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“This is Sir, my assistant,” he explained.

Messinger turned to Sir Gabriel. “I said the fewer people, the better.”

“I trust the lad,” Hugh said, his patience beginning to thin. He’d been drawn from his home and his wife, into fierce weather, and he was starting to grow annoyed rather than curious. “Sir Gabriel’s message said a body had been found. Who is the deceased?”

Messinger shifted his footing. “I do not know. I have never seen her before.”

As usual, the knowledge that it was a woman who had died sunk like a rock in Hugh’s stomach. No dead body was pleasant, but women and children were especially difficult to attend to.

The chief magistrate gave Messinger a solid pat on the shoulder. “Let’s go out.”

“Very well,” the man said with a depleting sigh. “This way.”

He turned on his heel and started for the back of the house, down a hall past the stairs to the first floor. The chief magistrate and Hugh fell into step together, and Sir brought up the rear.

“Give the man some grace,” Sir Gabriel told Hugh in a hushed tone. “He’s shaken.”

Finding a dead body would alarm anyone, but in Hugh’s experience, how a person handled that fright stripped away the veneer they normally presented to the world. Some people would lash out and grow irritated, while others would collapse and become insensible. Others still would treat the situation with levity, turning to humor to subdue uncomfortable feelings. It was the people who became somber and serious, and wished to restore order, that Hugh preferred to deal with.

They exited through a back door, into the mews lane that ran behind the block of terraced homes. Number 7 shared a row of carriage houses with its neighbors, and Victor Messinger went straight toward the one with lamplight shining from within an open doorway. A servant standing guard bobbed his head in greeting and stepped aside. The carriage house smelled of sweet hay, manure, and leather, and even though it wasn’t warm, it was at least out of the wintry elements.

“Kilton found the body,” Messinger said as he led them toward a horse stall.

“Who is Kilton?” Hugh asked.

“My driver.” Messinger took down a lantern that had been hooked on an iron peg and held it out to Hugh. “I’d just returned from my club. He was putting away the horses and carriage when he…when he found her.”

“Do you recall the exact time?”

Messinger released an irritated sigh. “Exactly? No. But I left White’s just after seven o’clock. So, perhaps half past the hour?”

“And what time did you leave for the club?”

“Four o’clock, I believe.”

So, the body was delivered between four o’clock and half seven. “Do you have any servants who would have been out here for any reason? Stablehands?” he asked, wondering who might have seen something.

“No. I’ve already asked my staff,” Messinger answered, still irate. “No one saw anything.”

Hugh ignored the man’s sniping reply and accepted the lantern. He entered the horse stall, holding out an arm to Sir.

“Wait a moment,” he said to the boy. Predictably, Sir crossed his arms with an expression of annoyance. He’d seen corpses before, but Hugh wanted to be sure it wasn’t too gruesome, even for Sir.

She was in the corner, her back toward the entrance, curled up on her side.

Hugh approached. “Has the body been touched? Moved?”

“My driver shook her by the shoulder to try to wake her, thinking she was merely asleep,” Messinger answered, his vocal cords constricted. “He saw her open eyes, and some blood on the front of her dress, and he immediately ran to fetch me. I sent for Sir Gabriel straightaway and thought it best not to touch anything more.”

“Good,” Hugh said, relieved.

Holding out the lantern, he peered around the floor. The hay near the body had been scattered, likely by Kilton’s feet, but there was no blood, no boot prints of any sort. With the light shining directly over the woman, Hugh assessed her more closely.

She was young. In her early twenties, he estimated. Her eyes were open, as the driver had stated, and her chest was awash in tacky blood that glistened dully in the light. He inspected the shallow cradle of straw underneath her, but the sheaves were clean except for a few drops of blood.

The young woman wore only a long-sleeved dress of fine red wool and a pair of matching red house slippers. Hugh touched her tapered sleeve; it was dry. So were the dark brown strands of her long, loose hair.

“Sir,” Hugh called, his permission to enter explicit. “Search this carriage house top to bottom and then walk the rest of the mews lane. See if you can find a discarded ladies’ coat or hat. Or a blanket perhaps. If you see anyone, ask them if they recall any carriages or wagons in the mews lane this evening.”