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“That was fast,” Rayley said. “Who made the arrangements?”
“I did,” Trevor said. “With some assistance on the London end.” Trevor’s eyes flitted
toward his fellow detective. “He was Scotland Yard.”
“What?” Rayley said with an exclamation of surprise that ran through the group. “How
did you learn that?”
“His name sounded vaguely familiar when I met him,” Trevor said. “I thought little of it
at the time, since the world is probably full of Jonathan Bensons. But after his death I couldn’t shake
the notion that yes, perhaps his familiar name was significant. So I sent a telegram last night and
received a reply this morning. He wasn’t current Yard, you see, which is why none of us had ever met
him. He was retired.”
“Retired? The fellow looked no older than either of us,” Rayley said.
“Electively retired,” Trevor said.
“Because he was a homosexual?” Davy asked. Trevor smiled at him. The boy’s
tendency toward plain speaking rarely failed to move the discussion along.
“That is my assumption, that the rumors were persistent enough to curtail his career.
Since leaving the force seven years ago he has worked in various functions, serving as a bodyguard, a
consultant in security matters, and he has also done a bit of private detection work. Catching
wayward wives with their lovers, that sort of tawdry thing. Somehow Michael Everlee found him
and convinced him to travel to Bombay.”
“Why would a Scotland Yard detective, even a retired one, take on such a task as this?”
Seal protested. “It is hardly up to his standards.”
“Presumably Benson was a bit like Adelaide, grateful for any work at all,” Rayley said.
“The man’s inclinations were obvious enough that they may have cost him not only his post at the
Yard but also alienated any number of would-be clients. And at least Everlee offered him an
opportunity for true investigation into a murder case, something I can imagine he missed dreadfully. I
know I would.”
They were then interrupted by a rap at the door. Davy opened it and allowed in one of
the local policemen, dressed in his shapeless drabs, who gestured to Morass.
“So he wasn’t here as an attaché or even a bodyguard…” Emma said, “but rather as a
private detective? Looking for evidence to exonerate Anthony Weaver?”
“Indeed, and we shall go to his room and take possession of his papers before we ship
the body back to England,” said Trevor. “He had at least a two-day advantage over us, so who knows
what he might have found.” He looked down at his notes. “And now on the issue of fingerprints.
You have collected them, Davy?”
“Yes, Sir, and I have identified six distinct sets from the Weaver home. The medications
Mrs. Weaver took are kept in the kitchen but there weren’t as many prints there as I had hoped.”
“Not surprising,” Trevor murmured, still flipping through his notes. “If the timeline
Weaver gave me is right, and the majordomo at the Club confirms that it more or less is, there was
nearly an hour between the time Rose and Sang left the house and Anthony Weaver reentered it.
Plenty of opportunity for the cook and maid to set the kitchen to rights, and thus wipe away any
evidence in the process. What I find strange is that you identified six different sets of prints and there
were seven people who were regularly in the house: Anthony, Rose, Sang, Adelaide, Felix, the cook,
and the maid. Whose are missing?”
“That I won’t know, Sir, until I’ve printed everyone involved. We have the two dead
people’s, of course, thanks to those chopped off fingers and we have Secretary-General Weaver’s, but