City of Bells (7 page)

             
Within minutes of the start of the meeting, Trevor was utterly confused as to what aspects of the investigation fell under Seal’s jurisdiction, and which fell under that of Morass.  The two men seemed to talk over the top of each other, much in the manner of comic actors.  Of course, it scarcely mattered what was said or who said it, for the past three days appeared to have provided little new information in the case.  With Seal attempting to take the lead and Morass offering numerous points of commentary, the men stumbled once more through the same details which had been outlined in the telegram and then simultaneously fell silent.

             
“You have interviewed the Weaver household staff, I presume?” Rayley ventured.

             
“Of course we have, for all the good it’s done us,” Seal said.  “Apart from the dead bodyguard, the Weavers employed a cook, a maid, and a young fellow who served as valet, driver, and butler.  All claimed to have seen nothing amiss.”

             
“And even if one of them had noticed anything, they wouldn’t tell us,” Morass added.  “The Indians don’t want to talk to the British any more than the British want to talk to the Indians.” 

             
“That seems a rather broad statement,” Trevor said.

             
“But accurate,” said Seal.  “To start, there is a code of honor among Indian servants which demands the guarding of the master’s secrets.  Secondly, Inspector Morass is quite right about the degree of mistrust which lies between the natives and the Raj. The local people are not eager to share their thoughts with any white man in uniform, I assure you.”

             
“Which shall make our interviews all the more difficult,” Trevor conceded.  “Nonetheless, we shall give it a fresh crack.  Where are these servants, anyway? Please do not tell me they remain in the house.”

             
“Of course not,” said Seal, bristling slightly.  “The house is shut tight and preserved as a crime scene.  The servants have returned to their own people.  A type of holiday, I suppose, made all the sweeter for them by the fact that Secretary-General Weaver has declared he shall continue to pay their full wages until this matter is resolved.”

             
There was a pause in which Trevor and Rayley exchanged a glance.  A small fact, but possibly pertinent.  Weaver could simply be showing a sense of responsibility toward his employees, making sure they were housed and fed during his time awaiting trial.  Or he could just as easily be buying their loyalty – and continued silence - from his prison cell.

             
“We shall interview the Secretary-General of course,” said Trevor.  “And sooner rather than later.  You can reconvene these servants, I should hope?  You took their addresses?”

             
Morass gave a low bark of laughter.  “These people don’t have addresses,” he said.  “If you could see the local district, you’d know soon enough –“ But here Trevor’s expression barricaded this line of thought and he hesitated.  “We can reconvene them if need be,” he finished meekly.

             
“Good,” Trevor said.  “See that you do.  One can hardly blame the locals for avoiding the Raj police.  But none of us are in uniform, so perhaps we shall fare better in persuading them to talk.”

             
“Unlikely,” Morass said. “All whites look dead alike to them.”

             
Gad, what an unpleasant man
, Rayley thought. 
As coarse as a feedbag and the other one, the one who works for the Viceroy…  Well, he has a better suit, and better teeth, and better manners, but I wager that at the core Seal is no more enlightened than Morass.
Rayley could only imagine the delicacy with which these two had conducted their initial interviews.  They reminded him of a man he had met on the
Fortitude
, a merchant of some sort who’d been sharing a nearby lounge as they had all congregated on the sporting deck, watching young Davy triumph in shuffleboard.  What was it that man had said?

             
We haven’t come to India to make friends.  We are here to rule.

             
And this was the attitude, no doubt, of the vast majority of the people they would have to deal with in the course of this investigation.  Be they military officers, civil servants, or businessmen…all the British on the ship had seemed to have the same self-satisfied air.  The assurance that might was right, that India was a barbaric land and should be grateful that England had stooped to save her from herself.  Perhaps it was not surprising that the Raj had bred a brotherhood of such bullies, for judging from the handful Rayley had met so far, it seemed that men who would have only risen to a modest rank in London could ascend to far greater heights here.  Even those with limited intelligence, education, or family connection could stride the streets of Bombay like little white kings. 

             
Similar thoughts seemed to be occurring to Trevor, who was visibly struggling to control his temper, and most likely to Tom and Davy as well, although the younger men had remained tactfully silent for the whole of the conversation. 

             
“Shall we tell you what we need?” Rayley asked, with a calm courtesy that he hoped was contagious.  “Or at least what we need to begin?”

             
“Of course,” Seal said.

             
“Inspector Welles shall interview the Secretary-General.  Thomas Bainbridge will examine the bodies, with me serving as his assistant.  Davy Mabrey shall search the Weaver house and we shall also at some point require access to the totality of the Byculla Club, where Mrs. Weaver and Sang actually expired.  The bodies were discovered in the foyer, I believe?”

             
Seal nodded.  “The butler had just greeted Rose Weaver at the door, with her bodyguard in attendance.  She was scarcely a dozen steps inside the foyer when she collapsed.  Sang seemed all right at first – even was on his way to fetch her some water, and then he fell too.  They hadn’t been inside the Club long enough for anything foul to have occurred there, so of course my mind went to poison, and of a type which acted slowly.  Something which they had likely imbibed before leaving the Weaver home.”

             
“Or on the carriage ride over,” Trevor said, noting out of the corner of his eye that something Seal said was making Morass wince. Most likely the problem was that one detective was taking credit for the theories of another, a problem which seemed to exist in every police station on the planet.

             
“Did they pass anything unusual on the drive over?” Rayley was asking.  “Were they delayed in any manner on their trip?”

