For Deader or Worse

by Sheri Cobb South

  Pickett’s curious preoccupation continued into the evening, to such an extent that even her mother noticed it. “The boy has no conversation to speak of,” Lady Runyon complained under her breath, when her belabored attempts to engage him in dinnertime conversation evoked only monosyllabic replies.

  “No doubt this inquest is on his mind,” Sir Thaddeus noted. “Tell me, Mr. Pickett, what can we expect upon the morrow?”

  Pickett sat up straighter, roused at last from his reverie. “I will be very surprised if the jury returns anything other than unlawful killing by person or persons unknown.” He glanced at Julia. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find him, my lady. I wish you were well out of this.”

  She gave him a reassuring little smile. “It’s all right, John. At least I shall only be giving evidence. It is not as if I myself were on trial.”

  “I should think not!” Sir Thaddeus declared, bristling. “Don’t know why my word can’t be sufficient. After all, we both saw the same thing. And so I told Buckleigh, be he son-in-law or no.”

  “Lord Buckleigh doesn’t make the rules, Papa,” Julia pointed out.

  “In general, the more witnesses there are, the better,” Pickett said. “One may notice something another did not.”

  Lady Runyon shuddered delicately. “I refuse to have murder discussed at the dinner table,” she announced. “Tell me, what do you think of the new Lady Buckleigh? I found her to be a rather colorless little creature myself, and can only wonder at Lord Buckleigh’s finding her an acceptable replacement for our poor Claudia.”

  “I doubt his lordship sees her as a ‘replacement,’ Mama,” Julia protested. “After all, he waited more than a dozen years to marry again.”

  “A pretty little thing, but timid as a mouse,” Sir Thaddeus put in. “Merchant’s daughter, of course. I daresay she’s afraid to open her mouth for fear of saying the wrong thing.”

  All eyes turned to Pickett, and he hesitated, weighing his options. As he saw it, anything he said would be held against him. If he were to praise Lady Buckleigh’s bashful beauty, it would no doubt be perceived as a slight against her predecessor; any denigration, on the other hand, would be seen as presumption on his part for criticizing his betters.

  “I think,” he said at last, “that I would do well to follow Lady Buckleigh’s example and refrain from comment.”

  Sir Thaddeus gave a bark of laughter. “Wise man, Mr. Pickett!”

  “Wise, indeed,” Lady Runyon agreed. “What a pity you could not have acquired this wisdom in time for the Brantleys’ dinner party.”

  This home thrust was delivered with a hint of a smile, however, which Pickett felt to be a good sign—the first he had received since making her ladyship’s acquaintance. “Yes, ma’am,” Pickett agreed with feeling. “I flatter myself that I rarely make the same mistake twice, so I shall hope to do better next time.”

  “For my part,” Julia observed, “I should be pleased to see more people err on the side of kindness. It seems to me that most social faux pas result instead from those trying to put themselves forward in some way.”

  “Alas, too true,” conceded Lady Runyon. “One has only to think of Lady Buckleigh’s mother for proof. I blushed for poor Lord Buckleigh at the wedding, for her manners were positively common! Whatever your sins, Mr. Pickett, at least no one could call you encroaching.”

  “Thank you, your ladyship,” Pickett murmured, catching his wife’s eye and giving her a wink.

  After dinner, the family repaired to the drawing room, where Julia was persuaded to entertain on the pianoforte. She recruited Pickett to turn the pages of her music (prompting Lady Runyon to admit grudgingly, when pressed by her husband, that they did make a handsome couple, seated side by side on the bench with their heads together, although she could not quite like the way Mr. Pickett braced himself with one hand on the back of the piano bench lightly touching Julia’s hip, which in Lady Runyon’s opinion was tantamount to a public embrace), and in this manner the family passed a desultory evening until the butler arrived with the tea tray. As the inquest was to begin promptly at nine the next morning, they did not linger afterwards, but sought their respective bedchambers to prepare themselves for the morrow’s unpleasantness.

