For Darcy, Dr Clitheroe’s illness was particularly inconvenient. He and Sir Selwyn Hardcastle, although they respected each other as magistrates, were not comfortable colleagues and until Darcy’s father succeeded to the Pemberley estate the two houses had been at enmity. The disagreement dated back to the time of Darcy’s grandfather, when the young servant from Pemberley, Patrick Reilly, had been found guilty of stealing a deer from the then Sir Selwyn’s deer park and was subsequently hanged.

The hanging had produce outrage among the Pemberley villagers but it was accepted that Mr Darcy had tried to save the boy, and Sir Selwyn and he became set in their publicly prescribed roles of the compassionate magistrate and the harsh upholder of the law, the distinction helped by Hardcastle’s seemingly appropriate name. The servants followed the example of their masters and resentment and animosity between the two houses were bequeathed from father to son. Only with the succession of Darcy’s father to the Pemberley estate was any attempt made to heal the breach, and then not until he was on his deathbed. He asked his son to do what he could to restore accord, pointing out that it was neither in the interests of the law nor of good relations between the two estates for the present hostility to continue. Darcy, inhibited by his reserve and a belief that openly to discuss a quarrel might only confirm its existence, took a more subtle path. Invitations to shooting parties and occasionally to family dinners were given and were accepted by Hardcastle. Perhaps he too had become increasingly aware of the dangers of the long-standing animosity, but the rapprochement had never developed into intimacy. Darcy knew that in the present trouble he would find in Hardcastle a conscientious and honest magistrate, but not a friend.

His horse seemed as glad of the fresh air and exercise as was its rider, and Darcy dismounted at Hardcastle House within half an hour. Sir Selwyn’s ancestor had received his barony in the time of Queen Elizabeth when the family house had been built. It was a large, rambling and complicated edifice, its seven high Tudor chimneys a landmark above the tall elms which surrounded the house like a barricade. Inside, the small windows and low ceilings gave little light. The present baronet’s father, impressed by some of the building by his neighbours, had added an elegant but discordant extension, now rarely used except as servant accommodation, Sir Selwyn preferring the Elizabethan building despite its many inconveniences.

Darcy’s tug on the iron bell-pull produced a clanging loud enough to awaken the whole house, and the door was opened within seconds by Sir Selwyn’s elderly butler, Buckle, who like his master apparently managed without sleep since he was known to be on duty whatever the hour. Sir Selwyn and Buckle were inseparable and the position of butler to the Hardcastle family was generally regarded as being hereditary since Buckle’s father had held it before him, as had his grandfather. The family resemblance between the generations was remarkable, every Buckle being squat, heavily built and long-armed, with the face of a benevolent bulldog. Buckle divested Darcy of his hat and riding jacket and, although the visitor was well known to him, asked him his name and, as was his invariable custom, instructed him to wait while his arrival was announced. The delay seemed interminable but eventually his heavy footsteps were heard approaching and he announced, “Sir Selwyn is in his smoking room, sir, if you will follow me.”

They went through the great hall with its high vaulted roof, many-paned window, impressive collection of armour and the mounted head of a stag, somewhat mouldy with age. It also housed the family portraits and down the generations the Hardcastles had gained a reputation among the neighbouring families for the impressive number and size of them, a reputation founded more on quantity than quality. Every baronet had bequeathed at least one strong prejudice or opinion to instruct or inconvenience his successors, among them being the belief, first formed by a seventeenth-century Sir Selwyn, that it was a waste of money to employ an expensive artist to paint the women of the family. All that was necessary to satisfy the pretensions of husbands and the vanity of wives was that the painter make a plain face pretty, a pretty face beautiful, and spend more time and paint on the sitter’s clothes than on the features. Since the Hardcastle men shared a propensity to admire the same type of female beauty, Buckle’s three-branch candelabrum, held high, illumined a line of poorly painted identical disapproving pursed lips and hostile protruding eyes, as satin and lace succeeded velvet, silk replaced satin, and silk gave way to muslin. The male Hardcastles had fared better. The strongly inherited, slightly hooked nose, the bushy eyebrows much darker than the hair, a wide mouth with almost bloodless lips looked down on Darcy with confident assurance. Here, one could believe, was the present Sir Selwyn, immortalised down the centuries by distinguished painters, in his various roles: responsible landowner and master, paterfamilias, benefactor of the poor, captain of the Derbyshire Volunteers, richly uniformed with his sash of office, and last of all the magistrate, stern, judicial but fair. There were few lowly visitors to Sir Selwyn who were not deeply impressed and suitably intimidated by the time they reached the Presence.

