City of Bells (3 page)

             
“Rose Everlee introduced you to Anthony Weaver,” Trevor gently prompted.

             
Geraldine nodded.  “Before we had left London harbor.  He was at my side even as I waved goodbye to Leonard and my parents.”

             
But Emma was frowning.  The letter which Leanna had read referred to a woman named Rose.  Apparently over the course of the years, the commanding officer’s wife had somehow become the dashing lieutenant’s wife and, more to the point, had also managed to get herself murdered.  What sort of tangle had Geraldine stumbled into?

             
Noting Emma’s expression, Geraldine nodded again.  “Yes, my dear, yes.  As unlikely as it seems, my chaperone for the voyage was the very same woman who now lies dead.  But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself once again.”

             
“You sailed,” Trevor said pointedly.

             
“We sailed,” Geraldine said. “Weeks upon the water, three of them spent simply drifting in the complete doldrums of the Indian Ocean, with nowhere to seek shelter except the terrifying prospect of the African coast.  The captain assured us that if we took harbor there we should be devoured on sight, and, fools that we were, we believed him.  And so we sat.  Too little wind, too much water.  Too little food, too much sun.  It was during those doldrums that Anthony and I...we indulged ourselves,  I suppose that is the best way to say it.  In ways which would not have been allowed in London, or even Bombay.”

             
Silence.  Everyone waited.

             
“The months that followed,” Geraldine said softly, “were the happiest of my life.  But also the most confusing.  The uprising came, you know.  Not nearly as swift or unexpected as the reports claim.  As military men, Roland and Anthony were both aware there was discontent among the native populace, but most of the reported trouble had been inland and it was widely believed that the coastline, and thus Bombay, would be safe.”  Geraldine grimaced.  “Perhaps I should say that it was widely believed that all the English in India would be safe.  The men and women of the Raj were rather naïve, you see. They thought that the Indians loved them unquestioningly, as children love their parents. But Anthony knew better.  He understood that the danger was real and much closer than anyone was willing to admit.  In fact, it is almost as if he had a premonition.  Against all my romantic and rather foolish protests, he insisted that I return at once to England.”

             
“And thank God that he did,” said Tom.  Geraldine’s story had left him very nearly in shock, as evidenced by the fact he had stopped drinking.  As many evenings as he had spent in his aunt’s home, he had never heard anything about a man named Anthony Weaver or even a voyage to India.  Had never known how close his beloved Aunt Gerry had been to being caught up in the infamous Indian Mutiny of 1857, which had resulted in the murder of nearly 400 British, a sizeable percentage of them women and children.

             
“What of Rose?” Trevor said.

             
“Roland wished for her to leave as well, but she was, at the advanced age of thirty-nine, at last expecting a child and thus her doctors forbad the trip,” Geraldine said.  “As it turns out, their advice was sound, for she delivered safely in Bombay.  But poor Roland was killed in the uprising before he ever got to see his son, and then Anthony -“

             
Here she stopped and Tom was aware that around the table they were all holding their collective breath.  The candles had sunk into a puddle, and the light was nearly gone.

             
“The next time I heard from Anthony,” Geraldine finally continued, “was when I received a letter explaining to me that he had married his best friend’s widow and was prepared to raise Roland’s son as his own.  He said that his loyalty to his captain surpassed all others, especially in light of the horrid manner in which the man had died.  Roland was a true hero, you see, impaled on a host of swords as he sacrificed himself trying to save a woman and her five children.”

             
“And you never saw Anthony again?” Tom said.  “Never heard from him at all until yesterday?”

             
Geraldine shook her head.  “As far as I know, neither Anthony nor Rose ever returned to England, not even for a visit.”

             
“Because their rapid marriage was a scandal?”  Trevor asked.  The memories were obviously painful, but it seemed a greater kindness to treat the story as a case study, and thus impersonal.  Offering sympathy over a jilting thirty years in the past would only insult a woman as independent as Geraldine.

             
“It wasn’t a scandal at all,” Geraldine said matter-of-factly.  “You must remember that India is an outpost, a colony, with few British men and even fewer women.  And the conditions were far more primitive in the fifties. Rapid marriage and, if required, rapid remarriage were the norm.  No, I think it was because India offered a man like Anthony, who had ambition but limited resources, a chance to make his fortune.  Staying there must have suited him.”

             
“Did it suit Rose?” said Emma.

             
“Not quite so much, I’d imagine,” Geraldine said, with another small private smile, this one of a manner Emma found impossible to interpret. “She complained of the heat and the bugs the entire time I knew her and she never learned to tolerate the food.  But my sources assured me that Anthony rose up the ranks well enough through the years, so I suppose their creature comforts expanded with his career.”

