Authors: Kim Wright
“Yes, and the problem is hardly uncommon among my patients,” Tufts said. “The middle or upper classes, especially the ladies, have a certain pattern. They have their first experience with opiates for legitimate reasons - a toothache, childbirth, some minor injury- and they find they like the effects. They come to India already a habitual user and in short order realize that the subcontinent opens up a cornucopia of botanical options. You shall witness the bounty yourself if you have the chance to leave the city during your visit. Barely twenty minutes from Bombay there are poppies growing in every field.”
“Did Rose Weaver have any underlying ailment?” he asked.
“Nothing other than the standard aches and pains of her age,” Tufts said. “And the accumulated effects of the laudanum itself, of course. But she handled those quite well. Had no noteworthy issues of alertness or balance that I could tell.”
“You are quite frank about prescribing a drug which had no medical benefit.”
“I shouldn’t say it had no benefit. Have you ever witnessed opiate withdrawal, young man? It is not a pretty thing, even for the young and strong, and there was little reason to put a seventy year old woman through the process. She was not the worst I have seen. Not even close.”
“Did she go though her medication especially quickly? Require more bottles than would seem likely?”
Tufts frowned in the flickering candlelight. “Are you asking if her dependence was worsening?”
“No, I am asking if you think it was possible that someone else was sharing her prescription.”
“Ah,” the doctor said. “Well...perhaps, and, if so I imagine his pain was real enough. Traumatic injuries such as those sustained in war can continue to torment a patient through the years, as I suspect you know. And everything seems to hurt a little more as one ages, as I suspect you do not know.”
“Weaver has a war wound?”
The doctor frowned. “Not that I’m aware. I was speaking of that Indian fellow who was Rose’s shadow. Followed her all the way into death, as it turns out. Pulkit Sang.”
“Ah,” said Tom, realization dawning at last. “So she procured laudanum for her loyal servant as well as herself.”
The doctor’s frown deepened. “’Procured’ is a rather odd term, my lad, so watch what you are implying. I daresay many white families in Bombay provide medication for members of their household staff. The natives have no access to doctors, at least not real ones. They have those swamis who chant and offer up their foul-smelling herbs. My understanding is that Sang had been in Rose’s service for many years. That he had been wounded, in fact, while attending her first husband on one of his campaigns. There is no crime in her impulse to allay the man’s suffering.”
Tom shook his head. “You misunderstand me, Sir. Now that I better grasp the situation I also see nothing odd in the fact that Rose and Sang might share her laudanum. My original question was based on the idea that her current husband might also have shared it.”
“Anthony Weaver? Entirely possible.”
“And this does not concern you? That a completely healthy person might also have fallen under the spell of this – what did you call it? – this botanical cornucopia?”
The doctor snorted. “There is no such thing as a seventy year old person who has spent the majority of his life living in India who is also completely healthy. The climate takes its toll, my young Mr. Bainbridge, in more ways than you and I have time to discuss. Anthony Weaver has had a cough for as long as I’ve known him. He has been treated for asthma and pleurisy and for a time I suspected pneumonia. But the man has stumbled on, as have his lungs, so that I can only conclude that he is being taken by a disease that moves slowly, methodically, and ultimately successfully.”
Tom winced. “Cancer?”
The doctor nodded. “My guess is that he will be dead within the year.”
***
The Bombay Jail
10:20 AM
The man does not seem at all well,
Rayley thought, taking in his first good look at the infamous Anthony Weaver. Trevor was right – it was hard to fathom Geraldine ever falling in love with such a ridiculous specimen of masculinity. Although he had been presumably doing nothing more than languishing in his jail cell when the young soldier came to fetch him, Weaver was outfitted in a rumpled linen jacket with a bright red cravat tied around his neck.
Rayley hardly knew what to make of such an affectation, but Trevor had warned him that the Secretary-General was likely to try and take charge of the interrogation, so at least he was prepared. Weaver was barely seated when Rayley fired the first question, and he fired it hard and fast.
“We know you were at Cawnpore in the fall of 1857,” he said, “along with Roland Everlee and his valet Pulkit Sang. Sang told his nephew that you drove a cart carrying him and the two surviving Sloane children back to Bombay. Why did you never report this fact to the authorities?”
It was quite a barrage of information, little of it likely welcome, but Weaver did not hesitate or even blink before answering. “I did not wish for my name to be included in the reports.”
“Why not?”
“It might have looked as if I ran from the heat of battle.”
“So what if you did? Presumably your goal was to save the lives of two innocent children.”
“Indeed. But not everyone in the military would have understood this. Emotions within the Raj ran very high in 1857, Detective. You have just produced a sympathetic evaluation of the situation, which the passage of time tends to encourage. But immediately following the mutiny, with so many British women and children dead, my friends and colleagues might not have been so generous in their evaluation of my motives.”
He was probably right. Rayley took a moment to observe the man sitting before him. Weaver was not as jumpy as Trevor had described and his answers, at least so far, had been rational and calm. If he had earlier been struggling with opiate withdrawal, it would appear that the drug had now loosened its grip on his system…
But then again, the man was perspiring freely. In fact, in the momentary silence which engulfed the small room, Weaver unknotted his cravat and dabbed at his forehead.
“What happened on that day?” Rayley asked. “The day Roland Everlee died?”