Darcy now followed Buckle into a narrow corridor towards the back of the house at the end of which Buckle, without knocking, opened a heavy oak door and announced in a stentorian voice, “Mr Darcy of Pemberley to see you, Sir Selwyn.”

Selwyn Hardcastle did not get up. He was sitting in a high-backed chair beside the fire wearing his smoking cap, his wig on a round table beside him which also held a bottle of port and a half-filled glass. He was reading from a heavy book which lay open in his lap and which he now closed with obvious regret after placing a bookmark carefully on the open page. The scene was almost a live reproduction for his portrait as magistrate and Darcy could imagine that he had a glimpse of the painter flitting tactfully through the door, the sitting over. The fire had obviously been recently tended and was now burning fiercely; against its small explosions of sound and the crackling of the logs, Darcy apologised for the lateness of his visit.

Sir Selwyn said, “It is no matter. I seldom end my reading for the day before one o’clock in the morning. You seem discomposed. I take it that this is an emergency. What trouble now is affecting the parish – poaching, sedition, mass insurrection? Has Boney at last landed, or has Mrs Phillimore’s poultry been raided once again? Please sit. That chair with the carved back is said to be comfortable and should hold your weight.”

Since it was the chair Darcy usually occupied he had every confidence that it would. He seated himself and told his story fully but succinctly, giving the salient facts without comment. Sir Selwyn listened in silence, then said. “Let me see if I have understood you correctly. Mr and Mrs George Wickham and Captain Denny were being driven by hired chaise to Pemberley where Mrs Wickham would spend the night before attending Lady Anne’s ball. Captain Denny at some stage left the chaise while it was in the Pemberley woodland, apparently after a disagreement, and Wickham followed him calling him to return. There was anxiety when neither gentleman reappeared. Mrs Wickham and Pratt, the coachman, said that they heard shots some fifteen minutes later and, naturally fearing foul play, Mrs Wickham, becoming overwrought, instructed the chaise to proceed at speed to Pemberley. After she arrived in considerable distress you initiated a search of the woodland by yourself, Colonel the Viscount Hartlep and the Honourable Henry Alveston, and together discovered the body of Captain Denny with Wickham kneeling over him apparently drunk and weeping, his face and hands bloodied.” He paused after the exertion of this feat of memory and took some sips of his port before speaking. “Had Mrs Wickham been invited to the ball?”

The change in the line of questioning was unexpected but Darcy took it calmly. “No. She would of course be received at Pemberley had she arrived unexpectedly at any time.”

“Not invited, but received, unlike her husband. It is common knowledge that George Wickham is never received at Pemberley.”

Darcy said, “We are not on those terms.”

Sir Selwyn placed his book with some ceremony on the table. He said, “His character is well known locally. A good beginning in childhood but thereafter a decline into wildness and dissolution, a natural result of exposing a young man to a lifestyle he could never hope to achieve by his own efforts, and companions of a class to which he could never aspire to belong. There are rumours that there could be another reason for your antagonism, something to do with his marriage to your wife’s sister?”

Darcy said, “There are always rumours. His ingratitude and lack of respect for my father’s memory and the differences in our dispositions and interests are sufficient to explain our lack of intimacy. But are we not forgetting the reason for my visit? There can be no link between my relationship with George Wickham and the death of Captain Denny.”

“Forgive me, Darcy, but I disagree. There are links. The murder of Captain Denny, if murder it is, took place on your property and the person responsible could be a man who, in law, is your brother and with whom you are known to be at variance. When matters of importance come to mind I tend to express them. Your position is one of some delicacy. You understand that you cannot take part in this investigation?”