Free Jane and the Stillroom Maid by Stephanie Barron Page B

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 notionthat 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 staredmalevolently 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.
    “And Tha’ held the maid Tess Arnold in thy employ?”
    “I did. She was raised on the estate during my father’s time, and entered into service at the age of twelve.”
    “That would be ten years ago, Mr. Danforth?”
    “Closer to twelve or thirteen, I imagine.”
    “And did she give satisfaction?”
    “So far as