On a Desert Shore by S. K. Rizzolo

Author:S. K. Rizzolo
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2015-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

The cavalcade of coroner, jury, and constables, with a clutch of reporters trailing at the rear, approached Garrod’s villa. The day was fine, a little sultry, with a sprinkling of rain that had speckled the pretty coat and Hessian boots of the coroner, a bright-eyed young man stepping bravely down the road. He strode up the carriage drive, swept by the line of waiting servants, and met Samuel Tallboys in front of Laurentum’s pillared entrance porch. Tallboys dispersed the journalists with threats of a citation for trespassing and took his place next to the coroner at the head of the procession.

The jury’s first stop was the hothouse, where the twelve local men stared at the exotic blooms with an awe they concealed behind stolid faces. Tallboys conducted them to the place where the poisoning had occurred. Afterwards they went upstairs to view the body. Earlier that morning, the knowledge that a trio of physicians, one a lecturer from St. Thomas’ Hospital, had taken their saws and scalpels to the corpse had vibrated through the household, sounding a note of dark excitement. Forced to shoo away several curiosity seekers from the upstairs corridor, John Chase had finally remained on guard at the door. Now when the coroner entered the chamber of death, he took one look at the corpse’s distended belly, his thin nostrils quivering, and buried his face in his nosegay. A peacock, thought Chase, but he kept his expression bland.

Next the men filed into Beatrice Honeycutt’s bedchamber to find her propped against her pillows with her aunt Mrs. Yates and the surgeon Caldwell in attendance. Dressed in a pink silk dressing gown and a delicate lace cap with flaps that draped down her shoulders, Miss Honeycutt expressed herself exhausted from the combined effects of her recent sickness and her uncle’s death. Gallantly, the coroner said she was not to rise from her bed, for he would not keep her long. Beatrice gave her hand first to him and then to Tallboys, who lingered over it a fraction too long. She held herself rigid, embarrassed by all these strange men looking at her. The jury waited in respectful silence, seeming sheepish and uneasy in this feminine domain.

“My dear, madam,” said the coroner, “I was relieved beyond measure to hear of your deliverance. Words fail me on this occasion, but may I offer my condolences on the death of your uncle?”

Lips trembling, Beatrice turned her head away.

“My dear,” said Samuel Tallboys, “we shouldn’t ask this of you. It’s far too much. Do forgive me for permitting it. I felt I had no choice but to give our cooperation. Perhaps…perhaps we can come back later?” Observing the man’s anxiety, Chase wondered if there could be a romance afoot, though the pompous and unimaginative Tallboys struck him as an unlikely candidate for a lover. Hugo Garrod had said that Beatrice had made a better success of her London season than had her cousin, but apparently she had not achieved a match for herself.

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