             
“It’s a five minute ride,” Seal said.  “The driver said they make the trip at the same time and along the same route every morning and that this day was not exceptional.”

             
“Any number of people might have known their route and timetable,” Davy said.  “I have always thought it a strange thing the way the royals and the posh fellows all stick to their patterns of coming and going.  It seems to leave them open to attack.”

             
“Quite right,” agreed Tom, shifting in his seat.  “Their love of protocol makes them sitting ducks.”

             
“But Mrs. Weaver wasn’t a target of any sort,” Seal said. 

             
“Yet she employed a bodyguard,” Trevor said.  “And an Indian one at that.  Was there any indication she felt threatened?”

             
Seal slowly shook his head.  “The Secretary-General denied that the household had received any threats, even though it would have been to his advantage to claim so.  The bodyguard was an old family regular, with them for years as I understand it, and announcing him as her bodyguard was likely no more than an affectation than anything else.  You shall soon see, Detective, that the members of the Raj never hesitate to hire more servants than are needed, and to set them to any number of silly tasks.  It is a status symbol to have two men doing the work of one, you see.”

             
And the same is evidently true of your police force,
Trevor thought, most pointedly turning his head from Seal, to Morass, and then back.  His sarcasm was evidently lost to the outsiders, although a current of amusement ran through Rayley, Tom, and Davy. 

             
“So you make nothing of her drive to the club,” Rayley said quietly.

             
Seal shrugged.  “Rose Weaver was an old lady and merely set in her ways like they all are.  Why shouldn’t she drive to her club at the same time and down the same street every morning?  There’s no reason to think their brief journey between the house and the Club played any role at all in their deaths.  After all, the carriage driver was quite unaffected.”

             
“And he would be?” Trevor asked, bringing his pencil to his pad of paper.

             
“The young man who does a bit of everything around the place,” Morass answered.  “He’s dark as the night but they call him Felix for some reason.” 

             
“And does this bit of everything include gardening?” Tom asked.

“
              I don’t know,” Seal said slowly.  “Why should we have asked him such a thing as that?”

             
“No reason,” said Tom.  “And I am getting ahead of myself as always.  It would seem we have any number of routes of inquiry before us so there’s no reason to sink into mere speculation as yet.  Are the bodies still at the Club?”

             
“In the kitchen on ice,” said Morass. 

             
“Oh and that reminds me,” Seal said. “You’ve all been invited to the Club tonight for dinner.  Including your lady friends and hostess.  The Byculla Club has been most accommodating in the whole matter, offering us every courtesy from the start.”

             
“Have they indeed?” said Trevor.

             
Rayley picked up the dropped thread.  “This is all quite fine, but our time is dwindling.  Our priorities for the afternoon are to view the bodies and secure the house.  In the meantime the two of you will find us the Weaver family’s lost servants.  Especially that remarkably handy young Felix.”

             
“This may take –“ Morass began, but Trevor cut him off.

             
“Very little time at all, I should imagine.  If the worthy Secretary-General is paying their wages, then his banker must be sending their funds somewhere and that is your place to start.”

             
“Of course,” Seal said for perhaps the fourth time since they had begun the briefing twenty minutes ago, but now a little less confidently, and Morass sank in his seat like a scolded schoolboy. 

             
“Someone has already come asking to see the house,” he said sullenly.

             
“Let me guess,” Trevor said.  “Michael Everlee, son of the deceased, stepson of the accused.  Fresh off the boat from London and determined to free Anthony Weaver from his cell.”

             
“Just the fellow,” said Seal, with some surprise. “But we didn’t allow him access, of course.  He lacked the proper paperwork.”

             
“Put up quite a squawk,” Morass said.  “Dead furious.  Kept saying that the house was his boyhood home and he didn’t need our permission to stay there.”

             
“Stay there?” Trevor said in disbelief.  “Do you mean the man actually intended to take up lodging in the middle of a crime scene?”

             
“We already said we sent him packing,” Morass said defensively.  “Him with his city suit and his – what did he call that nancy boy who was with him?”

“
              His attaché,” Seal said shortly.

             
“I presume you have men guarding the Weaver house?” Trevor asked. “That it has occurred to you he might not accept your order to stay away?” And then, in the ensuing silence, “Well, did you at least get an address for where Everlee is rooming during his visit?  No, of course not.  Why did I bother to ask? No one in the whole of the Bombay Presidency has an address.” 

             
“It would seem,” Rayley said, “that we must start at once before things get even more muddled.  If you will direct Welles to the jail and Mabrey to the Weaver house, and then Bainbridge and myself to the Club we shall-”

             
“We do have one more thing to show you,” Seal broke in.  He at least seemed aware that he had made a bad first impression and was eager to correct it, perhaps with some dramatic revelation.  In fact, with this last statement, even Morass brightened a bit and sat up straighter in his chair.

             
“Blood drawn from the victims, I hope,” said Tom.

             
“Blood, indeed,” said Seal.  “It’s in storage at the Club kitchens, along with the bodies.  But the truly important thing is that we have these.”  He reached down beneath his desk and pulled up a leaden urn, evidently a heavy one by the awkward way in which he let it clatter to his desk.  He removed the lid and then carefully extracted a four folded cloths, each packed in ice.  “Man left, man right,” Seal muttered softly to himself, squinting down at the small tags which were attached to each packet, their ink evidently smeared by contact with the half-melted ice.  “Woman right, and, woman…this must be woman left.   Here you go, doctor.”