He had been in custody only three days and yet the count had been told on good authority that his topcoat had been stolen and his face bruised and bloodied, and he had not eaten since the night before the murder of which he was now accused. The stench of ammonia made Thomas’s eyes sting as he and the count accompanied a turnkey down the sunless passage. Decay and pestilence lurked in every nook and crevice. Water dripped down cold walls and cockroaches scurried about over filthy flagstones. The flaming torches on the walls provided what little light there was, but most of the time there was hardly any. From railings to the left and right of them spindly, dirt-encrusted arms reached out. Young and old were penned together, those in their youth at the mercy of ruffian rogues and brutish felons well-rehearsed in the ways of villainy. One toothless old man pulled at the count’s wig, but the jailer coshed his hand and sent him yelping back into the corner of the cell, like a wounded cur.