             
“I have a question, Ma’am,” Davy said.  It was the first time he’d spoken since dinner.

             
“I’d imagine you all have any number of questions,” Geraldine said with a snort of amusement.  “But what is yours?”

             
“Meaning no disrespect, ma’am, but do you think it is possible…I mean, seeing as how they were on the same ship together when you met, coming back from England at the same time… and then haste of the…with her husband barely dead…I don’t know quite how to say it, ma’am, but when you look at the sequence…”

             
“You’re asking if it were possible that Anthony’s true affection was directed toward Rose all along?” Geraldine said. “That poor Roland was a cuckold, that I was their cover, and that Anthony’s professed loyalty to his captain was really just an excuse to stay close to the wife?  Of course it is possible.  It was, in fact, the first thought that occurred to me when I got Anthony’s letter all those years ago.”

             
Trevor was ashamed that this particular theory – which sounded so plausible when clothed in Geraldine’s plain language – had not occurred to him.  It had been neither his first thought nor his fifth.  And judging by the expressions around the shadowy table, neither Emma, Tom, nor Rayley had imagined it as well.  Painful to think that among them, only Geraldine and Davy were clear-headed enough to see through the haze of romance and adventure to the tawdry possibilities beneath.

             
Emma recovered first.  “Speaking of Anthony’s letter,” she said.  “The second one, yesterday’s, was addressed to the ‘Bride of Rosemoral.’  Why should he call you such a thing?”

             
“A silly spasm of pride,” Geraldine said.  “Despite the fact he presented it as mere duty, being tossed over for Rose was a blow.  I wrote him back that I too was about to be married and spun quite an elaborate tale around the event, even going so far as to suggest the Queen and Prince Albert would be in attendance.  And I believe I may, in my foolishness, have signed this fanciful missive ‘The Bride of Rosemoral.’  Strange he would remember that now, after so long.  Perhaps he did it to mock me.  After all, if he followed my history even half as avidly as I followed his, he would know that I remain Geraldine Bainbridge.”

             
“I can’t think why he’d mock you,” Tom said.  “Especially when requesting your help.”

             
“And that’s the real issue here, is it not?” Trevor asked.  “Putting aside the man’s audacity in even asking, what the devil sort of assistance does he expect you to provide?”

             
“Money?” Geraldine said archly.  “Everyone always seems to need a little more of that in times of trouble.  British council for his defense, I’d imagine?  An investigation, almost certainly.  I shall ask him, of course, when I get there.”

             
Another silence fell around the table. Not a pleasant, reflective silence, but the sort of nervous, anticipatory silence that precedes a gunshot, or a storm.

             
“Get there?” Tom finally asked warily. 

             
“Travel to India, even now,” Rayley broke in, “can be extraordinarily-“

             
“Geraldine, you don’t truly-“ Trevor began.

             
“Well of course I must go, darlings,” Geraldine said.  “Anthony will find no justice in Bombay, not unless someone somewhere stirs to help him.  We all know that.”

             
“But you owe this man nothing,” Trevor sputtered.  “Less than nothing.”

             
“You asked for the basic facts of our story,” Geraldine said, a trifle sharply.  “And the basics were precisely what I gave you.  But matters of the heart are never so simple as they might seem to those on the outside, looking in.”  She glanced around the table, at the shadowy forms of the others and then took a final, trembling sigh.  “For you see, I have my regrets as well.”

Chapter Three

Scotland Yard

August 18

2:14 PM

             
The next afternoon Trevor was back in his office in the basement of Scotland Yard, frowning at a telegram.  He was so preoccupied that he scarcely looked up when Rayley entered.

             
“She’s not Ripper,” Rayley said briefly.

             
“Never thought she was,” Trevor murmured, his eyes flitting across the paper in his hand a final time.  The fact that Jack the Ripper remained at large was a black eye that the whole of Scotland Yard wore, and some might guess that Trevor himself, as principal detective on the case, felt a special level of guilt at the fact the crimes had never been solved.   

             
But nothing could have been further from the truth.  Trevor knew in his heart he had done all he could do to capture Jack, and there was a certain peace in that knowledge.  Failure, Trevor had sometimes reflected, often seemed to bring more peace of mind than success, for success had to be constantly maintained while only failure allowed a man to close a door and truly leave the past behind.

