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“Weaver and Everlee, I presume,” Rayley said. “Back in their salad days.”
“It would seem so,” Trevor said. “The one on the left is definitely Anthony Weaver and
the other is…well, note the braiding on his shoulders and the insignia. I do not pretend to fathom the
many levels of the Raj but he is without question the more highly decorated of the two. I wonder how
and why Benson came to possess this picture.”
“The how is almost certainly through Michael Everlee,” said Rayley, sitting down
beside Trevor on the bed, but with hesitation, as if he found the act somewhat disrespectful to
Benson. “He must have carried the picture with him through the years.”
“Or else he recently took it from the Weaver home,” Trevor said, squinting down at the
faces of the two men. “I cannot fully shake the impression that he beat us to the crime scene, no
matter what Seal claims.”
“The photograph doesn’t seem to yield evidence in and of itself,” said Rayley.
“Unusually good work for its time, yes, but beyond that, just the image of Secretary-General and his
lieutenant. Do you make anything more of it?”
“Have you heard of this chap they call Freud?” Trevor asked abruptly.
“Sigmund Freud? I’ve read a bit of him. Why?”
“You know he says that biology is destiny.”
“Yes…” Rayley said cautiously. “But I believe that remark was made in reference to the
differences between how men and women think.”
“Ah,” said Trevor. “Well, if the fellow can explain that great mystery to the world, we
should bring him to England and have him knighted on the spot. But this picture reminded me of
Everlee’s remarks at the dinner table last evening. It was after you left, of course, but someone asked
him if he had come to see his father’s memorial plaque and he said quite pointedly that he had
traveled to India because of his other father. Meaning his stepfather, of course. Anthony Weaver.”
“And?”
Trevor glanced up from the photograph. “I do not entirely know what I am saying. Just
that it must be strange for a boy to grow up with two fathers – one by way of genetics and the other by
way of training. Under those circumstances, which would you imagine would have the greater
influence – the biology of his father or the ideology of his stepfather?”
“If I could answer that, I should demand to be knighted along with Freud,” Rayley said
with a soft laugh. “It is a question for the sages, is it not?”
“They look rather alike in the picture.”
“All men in uniform look rather alike.”
“I suppose,” said Trevor, “but it strikes me once again how entwined the fates of Roland
Everlee and Anthony Weaver truly are. They served in the same unit, were caught in the same battle,
lived in the same house, even married the same woman. One of them raised the other’s child as his
own.”
“And yet one lived and one died,” Rayley said, pushing up from the bed and moving
back toward the desk. “In the most crucial and ultimate sense, their destinies diverged.”
“Do you think Felix’s story about the children taken from that farmhouse is correct?”
Trevor asked.
“Almost certainly.”
“And the baby boy died and the girl was sent from India?”
“So claimed the report,” Rayley said, leafing through a notebook. “Last night I briefly
indulged the fantasy we might find the girl, who would now be close to forty and presumably still in