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bowled him aside in their efforts to get upstairs, at the top of which stood the door to the Lightbournes ’ guest-chamber. As before, that door was locked. They hammered it to no avail – it was solid oak – and, once again, Cedric was summoned with tools. When at last they’d opened the room, a similar gruesome sight confronted them. Lady Lightbourne lay beside her bed amid disordered sheets, eyes closed but a ghoulish grimace on her face. Her throat had been torn from ear to ear, and a wide puddle of blood was congealing on the carpet.
      Lord Lightbourne howled and roared when he saw this, and had to be forcibly restrained by O’Calligan and the judge. This time, he switched his accusations from the Irishman to Cedric. “It was him … him, the dog!” he bellowed. “He was the only one not present when we heard her ringing for help!”
      “It couldn’t have been him,” the judge insisted. “He was outside the drawing room, just about to serve us!”
      But logic had fled the bereaved man. He wrenched himself free and threw himself down onto his wife’s corpse, sobbing bitterly. As he did, there was a gasp of shock from the doorway. O’Calligan turned and found Lady Foxworth there. Quickly, he led her out into the passage.
      “How … is this possible?” she stammered, her face pale as ice. “That room was definitely locked. I heard Lady Lightbourne do it, herself.”
      “You’re sure none of your domestics have a key?”
      “I’m sure, but come and speak to them anyway.”
      O’Calligan did, going straight down to the kitchens in company with his hostess. There, as he’d expected, he found the two maids, Charlotte and Martha, huddled together, teary-eyed with fear. Likewise, there was no possibility that the cook, Agnes, was responsible: she was aged and obese, and shuffled about slowly on elephantine feet. After briefly interviewing the woman, O’Calligan – frustrated and dissatisfied – went back up to the room where the crime had occurred. Cedric was standing outside with a lighted candle. He warned the Irishman about going in, saying that Lightbourne had lost his mind. O’Calligan replied that he had no choice.
      Inside, the new-made widower, now with sword drawn, was seated on the bed beside the body of his wife, which he’d clearly placed there himself. He’d pulled off his wig, and had gone white in the face.
      Aware that he was being watched coldly, O’Calligan went first to the bell in the corner. It was similar to his own in that it hung just below the ceiling. If the poor woman had indeed reached up and rung it, it would have been quite a stretch for her, especially considering that she was at that moment under attack. Next, he contemplated the walls themselves, which, aside from a timber skirting-board, were of bare stone blocks and hung with tapestries. He checked behind the tapestries, but found nothing unusual. After this, it was the window: outside it he saw another unbroken strip of snow on the ledge. Clearly, no-one had entered or departed this way, though the top panel, he now noticed, was open, admitting an icy breeze.
      O’Calligan turned to Lightbourne . “Forgive me for asking, my lord, but did you or your wife open this casement?”
      There was a chilling silence, before Lightbourne replied: “My wife did. Last night. She always found a stuffy room intolerable.”
      O’Calligan noted that the hearth was cold. “Is that why you had no fire?”
      At first Lightbourne couldn’t reply. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips taut and grey and visibly trembling, and for the first time it struck the Irishman that there was more to this arrogant, posturing peacock than he’d first thought. Lord Randolph Lightbourne was one of that very rare breed: a rakish squire, a gambling man and a drinker, but all the same a fellow who genuinely cared for his wife. “We … we made our own warmth together,” he finally mumbled, starting to weep again,