             
The rest of the Yard did not share in this philosophy. They were still looking over their collective shoulder for Jack, and thus calling in the forensics team each time a female had the misfortune to be knifed in the East End.  That was, in fact, why Rayley and Tom had been fetched an hour earlier to examine the remains of a woman who had, almost without question, been killed by her own husband.  And there was no telling when the paranoia would finally end.  They had put Mary Kelly in the ground nine months ago.  She was not only the Ripper’s last known victim but also Emma’s sister, and thus every detail of that investigation was burned into Trevor’s memory as if it had been branded there by a hot iron.  No, he would never forget the case, never fully be over it, and yet – nine months was the length of a human gestation. The amount of time it took to bring new life into the world and so, it seemed to Trevor, a proper amount of time for a man to likewise reinvent himself.  To find a new incentive for his work.  The Ripper had slowly melted in his mind to an amorphous, uncatchable figure of evil.  The enemy Trevor knew he would never vanquish, for the instant the neck of one killer snaps with the rope, another victim is crying out from another street. 

             
In short, Trevor felt about criminals much the same way Jesus had spoken of the poor.  He knew they would always be with him.

             
And so he had dispatched Tom and Rayley to make study of this latest victim’s knife wounds and to record the statements of her doubtlessly raving husband.  He had spent the resultant privacy of the last hour composing a telegram to the military police of the Bombay Presidency.  His questions had been answered with stunning promptness, almost as if someone in that dusty little field office had been waiting anxiously for an inquiry from Scotland Yard and had all the particulars at the ready.

             
“See here,” Trevor said, sliding the paper across the table toward Rayley.

             
“Heavens,” Rayley said, pulling up a chair with a scrape.  “This may be the longest telegram I’ve ever seen.”  He scanned it quickly, a pucker appearing between his thin eyebrows.  “Miss Bainbridge said India is where the ambitious men used to go.  It would seem that is still the case.”

             
“What makes you say that?”

             
“This man, this Henry Seal, who has sent the missive…I get the impression he’s trying to make a name for himself, that’s all.  The report is suspiciously detailed.  And yet he dispatched this…this…what was the fellow’s name?  This Morose or Morass or whatever he was to examine the bodies.”

             
“It’s Morass, and I doubt Seal was the one who sent him,” Trevor said, drawing the paper back across the desk.  “The double structure of India’s government leads to much overlap of duties and confusion, so I can only assume Morass and Seal come from different divisions.  You have the Viceroy, of course, who reports to Parliament and as you see by his title, Seal is most likely with them.  And then each geographic region is its own presidency, with its own Governor, and my guess would be that Morass is from that division.   A group of military boys who are undoubtedly in over their heads but still reluctant to call in the Viceroy’s men.  You know, a bit like the local coppers always resent Scotland Yard when we come crashing about, telling them their business. Only in this case it’s worse because there is no clear chain of command.”

             
Rayley raised an eyebrow.  “You know all this off the top of your head?”

             
Trevor chuckled.  “I will admit that I’ve spent the best part of the last hour doing a study of how justice is dispensed in India.  And the answer appears to be ‘badly.’  Geraldine is quite right.  Even with his exalted title, there’s no telling what sort of investigation or trial Anthony Weaver can expect.”

             
“Do you think she’s really going?”

             
“If Gerry makes up her mind on something, no one can stop her.  Speaking of which, where’s Tom?”

             
“Got a bit of blood on him during the examination upstairs,” Rayley said with a shrug.  “Said he was going home for a wash and a change of shirt.”

             
“And you believed him?  You let him go?  He’s plotting with his aunt, and there’s no doubt about it.  My guess is both he and Emma will be on that same steamer to Bombay.”

             
“What if they are, Welles?” Rayley said, leaning back in his chair.  “Tom and Emma are unpaid volunteers.  They’re free to do exactly as they please and besides, anyone can see that Miss Bainbridge should not undertake such a lengthy journey alone.”

             
“I know what you’re thinking,” Trevor said, “but we can’t ask the Queen to release us again, not so shortly after Russia.  Or Paris, for that matter.”

             
“Whyever not?  We have no pending case.”

             
“Not at the moment, no.”

             
“And we went to Russia entirely at her behest.  To assist her in a private matter of her own, as I recall.”

             
“Nonetheless, I won’t go to Her Majesty yet again asking for leave,” Trevor said resolutely.  “Not so soon.  And not for some ridiculous case of marital violence. A man kills his wife.  A tragedy, certainly.  But of the most common sort, and hardly one that requires our specialized skills.  No, we shan’t go with Geraldine, no matter how she begs.”

             
“Has she begged?”

             
“Not yet,” Trevor admitted.  “But she will.”

             
“I wonder if the Queen has heard of this sad affair,” Rayley mused.

             
“Why should the Queen concern herself with something like this?”

             
“Come now, Welles,” Rayley said. “The dead woman, after all, is the widow of a well known military hero, a man with statues cast in his honor. The accused is a retired Secretary-General, with a distinguished record of his own.  If our sojourn to St. Petersburg has taught us anything, it’s that Her Majesty takes a dim view of any crimes which involve servants of the Crown.”