  “John, is something troubling you?” Julia asked as soon as they had reached the bedroom and closed the door behind them.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “That is not an answer,” she said sternly. “You seem distracted and, oh, I don’t know, distant in some way.”

  “Your mother paid me what might be interpreted as a compliment,” Pickett said. “Truth to tell, I don’t know quite what to make of it.”

  Julia smiled, but refused to be diverted. “Yes, I don’t doubt it, but your curious preoccupation had begun long before then. Tell me, is something wrong?”

  “Not wrong, precisely, just—puzzling.”

  “Something to do with Tom’s death?”

  “Perhaps. I’m not quite certain yet.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and patted the mattress invitingly. “If you would care to confide in me, I should be glad to listen.”

  “I wish I could, my lady, but I dare not just yet. If I should tell you, and then I should be wrong—” He shook his head. “As soon as I know for certain, I’ll tell you, I promise. But even so—” He broke off abruptly.

  “Even so what?” she prompted.

  “Even so,” he said with a sigh, “you may not like it.”

  * * *

  The foursome arose early and walked together to the village, Sir Thaddeus and Lady Runyon leading the way while Pickett and Julia brought up the rear. Pickett wore the black tailcoat he’d bought a year earlier for giving evidence at the Old Bailey in London, and Julia had chosen the most sober of the gowns she had packed for the journey. In fact, this peach-colored creation was not very sober at all in spite of its brown velvet piping and matching spencer, but she could not have worn black even if she had anticipated the need for it: during their week of newly wedded bliss in Pickett’s Drury Lane flat, she had piled all her black mourning gowns onto the grate in a symbolic (if expensive) gesture he had wholeheartedly approved. He himself had set the match.

  He smiled a little at the memory and she, seeing the slight twitch of his lips and assigning a wholly erroneous interpretation to it, said drily, “I’m glad one of us is enjoying this.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing of the sort, my lady. I was just recalling why you aren’t wearing black, like your mother.” He bent a sharp look down at her. “Are you worried about the inquest?”

  “Not worried, precisely, but I can’t deny that it does bring all the ugliness following Frederick’s death back to mind. But it will not be so bad this time.” She gave him a brave little smile. “After all, this time I have you.”

  “You had me then, too. You just didn’t know it.”

  She had known he had admired her, of course; she could hardly have failed to do so, for he’d had a habit of becoming rather endearingly incoherent in her presence. Still, she had no objection to a bit of lighthearted flirtation with her husband to distract her thoughts from the unpleasant duty that lay before her.

  “Did I, indeed?” she asked, peeping coyly up at him from beneath her lashes.

  He flexed his arm, giving a little squeeze to her hand as it rested in the curve of his elbow. “From the moment I first saw you.”

  “You’d best stop that, Mr. Pickett,” she scolded, although the gleam in her eye said quite the opposite. “It cannot be proper for me to appear at a coroner’s inquest blushing like a bride! What will the good people of Norwood Green think?”

  “Perhaps they will recall that you are a bride,” he pointed out, but forbore to continue this mutually satisfying conversation until they could do so in privacy.

  For privacy was certainly not to be found in Norwood Green that morning. The entire village, it seemed, had turned up at the Pig and Whistle, where the inquest was to be held. Even Lady Runyo
n, whom Pickett had assumed would not wish to attend so vulgar a gathering, had insisted upon supporting her husband and daughter throughout the ordeal—her son-in-law, Pickett assumed, could fend for himself.

  Still, he felt a pang of sympathy for Lady Runyon as they entered the tavern just in time to hear, in the silence that fell at their entrance, one villager chortle gleefully, “—Not this much excitement since that yaller-haired Runyon chit disappeared.” The man was immediately shushed by his neighbor, but the damage was done. If anyone in Norwood Green had forgotten the Runyons’ family history, they certainly remembered it now, and their interest in the new arrivals increased exponentially.

