“I do not,” said Mr. Hardy. “You said you wished to see her. You are looking at everything but her.”
“True,” said Jane. “Apologies.” She went to the bed and moved aside the sheet.
“Curious,” said Byron. “No marks indeed.”
“Her lips are rather blue, do you not think?” said Jane, tilting her head to one side, still holding the sheet up.
“Would you call that blue or more of a purple color?” said Byron.
“I wonder if she was poisoned,” said Jane. “There must be some way to know for sure about that. Perhaps if we called in the local doctor? Has anyone examined this body, Mr. Hardy?”
“I know less of this than you do,” said Mr. Hardy. “I tell you, I was not here last night.”
Yes, he’s rather harping on that, is he not?thought Jane.
“I arrived around noon. I came into the place, found her, was quite alarmed, and then the girls who work in the kitchen here told me what happened,” said Mr. Hardy.
“And what did they say?” said Byron.
“They said that a man woke the entire street up shrieking at the top of his lungs and that a number of men barged in, thinking the shrieking was coming from poor Anne’s own throat. They were there to protect her. But they instead, found a man in Anne’s bed, and Anne dead. They chased him to your house, Miss Austen, where you informed them he was a baron. After that, everything broke up and everyone went back to their business, and Anne was forgotten.” There was a bitterness to this last pronouncement.
Jane nodded. It would make sense, she supposed, for the nearby townspeople to come and see to Anne if she were in trouble. It would also make sense for the townspeople to be quite taken up by the prospect of a mob chase, a public hanging, and all of that sort of sordid behavior. People, in general, were drawn to the sordid. They could not help themselves. It was just part of human nature.
After all of that died down, however, they would have left it and returned to their own affairs.
“So, you never spoke to Mr. Eves?” said Jane.
“Not today,” said Mr. Hardy.
“He seemed to be leading the mob when I spoke to him this morning is all,” said Jane. She looked at Byron. “We should speak to him.”
“All right,” said Byron, shrugging. He was still looking at Anne. “I do wonder how I ended up in her bed.”
Jane scoffed. “Oh, that’s the thing we’re puzzling over, is it? That seems clear enough, I should think.” She dropped the sheet back down over Miss Seward. “You should perhaps call for a doctor to look at the body, Mr. Hardy.”
“All right,” said Mr. Hardy.
“All right,” said Jane, nodding.
“You don’t mean right now?” said Mr. Hardy.
“Well, I don’t think we should wait for much longer. She’s been dead for quite some time now,” said Jane. “I think the sooner a doctor looks at a corpse, the more he’s able to determine. We don’t need a gentleman doctor, really, I don’t think. I should think the surgeon, Mr. Fields, might suffice. I can send for him, if you like.”
“I shall send someone for Fields, of course,” said Mr. Hardy. “Are you going to wait here?”
“Well, I think we should speak to the staff,” said Jane. “Someone must know about this ladder.”
“Indeed, that’s quite astute, Miss Jane,” said Byron.
“Miss Austen,” she said to him.
He gave her a small, satisfied grin.
She might despise Lord Byron, she thought. If it only weren’t for the fact that there was something about the way he smiled that was a bit infectious.
CHAPTER FIVE
“SO, YOU REMEMBERme, then?” Byron waggled his eyebrows at Betsy, who was one of the tavern girls.
