Theft of Life by Imogen Robertson Page B

evidence offered to us is often imperfect.’
    Crowther turned aside and picked up his knife and Bartholomew started but Crowther merely turned the blade and slit the thin material of the shift from neck to hem. He then folded it back to show the naked body below.
    There were some bruises around Trimnell’s belly – they looked to Harriet as if they had been delivered with a fist. The body was thin almost to emaciation. It seemed impossible to believe such a fragile-looking creature could have been walking and talking yesterday, taking his coffee with his West Indian cronies.
    ‘Mr Bartholomew,’ Harriet said, ‘the owner of the coffee house mentioned that this man lived on Cheapside. That is an unusual address for a rich man, is it not?’
    The coroner looked surprised. ‘From what I’ve heard, Trimnell was not a particularly rich man, Mrs Westerman. Not everyone who lives in Jamaica makes his fortune. The wars, the exhaustion of the soil … Many of our friends in the West Indies are suffering a great deal.’
    She looked into his face for some sign of irony, but there was nothing but well-mannered concern.
    ‘Do you know anything else of the man?’
    Bartholomew ran his hand over his chin. ‘I have heard of him, and met his wife. She was at a gathering at the home of Sir Charles Jennings in Portman Square two evenings ago. A private concert.’
    ‘Mrs Westerman?’ Crowther had no interest in Mr Bartholomew and his social connections. She approached the body and watched carefully as Crowther turned the wrists and hands. Mr Trimnell had long fingers and hands which showed no sign of injury, nor the calluses of physical labour. His ankles, like his wrists, were unmarked. Strange. Crowther ran his fingers across the man’s scalp, then gently pulled open the jaw and felt inside the mouth for any hidden injury. He caught Harriet’s eye and shook his head.
    ‘I wish to turn the body. Your assistance please, Mr Bartholomew,’ he said, wiping his fingers on a corner of Mr Trimnell’s shroud.
    The coroner stepped forward and between them the two turned the corpse onto its front. Crowther pulled the shift free from Trimnell’s shoulders and threw it into the corner of the room. Harriet felt a hiss on her lips; across Trimnell’s back, from the top of the right shoulder-blade and reaching diagonally down to the spine, was a single raw wound. The skin was not torn away completely, but its path was clear by the areas that were scourged and bloody.
    ‘A whip-strike,’ she said. ‘But not a nine-tails – a single strap and narrow.’
    ‘They tied him up like an animal and whipped him,’ Bartholomew said in a whisper.
    ‘Like a slave,’ Harriet said, her voice neutral. ‘Or a vagrant. How many whippings are ordered every day in this city?’
    ‘Enough,’ Bartholomew said after a pause. His tone remained polite. ‘But not in a churchyard, not in darkness, and only after due process of law.’ Harriet nodded, conceding the point.
    ‘I am not certain that is quite what happened, Mr Bartholomew. Mrs Westerman,’ Crowther said, ‘what do you think?’
    She considered for a while. She had served long enough with her husband to see men flogged, tied upright to the grating while the drum beat and the company looked on. Part of the theatre of discipline. She remembered too the curate laid out at Crowther’s feet, arms above his head. She imagined Crowther with a whip in his hand rather than the familiar cane.
    ‘No, I think not.’
    ‘How can you know?’ Bartholomew asked, and stopped pulling on his buttons for a moment.
    ‘The angle and placing of the strike.’ And when he continued to look puzzled, she went on: ‘Turn your back to me,’ and warily, he did so. ‘If you were struck now from behind, by someone making use of a whip in their right hand, the blow would catch your shoulder here,’ she placed her hand on his right shoulder and he flinched, ‘then come down on this slope.’ With the side of her