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moved,” he replied, still unable to rid himself of his fear for Cornwallis. “I’m sorry … it was on his doorstep that the body was found. I don’t suppose it was more than mischance.”
    It was only towards the end of dinner, when he was eating the baked egg custard, that he even thought of the snuffbox and realized that he had told her a good deal less than the truth. But there was no point in distressing her by adding that now. It would worry her for nothing. She could not help.
    He was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice her silence as anything but companionable. Where should he begin with Cornwallis’s letter? How could he protect him?

2
    C
HARLOTTE HAD BEEN
distressed to learn that the tragedy of murder had again overtaken General Balantyne, even if only in that the dead man had been found on his doorstep. But it was a public place. Certainly anyone at all might have come to it without his knowledge or any acquaintance with him.
    The following morning when Pitt had gone, she left Gracie to clean away the breakfast dishes while she saw nine-year-old Jemima and seven-year-old Daniel off to school, then returned to the kitchen with the daily newspaper, brought to the step as a kindness by Mr. Williamson along the street. The first thing that leapt to her eye was the latest report on the Tranby Croft affair. Speculation was running riot as to whether the Prince of Wales would actually be called to the witness stand—and of course, what he would say. Having the heir to the throne appearing in court like a common man had never even been imagined before, much less had it happened. The room would be jammed with people curious just to stare at him, to hear him speak and have to answer questions put to him by counsel. Admission to the court was by ticket only.
    Sir William Gordon-Cumming was represented by Sir Edward Clarke; for the other side, Sir Charles Russell. Present, according to the newspaper, were Lord Edward Somerset, the Earl of Coventry and Mrs. Lycett-Green, among many others.
    Baccarat was an illegal game. Gambling in any form wasupon by many. Cards were viewed as a waste of precious time. Everyone knew that thousands of people played, of course, but there was a world of difference between knowing and seeing. It was said that the Queen was beside herself with anger. But then she was rather a straitlaced and forbidding woman even at the best of times. Ever since Prince Albert had died of typhoid fever, nearly thirty years before, she seemed to have lost all pleasure in life and was fairly well determined to see that everyone else did too. At least that was what Charlotte had heard said, and the Queen’s rare public appearances did nothing to disprove it.
    The Prince of Wales was a spendthrift, self-indulgent, gluttonous; and wildly and regularly unfaithful to his wife, the long-suffering Princess Alexandra, most particularly with Lady Frances Brooke, who was also intimately admired by Sir William Gordon-Cumming. Until this point Charlotte had had a very slight sympathy with him. Facing the court, Sir Ediward Clarke and the public would be nothing compared with facing his mother.
    Then, farther down on the same page, she saw an article by one Lyndon Remus about the corpse found in Bedford Square.
    The identity of the dead man on the front doorstep of the house of General Brandon Balantyne two mornings ago remains a mystery. Superintendent Thomas Pitt of Bow Street informs this writer that as yet the police have no idea as to his identity. Indeed he went so far as to say that he knew no more of it than any member of the general public.
    When pressed he refused to say whether or not he intended to investigate General Balantyne, who as readers will remember, was the father of the infamous Christina Balantyne of what came to be known as the Devil’s Acre Murders which scandalised London in 1887.
    There then followed a brief but lurid outline of that terrible and tragic case, with which Charlotte was all