The Serpent's Shadow

Chapter Eighteen

THE only benefit that the Fleet had in this heat was that it was at the bottom of a building which in turn was overshadowed on all sides by taller tenements. If the sun seldom penetrated here and it was dank, dark, and chill by winter, at least now it was something less than ovenlike. “There’s a perleesemun ‘ere t’ see ye, miss,” said a timid voice at Maya’s elbow as she collected her medical instruments and some of the drugs it wasn’t safe to keep at the clinic. She was layering them carefully into her bag, preparing to go home now that the last patient at the Fleet had been dealt with.

She turned around and found one of the numerous offspring of a woman she had just treated for a broken arm hovering anxiously behind her. The poor thing had arrived with all of them in tow, like a wounded goose with anxious goslings paddling madly behind, her gander supporting her with anxious honks.

“A policeman?” she replied, wrinkling her brow in puzzlement. “Well, thank you dear. I’ll come right along and see him.”

The child’s mother had not, for a wonder, been sent to the Fleet by a brutal husband; in fact, the husband was with her now, having held her while Maya set the broken limb, for a dose of opium could only do so much to keep her still during such an unpleasant operation. This time it was sheer bad luck and slippery steps that were to blame; seeing the poor man agonizing over his spouse’s pain was a pleasant change from knowing that a similar injury was the result of one more in an endless series of beatings.

As if the same doesn’t happen in “better” families—just not so publicly. But that was unfair. There was equal measure of good and evil at every level; she just saw more of the evil because of the consequences.

And I see good, too—little boys out sweeping crossings to bring precious pennies back to their mums, husbands giving up their ‘baccy and beer to give the kids a Christmas, women working long into the night for the wherewithal to feed their families—

Maya put on her hat, skewered it in place with a hatpin the size of a stiletto, and went to see the “perleesmun” before he frightened three quarters of her patients. With her bag in hand, so that he would get the hint that she meant to be on her way home as soon as she’d done with him, she went out into the waiting room. The waiting room was full, of course, but thanks to Lord Peter’s generosity, they’d been able to bring O’Reilly in on salary, and he, bless him, had arrived a half hour ago.

It wasn’t difficult to pick the policeman out, although he was not in uniform; not too many men coming into the Fleet were so nattily attired, and those that were generally were ill at ease or even alarmed at the sight of so many members of the lowest class of society. Besides the neat brown suit, he was too well-groomed and prosperous to be from around here; his old-fashioned mutton-chop brown whiskers and mustache surrounded a well-shaved, firm chin—such a good, strong chin with no hint of middle-aged fat that Maya suspected he kept it bare out of vanity. The bowler hat had not a speck of dust to disfigure it. Maya went straight to him, her free hand held out. He took it, and shook it gravely.

“I am Doctor Witherspoon; I believe you are looking for me, Detective—?” she paused significantly, waiting for him to supply a name.

“Detective Crider,” the man replied, taking her hand and shaking it firmly. She liked his handshake; strong without being overbearing, a warm, dry hand, neither too familiar nor too distant. “You’re quickwitted to know me for a ‘tec, if I do say so, miss.”

“Well, a police officer, but out of uniform—what else could you be?” she said, smiling. “How can I help you?”

“I was just hoping you would tell me about the last time you saw a gentleman by the name of Simon Parkening,” was the odd reply. “I’m told you have had a bit to do with him.”

Maya frowned, puzzled. “Parkening? Goodness, the last time I saw him was at the hospital, when I was showing Bishop Mannering some of the charity wards I work in,” she replied immediately. “I must say, he looked rather ill. He’d had what I thought might be a heatstroke the day before, I found him on the floor of one of the storage closets, you know. I sent him up to the regular Male Wards to have one of the other physicians look him over, since he wasn’t my patient.” She smiled deprecatingly. “I am a very junior surgeon and physician, you see. As a consequence, most of my patients are charity cases, and when they are not charity, they are uniformly female. I’m hardly the type of doctor that Simon Parkening would welcome as attending physician.”

