Chapter 19: The Ledger Laid Down

For a heartbeat nobody breathed.

Then six hundred people started speaking at once.

Hadrian was on his feet.

"Lies!

"Your Highness, the man is raving, he is a servant in the pay of..."

"Sit down, Lord Hadrian."

Dorian had not raised his voice.

The hall went quiet.

Hadrian sat.

The prince turned his pale eyes to Corwin.

"Go on, Mr. Radmore."

Corwin put his good hand inside his coat.

He took out the oilcloth bundle he had carried against his ribs all morning and set it on the rail of the stand.

He unwrapped it.

The brown ledger lay open under the vault, with a half-moon of red wax at the end of every line.

"Every line is a report on the duke, his visitors, his letters, Your Highness.

"The last is dated the fourth of April, for the vial."

"And that is Lord Hadrian's seal?" said Dorian.

"It is."

"How do you know?"

"I was paid in it," Corwin said.

"I kept every receipt."

He took the empty vial out and laid it beside the book.

"This is the vial he gave me.

"It never reached the duke's glass."

He turned.

"Dr. Reeve."

Tobias was on the front bench in his plain coat with a small pine box on his knee.

He got up.

He walked to the rail and put the box on the stand.

When he opened it, there lay the crystal glass, its rim sealed in dull yellow wax, a dark residue dried in the bottom.

"This is the glass from the ball," he said.

His voice shook, but he kept on.

"I have kept it in my own hands since.

"The residue is aconite.

"The vial smells the same."

"Anyone might have bought aconite," said the lawyer.

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