Krishna
Lady Lydia screams in terror and her escort Mr Tuthill seems completely taken aback. They had come across Lady Godwin’s dead body. Lady Darby rushes to their side.
When they know that Lady Darby was in the crowd, suspicion falls heavily on her – due to her past. But Lady Alana, her sister, takes her away forcefully, browbeating the scandalous accusations leveled at Lady Darby.
Philip, Alan’s husband, declares to the guests that he is not allowed to take part in the investigation because the murder happened in his own property and so he is biased. He has called for investigators from the next town but it will take three days at least for the person to arrive. In the meanwhile no one is allowed to leave his house as they could be potential witnesses or even indeed the criminal.
Lady Darby married a surgeon (who is now dead) for her drawing skills. He wanted a free artist to draw the insides of humans. She got a vile reputation but she gained experience on dead bodies. Philip now asks Mr Gage, the son of a detective to start the investigations until official help arrives and asks Kiera (Lady Darby) to help him due to her knowledge.
She finds that Mr Gage is both perspicuous and sympathetic. Lady Darby goes with him to examine the corpse – which had been moved to an underground vault – and finds that Lady Godwin was pregnant and the child was savagely cut out of her stomach! (Her husband was away for several months which adds a salacious twist to the whole thing).
On the way back, Lady Darby is attacked and the attacker is one of the guests who claims that he thought she was going to destroy the evidence. Lady Darby is determined to push on and goes to the murder place with both Philip and Gage. She finds that there was kohl mixed with the blood.
Then with Gage, she goes to interview Lady Stratford. The latter admitted that she did not like Lady Godwin who was nasty but was her friend because Lady Godwin wanted her to be. She also said that Lady Godwin was in liaison with two men that she knew, when her husband was away. Lord Marsdale and Mr Calvin were with her and Lady Stratford also claimed that her husband was aware of it and let her have her peccadillos as ‘she had already provided him with two heirs’.
The one thing different from the other mysteries is that Gage and Lady Darby keep eliminating suspects one by one even in the early stages of the investigation – ‘No it cannot be Mr Fitzpatrick’ or ‘No it cannot be Mr Abingdon’ that kind of a thing. I thought an author wanted to keep the readers guessing but… not in this book!
They finally figure out that the baby in the stomach of Lady Godwin was Lord Stratfords. And ominously for Lady Stratford, she was aware of it, and she used to use the flowered knitting scissors and also her maid Faye lost an ornate shawl that was found earlier wrapped around the body of a dead infant buried in the grounds – Lady Darby is the one who saw the moved stones and led Gage and Philip there in the first place.
Lady Stratford claims that she was planning to keep the baby with a childless relative as Lady Godwin did not care what happened to it and Lady Stratford wanted a baby badly. When Lord Startford made Lady Godwin pregnant, he flaunted the fact that he was fertile in her wife’s face, augmenting her misery. But was that enough to provoke her anger and murder Lady Godwin?
Lady Darby is not convinced. Even Gage does not believe her. But when she goes sleuthing with dogs, she finds a regular kerchief in the hold in a tree and it is bloodied. She waits for Gage to come back – he has gone in search of a footman – a possible accomplice to Lady Stratford – who disappeared on the very day that Lady Godwin was murdered.
When she goes to Lady Stratford to ask some questions, we know who the real murderer is. (And it is known well before the end of the book, another deviation from other mystery books). And the murderer arrives with a gun and binds both Lady Stratford and Lady Darby to take them to another location. Lady Darby has no idea what the murderer plans to do with them.
The rest of the story is about how when all else seems to be lost, they are rescued. And includes Lady Darcy’s bravery and the unspoken attraction between Lady Darby and Gage, which is fated to continue into the series.
Also we learn the trivia from the epilog as to how there were no books on anatomy that could help scientists and doctors until the first one called ‘Anatomy : Descriptive and Surgical’ was published in 1858 by Henry Gray and came to be more commonly known as ‘Gray’s Anatomy’!
A very enjoyable mystery, not at all on the lines of famous sleuths who carry the investigations until the every end with dramatic revelations. For all that, the descriptions draw you in and the period details seem to be on the spot.
It deserves a 7/10
— Krishna