Neither my mother’s protests, therefore, nor Martha’s anxiety, nor my fear of public display could prevent me from attending the coroner’s panel.
“The maid was in service at Netley Lodge, Mamma,” I told her mildly, “and her death must cause considerable discomfort in Mrs. Challoner’s breast. I should not consider myself a true friend, did I fail to lend support at such an hour.”
My mother declared that if I was determined to make a cake of myself, then she utterly washed her hands of me. My brother Frank said instantly, however, that he would bear me company — and dear Mary confessed herself glad of his decision, in a gentle aside she imparted in the upstairs hall.
“Frank is so restless when he is turned ashore, Jane, that I declare I can do nothing with him! Better that he should enjoy an hour of freedom about the town, and interest himself in all the doings of Southampton, than rebuke poor little Mary Jane for her irrepressible spirits.”
I thoroughly agreed. At a quarter to the hour, therefore, I left Mamma prostrate in her bedchamber, smelling salts at hand, while I tied my bonnet strings unsteadily in the hall. I had not slept for most of the night, nor had I eaten more than a square of bread all day; I was in dreadful looks. I had considered of Lord Harold’s parting remark— provided I am at liberty so long—and concluded that he expected to be charged with murder. I understood the painful course his thoughts had taken. He did not like to admit to an affair of honour, which the law must frown upon; he refused to implicate Mr. Ord in a matter of bloodshed; and he hoped to shield me, my brother, and Dr. Jarvey, who had attended the meeting in good faith. Therefore, he was left with but a single course: to inform the authorities that he had discovered the girl’s corpse himself, in an isolated field, at half-past six o’clock in the morning. It was an unenviable position; but one from which Lord Harold was unlikely to shrink. Ever the gambler — and man of honour — he should surely cast his fate upon the toss of a die.
“But why?” I demanded of my reflection. “Why must he bear the weight of so heinous a crime, and not Sophia Challoner?”
“Are you ready, Jane?”
Frank wore his full dress uniform, complete with cockade, to lend the proceedings an air of dignity.
“You should not attempt to bear me company,” I warned him. “You will hear vile things said about everybody. It is the general rule of inquests, to contribute everything to rumour, and nothing to justice.”
“You make it sound worse than the Royal Navy,” he observed mildly.
The small dining parlour in the Coach & Horses was usually bespoken for dinner by wealthy merchants in the India trade, who put up at the inn while en route from London to Southampton. It was chock-a-block with local faces by five minutes before two: seamen reddened with exposure to the elements, retired officers of the Royal Navy, a few tradesmen I recognised from shops along the High. Frank bowed left and right to his large acquaintance, but kept a weather eye on me. My brother’s countenance was composed and unsmiling: much, I suspected, as he might enter into battle.
Of Sophia Challoner there was no sign, nor of Mr. Ord; the entire Netley party had dignified the inquest by their absence. Lord Harold was seated near the front of the room, his valet at his side, but both were so sober in their mien, that neither turned his head to notice our entrance. The press of folk was so great, I did not like to force my way forward. Frank cast about for seats to the rear, and several men claimed the honour of offering theirs to me. One of them was Jeb Hawkins.
The Bosun’s Mate pulled his forelock in my brother’s direction, and received a sturdy clap on the shoulder; they had long been acquainted, and knew each other’s worth. “This is a rum business, miss, and no mistake! Poor old Ned Bastable! His granddaughter served out like that — I’ve never seen Ned so shaken, not even when the French took his right leg with a ball!”
I grasped his rough hand in my gloved one. “It gives me strength to see you here, Mr. Hawkins.”
He harrumphed, and cast his eyes to the floor. At that moment, the coroner thrust his way to the front of the room and took up a position behind a broad deal table, much scarred from the rings of tankards.
“That’ll be Crowse,” whispered the Bosun’s Mate knowledgeably. “Not a bad sort, though hardly out of leading-strings.”
A hammer fell, a bailiff cried, and all in the assembly rose. “The coroner summons Mr. Percival Pethering to the box!”
Frank snorted in derision beside me.
Percival Pethering was a magistrate of Southampton — a pale and languid article, foppishly dressed. His great height and extreme thinness made of his figure a perpetual question mark. Stringy grey hair curled over his forehead, and his teeth — which were very bad — protruded like a nag’s of uncertain breeding. He seated himself at the coroner’s right hand, and took a pinch of snuff from a box he kept tucked into his coat.
The mixture must have been excessively strong: he sneezed, dusting powder over the leaves of paper on which the coroner’s scribe kept his notations.
“Mr. Pethering?”
“At your service, Mr. Crowse.” The magistrate pressed a handkerchief to his nose.
“You are magistrate of Southampton, I believe?”
“And hold my commission at the pleasure of Lord Abercrombie, Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire.”
“Indeed. And you have been in the commission of the peace how long?”
“Full fourteen years this past July seventeenth.”
“Very well. Pray tell the jury here impaneled, Mr. Pethering, how you came to learn of this sad case.”
The magistrate grimaced at the twelve men arranged awkwardly on two of the publican’s sturdy benches, and tucked his handkerchief into his sleeve.
“A sad case, indeed. One might even say a gruesome, not to mention a shocking business, had one less experience of the cruelty of the world in general than I have, and the depravity of the Great—”
“The facts, Mr. Pethering,” the coroner interrupted impatiently.
“Certainly, Mr. Crowse. I had just sat down to my breakfast yesterday — no later than seven o’clock, as is my custom — when a messenger arrived from the village of Hound, crying out that murder had been done, and I must come at once.”
A murmur of excited comment rippled like a breeze through the assembly, and Mr. Crowse let his hammer fall. “Murder is a word grossly prejudicial to this proceeding, sir. Pray let us hear no more of it until the panel has delivered its verdict.”
“Very well. I undertook to accompany the man — valet to Lord Harold Trowbridge — to the cottage of old Ned Bastable in Hound. There I found Dr. Hugh Jarvey, physician of this city, and Lord Harold — a gentleman of London presently putting up at the Dolphin — who had discovered the corpus of a young girl on Butlock Common earlier that morning.”
“And what did you then?” Mr. Crowse enquired.
“I examined the corpus, as requested by Dr. Jarvey, and agreed that the maid — Flora Bastable, by name, old Ned’s granddaughter — had died of a mortal wound to the throat. I informed the coroner that an inquest should be necessary, and arranged for the conveyance of the girl’s body here to the Coach & Horses.”
“Thank you, sir — that will be all.”
Mr. Pethering stepped down. “The coroner calls Lord Harold Trowbridge!”
I discerned his figure immediately: straight and elegant, arrayed in black, striding calmly down the central aisle. His countenance was cool and impassive as ever; he looked neither to right nor left. Mr. Crowse, the coroner, might have been the only other person in the room.
“Pray take a chair, my lord,” Crowse said brusquely, “and place your right hand on the Bible.”
He swore to God that he should speak only the truth, and gazed out clearly over the ranks of townspeople arrayed to hear him. He espied my brother Frank, and the corners of his mouth lifted; his eyes settled on my face. I am sure I looked ghastly — too pale above my black gown, my features pinched and aged. For an instant I read his disquiet in his looks, and then the grey gaze moved on.