Victorian Villainy by Michael Kurland Read Free Book Online

but not her dress.”
    “Shoes?” the coroner asked, with the bland air of one who is called upon to discuss semi-naked ladies every day.
    “I don’t believe so, sir.”
    “That will be all,” the coroner told him, “unless the jury have any questions?” he added, looking over at the six townsmen in the improvised jury box.
    The foreman of the jury, an elderly man with a well-developed set of mutton-chop whiskers, nodded and gazed out at the witness. “Could you tell us,” he asked slowly, “what color were these undergarments?”
    “White,” the young man said.
    “Now then,” Sir George said, staring severely at the foreman, “that will be enough of that!”
    Sergeant Meeks was called next. He sat in the improvised witness box hat in hand, his uniform and his face having both been buffed to a high shine, the very model of English propriety. The coroner led him through having been called, and arriving at the scene with his two constables, and examining the body.
    “And then what did you do, sergeant?”
    “After sending Constable Gough off to Beachamshire to notify the police surgeon, I thoroughly examined the premises to see whether I could ascertain what had occurred on the, ah, premises.”
    “And what were your conclusions?”
    “The deceased was identified to me as Mrs. Andrea Maples, wife of Professor Maples, who lived in the main house on the same property. She was dressed—”
    “Yes, yes, sergeant,” Sir George interrupted. “We’ve heard how she was dressed. Please go on.”
    “Very good, sir. She had been dead for some time when I examined her. I would put her death at between seven and ten hours previous, based on my experience. Which placed the time of her death at sometime around midnight.”
    “And on what do you base that conclusion?”
    “The blood around the body was pretty well congealed, but not completely in the deeper pools, and the body appeared to be fairly well along into rigor mortis at that time.
    “Very observant, sergeant. And what else did you notice?”
    “The murder weapon was lying near the body. It was a hard wood walking stick with a ducks-head handle. It had some of the victim’s blood on it, and a clump of the victim’s hair was affixed to the duck’s head in the beak area. The stick was identified by one of the bicyclists who was still present as being the property of Professor Maples, husband of the victim.”
    “And what did you do then?”
    “I proceeded over to the main house to question Professor Maples, who was just sitting down to breakfast when I arrived. I told him of his wife’s death, and he affected to be quite disturbed at the news. I then asked him to produce his walking stick, and he spend some time affecting to look for it. I then placed him under arrest and sent Constable Parfry for a carriage to take the professor to the station house.”
    “Here, now!” a short, squat juror with a walrus moustache that covered his face from below his nose to below his chin, shifted in his seat and leaned belligerently forward. “What made you arrest the professor at that there moment? It seems to me that whoever the Maples woman was having an assigerna....—was meeting at this here cottage in the middle of the night was more likely to have done her in.”
    “Now, now, we’ll get to that,” the coroner said, fixing the fractious juror with a stern eye. “I’m trying to lay out the facts of the case in an orderly manner. We’ll get to that soon enough.”
    The next witness was the police surgeon, who testified that the decedent had met her death as a result of multiple blunt-force blows to the head and shoulders. He couldn’t say just which blow killed her, any one of several could have. And, yes, the duck-headed cane presented in evidence could have been the murder weapon.
    Sir George nodded. So much for those who wanted information out of its proper order. Now....
    Professor Maples was called next. The audience looked expectant. He testified