  The Pig and Whistle had been transformed since Pickett’s visit the previous day. Chairs had been arranged in a line against one wall, and here sat a coroner’s jury of seven good men and true. The tables had been pushed against the opposite wall, and the remaining chairs arranged in rows. Most of these were full, save for a few in the front row reserved for those who were to give evidence, as well as those who were present in some official capacity: Lord Buckleigh, as Justice of the Peace, held a position of prominence, as did another man whom Sir Thaddeus pointed out to Pickett as the sheriff, and a tall, white-haired individual identified as the physician. Jamie Pennington, tight-lipped, sat next to his parents in the second row, while immediately behind him, Martha Pratt and her brood took up almost an entire row, with two children on each side of their mother while the youngest held pride of place on her lap. In the row behind her, Lady Buckleigh sat between a stout, ruddy-complexioned yet well-dressed man and woman who were almost certainly her parents. The rest of the chairs were taken up by the local gentry, many of whom Pickett recognized from the Brantleys’ dinner party, while the overflow crowd sat on the tables or leaned against the walls. As he studied the widow and her wide-eyed, frightened children, it occurred to Pickett that in the unlikely event that Tom had played his wife false with Sadie the tavern maid, it was unlikely that Mrs. Pratt could have avenged herself even if she had felt so inclined: it would have been very difficult for her to commit murder with five children in tow.

  As for Sadie, she had dressed for the occasion with what Pickett supposed passed for sobriety in her opinion, her low-cut bodice supplemented with a kerchief tucked into the neck. Apparently feeling his eyes upon her, she looked up at him and winked. Despising (not for the first time) his tendency to blush, Pickett turned away abruptly and seated himself in the front row beside his wife.

  The principal players now having taken their places, the elderly coroner, Mr. Hughes, rose to his feet and delivered himself of a rambling and barely audible speech. By those few phrases which were comprehensible (“inquiry into the death ... Tom Pratt ... body found on Sunday last ...”), the assembly was given to understand that the inquest was now underway.

  “... Now call ... employer, Sir Thaddeus Runyon.”

  Sir Thaddeus, correctly interpreting this as his cue to take the stand (the stand, in this case, being a single chair positioned at the front of the room and turned so that it faced the crowd), heaved himself out of his chair and, after being properly sworn in, sat down in the witness’s chair and regarded the coroner with a faintly combative stare.

  “Well, Hughes, let’s get on with it.”

  Far from being intimidated, the coroner’s chest swelled, and his whole demeanor changed. The years seemed to fall away, and instead of the elderly man muttering under his breath, the barrister who once appeared before the Assizes seemed to emerge as from a long hibernation.

  “Sir Thaddeus Runyon,” he announced in ringing tones, “you were the employer of the deceased, were you not?”

  Sir Thaddeus nodded. “Aye, that I was.”

  “In what capacity did the deceased serve you?”

  “Dash it, Hughes, everyone in the village knows that!”

  “Just answer the question, if you please.”

  Sir Thaddeus gave a huff of annoyance. “Oh, very well. Tom Pratt was my head groom.”

  “And how long had he served you in that capacity?”

  There was a moment’s pause while Sir Thaddeus performed a few mental calculations. “Two years. For the three years prior to that he was my stable hand, having come to me from Brantley, who’d taken him on in ’96, after Lord Buckleigh let him go.”

  A murmur arose from the crowd as the old-timers recalled the strange disappearance of Sir Thaddeus’s elder daughter. In the aftermath of the search that had turned up no sign of the girl but a gold ring and a blood-soaked shawl, a distraught Lord Buckleigh, having no one else he could hold accountable for the loss of his wife, had dismissed the stable hand who had saddled her horse and thus unwittingly allowed her to take the fateful ride that had ended her life.

  “Silence, if you please!” commanded the coroner, and the crowd obeyed, however reluctantly. “Now, Sir Thaddeus, would you say Tom Pratt was a good employee?”

  “Aye, I’d not have trusted my horses to him otherwise,” the squire said.

  “When did you notice that he was missing?”

  “I didn’t, really. It was my stable hand, Will, who said he’d not been in all day. Mind you, I thought that odd, and unlike him.”

  “Did you have any reason to suspect foul play?”

