The Empty Court by Donald Strong

Lord Cedric Ashcombe is found dead inside a locked hearing chamber. No weapon lies beside him. No intruder was seen entering or leaving. Guards stood outside the door, the windows remain barred, and nothing in the room appears disturbed. Yet Ashcombe did not die naturally. Called to the river city of Blackstone, Sir Alaric of Wrenmere and Mira find themselves investigating a man whose judgments shaped the lives of thousands. For more than twenty years, Ashcombe settled disputes over land, inheritance, debts, and property—and almost everyone in the district remembers a reason either to respect him or resent him. But as Alaric begins tracing the final weeks of Ashcombe’s life, the investigation keeps leading backward. Old court records raise questions no one wishes to answer. A long-settled dispute is still spoken of in lowered voices. People who once appeared before Ashcombe’s court remember its consequences very differently. And somewhere beneath decades of judgments, missing records, and unfinished grievances lies a secret the dead lord himself may have been trying to uncover. Mira begins to suspect that understanding how Ashcombe died will require understanding the life he spent passing judgment upon others. Because some decisions do not end when the court empties. Some wait years for their consequences. The Empty Court is the fifth book in The Alaric Investigations, a historical mystery series of buried motives, old grievances, and crimes whose beginnings often lie far deeper in the past than their endings.