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Thomas called I was unemployed and so went straight away to see the curious remains recovered from the cesspit.
    I found Lord Gilbert and his reeve, John Holcutt, standing over the small pile of bones. “Ah, Hugh, see here. What do you make of this? I fear we have found poor Sir Robert.”
    I could see no reason at the moment to disagree with him, but I wondered how a man last seen leaving town on a horse might be discovered in a cesspit. And what of his squire? Might two sets of bones be revealed?
    I knelt to study the skull at my feet and felt a gnawing apprehension that Sir Robert was yet missing. I kept my uncertainty to myself. Each new bucket of sludge generally brought with it more bones. As the pit was emptied, a nearly complete skeleton lay on the cobbles between the castle and the marshalsea. As new bones rose to the light of day I cleaned them, and the putrefying flesh which adhered to some of them, in a tub of water and laid them out. Each new bone justified my first suspicion.
    The bones were mostly free of flesh and gristle. Decomposition was advanced. The jaw was barely affixed to the skull. At the back of the skull a small patch of fair hair clung to decaying scalp.
    “What color hair had Sir Robert?” I asked.
    Lord Gilbert studied the skull as I turned it in my hands. “Very much like that,” he nodded. “A dark blonde, with a flash of red in the sunlight.”
    “How tall was Sir Robert?” I asked.
    “Quite tall. He had two inches on me,” Lord Gilbert replied. That would have made Sir Robert five feet nine or ten inches tall.
    “These are not Sir Robert’s bones,” I told the onlookers. Lord Gilbert’s jaw dropped. “The hair color may suit, but these are the bones of a woman, I think. See how delicate is the skull. And a young woman, a girl, as well. The teeth are not yet beginning to rot, and I see no evidence of wisdom teeth erupting. This is the skeleton of someone barely five feet tall, perhaps less.”
    “But…there are no women or girls missing in Bampton,” Lord Gilbert spluttered.
    “Well, there is a lass missing from somewhere. Perhaps no one knows of it yet. But I assure you, these bones never held Sir Robert aright.”
    Lord Gilbert called Thomas de Bowlegh and Hubert Shillside to the scene. Father Thomas is one of three vicars of the Church of St Beornwald. He spoke the sacrament over the bones in the dying light of a gray autumn day. Hubert Shillside, prosperous freeholder and the town haberdasher, is also the town coroner. He quickly assembled a jury of prominent citizens, inspected the bones in the fading light, and in consultation with his peers pronounced a probable homicide. No deodand could be found, nor could a perpetrator be identified.
    Lord Gilbert made arrangements with Father Thomas to have the bones interred in the churchyard next day. I thought this hasty. A closer inspection in better light might yield some clues to identity, or the cause of death. I approached Lord Gilbert with a request that the bones be transferred to my dispensary for examination next day. They had been unburied for many months – at least, not buried in hallowed ground. One or two more days would matter little. Lord Gilbert’s response took me aback.
    “No! I’ll not deny Christian burial to…to…to whoever has died in my castle.”
    “Did she die in your castle?” I asked.
    “How do I know?” he snapped. “I don’t…we don’t even know who she – it – is, much less where or how she died.”
    His vehemence surprised me. I wondered why he wished the bones out of sight so soon. I confess to a moment of suspicion. “You make my point readily. Study of the bones in good light tomorrow may yield answers to those questions.”
    Petronilla stood silent, listening to our debate. “It seems a small thing, Gilbert, to allow Master Hugh [I never completed my doctor’s degree, so could not properly be called “doctor,” although I was a practicing surgeon] a day or two to learn