  “No. I just reckoned he’d had too much to drink the night before, and was sleeping it off.”

  “You will now tell us how you came to discover his body.”

  Sir Thaddeus rubbed the side of his nose. “Well, now, after church, I went riding with my daughter and her husband—showing him about the place, you know—”

  “This would be your younger daughter, Miss Julia?”

  “It could hardly be my elder, could it?” growled Sir Thaddeus. “Of all the asinine questions! Anyway, as we approached the rise where my land abuts the Layton place, my daughter and I raced to the big oak that marks the corner of the property. I reached the oak first, and found the poor fellow lying there dead. I didn’t have time to warn my daughter away, for she reached the tree immediately afterward.”

  “Describe, as nearly as you can remember, how you found the body.”

  “Dash it, man, I just told you!”

  “You misunderstand, Sir Thaddeus. I want you to tell me what you saw—what the body looked like.”

  Sir Thaddeus scowled. “He looked like a dead man. His throat was cut, by gad! How do you think he looked?”

  A smothered sob from the widow broke the silence.

  “Beg pardon, ma’am,” Sir Thaddeus said sheepishly, “but, well, there it is.”

  The coroner pressed on, undeterred. “How was he lying? On his belly, or on his back? Think, man!”

  “On his back,” Sir Thaddeus said decisively. “I could see his face, and the, er, wound.”

  “And he was already dead at that point?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Did you check to make sure? Feel for a pulse, for instance, or anything of that nature?”

  “Why should I have done? I tell you, the fellow was dead! There was blood all over the place. I was more concerned with shielding my daughter. She’s seen too much of bloodshed over the past year.”

  “Thank you, Sir Thaddeus, you may return to your seat.” Turning back to the crowd, he announced, “Miss Julia, er, Lady Fieldhurst—that is, Mrs. John Pickett, you will please take the stand.”

  Julia gave Pickett’s hand a quick squeeze, then took her father’s place at the front of the room.

  “Mrs. Pickett,” said the coroner after administering the oath, “you reside in London, do you not?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hughes.”

  “You will please state your business in Somersetshire.”

  “I am visiting my parents.”

  “You are newly married, are you not?”

  She inclined her head. “Less than a fortnight, in fact.”

  “Curious sort of wedding trip,” observed the coroner.

  “I say, Hughes!” Sir Thaddeus bellowed. “Are you suggesting my
daughter came all the way from London to murder my groom? Why, she didn’t even know the fellow!”

  “Sir Thaddeus, I must ask you to be quiet. I am not suggesting any such thing.” He turned back to Julia. “Is it true what your father says, that you did not know the deceased?”

  Her brow puckered. “Not exactly. I do remember Tom Pratt being employed in Lord Buckleigh’s stables, for I used to see him when I rode over to visit my sister. She was married to Lord Buckleigh, if you recall.”

  Every eye seemed to turn to where Lord Buckleigh sat in the front row, his countenance as stiff and pale as if turned to stone.

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Pickett,” the coroner continued. “Now, would you say your father’s account of the discovery of the body was accurate?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Did you recognize the deceased?”

  “No, for I had not seen him in many years.”

  “How many, would you say?”

  “Not since my marriage—my first marriage, that is. Six years, almost seven.”

  “Very well. And having seen the body, what did you do? Did you perhaps faint? I am sure no one would blame you.”

  “I certainly did not! I beckoned to my husband to hurry and join my father and me.”

  “Why this eagerness for Mr. Pickett’s company at such a time, Mrs. Pickett? If you will forgive me, the presence of a dead body hardly seems conducive to wedded bliss.”

  “My husband is a Bow Street Runner, Mr. Hughes. In fact, it was he who cleared me of suspicion in the violent death of my first husband. Had it not been for him, I should very likely have gone to the gallows. Can you suggest anyone whose presence might be more desirable in such circumstances as my father and I faced?”

  “Let me remind you that I am the one doing the questioning, your ladyship—that is, Mrs. Pickett. Why, may I ask, did you have to beckon to him? Why did he not participate in this race?”