Lord Justice Oglethorpe was a stolid man, a phlegmatic and ponderous older fellow who, it was rumoured, could take an hour choosing an entrйe from his club's daily menu, and so meditative at chess, cards, or backgammon that no one had asked him for a game since his teens.

"Your principals are not present, Sir George?" he enquired with a bland expression. "How odd."

"They are not, milud," Sir George Norman, usually a very smooth gentleman, responded, fidgeting a little, looking as if he wished that he could jerk his head about to hunt for them. Both his clerks had already been sent haring round the halls and into the street outside, in a desperate last-minute search for the Beauman party.

"And have you, sir, had cause to correspond with them prior to this instant?" Oglethorpe intoned, with his head cocked to one side.

"I have not, milud," Sir George had to admit, all but wringing his hands. "Not since a brief note from their lodgings in Islington, in receipt of my informing them of the date their case was to be held."

"How extremely odd," Oglethorpe commented with an uncharacteristic huff. "Mister MacDougall… I trust your witnesses are here."

"We are, in all respects, both ready, and eager, to proceed, my lord," MacDougall piped up as he bowed his head, taking a second for a smirk in Sir George Norman's direction.

A folder of pale "law calf" was opened, up on the banc surface, and papers rustled as Lord Justice Oglethorpe cleared his throat with several "ahems," waiting out the snickers and whispers of the court spectators.

"Ahem… in the matter of Beauman versus Lewrie… after an exhaustive review of the trial transcript from the High Court in Kingston, Jamaica… and comparing the witness statements sworn in that proceeding against the sworn affidavits provided by the defendant, I find such contradictions of the facts of the matter obtaining to warrant an entirely fresh proceeding, de ovo. Harumph!