He rode off south, and I turned down Cheapside. As I rode between the rows of busy stalls I kept a careful eye out. I told myself no one would dare assault me among such a crowd – anyone would surely be seized before he could get away. But I was glad to see a number of constables with their staffs among the crowd. I turned up Walbrook Road, where many imposing merchants' houses stood. A little way up the street I saw Joseph pacing up and down. I dismounted and shook his hand. He looked strained and tired.

'I have been to see Elizabeth again this morning.' He shook his head. 'Still she says nothing, just lies there, paler and thinner each time.' He studied me. 'You look out of sorts yourself, Master Shardlake.'

'This new case I have is a troubling matter.' I took a deep breath. 'Well, shall we face your family?'

He set his jaw. 'I am ready, sir.'

Then so must I be, I thought. Taking Chancery's reins, I followed him to an imposing new house. He knocked at the front door. It was answered by a tall, dark-haired fellow of about thirty, dressed in a new jerkin and a fine white shirt. He raised his eyebrows.

'You! Sir Edwin said you would be calling.'

Joseph reddened at his insolent manner. 'Is he in, Needler?'

'Ay.'

I did not like the steward on his looks. He had a broad sly face under long black hair and a stocky frame starting to run to fat. An impertinent servant, I thought, allowed to get above himself. 'Can someone stable my horse?' I asked.

The steward called to a boy to take the animal, then led us through a wide hallway and up an imposing staircase, the banisters carved with heraldic beasts. We followed him into a richly appointed parlour hung with tapestries. Through the window I could see a garden, large for a town house. Flower beds with trellised walkways between ran down to a stretch of lawn; the grass was browning at the edges from lack of rain. There was a bench under an oak tree and, nearby, a circular brick well. I saw its top was sealed.

Four people sat on cushioned chairs. All were dressed in black, to my surprise for it was nearly a fortnight since Ralph had died and few wear mourning so long. Sir Edwin Wentworth was the only man among them; seeing him close I saw the resemblance to Joseph not only in his plump red face but in something fussy about his manner. He fumbled with the hem of his robe as he stared at me, eyes hard with anger.

His two daughters sat together: they were as pretty as Joseph had described, both with fair hair falling over the shoulders of their black dresses, milk-white complexions and with startlingly large cornflower-blue eyes. They had been embroidering, but as I entered they laid their needles on their cushions and gave me quick, demure smiles before lowering their heads and sitting with a well-brought-up stillness that was decorous but also a little unnerving, their hands unmoving in their laps.

The third female in the room could not have been more different. Joseph's mother sat ramrod straight in her chair, snow-white hair gathered under a black cap, veiny hands folded over a stick. She was thin, the planes of her skull visible beneath pale skin that was a patchwork of lines and smallpox scars. Wrinkled eyelids were closed for ever over her decayed eyes. She should have been a pitiful figure, but somehow she dominated the room.

She was the first to speak, turning her head towards me and thrusting out a lantern jaw. 'Is that the lawyer come with Joseph?' she asked in a clear voice with a trace of a country accent, showing pearl-white teeth I knew must be false. I shuddered involuntarily, for having dead people's teeth fixed in your jaw by a wooden plate was a conceit I disliked.

'Yes, Mother.' Edwin cast me a look of distaste.

She smiled crookedly. 'The seeker after truth. Come here, master lawyer, I would know your face.' She raised a beringed claw and I realized she wanted to feel my features as blind people sometimes will with their social inferiors. I approached slowly, for this was presumption from a woman who had once been a mere farmer's wife, but bent down. I felt all the eyes in the room upon me as her hands flickered lightly over my head and face with surprising gentleness.

'A proud face,' she said. 'Angular, melancholic' She ran her hands lightly over my shoulders. 'Ah, a satchel of books and the slip and slide of a lawyer's robe.' She paused. 'They say you are a hunchback.'

I took a deep breath, wondering if she intended to humiliate me or just spoke as she liked out of age.

'Yes, madam,' I replied.

She smiled, giving me a glimpse of wooden gums. 'Well, you can take solace in having a distinguished face,' she said. 'Are you a Bible Christian! I hear you were once associated with the Earl of Essex himself, God protect him from his enemies.'

'When I was younger, I knew him.'

'Edwin will have no papist in this house. He even gives the girls religious books, encourages them to study the Bible. Such ideas are a little advanced for me.' She waved a hand at her son. 'Answer his questions, Edwin,' she said brusquely. 'Tell him everything. You too, girls.'

'Sabine and Avice have had enough, Mother, surely?' Edwin's voice was pleading.

'No. The girls, too.' Sir Edwin's daughters cast identical wide blue gazes at their grandmother, apparently as much under the old woman's spell as their father.

'We must have all this finished,' she continued. 'Perhaps you can imagine, Master Shardlake, the misery Ralph's death at Elizabeth's hands has brought our small family. Three weeks ago we were happy, with fine expectations. Look at us now. And Joseph taking Elizabeth's part makes matters worse. Perhaps you may imagine our feelings about him. We will not have Joseph in our house again after today.' She spoke calmly, evenly, without turning her head to her oldest son. Joseph lowered his head like a naughty child. I thought what inner courage it must have taken to defy this beldame.

'Am I right,' Sir Edwin asked, in a deep voice very like his brother's, 'that if you think Elizabeth is guilty you will cease to represent her? That those are the rules of your trade?'

'Not quite, sir,' I replied. 'If I know she is guilty, then I must and shall cease my representation.' I paused. 'May I tell you how the matter seems to me?'

'Very well.'

I went over the circumstances as I knew them: the girls hearing the scream, looking from the window, then rushing into the garden; Needler coming out and finding Ralph's body in the well. I felt sorry for the two girls having to listen to the terrible story once more. They cast their heads down again, kept their faces expressionless.

'But you see,' I concluded, 'no one actually saw Elizabeth push the boy into the well. It seems to me he might have slipped.'

'Then why does she not say so?' the old woman snapped.

'Because she knows questioning would bring the truth from her,' Edwin said with sudden fierceness. 'Of course she killed Ralph! You didn't have her in your house nine months, sir; you didn't see the viciousness she was capable of!' His mother leaned across and put a hand on his arm and he sat back, sighing angrily.

'Can you tell me more about that?' I asked. 'I only know what Joseph has told me.'

Sir Edwin shot an angry glance at his brother. 'She was malapert, disobedient and violent. Yes, sir, violent, though she was but a girl.'

'From the very start?'

'She was surly from the day she came, after my brother's funeral. We were prepared to make allowances as she'd lost everything. I was prepared to share all I had and I am not a poor man, though when I came to London I'd no more than Joseph has.' Sir Edwin's chest swelled momentarily with pride, even in the midst of his grief and anger. 'I told the girls to make her welcome, teach her the lute and virginal, take her out visiting. Much thanks they got. Tell him, Sabine.'