Free Blind Justice by Bruce Alexander Page A

Westminster, where I am the law. Now take us there.”
    Complaining all the way, the butler led us down the hall and through a door under the main staircase. This, in turn, opened to another set of stairs leading downward. Having once been rebuked for offering aid, the butler plunged ahead and within a moment had disappeared. Sir John put down a tentative foot, then muttered a request for my assistance. The steps were narrow and steep and dimly lit from below. With his hand on my shoulder, we made it down in good order and successfully navigated the bend midway, where we had lost our guide.
    At the bottom of the stairs we found ourselves in the kitchen. I marveled at this, never before having considered where such a necessary room might be placed in these great houses. Besides us three newly arrived, there were four there: two men who had recently conveyed the body downstairs to the kitchen; and two women, kitchen slaveys, who were making ready to wash the body. Water was heating in a kettle on the cookstove. Between them, in the middle of the room, lay the body of Lord Goodhope stretched out on a long table: not quite long enough: feet and ankles, now seeii only in white hose, dangled over the edge at mid-calf. The corpus was thus in a state of preparation: shoes off, waistcoat open, shirt unbuttoned.
    “Have they begun washing the body?” Sir John whispered to me.
    “No sir,” I whispered back, “I think they have not.”
    “Good, and thank you, boy.” Then, banging down his walking stick and speaking in a voice of great authority, he addressed all and sundry: “I, as the magistrate of the Bow Street Court in the City of Westminster, forbid this process to continue. There will be no washing of the body, according to custom, until a qualified surgeon has viewed it and made his report. Is this understood?”
    There seemed a general unwillingness to speak in response. Finally, Potter coughed and spoke up: “Understood, Sir John.”
    “Very good,” said Sir John, and continued: “My advice is to store the body in a cool place and wait for word from either me or the surgeon. Whichever comes first. Is this also understood?”
    “Completely,” said Potter, gaining strength. “It will be done as you say. I promise it.”
    “All right, Mr. Potter. I shall hold you responsible.”
    The young men and women who were there in the kitchen seemed to breathe easier. There was a general relaxation. The women (girls they were, truly, about my own age), especially, seemed to welcome the postponement. One of them giggled.
    “Master Proctor!” A shock ran through me as I heard myself addressed so formally.
    “Yes, Sir John,” said I, with all the gravity I possessed.
    “I wish you now to inspect the body of Lord Goodhope, as it was brought down from the library.”
    “I will do so,” said I, hoping to impress him with the formality of my reply, and perhaps also the kitchen slaveys: the one who had not giggled was quite comely.
    And so, thus empowered, I strutted round the table, giving my full attention to the body of the deceased. It no longer gave me pause to look upon him, the porridged nose, the bulging eye: They were all the same to me. I concluded my tour next to Sir John.
    “Is the body as you first viewed it?”
    “It is, sir.”
    “With particular reference to our earlier discussion, Master Proctor, are the hands clean and unsmudged?”
    “They are, sir.”
    He addressed the room: “Have they been cleaned? Have the hands of the corpus been washed?”
    The answers came back variously, but they came back from all four who had been there in the kitchen. All were in the negative.
    “Very good,” said Sir John. “Please remember my orders with regard to the remains. A surgeon will come sometime tomorrow.” He half-turned then, but remembering a detail, came back to ask, “Is Ebenezer Tepper, the footman, in this company?”
    There was a pause, but then the younger of the two men, a lad fit and strong of about