‘What’s going on here? Walter?’

Her uncle held up his hand and pressed a handkerchief to his mouth, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down as though it would tear itself from his throat. He staggered past Silas, who adroitly stepped out of his path, and reached out to support himself against the mantlepiece, a deep and dragging cough finally wrenching its way from his lungs. Harriet watched in horror as her uncle fell, coughing, to his hands and knees, then slipped forwards, his head hitting the grate with a dull thud of flesh and bone against iron.

Silas crouched beside him, his hands hovering over Walter’s shoulders.

‘Get off him!’ Mr Boothby bellowed the words and Silas jumped to his feet.

‘Fetch the doctor,’ Harriet whispered. ‘He needs the doctor.’

Mr Boothby stood in front of her, blocking her view of Walter and Silas, and waited for Harriet to look up at him. ‘The police, too, Harriet.’ He looked scornfully at Silas. ‘I knew you’d be trouble.’

Walter lay face down, head and shoulders on the tiles of the fireplace, and his legs stretched out on the carpet. Rust-coloured blood spotted the crumpled handkerchief in his fist and black liquid bloomed on the lacquered tile.

Chapter 30

‘So, will you be going to your club tonight?’

There was a sharp edge to his wife’s voice. Charlotte was hardly ever querulous, and Gunson realised she was as overwrought as he. The inquest was consuming him – had consumed him. She needed reassurance and so there was really only one answer he could give. He laid his knife and fork down carefully, flinching at the gentle clink of silver on china. ‘No. I think not.’

They had dined on lamb and new potatoes, sprouts and peas and mint gravy. The meal sat in his stomach like a rock. Rather than meet Charlotte’s eye, he examined the familiar pattern on his dinnerplate; dominating the white glaze was a black tree trunk with stubby roots, thin black branches reaching to the edges on which were blooming oversized flowers of no variety he’d ever seen, almost Oriental in design, and beautiful. The plate was part of a dinner service that had been in his wife’s family for many years and came with her when they married. Plate from Derby, utensils from Sheffield. Assuredly, a quality combination. He should placate Charlotte, tell her that he would rather spend the evening in her company, sipping his brandy by the fire while she played the piano for him, but he couldn’t summon the energy to utter the words and stared instead at this design on his plate.

‘There’s no point dwelling on it,’ she said. ‘Let’s look ahead to the weekend we’ll be spending with James and Anne and little Freddie. Your grandson dotes on you.’

He finally met her gaze. ‘I may have to send you alone. If I am to be sacrificed to satisfy the town tomorrow, I don’t think I’d have the stomach to face James.’