The surface of the desk was clear except for the inkwell and pen tray and there was no sign of any disturbance in the room except for the body on the floor and the disgusting mess surrounding its head.
Doctor Talbot lay where James had left him, half on his side. He was a tall, slender man who had once had a fine head of thick fair hair. Perhaps in life he had been handsome. Now his eyes were open, his mouth gaped. I moved to one side away from that cold blue stare and tried to assess the scene professionally. It was less than easy with a churning stomach and a faint buzzing in my ears.
‘There’s the weapon, I would guess.’ I pointed to the poker lying half on the hearth, half on the carpet. Its head was stained dark and, as I moved closer, I could see blond hairs stuck in the dried blood and matter. ‘Even so, better check.’ I picked it up, reminding myself that fingerprinting was still in the future, and brought it over to the body. As Lucian turned the head I laid it against the clearest of the wounds. ‘It fits.’ I put it back and kept myself turned from the men until I had the urge to lose my belated lunch under control.
‘We need to leave everything as near to how you found it as possible,’ Luc said to James. ‘But we’ll search him first.’
I left them to it and began to study the room. Paperwork was what we needed to find and check and the first place to look would be a safe. Did they have wall safes in 1807? I checked behind all the pictures, tried to shift the furniture that was against the walls, found nothing. There was no bookcase in the room, so that left the desk, but the drawers were unlocked. I found stationery, ink bottles, spare pens, headed paper for invoices, sealing wax and two volumes on gynaecology. A quick glance inside made me wince. I gave them a good shake, to be on the safe side, but all that fluttered out was a blank prescription form. Then I took out each drawer and checked underneath it.
‘Yes.’ When I had them all out, knelt down and looked inside I could see a small key hanging on a nail. At full stretch I could just reach it.
The two men looked up as I pushed back the final drawer. ‘Nothing on him,’ Luc said. ‘James, we need to turn him so he is as he was when you found him.’
That was easy enough. His hair had dried into place and the marks on the carpet showed where to put his head. There was a knock on the door and Garrick came in.
‘Garrick, have a look at this. Does it seem as though he’s been moved?’
‘A fraction, my lord. But it would be expected that would happen if whoever discovered him checked for signs of life.’
I held up the key. ‘Look what I’ve found.’
‘Ah.’ Luc stood up and took it from me. ‘Cupboard, I’d say.’
‘Not in here – but there’s the other door off the lobby.’ That was unlocked and when we went through it was clear that we were in the doctor’s working office. There was a simple desk, a comfortable chair, several bookshelves full of medical texts and a large double-fronted cupboard with solid doors.
The key fitted. Inside were rows of ledgers with red morocco spines embossed with numbers impressed in gold. We each slid one out and began to flick through them.
‘This all seems perfectly innocuous,’ I said after several pages. ‘Obviously the ladies concerned wouldn’t be happy to have their medical records read by all and sundry, but I can’t see anything the slightest bit dubious here. Names, dates, brief medical notes, outcomes. Date of invoice and date of payment. Not how doctors would organise records when I come from – there would be files for each patient and then separate business accounts.’
‘Cross-referenced here,’ James said. He’d taken a ledger from the lower shelf. ‘Names and then volume and page numbers which must refer to those you’re looking at. Dates accounts sent, dates payments received.’
‘It is all secure, but not hidden,’ I said, checking another volume. ‘Nothing to worry about here.’
‘So, we discover what has been hidden,’ Luc said.
It took half an hour but eventually Garrick found it, a concealed cupboard betrayed by the merest hint of a crack in the panelling. There were six volumes inside.
‘Code,’ James said in disgust, flicking through. ‘All numbers.’
‘We’ll take the lot,’ Luc decided, heaping them into Garrick’s arms. ‘You carry these out the back way to the mews. ‘The rest of us will lock up, go back to the main house and, so far as our future evidence is concerned, will decide that we have waited too long to give Doctor Talbot the bad news about Coates and will prevail on Bromley to open the door.’
‘Find body, shock, horror, rush for help,’ I summarised. ‘But do we need to check in his bedchamber in case of personal papers?’
‘Yes. You and James do that, I’ll go to the Magistrate. This is murder, so I believe he takes precedence over the Coroner.’
‘Are you all right?’ I asked James as we went upstairs.
‘Yes.’ It was clearly a lie. He was worried sick, grieving for his friends, appalled that George might have murdered his lover and, although he hadn’t said so, he must be anxious that his involvement did not draw attention to himself and his own dangerously illegal lifestyle. I didn’t say any more, he was probably mortified at showing any weakness to a female as it was.
We searched thoroughly and fast. James found a small packet of letters and I jammed them into my reticule without either of us reading them. There was nothing else we could find that looked the slightest bit incriminating and we were back downstairs in the private part of the house, sitting solemnly either side of the drawing room hearth when the Magistrate, accompanied by two constables, arrived.
Luc showed them in. ‘My brother, Mr Franklin and our cousin, Miss Lawrence who, most unfortunately, was with us when we made the discovery.’
He shot me a very pointed look and I put a hand to my face and quavered, ‘It was terrible.’
James passed me a vast white handkerchief and I took refuge beh
ind it while the Magistrate made the vague clucking sounds of a man confronted by inconvenient feminine weakness but who wouldn’t have the ladies react in any other way.