“You say he looked ill, miss?” the detective persisted.

She nodded. “Quite green, to be honest. If he had been my patient, I would have insisted that he stop at home for several days, and if he felt he needed further attention, I would have made a house call. I can’t imagine what he was thinking, coming into the hospital like that after collapsing the day before. Even if it was because he urgently needed to see his uncle, surely Doctor Clayton-Smythe would have come to him if he’d sent a message.”

“So—he wasn’t thinking rational, you’d say?” The detective’s mustache twitched, as if he were a bloodhound that had just sniffed something interesting.

Well, this is certainly an odd conversation. I wonder what Parkening has gotten himself into now? More than his uncle can hush up, if there’s a police detective asking questions. “That would depend entirely on what you think of as ‘rational,’ ” she temporized. “Do I think he still knew the difference between right and wrong? Definitely. Do I think he was capable of getting himself from his flat to the hospital and back without losing his way? Obviously, or I would have made sure someone went with him. But do I think he was prepared to treat himself as an invalid? Definitely not—but that was as likely to be from a reluctance to accept an infirmity, however temporary, as from a deficiency in judgment. A man like Simon Parkening,” she added judiciously, “is unlikely to admit to any sort of weakness.”

The detective nodded, but persisted. “Assumin’ he had a heatstroke, could he have, well, gone off his head after you saw him? Not in any violent way, you understand—just, go a bit barmy, so to speak, and wander off somewhere?”

Good heavens, don’t tell me the man’s gone missing! “It’s less likely than that he’d simply fall down in a faint somewhere, but it could happen, I suppose,” she replied. “The last I saw of him, his uncle had taken him in charge and was sending him back to his flat in a cab.”

“And that would be where?” the policeman asked.

Curiouser and curiouser. “I’m not sure. We don’t precisely move in the same social circles, you understand,” she responded, and frowned. “Piccadilly? Or would that be—no, that’s Doctor Greenway. I’m sure he must be in the West End somewhere. Doctor Clayton-Smythe is Sloane Square—well, Mister Parkening isn’t a doctor; I know all of the other doctors’ addresses of course, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you where Mister Parkening lives.”

Piccadilly probably wasn’t where Parkening lived, but it was probably the right sort of area for him to be in. If something’s wrong, I don’t want to immediately deny that I know where he lives. Oh, dear, this is so difficult! How to avoid looking suspicious when I don’t know what I might be suspected of!

“Belgravia,” the policeman supplied absently. “He’s got a flat in Belgravia.” He seemed to find Maya’s responses perfectly reasonable; she detected a relaxation that hadn’t been there a moment before.

Oh, good. At least I’m not a suspect anymore!

“Oh—that makes sense—so handy to his uncle.” Maya smiled cheerfully. “Although I would never have guessed it; Simon Parkening doesn’t strike me as the sort of gentleman for such an artistic neighborhood. It just goes to show how little I know about him, I suppose. Perhaps he has secret yearnings to act, or writes unpublished poetry! I don’t suppose you can tell me what all this is about, can you, detective?”

“Seein’ as there’s no connection with you and Mister Parkening—it seems he’s gone missing, miss.” The detective was very good at concealing his thoughts behind that walrus mustache, but Maya saw his eyes peering at her keenly, waiting for her reaction. Fortunately, since she had nothing whatsoever to hide, it was an honest one of surprise.

“Good heavens! Missing? But how? When? Oh, dear. Is Doctor Clayton-Smythe all right?”

“Happens he went out last night, and didn’t come home at all, miss,” the detective said with a certain subdued relish, but a very inquisitive and predatory gleam in his blue eyes. “His man alarmed the police this morning, thinking his master must have met with harm.”

“Oh, no—how horrible!” she exclaimed. “And certainly if he’d met with an accident, he’d have been taken to his uncle’s hospital immediately—oh, heavens!” Her tone took on annoyance as well as concern. “Oh, these young men will go out on their amusements, no matter what a doctor tells them! I swear to you, if it wasn’t for young men behaving foolishly, I wouldn’t have half the number of patients I see!”

Now the policeman chuckled, and there was sympathy in his voice. “I must agree with you, miss. If it wasn’t for high-spirited young men, there wouldn’t be no need for a quarter of the men on the Force.”

She sighed. “I can’t think what to suggest to you. I suppose there’s no chance he could have come over ill and be safely in bed at a friend’s flat?”

“We’ve checked that, miss,” the detective replied, the keen look (which struck Maya as very like that of Mala with a pigeon in view) leaving his eyes. The corners of his mouth turned up a very little, and the hunting look was replaced by a marginally warmer expression. “None of his friends have seen him. We’re going back over his movements, and—” He hesitated, and then had the grace to look embarrassed, “—well, there was some things said about you in his man’s hearing. That’s what brought me here, just on the chance that you might have had some—contact with him.”

Maya sighed again, but now with unfeigned exasperation. “Mister Parkening does not approve of females being anything other than ornamental, I suspect,” she said shortly. “I shall be charitable and diplomatic, you understand, but he has been something less than polite to me within the hospital. Although he is not a doctor and has no authority there, he seems to have the opinion that his relationship with Doctor Clayton-Smythe gives him the right to pass judgment on everything and everyone in the hospital. I believe that his view is that the only reason for a female to intrude upon a place normally occupied by gentlemen, such as a hospital, is so that she could draw masculine attention to herself. It is an attitude I, of course, have no sympathy for.” She shrugged. “He never can believe that a woman could be as dedicated to medicine as any man.”

The detective unbent just the slightest. “I believe you’re correct, miss. Which is to say that the things as was said about you by Mister Parkening follow that line of reasoning, and may I say are not in keeping with the opinions of most other people. Mister Parkening seems to have had a what-you-call—a prejudice where you were concerned. Didn’t seem likely that anything he spouted was true, but we have to check everything out, if you take my meaning, most especially since it was you that found him after his fit, and not some other doctor.”

“Of course.” She nodded graciously. “That—well, frankly, I wish it had been some other doctor; it was quite a shock to find a man lying on the floor of the linen closet! If I can be of any service to you in a further way, I hope you will let me know. You have my address at my own surgery?”

The detective patted his pocket, in which she discerned the shape of a notebook he had not removed during the interview. “I don’t think we’ll need to speak any more with you, miss, and thank you.”

“Thank you,” she replied, and saw him out, much to the relief of the patients on the benches.

He took the cab that had been waiting for him; she walked as far as a ‘bus stop, where she caught a horse-drawn conveyance and ascended to the open top where she stood a chance of getting some moving air. The sun was setting; the sky overhead brassy and unrelenting.

So Simon Parkening is missing! How very strange.

If he’d come to some misadventure in the slums, he should have turned up by morning. It was unlikely that any of the myriad woes that could befall a poor man would strike someone dressed the way Parkening dressed.

No one would “shanghai” a gentleman to crew some tramp ship; for one thing, what was the point? A gentleman would be absolutely useless on board a ship as a common seaman, he wouldn’t be half strong enough, nor would he have even a rudimentary grasp of how to perform manual labor. For another, there’d be sure to be a row when he went missing. By the same token, a footpad might rob gentlemen, but seldom killed them. There was sure to be a row, and rows brought police in force to hunt for the murderer. So what could have happened to him?

Oh, I’m uncharitable enough to hope he was beaten up by some poor little whore’s protector, she thought, just a bit maliciously. And I hope he’s been stripped of everything and as a consequence is just now waking up in an alley or a Salvation Army clinic or a shilling doss house. Not that he’d learn any lessons from his experience, but it would be nice to think of him finding himself at the mercy of others for a change.

Bah. He’s not my problem. Let the police find him.

Her feet had been hurting her all day; it was such a relief to finally be off them that she closed her eyes for a moment, flexing her toes inside her boots to relieve the cramp in her arches.

If only it would rain! The heat wave had eased, but not yet broken; it was almost as if there was an invisible bowl over England, keeping the heat in.

But just as that thought came to her, she felt the touch of a cool zephyr on her cheek. She opened her eyes, wondering if it had been her imagination, but—oh, joy!—it wasn’t! Dusk had come a half-hour early, for clouds boiled up in the west and rolled slowly across the sky above her, moving ponderously toward the east.

By heaven—a thunderstorm at last! She was so happy to see it that she didn’t care if she got within doors before the rain descended.

It was a near thing, as it turned out. Only by scampering to her door from the corner where the ‘bus left her did she manage to beat the first fat droplets that splatted down into the dusty street behind her.

Thunder shook the house as she shut the door behind her, and she went straight into her surgery office. With a rain like this coming down, the girls of the street would know that there was no use looking for men until it passed, and some of them would finally come to see their doctor. It would, without a doubt, be a very busy evening.

The rain let up around suppertime. By bedtime, just after eleven, it had gone off altogether. Maya looked down onto the street once she had turned her light off, so her eyes could adjust to the relative darkness outside. From her bedroom window, Maya noted mist rising from the cobblestones, eddying around the gaslight in thin, snakelike coils. It looked positively uncanny, especially in light of how hot and dry it had been just this afternoon.

Of course. One downpour won’t have cooled all of the heat stored in those stones, or in the ground beneath them. By midnight the fog is going to be too thick to see in. She shivered a little. The poor girls would be out on the street by now, trying to make up for lost custom, and in a fog this thick, they were easy targets for men who wanted their fun without having to pay for it. On such nights the notorious Jack the Ripper had done his foul work—and “working girls” still faced the prospect of being murdered by their customers, even though the “Ripper” was no longer in evidence.

There were other perils, too. Accidents of all sorts could take place in a thick fog. The one great advantage that a horse-drawn cab had in this weather was that the horse’s senses were keener than the driver’s. You didn’t get hansoms going into the Thames, and collisions between horse-drawn vehicles going at a reasonable pace were rare. There were more and more motorcars and motorbuses on the London streets, however, and the drivers seemed to Maya to be more than reckless when it came to taking a reasonable pace in bad weather. There was always at least one bad collision in a fog, and when one came up as suddenly as this one, there were usually more. Far more frequent were the instances of people being run over by drivers going too fast for the conditions. By the time she got to the hospital in the morning, the wards would be buzzing with tales of the latest horrific accidents. It wasn’t just motorcars either. There were terrible bicycle accidents in bad fogs, for the riders were just as heedless of conditions as the drivers of motor vehicles, and it was as easy to break one’s neck on the cobbles in a tumble from a fast-moving bicycle as it was to break one’s neck by being thrown from a motor.

She turned away from the window and saw to her amusement that Charan, Sia, and Singhe were all waiting for her on her bed, wearing expectant—and slightly impatient—expressions.

So—it’s going to be cooler tonight, and apparently I am supposed to function as a warming pan! she thought with great amusement as she got into bed. At least that means that it will be cooler tonight; they’re fairly good judges when it comes to weather.

As she lay in bed with the mongooses pressed firmly, one alongside each leg, and Charan curled up in the crook of her arm, her thoughts drifted back to that odd interview at the Fleet with the police detective. Of all of the things that could have happened, she would never have expected something of that nature.

I wonder if Parkening ever turned up again? She might have felt a slight twinge of concern about him if his malady had really been heatstroke. As it was, she wasn’t the least sympathetic. If she hadn’t been able to give him a good thrashing for his beggarly behavior, it seemed that Fate had stepped in to give her a hand. It was a good thing that the policeman hadn’t expected a show of “womanly concern” from her, because she didn’t think she’d have been able to produce a convincing expression for him.

And just how would I have explained that, anyway? “Well, officer, the fact is he’s not actually suffering from heatstroke. The man tried to force his attentions on me in that closet, and I used magic to knock him to the ground. So you don’t need to worry that he’s wandering about half-delirious somewhere. The worst he got from it was a well-deserved headache.” Oh, that would have sounded rational! If the fellow didn’t bustle me down to the police station on suspicion, he’d have hauled me into a lunatic asylum!

She wondered if Parkening was the sort to contrive his own disappearance in order to get attention. If he hadn’t turned up by now, he’d certainly be in all the papers, if only because of his connection to his uncle.

If he has engineered this, he’ll likely materialize in a police station or hospital without coat or hat, and with some wild tale of abduction. By Chinese, of course—or perhaps by evil Hindu dacoits! The latter idea made her smother a cross between a snort and a chuckle. They will, of course, have lured him into their clutches with the promise of an Asian beauty—no, wait, that’s not heroic enough. I know! He’ll have seen the blackguards dragging some poor white girl away, meaning, no doubt, to sell her into White Slavery. It would have to be a beautiful and pure, honest serving girl—as if he’d pay such a scene a moment of his attention!—and he rushed to her rescue. They overpowered him, drugged him, and left him bound and gagged in some dank warehouse while they made off with the maiden! And of course, by the time he woke up and freed himself, they were gone without a trace. That would certainly be enough to make Parkening a nine-days’ wonder in the newspapers—and to make life misery for the Chinese or Indian population of London until people forgot about his story.

I hope he is in trouble of his own making, and hasn’t the wit to make up a tale, she thought, sobered. I’ll have to speak to Gupta about this in the morning, just in case. The wretch is mean enough and vindictive enough to make up just such a fantasy so that he can revenge himself on me through my household, and the only doubt I have is whether he’s intelligent enough to think of doing so.

It occurred to her that if Parkening continued to plague her, it might not be a bad thing to gradually turn over most of her hospital work to O’Reilly. The Irishman was her full partner at the Fleet now and, thanks to her, a full surgeon as well. When the “ladies of leisure” returned from their holidays and the theaters opened in full force, she would have plenty of paying patients to occupy her time without taking on the additional work in the charity wards, and besides, less time spent at the hospital would mean more time for the Fleet. Granted, she wouldn’t get as much practice in surgery… and that was definitely a drawback. But she was doing surgery in the clinic, after all. If one of the patients from the Fleet were to be sent to the hospital, O’Reilly could take him in charge—unless, of course, the patient specifically wanted Maya.

But that would be running away.

The admonition stopped her spinning thoughts for a moment. The suffragettes don’t run away. They let themselves be jailed, they even go on hunger strikes knowing that they’ll be force-fed and might even die of it.

True, but sometimes it was a great deal wiser to run from a problem than to confront it. Parkening’s behavior was not something she had any control over, and if he decided to enlarge his circle of potential victims to all those around her, wouldn’t it be better just to take herself out of his purview and hope he would forget about her?

So long as he did forget. Some people continued to pursue even when the object of pursuit was well out of reach.

It seemed such a coward’s portion. And when he stopped pursuing Maya, who could, after all, defend herself and had powerful friends like Lord Almsley, who would he choose to pursue next? With a man like Parkening, there would always be a “next” victim.

I’ll worry about it after he resurfaces, she decided. With any luck at all, Parkening would be made much of, and the attention would distract him from making the lives of others miserable.

And if I’m really, truly lucky, came the nasty little thought, just as she drifted off to sleep, something terrible has happened to him and I’ll never have to worry about him again.

She paid for that nasty little thought with dreams of being pursued through the fog by some nameless, faceless menace. She woke just after dawn with an aching head and a strong disinclination to go out until the sun had burned that fog away. It lay in thick swaths all around the block, and it seemed that Maya’s reluctance was shared by everyone else in the neighborhood, for there was nothing stirring out on the streets.

With the first touch of the rays of the sun, however, the stuff vanished like her dreams, and she packed up her bag as usual to see to her patients at the Fleet. A boy was selling papers on the corner, crying headlines that had something to do with politics in Europe. She bought one for the ride to the clinic. The omnibus was usually empty and she took full advantage of the fact to put her bag on the bench beside her and open the paper.

The headlines on the front page might have been about Balkan unrest, but the first “screamer” inside struck her with the news that social lion Simon Parkening was still missing, and foul play was no longer suspected, but a certainty.

Lord Alderscroft contemplated the saddle of mutton before him with gloom, while Peter Scott waited for the apology he already knew was forthcoming. Finally the peer raised his eyes and looked straight into Peter’s face.

“I asked you here for luncheon so that I could apologize to you, Scott,” Alderscroft said manfully. “I’ve taken down the Great Shield; it’s utterly useless, and the power wasted on it can be put to more productive efforts. You were right about this India business, and I was wrong. There were more deaths last night, and all the signs point to that missing man being mixed in with it somehow. He’s probably dead, too,” Alderscroft added glumly, as an afterthought.

“If it’s any consolation to you, I know something about the fellow, myself,” Peter replied. “He is—or was—more than a bit of a rotter. I doubt he’ll be mourned or missed by anyone but his own family, and possibly not even by them much.”

“Personal information, Scott?” Alderscroft looked at him keenly from under his shaggy brows. “From that little Hindu doctor of yours?”

Peter coughed. “Well, yes, actually. The man had a habit of making a nuisance of himself around her hospital.”

Alderscroft helped himself to mutton, chewed thoughtfully, then replied, “I don’t suppose the doctor-gel could be mixed up in this…” But then to Peter’s relief, he shook his head, and answered his own question. “No, not likely. We know her, we’ve had our eyes on her, and not only has she no connection whatsoever to the men who were murdered—well, bar the rotter—but there’s been nothing from her quarter but the shields and defenses and a trifling bit of healing magic.”

“I am a bit concerned that she might be a target of this—” he ventured. “My lord, I really do think we ought to invite her into the White Lodge, not only because she is becoming a formidable Earth Master, but for her protection. As long as she must function alone, she will be in danger, if not from this menace, than from others who will wish to gather her into their fold.”

Alderscroft’s brows contracted together in a frown, and he stabbed at an inoffensive piece of mutton savagely. “A woman? And a foreigner to boot? Out of the question! East is East and West is West, my boy—we don’t mix our magic with Eastern magic, that only brings trouble. Well, look at the messes that Blavatsky woman got herself into, and the Besant girl is no better nor saner!”

“Yes, but—” Peter began just as stubbornly.

“But me no buts. There never has been a woman in the Exeter Club, nor a foreigner, and there never will be.” Alderscroft stared at Peter as though daring him to attempt a contradiction, but Peter was not about to fight a battle against a windmill, and changed the subject.

“How many victims were there last night?” he asked.

“Eh?” Alderscroft said, surprised. Clearly he’d expected an argument, and when Peter had declined to give him one, was taken a little aback. “Ah—seven, I believe. At least that’s the count this morning. All of ‘em, bar the missing one, retired Army. None mages. All smothered, the breath squeezed out of ‘em.” He shook his head. “Can’t link the missing man in with that set, but Owlswick swears he’s getting the same sort of taint on the fellow when he tries to scry out what’s happened to him, and I suppose he could be linked into Hindus in some other way—” his gaze sharpened, “—if he offered some insult to that Hindu doctor of yours. Did he?”

“I gather that he made some improper advances, yes,” Peter said reluctantly. When Alderscroft pinned a person with that direct gaze, it was damnably hard not to give him what he wanted out of you.

