Unraveled (Turner, #3)

“Gentlemen,” another voice said, “it’s a conviction, then?”


Everyone else shifted to look at the magistrates to the left of the room. It would seem out of place if she didn’t follow their lead, and so Miranda raised her head. The three men tasked to hear the sessions today sat behind a heavy oak bench. They were dressed identically: curled, white-powdered horsehair wigs atop, and heavy black robes beneath. The man in the center with the red face was the mayor. On his left sat a fellow she’d never seen before. That man’s wig was askew.

“Indeed,” Croggins was saying, “what’s another conviction amongst friends?”

On the right, sitting a good two feet from his compatriots… “Perhaps,” this last magistrate said, “I might ask a few questions before we rush to judgment.”

Miranda swallowed. He was Magistrate Turner—better known as Lord Justice.

His face wasn’t red. His wig was straight. And while the other magistrates were smiling at Croggins’s antics, Lord Justice looked as somber as a crow in his black robes, stern and implacable. She could almost believe the stories that were told about him.

“Always covering the ground, Turner,” the mayor said in exasperated tones. “Very well. I suppose you must have your way. But I hardly see the point, as the man has admitted his guilt.”

Compared with his colleagues, Lord Justice looked like the statue of a magistrate instead of irresolute flesh and blood. He fit the name he’d been given. Justice made her think of hard lines and inflexible resolve. Lord Justice scanned the room with sharp, mobile eyes, which seemed to take in everything all at once.

Lord Justice, everyone said, could smell a lie at twenty paces. Miranda sat no more than fifteen from him.

Just looking at the man gave her gooseflesh. She’d appeared before him once. Even thinking of the questions he’d asked, the way his eyes had pierced her, made the skin on the back of her neck prickle. And that time, she’d been telling the truth.

“Perhaps,” Lord Justice said, “you could help me understand the events of last night. I’ve heard the testimony from your daughter. But I wish to hear it in your words. How did the fire start?”

“Ah,” Billy Croggins said, “that would be the drunk part of drunk and disorderly.” He smiled winningly.

Lord Justice was not so easily won. He steepled his fingers. “Were you voluntarily drunk? Or did you have your drink forced upon you?”

“I’d be much obliged, Your Worship, if people forced drink upon me. As it were, I had to purchase it like a regular booby.”

The only response to that witticism was a thinning of the magistrate’s lips. “When you were inebriated, you went to your daughter’s house?”

“Yes, and can you believe my own child wouldn’t open her door for me? Told me to go away and come back sober. If I waited for that, I’d never see my grandchildren at all, not ’til Gabriel sounded his trump at the last.”

A woman in the crowd let out a harsh bark of laughter at that, and the mayor hid a smile behind his sleeve.

Lord Justice still found no amusement in the proceedings. He tapped his fingers against the bench. “Was it then you threw the lantern into the woodshed and threatened to burn her out?”

The smile on Croggins’s face fixed in place. “Might have done, might have done. Wasn’t thinking so clearly at that point. I didn’t actually burn her woodshed down—just wanted to scare her a little, so she’d show some respect for her father. Besides, it seemed like a good idea. At the time.”

Lord Justice sighed and leaned back. “You see, Billy Croggins, this is what has me worried. Everyone in this courtroom seems to think you’re a jolly old fellow. Everyone thinks you’re amusing. Everyone is laughing. Everyone, that is, except your daughter. Why do you suppose that is?”

“She’s got no sense of humor.”

A few chuckles rose from the audience, but they were weaker, and held a nervous edge.

“Here’s my theory: her two infants were in the house when you tried to burn her out. Maybe she didn’t see the joke in putting their lives at risk.”

“Aw, it was just the woodshed!”

“It was an outbuilding, within the curtilage and attached to the dwelling-house,” Lord Justice said. His gaze focused on some point in the distance, as if he were reading those words off some page that only he could see. “According to the Statute of George, that’s arson.”

“Arson! But the wood scarcely even caught!”

Lord Justice leaned over the bench. “Arson,” he repeated firmly. “As you didn’t succeed, attempted arson, and as such, punishable by one year’s hard labor. Do you think that might dry you out?”

“Your Worship, I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”