“I’m sorry,” I said, grimacing apologetically around the table. “I’ve been doing background reading on this all week, so I’m a little obsessed right now. I’ve sort of hit a dead end, though.”

Having exhausted the Institute of Historical Research’s collection of monographs on late-eighteenth-century India, I wasn’t quite sure where to go for the primary sources. It was my time period, but quite definitely not my field.

“I wonder what happened to all the old East India Company documents,” mused Colin, his fingers tapping against the back of my chair. “They had to go somewhere after they tore the East India House down.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done any work with Indian documents.” There was a very nice new professor in the history department back at Harvard whose specialty was eighteenth-century India, but I had only met him very briefly at a department cocktail party the previous spring, hardly enough of an acquaintance to feel comfortable e-mailing and nagging him for advice. I was sure he would have no idea who I was. After the first thirty or so introductions, one grad student begins to look much like another.

“You could ask Aunt Arabella,” suggested Serena. “She spent a good deal of time in that part of the world.”

“Really?” I remembered Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s flat, with its chintz and white moldings and unexpectedly exotic accoutrements, relics of the last gasp of Empire. There had been a tufted Zulu spear and many-legged Indian gods sitting side by side with the usual Dresden shepherdesses and Minton candy dishes.

Because it had been Mrs. Selwick-Alderly who had introduced me to Colin — so to speak — I had warm and fuzzy feelings for her, even if we weren’t quite on “Aunt Arabella” terms yet.

“Her husband was stationed out there during World War Two,” said Colin. “And they stayed on until the transfer of power in 1947. If nothing else, she should at least have some idea of where you can start to look.”