             
“It’s a domestic affair,” Trevor repeated, his face flushed. “The murder may have involved more celebrated people in a more exotic setting, but I assure you that the Weaver case is at heart no more compelling than the story of that baker’s wife who lies bloody and bludgeoned above us. Our duty is to the Queen and the citizens of London.  Weighed against that, the fact that Gerry knew this man a lifetime ago counts for nothing.”

             
“And yet,” Rayley said, gazing innocently up toward the water-stained ceiling, “for some reason you have spent the last hour reading up on the legal system of the Bombay Presidency.”

***

Windsor Castle

3:30 PM

             
“Of course we are familiar with the Weaver case,” the Queen said.  

             
So she is back to the royal “we,” Trevor noted with bemusement.  During their recent trip to Russia he and the other members of the team had traveled in close congress with the Queen and her granddaughter - so close, in fact, that on more than one occasion they had stood witness to the most un-royal sort of family rows.  But if he had thought that such a sustained period of enforced intimacy was to alter the nature of his working relationship with Her Majesty, it was evidently not to be the case.  Victoria seemed capable of passing through levels of formality as easily as she walked through the rooms of Windsor Castle.  The Queen had granted his request for an audience with a promptness which suggested she had not forgotten his services to her family during the Russian caper, but now that he was seated in her private office, her infamous hauteur had returned.

             
“The sacrifices made by Roland Everlee,” the Queen continued, “earned him the highest honors that the Crown can bestow.  Posthumously awarded, of course, but he is still regarded far and wide as the very example of British honor.  And thus the murder of his widow, even so many years after the fact, would most naturally be brought to our attention.” 

             
Victoria shifted in her seat.  Short and plump, she never seemed wholly on balance atop her enormous chairs, and more than once Trevor had indulged the whimsical notion that the Queen might actually tumble from her padded cushions and roll across the floor.  Now she looked impassively at Trevor and added, “Perhaps the better question is, why has a Scotland Yard detective taken interest in such a matter?  Are the streets of London so silent that you must search halfway across the globe to find a forensic challenge?”

             
She had them there. 

             
“A friend brought the case to my attention,” Trevor admitted.  “She is connected to both the victim and the accused.  Or at least she was connected to them long ago.”

             
“We presume you refer to Geraldine Bainbridge?”

             
Trevor looked at the Queen with surprise. 

             
“You came before me last year with this ill-formed notion of a forensics unit,” she said.  “Requesting funds for a science that my advisors assured me was hardly a science at all… and yet I personally financed you. Since that date your unit has provided service beyond reproach, proving that my support of your work was not in vain.  But do you imagine I would have invested so much in an ordinary detective named Trevor Welles without a bit of intelligence of my own?  I would venture I know as much about you as your own mother does.  Your mother who, if memory serves, is named Edith and resides in Shropshire.  A lovely piece of country, albeit a bit remote.”

             
Trevor could think of nothing to say to any of this, which was just as well, since the Queen continued.  “So I am quite aware of your friendship with Miss Bainbridge, a woman I met years ago.  I gather that she also made acquaintance with Anthony Weaver in her girlhood?”

             
At least she had dropped the “we,” and, in fact, was looking at him with sympathetic interest, but Trevor was unsure of how much of Geraldine’s story he should share with the Queen. 

             
“Not exactly girlhood,” he said, aware that he was avoiding the key issue.  “Miss Bainbridge was thirty-five.”

             
“And this strikes you as an age too advanced for romantic intrigue?  How old are you, Detective?”

             
“Thirty-four,” he admitted.

             
“Then you must hurry.  The clock is surely about to strike.”

             
Was she making a joke?  Trevor had never known the Queen to joke. 

             
“Geraldine traveled to India in 1856, the year before Roland Everlee’s death,” he finally said.  When in doubt, best to stick to the barest of facts.  “Rose Everlee was her chaperone for the voyage and introduced her to Anthony Weaver on the ship, during the weeks that they were in transit between London and Bombay.”

             
It was an incomplete explanation, to be sure, but the Queen seemed to grasp the implications behind his words at once.  She nodded briskly and reached for a paper on the table beside her. It bore a grand blob of maroon-colored sealing wax on the back, a detail which struck Trevor as odd. 

             
“It is quite fascinating how matters sometimes converge,” she said.  “For I received just this morning a letter from Michael Everlee on this same subject.  Do you know the man?”

             
“Only by reputation,” Trevor said.

             
“Indeed,” said the Queen.  “Cambridge educated, the young hero of the Conservative Party and thus a rising figure in the House of Commons.  Or so they tell me.”  Peering down, she read aloud: