City of Bells (24 page)

             
“And you shall have the same level of discretion from us,” Rayley said, “as long as the facts in question do not relate to the murder.  I take it your mother was….ill?”

             
“Yes, ill,” Everlee said, turning back toward him.  “She suffered from a nervous affliction which required relief at the dawning of day…and sometimes in the evening as well.”

             
Trevor was glad that Rayley was handling the questioning.  Not only was he better at this sort of indirect and gentle grilling – even using restraint with a man who had so grievously insulted him the very night before – but Trevor was not sure he could have kept the skepticism from his face.  Rose Weaver was imbibing laudanum both morning and night?   If that were true, the real mystery was how the woman could remain on her feet.  Trevor had once taken a small dosage of the opiate from a well-meaning dentist and had not only lost an entire afternoon, but had found himself in serious discussion with a houseplant. 

             
She must have had a full addiction,
he thought. 
To have ingested laudanum on such a steady basis and still have been able to socially function.

             
“And this was the medication she took every morning?” Rayley said.  “As everyone in the household was doubtlessly aware?”

             
"His chart….”

             
“Yes, the chart,” Rayley said, handing Everlee the notebook again.  “Can you make heads or tails of these columns of numbers?”

             
“I cannot say for sure…”

             
“I realize that.  Tell me what you think.”

             
“I received a letter from my mother before I left England,” Everlee blurted in a sudden rush of words.  “It arrived on the same day I got notice of her death, which made it all the more poignant to read, as I trust you gentlemen can imagine.  In it she mentioned, somewhat in passing, that one of her songbirds had been found dead in its cage the day before. She kept two of them, you see.  I showed the letter to Benson, of course, it being the last missive I would receive from her, and he seemed to feel it was significant. Thought perhaps that whoever wanted to poison Mother might have practiced on the little bird.  And then we found the dropper…”

             
“The dropper?” Trevor broke in.  “Where?”

             
Everlee began to pace.  “It was against police orders…”

             
“God’s nightgown, man,” said Trevor.  “We aren’t going to charge you with illegal entrance into your boyhood home.  You surely know these are not the sort of sins we’ve come to India to prosecute, so please – put your pride or caution or whatever is troubling you aside, and tell us whatever you know.”

             
“We went to the house the day we arrived in Bombay,” Everlee said in another rush of words. He seemed to be the sort of man who went through life tightly wound, choosing every word and mannerism to create a specific impression.  But Trevor had noticed that when these careful men finally dropped their guard, they often became the most readily confessional of all. Now Everlee wandered over to the small window and looked out of it, turning his back to the detectives.   “Because of the bird and the nature of mother’s death,” he said, “Benson already suspected poison.  So he walked straight to the kitchen and picked up everything he could find that might relate.  And there was a tree in the garden that intrigued him as well, although I can’t say why.”

             
“He was ahead of us in every way,” Trevor murmured and Rayley nodded.  This one man had found as much as the lot of them all together. Benson must have been good at his job before the Yard sacked him.

             
Everlee remained turned to the window.  “I don’t know entirely what theory he was working on.  He preferred not to share ideas before he was certain, he said.   Did not want to falsely raise a client’s hopes.  But I suspect that chart represents his efforts to ascertain how much poison it would take to kill people of various sizes.  A small amount for a bird, more of course for a human…”

             
“Ah, then this bit about eight stone makes sense,” Rayley said.  “Your mother was a small woman?”  He could not quite bring himself to admit to Everlee that he himself had gazed upon her ravaged body, that he knew her to have been no heavier than a girl.

             
The man at the window nodded.

             
“About eight stone?”

             
“If that.”

             
“But Benson’s notes read
Too much for eight stone.  Fourteen?” 
Rayley said, with a glance down at the notebook. “Something he found in the dropper must have indicated that the dosage was higher than it would have taken to kill a small woman.  Fourteen stone…that is enough for a very large man.”

             
“I suppose,” Everlee said, turning at last to look at the two detectives, who were still sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bed.  “But I never understood what difference any of that would make.  Why would a killer bother to compute dosage and use a dropper with the care of a physician?  If I were going to poison someone I would give them a great amount to make sure the job was done.”

             
“Indeed,” said Rayley.  “And that would be fine if you intended to kill them in their beds.  But if you wished to give them just enough poison to bring on a delayed reaction – to give them time to be far from your house when they died….”

             
“Ah,” said Everlee.  “Yes, I see.  Our killer did not only wish to kill but to make it seem that the death was from natural causes.  At mother’s age heart failure would not attract comment, especially if her collapse was witnessed by any number of people at the Byculla Club.”

             
“Quite,” said Rayley, “but the plan went awry when Sang died too.  Do you have any notion why her manservant might have taken your mother’s medication?”

             
“None.”

             
“Laudanum is highly addictive,” Trevor said, pushing up from the bed and moving aimlessly across the room before finally coming to rest against the doorframe.

             
Everlee considered this with narrowed eyes.  “What are you suggesting?”

             
“Only that not everyone who takes opiates does so for medicinal reasons.  There may have been others in the household using the medication prescribed for your mother.  It would hardly be the first time this had happened, that one person in a family becomes the procurer, in a way, of medication for them all.  There is no need to bristle at these words, Sir, for I repeat Rayley’s promise.  The only facts which will emerge from this room are those which are strictly pertinent to the murder investigation.”

             
“I do not wish to seem slow, Sir, but I repeat:  What are you suggesting?”

             
Trevor shifted his weight.  “Your stepfather is a large man, is he not?  About fourteen stone?”

“
              Of course,” said Rayley, turning to face Trevor in a manner that made the bedsprings squeak.  “But of course.  We were fools not to see it earlier.”

             
“Then I must be a true fool,” said Everlee, his eyes darting back and forth between them.  “For I do not see it even now.  What is the meaning of Benson’s bloody chart?”

             
“If the dosage was calculated not for a human body of eight stone, such as your mother,” Trevor said, “but rather a body of fourteen stone, like your stepfather, it throws an entirely new light upon the case.  One I think you should welcome.”

             
“And why is that?”

             
“Because it suggests that Anthony Weaver was not the killer,” Trevor answered, as Rayley snapped the notebook closed.  “That instead, he was more likely the intended victim.”

***

The Gardens of the Khajuraho Temple

3:50 PM

             
Poor Davy.  He seemed to always find himself stuck with the fingerprinting. Emma imagined it to be tedious work, yet Davy always went willingly to the task.  She supposed that Geraldine might likewise grow tired of writing out bank checks, which seemed to be her most consistent contribution to the work of the group, but writing a check was precisely what Gerry was doing at the moment.  And for the second time that day, Leigh Anne Hoffman was watching the process with an almost obscene amount of pleasure.

             
At least the activity on the portico gave Emma the chance to slip from the group unobserved and make her way to the garden.  It was all but deserted this time of day, the girls presumably spending their afternoons inside, in some sort of rest or study.  But during their unsatisfactory interview of the maid and cook, Emma had noticed a single girl enter the garden.  The same pretty one who had served them tea that morning.  She believed Miss Hoffman had called her Catherine.

             
“Excuse me,” Emma ventured, picking her way through the neatly planted rows and with a guilty glance back over her shoulder at the portico.  “But might you answer a question for me?”

             
The girl was cutting herbs with a small scissor.  Mint, parsley, and some others Emma did not recognize.  She rose from her crouch gracefully and nodded.

             
“You speak both English and Hindustani, do you not?”

             
Another nod.

             
“I have heard a phrase in Hindustani which I do not understand,” Emma said.  Actually she had heard a great number of Hindustani phrases she didn’t understand, but she was especially curious about the syllables the cook and maid had uttered at the start of nearly every reply.  “It sounds a bit like the English words ‘thick high’” she said.  “And they bobbed their heads as they said it.”

             
The girl smiled, a gentle smile of understanding.   She was like a child too, Emma noted.   A tall and very pretty child.  She supposed it was natural Miss Hoffman would try to shield her young charges from the society which had given them such a cruel start in life and that dwelling within a garden which furthermore dwelt inside a temple might give the girls a severely limited view of the world….but still, innocence of this sort did not seem to serve them. She wondered if they were really as prepared for marriage or employment as Miss Hoffman had claimed.

             
“It means ‘Yes, as you would wish it,’” the girl said.

             
“So they are words of agreement?”

             
The girl nodded.  “You say them at the end of a prayer as well,” she said.  “Much like ‘Amen.’”

             
Emma stepped back, leaving Catherine to return to her task.  So she was right.   Leigh Anne Hoffman had indeed been framing the questions in a certain manner, putting words in the women’s mouths, doing what the Americans called “leading the witness.” These interviews were useless, save for the fact that they showed Miss Hoffman was prepared to thwart them at all turns, not only those involving Adelaide.  She would have to tell Trevor at once.

             
But as Emma turned, her thin summer boots slipping in the moist earth of the garden, she found herself face to face with none other than Miss Hoffman herself.  

             
“If you wish to speak to any of my girls, Miss Kelly,” the woman said, “you do not need to slip away like a thief in the night.  All you must do is simply ask.”

             
“Your girls?” Emma asked, as they both instinctively stepped out of earshot from the kneeling Catherine.  “It would seem to me that they are young women in their own right.”

             
“Some more so than others,” Miss Hoffman said, in a rather self-satisfied tone of voice, as they turned to walk back toward the portico where Gerry and Davy waited, along with the dark-fingered servants.

             
“You are quite cavalier about this all,” Emma said.  “Considering that three people are dead.”

             
“Three?” Miss Hoffman said.  “But I understood that the young Morrow girl was recovering nicely from her shock.”

             
“She is.  I mean Rose Everlee Weaver, Pulkit Sang, and Jonathan Benson.”

             
The woman suddenly froze in her tracks.  “Pulkit Sang, you say?”

             
“Mrs. Weaver’s manservant.  He expired within a few feet of his mistress that morning at the Byculla Club, which is the only reason we are even here in Bombay.”

             
“They died together?”

             
“Indeed.  In fact, it was their near simultaneous demise that revealed the event to be a murder and not a natural death.  Thus you might say that Sang is the one who thwarted the killer’s clever plans, just as a bodyguard is supposed to do, even if he accomplished his task posthumously.  Wildly ironic, is it not?”