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Chapter Twelve
The Tucker House
12:50 PM
Joined by Inspectors Seal and Morass, the Thursday Night Murder Games Club
convened in the front parlor of the Tucker house just after luncheon to discuss the events of the day
thus far.
“She escaped you?” Trevor was saying skeptically. “You honestly expect me to accept
that a 40-year-old woman wearing a sari managed to outrun two far younger men, both conditioned to
the standards of Scotland Yard?”
“She out jumped us, is more like it, Sir,” Davy said. “Right over the garden wall she
went in a mad scramble and by the time Detective Abrams and I had gathered our wits enough to run
‘round it…”
“I don’t blame you for looking at us like that, Welles,” Rayley said wearily. “If I hadn’t
seen it myself I would never have believed it. The woman moved like a monkey.”
“Perhaps her circumstances have forced her to become good at evading men,” Emma
said. “Especially men in authority.”
“It is not the fact she escaped us that chews at my copper’s pride,” said Rayley. “It is
the fact she escaped us so easily. Almost casually. Emma’s right. This lady has been on the run in
one form or another all her life.”
“At least this time we know where to find her,” Trevor said. “I will return to the school
as soon as I can.”
“You shall return to the wall, you mean,” said Rayley, with a sly smile.
“No,” said Emma. “What he means is that he shall return to the curiously enchanting
Mrs. Hoffman with her strange teas and men’s trousers. You know our Trevor. Always the first to
sacrifice himself for the greater good.”
“That is quite enough,” said Trevor. Teasing was the norm among the six regulars, but
they couldn’t forget that Morass and Seal were present, and following the banter with entirely too
much interest. Trevor had briefly considered commandeering the only desk in the parlor to illustrate
to Seal that it was Scotland Yard and not the Viceroy who was really in charge here. But upon
reflection had elected instead to merely sit in one of the circled chairs and direct the discussion. He
would not allow a mere 48 hours of living among the Raj to turn him into a poser or, worse yet, a
bully.
“We shall move on to Tom and hope he can report more success,” Trevor said, pointedly
rustling his papers to remind them all this was an official meeting. “Please tell me that you are now
able to say definitively that poison was the murder weapon.”
“Define definitively,” Tom said with a rakish grin. “The blood samples were in far too
deep a state of decomposition to yield the sort of proof a British courtroom would require, but, thanks
to Inspector Morass, I was quickly able to identify the shrub Davy found growing in the Weaver
garden. Tell them what it is called, Inspector. Wait….wait for it. I promise you shall love this part.”
“The leaves were from a local plant that natives call ‘The Suicide Tree,’” Morass said.
“So named because its kernels, if brewed or ground up, release a toxin strong enough to stop the
human heart.”