she was happy there. Or perhaps she does not fully grasp what the changes to the household
mean.”
“You do not monitor her movements?”
“She is a grown woman, Detective, and I have twenty-three girls here for whom I am
solely responsible.”
“So she roams the streets unattended?”
“I suppose she does. Are you suggesting I bell her like a cat?”
“May we talk to her? If not now, when she returns?”
“If you wish, but you’ll get nothing. Nothing of any use in a legal sense. Adelaide is
prone to fantasies… perhaps one might even say hallucinations.”
“What is the source of her affliction? Did she suffer some sort of trauma?”
“I cannot say.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“Miss Hoffman,” Emma said, leaning forward, for she could read the telltale signs that
Trevor was on the verge of losing his temper. “I appreciate that the paperwork on Adelaide is just as
you say, incomplete, but perhaps something in it can help us. We are doing background checks and
interviews with everyone who was in the household the day Mrs. Weaver died.”
“I was told by Inspector Seal that Rose Weaver died in the foyer of the Byculla Club
early in the morning. What can that possibly have to do with Adelaide?”
“She did die at the Club,” Trevor said. “But we believed she was poisoned in her
home.”
“Poisoned?” For the first time since their arrival, Miss Hoffman appeared genuinely
shaken. She glanced toward the garden, where the girls were finishing their morning labors, a few of
them wandering back toward the house with their arms linked. Someone among them was singing.
“That is our best guess at this point,” Emma said. “So you can understand why we need
to talk to all the members of the household.”
“But she truly wasn’t a member of the household,” Miss Hoffman said. “She only
visited Mrs. Weaver for a few hours in the heat of the day. She came back here at night. Every night.
She would not have been there in the morning when this poisoning must have occurred. ”
“Indeed,” said Trevor. The woman’s protectiveness was quite touching, but he was glad
he had not mentioned the recovery of the medicine dropper. “No one is accusing Adelaide of
anything. But her papers….Might we have a look?”
Without answer, Miss Hoffman rose in one supple movement to her feet and went inside
the temple. When she was gone, Emma turned toward Trevor.
“It is a mistake to push her too hard.”