A/N: My other OTP is Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I am happy to acknowledge that the premise for this story, which is set after the 2012 Christmas Special, is Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers, although my plot isn't the same. Yes, JF has also done this storyline in DA canon with Bates and Anna, but he repeats himself too, doesn't he?


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To look upon the universe as a prison cell and all men as criminals about to be executed is the idea of a fanatic.

—Voltaire, Letters on the English Nation 1734


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That's a blackbird, and he's singing his spring song Anthony thought, just as he woke before he'd even opened his eyes. How nice to hear that in the dark winter days.

He turned onto his side and looked at the empty place in the bed beside him, as empty as his heart. The world had stopped turning for him one day the previous summer, when he walked out of the doors of Downton Church. He'd hastened back to Locksley and not left the estate since — over a year ago. He had not really noticed the height of that still, lazy summer, nor the summer after that. When he'd next looked, really looked instead of staring out of the library windows with unseeing eyes, another drear, damp autumn was being conquered by another sharp, unforgiving winter. The seasons had continued unfurling while he turned ever more in on himself.

His days wore a weary, unchanging familiarity now. The one thing he had insisted on was that the estate should continue to be well run. He had forced himself to redouble his attention to its infrastructure and to his tenants. They must not be allowed to suffer for his sins. Once he'd spent the morning on business, he read a little in the afternoons, but not as much as he once had, finding he now lacked the concentration especially sitting in that library, haunted by her ghost smiling trustingly at him. He walked once around the grounds each day; his butler, Oakley, had been quietly adamant about that early on, and obeying his advice was the least Anthony could do to repay Oakley's care and loyalty.

But that autumn morning Oakley shattered Anthony's fragile peace. He had expected one day to hear news of Edith's engagement or marriage, and he did not care to consider how he would bear hearing about it. But he had never expected this.

"Oh that's just ridiculous; I don't believe it for a moment. I really think you must be mistaken, Oakley."

"I hope I am, Sir, but I fear I am not. The milkman was quite certain. He said he'd read it in The Sketch this morning."

Anthony thought for a moment, and then asked Oakley to get his friend Hugh Gervas on the telephone and then get hold of a copy of that newspaper.

"Morning, Hugh. Listen, I…"

"Anthony! I was just about to telephone you. You've heard then? Isn't it awful? How are you bearing up?"

Anthony was taken aback for a moment. "It can't be true? You can't be telling me this is actually true?! Hugh, I was ringing you to confirm that it wasn't."

"I'm afraid it is. Edith Crawley was arrested yesterday evening on suspicion of murdering her lover, one Michael Gregson, the editor of The Sketch. According to my friend, Perry Chaunter, the one at Scotland Yard you know, she was found red handed at his flat: holding the dagger covered in blood standing over the man. She's being held in Holloway. Anthony? Anthony?!"

But Anthony had dropped the receiver. He was standing motionless, deathly pale, vainly fighting the panic that was gripping his guts more fiercely with each passing second.

"No, please God, no!"


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Edith watched the damp trickle down the walls of her cell. Life was as cold and as pointless. Her life anyway. There was the occasional scream from women held in the cells around her, but she herself hadn't uttered a word to anyone for…well, however long she'd been here and she couldn't tell how long that was anymore. She hadn't eaten any of her meals so she couldn't judge the time that way. The shapeless prison uniform almost strangled her like a straight-jacket. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept. Did it feel like this to lose one's mind?, she wondered numbly.

She did remember what Michael's blood had felt like, what it had smelt like. That whole evening had been ghoulish. But before that she remembered what it felt like to be his mistress. To begin with it was…comforting, yes, that was the word. It was a relief to find that she could be attractive to a man, any man, but it all became so hollow, so shallow, so very quickly. Once again she longed for blue eyes rather than brown; for awkward, shy, gentle goodness rather than calculating, possessive confidence.

She was so completely and utterly sure she would never see those blue eyes again, not in this life anyway, that everything else and all other facts in her existence left her without any sensation whatsoever. She could feel nothing, try as she might, concerning her family who would be despairing of her and of the shame she had brought and was still bringing on them and the House of Grantham. She didn't dread them arriving and haranguing her. She didn't fear them shunning her or ignoring her. She felt nothing about the fact that she would be tried for her life without the smallest flicker of hope that she might avoid the hangman's noose. Nothing mattered at all except for this one fact: that Anthony Strallan had walked away from her once long ago in Downton Church, taking all light and warmth and joy and love with him, leaving her dead inside. She had been living a lifeless life ever since. She would never live another happy moment without him…and it was impossible that he would want to see her, or that she would ever again see his crooked smile, no matter how desperately much she wished she could. Compared to that, a mere execution was nothing; nothing at all.