Weaver looked at him directly, the eyes within the pockets of sagging skin still piercing. “What could that matter after so much time? It bears no correlation on the matter at hand.”
“I am not so convinced of that, Secretary-General,” Rayley said. “Pulkit Sang does lie dead beside your wife.”
“Yes,” Weaver said. “Yes, indeed he does.”
“And I will admit,” Rayley said, “to a good deal of personal curiosity about Cawnpore. I have read the reports recently, you see, and find that what they do not say is even more intriguing than what they do. You are the only man alive who knows what happened. If you do not speak, the truth will die with you.”
Weaver smiled. “And that has been my precise intention for the last thirty-two years, Detective. To have the true story of Cawnpore die with me.”
I could bluster and show my credentials,
Rayley thought.
But to what end? He is an old man and quite alone in the world, with very little left to lose. We have nothing to threaten him with, and likewise, nothing to offer him. Freedom from this jail cell, a few more miserable years of life, the restoration of his reputation among others of his kind…these are pale incentives for a man so near the end.
And then inspiration struck.
Rayley waited for the old man to finish wiping his brow and retie his cravat before saying, slowly and with great emphasis on every syllable, the one sentence which might prompt cooperation from Anthony Weaver.
“Geraldine Bainbridge has traveled with us from London.”
For a moment, Weaver did not react at all, making Rayley wonder if he had misjudged the situation. But when the man finally spoke, his voice trembled with emotion.
“You say Geraldine is here? In Bombay?”
“Do you wish to speak with her?”
“More than anything.”
“And so you shall. If you cooperate.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Just what I said. The story of a single day.”
Weaver leaned back in his chair. Silence once again engulfed the room and Rayley waited. Weaver was stalling to give himself time to control his nerves, this much he knew, but Geraldine was Rayley’s only bait. If the chance to see her was not enticing enough to prompt some sort of confession, then this interview would come to a rapid end.
After a moment Weaver smiled again, but with less self-assurance than he had displayed the first time. “But how will you know,” he asked, “if I am telling you this slippery thing you call the truth? As you have said yourself, I am the only person who knows what happened that day, so it seems I could concoct any tale which suits my fancy and you would have no choice but to believe me.”
He is bluffing,
Rayley thought.
Very well. So shall I.
“The last two days have given me some notion of what you are about to tell us,” he said. “We have interviewed Felix, you see, and he was full of information. It would appear the boy was his great-uncle’s confidant.” Weaver, Rayley noted with satisfaction, appeared disconcerted at this notion and was once again unknotting his ridiculous neck scarf. “If your story matches that of Sang, and furthermore fills in a few of the details that Felix was unable to provide, then you shall be rewarded for both your truthfulness and your thoroughness. Geraldine is very eager to see you.”
Now this last line was a blatant lie. Geraldine appeared to have no interest in visiting Weaver, which now that Rayley stopped to consider it, was in itself rather odd. Why had she traveled thousands of miles to defend the man but then, once she set foot in Bombay, never expressed the slightest desire to come to his jail cell?”
But the lie had the desired effect. The smile had utterly left Anthony Weaver now and he gazed up thoughtfully, as if wondering where to begin.
“Our entire unit was headed in the direction of Cawnpore,” he finally said. “We were traveling with great urgency for we had no idea that the women and children who had been imprisoned in the schoolhouse were already dead. As we moved east through the rural districts out from the fort, we had encountered several stranded families and…and the remains of stranded families whom the mutineers had found first. We got word of a woman living alone with five young children, on a farm just outside the fort. She was a widow, you see, her late husband taken from our own unit, and Roland insisted we go there at once and assure ourselves of her safety. Or at least that he and I go there while the rest of the men pressed on toward the schoolhouse.”
“And Sang was with you.”
Weaver nodded and swallowed. His throat was clearly dry, his voice weak from lack of use. Rayley pushed a pitcher of water across the table toward him with one hand and a glass with the other. Weaver poured and drank lustily, even slurping a bit, then sat back to resume his tale.
“Sang went everywhere with us. He never left Roland’s side.”
“And you traveled in a cart,” Rayley prompted, happy that he did have this one small detail with which to possibly frighten the man. But Weaver merely looked at him, his expression a bit vague with memory, and nodded again.
“Yes, a pony cart,” he said. “When we got to the farmhouse we found the family not only alive but quite unaware of any impending danger. We were pushing them to hurry but the woman….it is not good to speak ill of the dead, I suppose, but Mrs. Sloane was a fool. She was trying to pack, to take some sort of silver with her and a cot for the little ones. We kept saying no, that we must hurry, but news traveled slowly in those days and misinformation was rampant in the outlying areas. She had no idea how bad the mutiny was…she had not seen what we had seen as we passed the homes of her neighbors and Roland was trying not to alarm her. Being his usual gentlemanly self. Careful with the ladies, he always said. We had to be so very careful with the ladies. I suppose marriage to Rose had convinced him that they would shatter like fine china at the slightest provocation. The woman seemed to be under the impression that she would only be going to Bombay for a few days, almost like a holiday, before returning to the farmhouse with her children. And so Mrs. Sloane was….she was trying to put things in a basket. Food for the little ones and nappies for the baby and then, just like a shot, they were upon us. At least a dozen mutineers. We smelled smoke…”