“You have stated that you are Lord Harold Trowbridge, of No. 51 South Audley Street, London?”

“I am.”

“Will you inform the panel of the business that brings you to this city, my lord?”

“Certainly. I have a considerable fortune invested in shares of the Honourable East India Company, and have been in daily expectation of the arrival of a particular ship out of Bombay — the Rose of Hin- doostan.” His lordship drew off his black gloves. Mr. Crowse raised an eyebrow. “I observe, my lord, that you are presently in mourning?”

“My mother, the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough, lately passed from this life.”

“Pray accept my condolences. She was interred, I believe, only a few days since? Surely your man of business might deal with an Indiaman at such a time, rather than yourself?”

“I employ no man of business, Mr. Crowse; and I fail to comprehend what my affairs have to do with the subject of your inquest.”

“Very well, my lord. Will you tell the members of the panel here convened, how you came to be at Butlock Common yesterday morning?”

I held my breath. Would he admit to the affair of honour?

“I had arranged to meet an old friend of mine — Dr. Jarvey, of East Street — in order to take a ramble about the countryside,” he said tranquilly.

My heart sank. Lord Harold meant to bear the full brunt of suspicion.

“A ramble?” the coroner repeated in surprise.

“Yes. We are both of us fond of walking.”

“You are presently lodging at the Dolphin, are you not, my lord?”

“I am.”

“And Dr. Jarvey, as you say, resides in East Street?”

“He does.”

“Then would you be so good as to explain why you chose to meet over four miles from the town, in an isolated field, where a corpse happened to be lying?”

“We had a great desire to view the tumuli at Netley Common, nearly two miles distant, and thought that Butlock Common should make an excellent starting point. One might wander through Prior’s Coppice along the way; it is a lovely little wood at this time of year.”

“I see.” Mr. Crowse looked unconvinced. “You arrived well before Dr. Jarvey?”

“Perhaps a quarter of an hour, all told. It was yet dark as I approached the common.”

“And what then occurred?”

“I stepped out of my chaise for a breath of air—

took a turn upon the meadow that borders the lane — and found to my great distress that a young woman had been left for dead upon the ground.”

“Did you recognise the girl?”

“I did. She was serving-maid to an acquaintance of mine, one Mrs. Challoner of Netley Lodge.”

“You had seen her in your visits to the Lodge, I collect?”

Lord Harold shrugged. “One maid is very like another. I recalled, however, that one of them was quite young — and had startling blue eyes. The corpse was similar in these respects.”

“You do not recollect meeting the young woman elsewhere?” Mr. Crowse enquired in a silken tone. Lord Harold hesitated a fraction before answering. “I do not.”

“Very well. What did you next, after discovering the corpse?”

“I ascertained that the young woman was dead; and then returned to my carriage to await the arrival of Dr. Jarvey, as I thought him likely to know best what should be done.”

Mr. Crowse appeared on the point of posing a final question — considered better of it — and said, “You may step down, my lord.”

Lord Harold quitted the chair.

Dr. Jarvey was then called to the stand. He informed the coroner’s panel that he had arrived at Butlock Common yesterday at perhaps half-past six o’clock in the morning, where he had examined the body of a woman discovered upon the ground.

“Her throat had been cut by a sharp blade, severing the principal blood vessels and the windpipe. I should judge the instrument of her death to have been a razor, or perhaps a narrow-bladed knife; the corpus was barely cool, and given the chill of the weather yesterday, I should judge that life had been extinct no more than an hour prior to my arrival.”

“Can you tell the jury, Doctor, why you travelled alone to Butlock Common so early in the morning, and in a hired hack — rather than availing yourself of his lordship’s chaise?”

“A doctor’s hours are not his own,” Dr. Jarvey answered equably. “I cannot be certain, in arranging for activities of this kind, that I may not be called out at the very hour appointed for the meeting, in attendance upon a patient who is gravely ill. I generally chuse to meet my friends, rather than inconvenience them through delay. Therefore, if I am prevented from appearing on the hour, they may pursue their pleasures in solitude.”

Mr. Crowse, the coroner, looked very hard at Dr. Jarvey as he concluded his diffident speech; then he turned to the twelve men of the panel and said, “I must now require you to rise, and accompany me into the side closet, so that you might observe the corpse as is your duty, and testify that life is extinct.”[26]

With varying degrees of alacrity, the panel shuffled from their benches and through the doorway indicated by Mr. Crowse, who waited until the last man had exited the room before closing the door behind the entire party.

A tedious interval ensued, during which Frank shifted in his chair and folded his arms belligerently across his chest. He was uneasy with the degree of duplicity in the proceedings, though I doubted he had perceived its logical end.

The closet door opened, and the men — sober of countenance but in general composed — regained their seats. Mr. Crowse ignored the craning of heads from the assembly as several tried to glimpse what lay beyond the closet door.

“The coroner calls Mrs. Hodgkin!”

A plump, kindly-faced matron in a bottle-green gown with outmoded panniers made her way to the box. She curtseyed, then seated herself stiffly on the edge of the chair.

“You are Elsie Hodgkin?”

“I am. Housekeeper at the Dolphin Inn since I were eighteen year old, and I’m nigh on eight-andforty this Christmas, as I don’t mind saying straight out.”

“Very well,” replied Mr. Crowse. “Please inform the men of the panel what you know of Deceased.”

“She were a lot better acquainted with that there Lord Harold than he’s admitting,” Elsie Hodgkin said immediately. “Two or three times the girl’s come asking for his lordship at the Dolphin, and once she spent an hour or more waiting on his pleasure in our parlour.”

Lord Harold held himself, if possible, more erect in his chair; I had an idea of how his expression should appear — eyes narrowed, every feature stilled.

“Indeed? Have you any notion of the girl’s business?”

“She seemed respectable enough,” the housekeeper said, “but I’m not the sort to send a girl that age into a gentleman’s room for any amount of pleading.”

“Did you observe Lord Harold to meet with Deceased?”

Elsie Hodgkin’s small eyes shifted shrewdly in her face. “Sent that man of his down, he did, to have a word; and I’m that busy, I cannot rightly say whether his lordship followed the valet or not.”

“Do you recall the last time you saw Flora Bastable in the Dolphin?”

“The day before her death,” Mrs. Hodgkin said with relish. “Waited in the parlour, Flora did, while his lordship fired those pistols in the yard, as though he hadn’t left the poor young thing cooling her heels above an hour.”

A murmur of comment stirred the assembly, and I espied a few heads turn in his lordship’s direction.

“Were you aware that Lord Harold quitted the inn quite early yesterday morning?”

“He were gone before I was out of my bed,” she said flatly, “and quiet about it, as though he hoped a body wouldn’t notice. Furtive and stealthy, like.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hodgkin. You may step down. The coroner calls Miss Rose Bastable!”

A frightened young face under a mobcap — a pair of hands twisting in a white apron — and Rose Bastable took her place at Crowse’s right hand. She stared at him fearfully, a sob escaping her lips.