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hour.”
    “It is nothing, Your Grace—I had not yet sought my bed. May I be permitted to view the body?”
    Eugenie inclined her head, and gestured towards the anteroom. After an instant’s hesitation, and the briefest survey of the appalled onlookers, Mr. Elliot made his ponderous way to the dead man’s side.
    I let fall the window drape, and joined my party at a little remove from the anteroom itself, but affording an excellent prospect of the interior through the opened connecting doors.
    “What a devil of a man to intrude upon the Dowager’s misery,” my sister Eliza whispered. “He might be Pantagruel from the Comédie Fran~aise! But I suppose the Duchess is familiar with such characters of old.”
    “Eliza!” Henry muttered fiercely in his wife’s ear. “I have told you that oaths cannot become a lady!”
    With a sigh and a grunt, Mr. Elliot forced his bulk to a creaking posture by Mr. Portal’s head. A quick twitch of the covering linen; a shrewd appraisal; and a forefinger bluntly probed at the dead man’s chest.
    “And where is the knife?”
    Dr. Gibbs cleared his throat and glanced at Lord Kinsfell. The Marquis sat with bowed head and slumped shoulders, his attention entirely turned within. The physician reached for the bloody thing, which had been laidon a napkin by one of the footmen, and handed it to the magistrate.
    “Ah, indeed,” Mr. Elliot said through pursed lips. “A cunning blade, is it not?”
    No reply seemed adequate to this observation, but none was apparently deemed necessary.
    “And you, sir, would be—?”
    “Dr. Gibbs, of Milsom Street,” the Moor replied. “I have the honour to attend Her Grace.”
    “Then I venture to suppose that you will declare the gentleman dead, will you not, Dr. Gibbs? What a quantity of blood there is, to be sure!”
    Mr. Elliot sat back upon his massive haunches, and surveyed the body with a rueful look. “To come to such a pass, and in such a suit of clothes! I fancy
you
should not like to end in a similar fashion, eh, Gibbs?—A similar
fashion
, d’you see?” The corpulent magistrate laughed heartily. “Aye, that’s very good.”
    A sudden whirl of skirts brought the black-haired Medusa furiously to his side.
    “Mr. Elliot—if
that
is how you are called—I would beg you to comport yourself with some decency and respect! A man has been foully murdered—and you would make witticisms upon his attire? It is intolerable, sir! I must demand that you apologise immediately!”
    “Apologise?” Mr. Elliot heaved himself painfully to his feet, and regarded Maria Conyngham with penetration. “And to whom must I apologise, pray? For the gentleman in question is beyond caring, my dear. And now tell me. Are you not Maria Conyngham, of the Theatre Royal?”
    “I am, sir.”
    “Enjoyed your Viola most thoroughly. Now be a good girl and stand aside. Your Grace!”
    “Yes, Mr. Elliot?”
    “I should like an account of this evening’s amusement.”
    The Dowager glanced about her helplessly.
    “I shall tell him, Grandmère,” interjected the Lady Desdemona. She had been seated near her brother, her hand on his, and now rose with an expression of fortitude, her countenance pale but composed. “Mr. Portal is the manager of the Theatre Royal, whose company we intended to celebrate this evening. The masquerade was some hours underway, when we were so fortunate as to enjoy a recital from
Macbeth
, performed by Mr. Hugh Conyngham—”
    “Mr. Conyngham is where?”
    “At your service, Mr. Elliot,” the actor replied, stepping forward.
    “And in the recital you were positioned where?”
    “In the drawing-room opposite, before the fire.”
    “The assembly regarding you?”
    “Of course.”
    “And Mr. Portal was—?”
    Lady Desdemona broke in with an exclamation of annoyance. “But that is what I am telling you!”
    Her brother stood up abruptly. “Mr. Portal was within the anteroom where his body now lies. I know this, because I thrust open