“Myrtle!”
“In the case of suspicious death, any citizen has the right to demand that the Coroner perform an inquest.”
All cheeriness left Miss Judson’s face. “You will not,” she said, voice severe. “I understand that you’re curious about what happened, and I know you’re not simply being morbid. But haven’t we bothered that poor family enough? She only just died. Why can’t you wait for the obituary like everyone else?”
I wasn’t sure how to make her understand if she didn’t already. She should understand; she was Miss Judson, after all—nobody in the world knew me better. “I just need to know what happened,” I mumbled. “We’re going to be late.” And I shoved past her into the courthouse, and tried to content myself with a nice murder trial.
The proceedings had already started, but the bailiff recognized us and let us slip quietly into the public gallery overlooking the courtroom. Father looked splendid in his black robes and white wig, marching boldly before the Bench. Swinburne was exceptionally progressive in employing a professional Prosecuting Solicitor. Father would not be prosecuting the whole case, unfortunately. Murders were too important to be tried locally. This was just the initial stage, to determine if the case against the men had merit, and was worth committing them to the higher courts. Still, Father’s role was significant, and it was a thrill to watch him work.
The defendants sat in the dock, a small boxlike room whose single door led straight into the jail cells. It was designed to give everyone in the courtroom a clear view of the occupants. The first man, whose name was Cobb, had a furious scowl, heavy eyebrows, and a lumpy nose which I suspected had been broken at least once.* The second, called Smythe, was younger. He was pale and sweating and kept yanking at his collar. I tried to picture them beating another man to death, and it seemed very pointless.
We had arrived at the best part: the Coroner was just starting to give his testimony. As the official in charge of everyone who died in Swinburne, he was regularly called on to testify in Father’s cases. He didn’t perform the post-mortem exams on murder victims—that job fell to the Police Surgeon—but he was otherwise extremely well versed in the Science of Death.
“I arrived at Bell’s Tavern at half past eleven on the night of July eighth,” the Coroner was saying. “There I found the body of the victim. It was clear that the cause of death had been multiple blows about his head and face. A broken whiskey bottle lay in pieces beside the body.”
“And what was your verdict, sir, regarding the cause of the victim’s death?”
“Wilful murder.”
Notebook in hand, I listened happily for the rest of the morning, my disagreement with Miss Judson temporarily forgotten. I didn’t really intend to request an inquest into Miss Wodehouse’s death, but I thought the Coroner might want to know the inconsistencies in what had happened last night. I wasn’t convinced Inspector Hardy had conveyed my concerns in his report—plus he hadn’t known about the lily garden. If anything nefarious had happened to Miss Wodehouse, shouldn’t someone find out for sure?
Eventually Miss Judson shifted slightly, permitting a view of her sketchbook. She’d squeezed a small portrait of Father in his wig into her depiction of the trial. He looked very dashing, and she’d quite captured the strong corner of his jaw and the fierce way his eyes burned out over the courtroom. My heart swelled.*
As we observed, the opposing counsel began to build his defense, but Father knocked down every point he raised until the only thing left was the single inescapable conclusion: that the two accused had wilfully murdered an innocent man. I found Father’s work mesmerizing, the way he pieced together individual bits of evidence into a clear, undeniable picture. It was like the way the planets fit together in the heavens, or the sixty-six elements in the Periodic Table. A natural order to the universe, life and death, good and evil, law and order.
I turned my notebook to a fresh page. In a trial, the Prosecution is charged with lining up a preponderance of the evidence, an overwhelming impression that all clues point toward the suspects’ guilt. I didn’t have any suspects yet in Miss Wodehouse’s death, and I couldn’t prove anything, but I was starting to see a preponderance. The destruction of her lilies, mysterious men skulking about the gardens in the middle of the night dropping their bloody cigar cutters, the improbable timing of her bath, Mr. Hamm’s bonfire of “debris” and his lies . . . Old ladies in good health didn’t just suddenly drop dead in the middle of the night after the total destruction of their life’s work. Maybe I couldn’t call for an inquest, but I certainly found Miss Wodehouse’s death suspicious. More than suspicious, in fact.
“It was murder!”
4
Post-Mortem
The post-mortem examination, also called the autopsy, requires a skilled deductive mind to interpret both the medical and criminal evidence. The difference between a murder and a death from natural causes sometimes comes down to one stroke of the Coroner’s pen.
—H. M. Hardcastle, Principles of Detection
That was definitely said with more enthusiasm than I’d intended, not to mention volume—right in the middle of the Defense Counsel’s dramatic pause, when the entire courtroom was tense with heavy silence.
“What? What murder? Who’s that?” snapped Mr. Justice Fox, who was quite elderly and somewhat hard of hearing. “That’s the Prosecution’s job, my good man!”
“I didn’t say it,” protested the counsel for the defense. “It came from the gallery.”
I was on my feet by then, Miss Judson urgently trying to tug me back down, as all heads in the courtroom—including Defendant Cobb’s lumpy one—swiveled my way. All heads but one: Father’s was bent over, buried in his hand.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” I said. “I didn’t mean this murder. I meant a different one.”
Justice Fox scowled at me, but he might have just been trying to see me clearly from the Bench, so I waved. I saw Father’s back stiffen. “What’s this about a murder, child? Who are you?”
“Myrtle Hardcastle, my lord,” I answered promptly, with a very professional curtsy.
“Hardcastle? You don’t mean—”
“Yes, sir,” I said proudly. “My father’s the Prosecuting Solicitor.” For some reason, this made everyone laugh.
“Myrtle.” It wasn’t technically possible to hiss my name, but Miss Judson had made an art form out of fierce whispering.
The judge shifted on the Bench. “Miss Hardcastle, what is the meaning of this outburst?”
“I’m very sorry, sir. I was caught up in the proceedings. It won’t happen again.”