Those words sink me into a terrible black mood. The thought that Madame could have been afraid. Of me? It pushes my head down.

When I look up, you’re on your feet. You couldn’t be more different from Jessop. He took the floor like an actor, all eyebrows, teeth and hands, the better to see him up in the gallery, his gown more up and down than a whore’s nightdress. Yours is planted firmly on your shoulders. For a moment, all you do is frown at your papers, as if studying them. Thinking. It’s a seeping silence, after all of Jessop’s bluster, and Linux’s sobbing. The room goes quiet too.

Silence can be a chisel. Perhaps you’re making her wait in the hopes that you can use it in that fashion on her.

You look up. ‘If I understand you correctly, you went straight from your master’s dead body to your mistress’s bedchamber.’

She purses her lips. ‘Is there a question, Mr Pettigrew?’

‘You were awake, moving through the house. You were in the library, then the bedchamber. Is it possible that, in order to cover your own tracks, you now seek to lay my client’s on top?’

‘You’re as addled as your client if you truly believe all that. But I suspect it’s more a case of her paying you by the word.’ She laughs. ‘I am not the one who made threats, and who was found covered in blood.’

‘Blood that could have been transferred onto my client while she lay beside her mistress.’

‘A likely story, sir. Her mistress massacred right next to her and she never woke up?’

There’s no answer for that, of course, so you’re forced to switch paths. I could tell you there’s no shaking Linux off. In any event, she isn’t the one who had blood on her hands, and no story to account for what she’d done. Nor has anyone come to bear witness against her. No one will ever see her as the monster, if the choice is between me and her.

‘Here is another puzzle. Such a savage killing. Then tidying up. How would that have been done? Why tidy the bedchamber and not the library? I am having some difficulty with all of this.’

‘You seem to be having difficulty with many things. Sir.’

I hear snorts, laughter in the gallery. My stomach sinks. How is it a laughing matter? Would they all be so entertained if I was swinging in front of them? I look around the room. All these people who’ll go home tonight to suppers and families, I suspect they would. I dig my nails deeper into the railing.

You flick the tails of your wig behind your neck. ‘It was you who said there was nothing out of place in Madame’s bedchamber.’

‘There was a dead body in that room.’

‘Yes, but those were your words, Mrs Linux. I am quoting you. Nothing out of place. The room tidied up.’

‘Perhaps you should ask your client,’ she says, giving the jurors a sharp look. ‘I am not an expert in murder.’