“Mr. George Hemming!”

Mr. Tivey’s voice rang through the chamber, but no answering shuffle of feet prepared to meet it. I craned my head in search of the solicitor’s form. Mr. Hemming, I felt certain, was not in the Snake and Hind; but was such a lapse of duty possible? Had he unaccountably avoided the Inquest?

A stab of doubt, akin to the warning note that had sounded in my brain at Miller’s Dale, coursed through my blood. Mr. Hemming was not to be suspected of murder. He was too much the gentleman, and too much my cousin’s old friend. Besides, there had been a gentleness in all his ways — an ease of manner — that was utterly at variance with violence. That ease had fled instantly once the maid’s body was discovered. Why was the solicitor determined to act as one burdened by guilt?

“Mr. Hemming! I call Mr. George Hemming!”

The stir of speculation throughout the room was considerable. Lacking a gavel, Mr. Tivey hammered upon the table with the flat of his broad palm. “Very well — then I call Mr. Edward Cooper, clergyman of Hams tall Ridware!”

My cousin opened his mouth and began to sing.

He made his way in stately procession to the head of the airless room, his eyes uplifted to the rafters, and his face beatified. The lowness of the public room’s ceiling rather spoiled the effect; but his strains carried into every available corner in a most gratifying way. I thought I should sink under the misery of Mr. Cooper’s example, but that I was a stranger to most of the observers present. He took his place in the witness’s chair, and gazed solemnly at the assembly as he concluded his first verse. I felt sure that he intended to go on with a second — he filled his lungs with air — but Mr. Tivey swooped down to administer the oath, and forestalled another chorus of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”

In answer to the Coroner’s questions, Mr. Cooper related how he had retrieved the body in the company of the miller and his friend Mr. Hemming, and how our party had conveyed its sad burden into Bakewell. He made no mention of Mr. Hemming’s extreme reluctance to do so, and from this, I determined that my cousin was anxious on his friend’s behalf as well. Mr. Tivey addressed some further questions, regarding time elapsed between my discovery of the body, and its conveyance into Water Street; and then dismissed Mr. Cooper, who retreated to his seat in fulsome song.

Mr. Tivey pounded upon his table.

My cousin bowed his head in supplication, but happily ceased his caroling.

Black brows drawn down over his harshly-graven features, Mr. Tivey paused to compose his thoughts.

“As the surgeon called in attendance upon Deceased,” he informed the jury, “I proceeded to examine the corpse. It is well known by now that my first discovery was an interesting one — namely, that Deceased was not a young gentleman of unknown origin, but a maidservant by the name of Tess Arnold—” At this, a murmur arose from the assembled townsfolk, more of satisfaction at having previously possessed the remarkable intelligence than any surprise at its publication. Mr. Tivey stared balefully at the crowd. He refused to speak further until the comment had subsided.

“The maid Arnold belonged to Penfolds Hall, the estate of Mr. Charles Danforth, near Tideswell. It will be observed that Tideswell is little over a mile north of Miller’s Dale, an easy enough distance for an accomplished walker.

“Deceased had suffered grievous harm. As the previous witnesses have described, her tongue was cut out and her entrails torn from her body. It is my opinion, however, that these dreadful wounds were inflicted after death.”

This had the power to surprise me; and it spurred a further wave of murmuring in Jacob Patter’s inn. Few in Bakewell had known the Coroner’s judgement, it would seem. Mr. Tivey’s dark eyes glittered with satisfaction.

“The blood observed to be congealed in such amounts did not flow directly from the mouth or abdomen — although the marks of blood were on them — but from the wound to the head created by the lead ball. The shot, I believe, was fired from a fowling piece at some remove from Deceased. From the condition of the body when I viewed it at one o’clock Tuesday, I should judge the girl was killed the previous night — but when exactly she was killed, who can say? Certainly not Michael Tivey.”

That Tess Arnold should have died from the firing of a gun some distance from herself, while climbing about the rocks above Miller’s Dale in the utter dark, defied belief. I had comforted myself with the notion that only a madman could have destroyed the maid — but no madman had aimed the piece that killed her. Only a most accomplished marksman could effect such a shot; the calculation and coolness necessary for the deed’s success, argued premeditation. And once the girl was dead — why cut out her tongue and bowels? Here was a tangle, indeed.

The Coroner sat back with a grin, very well pleased by his own performance. The recital was calculated to excite the townspeople in Jacob Patter’s public house; it was for this that they had come. They were mostly common folk, of the sort that might have claimed Tess Arnold’s station; and they were mostly men. Their faces were burnt brown by the sun, and their nankeen breeches, though generally clean, were worn and mended in places. They had greeted the witnesses’ accounts with a stolid gravity — but Mr. Tivey’s gruesome testimony must be apprehended and exclaimed over.

The few women in the room must draw my interest, from the singularity of their presence. They were four in number: the first, a respectable-looking individual with a tight mouth, shrewd eyes, and a gown of dark grey, worn less in respect of Deceased, I surmised, than as a matter of custom. She sat apart from the other three, with her gloved hands laced tightly through the strings of her reticule; her posture was exceedingly upright. She looked neither to right nor left, but kept her eyes fixed upon Mr. Tivey at his table.

The remaining women formed a loose knot at the head of the room, barely a yard removed from the Coroner’s panel. The eldest — a crone whose crazed, unfocused stare betrayed her blindness — was undoubtedly Betty Arnold, the maid’s mother. The girl to her right was disposed to maintain a determined weeping, and I utterly failed to glimpse her face, it being smothered by a large checked handkerchief throughout the proceeding. The young woman to the left kept her hand firmly on the old woman’s elbow and stared malevolently at Mr. Tivey, her face like stone and her cold eyes unblinking. What was she, then? Friend of the bosom or sister to Tess Arnold? Her profile was fine, and I thought I traced a semblance of the dead girl’s features — until she turned, and I saw that her face was utterly disfigured by a wine-coloured stain that mottled one cheek.

“Pray allow Mr. Charles Danforth to approach the panel,” Mr. Tivey intoned.

I turned my head, in company with every other person in the chamber — and watched as Tess Arnold’s employer made his slow progress towards the coroner. He was perhaps five- or six-and-thirty, a man not above medium height, with powerful shoulders encased in a well-cut green coat of superfine; his hair was chestnut, and his features regular. An expression of pain was writ upon his brow, however; and he walked with the aid of a stout length of oak. The widower Charles Danforth — handsome, rich, and the object of either a curse or a singular run of bad luck in his personal affairs — was also lame.

“Tha’rt Mr. Charles Danforth of Penfolds Hall?” Mr. Tivey enquired.

“I am.” The voice was surprising in its depth — a rich voice of decided timbre, the voice of politics or of God; but there was a languor about the man that suggested illness or deep sorrow. Little of a worldly nature was capable of stirring Charles Danforth’s passion.