“I should hardly call murder a trifle,” George Hearst remarked in his mordant voice, “though if one is so disposed, all that is serious in life may be ignored by a steady pursuit of frivolity.”

“La, George, you are a stick,” Miss Fanny observed. “I wonder the murderer has not seen fit to send you off, out of sheer ennui. But never mind. We shall amuse ourselves the better without you.”

“As is generally the case,” Mr. Hearst replied, “though I count it no dishonour. Since you find amusement in everything, Miss Delahoussaye — even what is serious or tragic — stimulating your ability to laugh must be considered a talent very much in the common way. I confess I pride myself on rarer qualities.”

“There must be a store of old clothes about, in such an ancient seat as this,” Fanny said, paying him no heed; “I am sure Lieutenant Hearst would delight to see me arrayed as Marie Antoinette, and parade himself as the Sun King.”

Madame appeared startled, and surveyed her daughter narrowly. “I should sooner wish you to have the ordering of your history, my dear,” she said, “for some several generations separate the two.”

Fanny shrugged with elegant disregard. “Pooh, Mamma! When one is play-acting, it makes no odds. I shall call for Mrs. Hodges, and turn the attics topsyturvy.”

“Pray do not, Fanny,” Madame said sharply. “We should sooner hear your lovely voice raised in song — and to deprive us of your presence would be a cruel piece of work. I am sure,” she said, “that Lieutenant Hearst agrees.”

I was surprised to hear her appeal in such a case to a man she despised, and concluded that fancy dress was indeed abhorrent to her. But Miss Fanny was all smiles in an instant, and I must give up my place at the instrument. In truth, I cared little, and soon sought the privacy of my room; for she would persist in singing boisterous carols of the season, in an ill-considered display of liveliness.

Yesterday, Sir William presided over the removal of the late Earl's coffin from the great stone sarcophagus in Scargrave Close churchyard, and saw it entrusted to Dr. Pettigrew, the London physician. In this he was attended by Eliahu Bott, the Hertfordshire coroner a trim little fellow with a perennially dyspeptic look. The inquest is called for this afternoon, and all are to attend. I myself must offer testimony of the finding of Marguerite, and feel no little trepidation at the prospect. And so my life is as suspended as indrawn breath, awaiting that relief of tension that I pray the inquest will bring.

Sir William himself has grown remote in speech and aspect; he has ceased to impart what ever he knows of the case to me, treating me rather with a gentle and solicitous concern that inspires only fear. That he knows some ill of Isobel and Fitzroy Payne — that he believes them, in fact, to be guilty of both murders — I have surmised. Lacking that affection for the Countess born of close acquaintance, or that respect for the character of the new Earl I persist in harbouring, Sir William is unfettered in his judgment; and so I anticipate his harshness with regard to the inquest and fear for its outcome. His duty as magistrate for the district compels him to prove my friends’ guilt[30]; and in gathering what may tell against them, he is assiduous as ever in his days at the King's Bench. That he was absent some few days in London, in search of witnesses for the coming panel, I learned from his dear lady upon calling at the house in the Scargrave carriage; and her own gravity of manner, and pitying look, did little to cheer my hopes of a happy outcome.

Though the weather has held fair since Christmas Eve, I have scorned Lady Bess and the pleasures of riding horseback; scorned my journal, my volume of Boswell, even my letter-writing — for how to tell my dear Cassandra of the evil men may do? And, in truth, I hardly know what I should write; for I cannot find the logic in events for myself, much less for the understanding of another. The world is revealed as an uncertain place, where the face of a friend may hide the intent of a murderer; where the stoutest protestations may serve to beguile the trusting into a false complacency. Isobel's handkerchief, found by the paddock gate, and Fitzroy Payne's handwriting on the note found in the maid's bodice — to say nothing of the Barbadoes nuts in his possession — are facts which cannot be denied. Even did no word of Isobel's attachment to her nephew emerge at the inquest, the sagacious among the jury might surmise it, from the linkage of evidence and the respective ages and association of the parties. A stranger to either's character might readily assume that the heir poisoned his uncle for the dual purpose of acquiring his fortune and his wife; and that Isobel, needy of money and younger by a generation than her spouse of three months, should happily accede to the plan of her amorous swain. The maid's death is handily disposed of; she had accused the lovers to the magistrate, and won a brutal silence as her reward. And so the prospects for both are most black, indeed.

I say nothing of my own credence in the plot outlined above. To be frank, I know not what to think. An unhappy choice is before me: to find the Countess's and her lover's earnest avowals of innocence to spring from the grossest duplicity, and my own faith in Isobel to be founded upon sand; or to accuse others, equally intimate to the household, of adding to the sin of murder that of entangling the innocent in a deadly web of suspicion. Neither is to be preferred, for both are based upon die worst in human nature; and though I have learned to laugh at such — to look for it among my acquaintance and mock it in my writing — when met with evil in its truest form, I find that even I cannot dismiss it with worldly detachment. The maid was too dead, and too anguished in her dying, to permit of it; any more than the ravaged face and painful final hours of the late Earl should counsel mercy to his assassin.

Later that afternoon

“MY DEAR COUNTESS,” TOM HEARST SAID EARNESTLY TO Isobel, “may I suggest you ride with George and me, and Miss Austen if she will, and leave the Scargrave coach for another day.”

“But Percy has brought the horses round, Tom,” Isobel protested, with a gesture for the Scargrave coachman.

The Lieutenant appeared to hesitate, and cast a glance at Fitzroy Payne.

“I believe my cousin fears for your safety, Countess,” that gentleman said quietly. “The townsfolk's mood is grown ugly since the publication of the maid's letter, and her brutal death.”

Isobel's beautiful eyes were shadowed as she studied the Earl's countenance. With a tremor in her voice, she enquired, “You share Tom's fears, Fitzroy?”

“I am afraid, my dear Isobel, that many would relish the chance our public parade affords them. My late uncle was neither so lenient in his management of accounts, nor so indulgent in his stewardship of his tenants, as to win their gratitude and affection. As his heir, I have inherited the malice they bore him.”

“There was even talk of stoning the coach,” Lieutenant Hearst said apologetically, “the maid having been a favourite among the bloods at the Cock and Bull. Indeed, Sir William advised that any equipage bearing the Scargrave crest should be left in the carriage house today. It is he who apprised me of the danger. Our chariot, as you know, is painted a simple black, and could not hope to draw the attention that Percy and his four matched greys should do.”

“Very well,” Isobel said, her voice choked. “I shall submit to hiding and deceit, though both are alien to my nature. And I shall leave for London as soon as the inquest is closed, the better to escape this horrid place.”

And so we were handed in to the Hearsts’ equipage, while the Delahoussayes and the new Earl sought Sir William's chariot; and though a crowd was gathered at the publican's door, we pulled up in the rear of the building, and entered it unscathed.