Then Comes Murder

Accusations and Alibis (part three)

It was an uncomfortable thing, lying to a group of gentlemen. Nora wasn't entirely certain why she'd done so—perhaps it had been listening to Mr. Cooper detail the reasons she was not capable—but it had happened before she could think better of it. When she did think better of it, bending over the twisted corpse of the Duke of Ashurst, it was far too late to take back what she'd said.

I know what to look for, in theory.

Odd as it was, it seemed theory was enough. Though she'd never before examined a body that was not depicted in a book, Nora found it surprisingly straightforward. No, the clean illustrations she'd studied were not quite the same as the picture before her, but, if she pretended this was another of her father's puzzles, the logical process was quite nearly the same.

With a determined detachment, Nora approached the corpse as she might her research: that was, a stepwise dance to find answers to all the tiny questions that formed the riddle of it all. From a glance, she could not tell if the duke had been murdered; but, Nora could plainly see a hundred other answers for questions she had not yet asked.

The vomit next to the body was neither bilious or bloody. It was the same color of the traces left around the duke's pale lips. It smelled like, well, it smelled like vomit. Nora could not detect any accompanying sweetness or bitterness that might signal a purgative, or perhaps, over-indulgence. His airway, despite the traces of vomit, seemed quite patent. She doubted he'd asphyxiated on his emesis.

His eyes were open and dull, but without the hemorrhages that might suggest he'd been strangled. Even in death, his expression was malcontent. There was no telling glower, no fixed-gazed attention on a death note to accuse a culprit. The silent room did not even promise the aid of his vengeful spirit. A bubble of hysteria threatened to escape her. Not only was this exam unlike the painstakingly illustrated texts in her father's library, it also violated the dramatic rules of every novel she'd ever read. Nora swallowed and set her jaw. If she fainted in this room, Mr. Alton and Mr. Cooper would laugh themselves silly. No, she was stronger than that. She clenched her jaw and carefully closed his eyelids.

It's just a puzzle, she told herself. She stole a steadying breath. It's just another puzzle.

It was easier to focus on each part, then, instead of the whole. Easier to divide the man from his body. Somewhere behind her, she could feel the weight of Jacob's gaze. They were counting on her to give an answer. Resolved, Nora continued with her exam.

His pale throat bore no sign of bruising or ligature. Though he lacked breath, she'd listened for any trace of heartbeat, any sign that he might still be revived, but the man's chest was silent and still. So close to the body, she searched for signs of trauma, but there was no bruising, no redness, no broken bones beneath her searching fingers.

Though his corpse was fast-cooling, his abdomen was soft and without signs of distention or firmness that might indicate some intraabdominal affliction. Despite the death, there was no sign of fecal incontinence, no purging diarrhea, or smell of it in the too-warm room. The vomiting then, had to be due to some other cause.

His hands had caught her attention: there was a swathe of hyper-pigmented marks across his palms. It was almost as if he'd once picked at a rash that had affected his hands or had earned a smattered of strange scars. Nora frowned, but continued.

His fingers, pale and stiff, possessed a round nail bed that made his hands seem inhuman. His legs, despite his body's thinness, were swollen. Edema, she mused, from a weak heart, perhaps.

The body was not the only mystery. At the claw-footed writing desk, half-written letters, addressed to a barrister, lay scattered across its surface. They were hastily scrawled with spotted ink and angry scratches. The account books were similarly recorded, with a messy, irritable hand. Nora frowned deeper and her brows furrowed with the weight of it. She had never taken much interest in the running of Leighton, but Caroline had emphasized, time and time again, the importance of clear record keeping. Judging from the ink-splattered scrawl, the record of Leverett Hall was not a clean one.