It was a formidable structure, this courthouse. With its Doric-columned portico, a pedimented gable entrance and those colonnaded wings, it was worthy of any great city in the empire, worthy of Ancient Greece itself. It completely dominated and obscured the colony’s first purpose-built gaol, which had been erected directly behind it. In less civilised times, on a day when a public hanging was underway, the more squeamish citizens might stroll along Oxford Street and take solace in the elegant lines and smooth sandstone, in the tiled marble floors of the magnificent courthouse and so forget the horrors behind.

It was meant to be daunting, it was meant to be formidable. Alice Nimrod, late on Monday afternoon, shrinking before its magnificence, understood that. It was meant to strike fear and awe into the hearts of every wretched man and woman who was brought through its doors.

Her footsteps slowed as she approached. There seemed to be very few people about: two police constables nominally standing sentry who silently observed her approach, one or two court officials coming out of one side door, crossing the courtyard and disappearing inside another. The vast double-height front doors remained solidly closed as though to repel all intruders like the gates of some great medieval castle. Alice stopped before these doors, presuming some way inside would present itself. A sign affixed to the wall suggested that a Jury Assembly Room, Sheriff’s Office and Court Keeper’s Office were somewhere within but gave no clue as to how to enter nor how to reach these obscure places.

The two constables observed her. She abandoned the massive front doors and went instead to a side door. Here was a glass case just inside the doorway within which was a typed sheet headed Court 3 and beneath this Crown v. Nimrod. There were other cases, too, being heard that day—nine in all, which seemed a heavy workload for any courtroom—but it was here that Alice’s eyes went and stuck fast and got no further.

Crown v. Nimrod.

Somewhere deep inside her the fading but always present figure of her mother moaned and wept inconsolably for the shame that had befallen her eldest child.

Crown v Nimrod.

It was as though Milli had offended against the Queen herself and though Her Majesty, seated on a throne in a castle on the far side of the world, could know nothing of this one particular case, yet still it was a shame almost too great to endure.