“Huh. So that would be where your information came from. No reason for the girl to lie, I suppose. No, of course not, she’s a doctor, she’d have more reason to cover it up to preserve her reputation. What happened, exactly?” Alderscroft’s glacial gaze pried every last detail out of Peter, including the little plot that he and Almsley had made up to free Maya from the unwanted attentions.

“Ha!” the old man barked, amused, when Peter was finished. “Clever enough, all of you! Good trick of hers, callin’ what she did to the fellow ‘heatstroke.’ Ha!” He pondered the tale, stabbing bites of his luncheon and chewing them with deliberation while he did so.

At least I’ve managed to restore his appetite.

“Well played,” he said at last. “Nothing to connect us, or magic in general, with what went on. Managing to hush the fellow up. Perfectly allowable use of magic in self-defense, especially considering the situation. Though—someone should have noticed when she struck him.”

“It was a very transitory phenomenon, my lord,” Peter said cautiously. “It didn’t take place at night, nor in one of the venues we’ve been watching. Under such circumstances, I can see how it would not be caught by a watcher.”

“True, true. But still.” Alderscroft frowned. “Someone should have noticed, use of power like that, and unshielded. I’ll have a word with Owlswick. He’s supposed to be watching by daylight, whether or not anyone else is, and he’s supposed to report things like that to me.”

Aha—so that’s why Lord Owlswick never leaves the club! “She is a doctor, my lord. It might not have been as great a use of power as you are assuming. A doctor would know better than anyone else how and where to strike to incapacitate someone.” Peter had more in mind than merely helping Lord Owlswick out of a reprimand by pointing that out. He hoped that—after later consideration at least—giving evidence of Maya’s multiple talents might yet pave the way for her entry into the Club and Lodge, if only Lord Alderscroft could be made to see past his Old School Tie prejudices.

“Hmm. A point. Well, there’s the link from the missing man to the killer—the cad laid hands on a Hindu wench, and with intentions, to boot.” Alderscroft nodded. “Don’t matter if she never told anyone but you and her servants, or even if she didn’t tell the servants. Servants overhear everything, and they gossip. Wouldn’t be long before it was all over, at least with the Hindu population.” He brooded over his potatoes. “Wish we had some sort of hook into the ranks of Hindu servants in London. If anyone knows anything that might lead us to the killer, it’ll be with them.”

“You surely don’t suspect them of helping the killer?” Peter exclaimed, appalled. He hadn’t thought Alderscroft to be that insular!

But Alderscroft shook his head. “No, no, not a bit of it. For one thing, there wasn’t a victim that still had Indian servants. No, I’m just thinking that there may be rumors in the bazaar, so to speak, rumors that would be damned useful to us, and of no use to the police, and I wish we were in a position to hear ‘em.”

Peter thought of Gupta and Gopal, and wondered just how open they would be with him. Well, what could it hurt to ask? And that might be yet one more reason for Club and Lodge to feel obligated to Maya. The more obligations that piled up, the less resistance there would be to bringing her into the fold.

After all, that was one reason why they brought me in.

“Doctor Witherspoon’s servants might be willing to talk to me,” he said cautiously. “Especially if she asked them to. She treats them less as servants and more as family, from what I’ve seen.”

Alderscroft cleared his throat, and looked a little embarrassed. “It’s not my place to criticize how a woman runs her own household,” he said, “But in most cases, that’s a mistake—”

“But not in all—and anyway, this just means they’re more likely to talk to me to oblige her,” Peter said firmly. “I take it you’d like me to have a word, then?”

Alderscroft nodded. “I’d be obliged to the doctor,” he responded, much to Peter’s pleasure. “Especially if they can tell us anything interesting.”

“Then I’ll see to it immediately,” Peter promised. “I’ll be happy to.”

And if ever there was an understatement, that was surely a mammoth.