“I’m sure she understood,” said Jane. “She would have realized you were quite occupied.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “My mother, though, she was fat.”
“That’s putting it rather baldly,” said Jane.
“It’s only the truth. She could be… she had…” Byron shrugged. “Let’s not talk about my mother.”
“Of course,” said Jane. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Byron sighed heavily. “Listen, about the cock fight. I’m remembering more and more about that. I think it actually explains what happened to my pocket money. I was wondering about that. It was gone in the morning, and I thought I must have simply spent it. One doesn’t get burgled in the country, after all, but then I remembered that I bet on one of the birds. But it lost.”
“Your patchy memory is clearing up?”
“A bit,” said Byron. “Here’s another thing, however, something I don’t know what to do with. I have a memory of climbing that ladder.”
“The one up into Miss Seward’s room?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Jane sat back in her chair and fixed him with a look. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t any notion why I would have been climbing that ladder. But I didn’t kill her. I know that.”
“Would you have bought laudanum for pleasure?” said Jane. “Are you that sort?”
“I…” Byron hesitated.
“I thought so,” she said.
“Well, I’m not an opium eater,” said Byron. “I’ve done it. Who hasn’t? I’ve used the pipes and all that, and—”
“Ihaven’t,” said Jane.
“Well, you wouldn’t have, because you’re… Jane Austen.”
“You mean because I’m a woman.”
“That too.”
She huffed.
“Anyway, I’vedoneit, but I don’tdoit, if that makes any sense.”
“It does not.”
“You’re either a habitual opium eater or you are not. It’s that simple. You must be careful, if you partake of it, not to become habitual,” he said. “It’s very easy for it to become habitual. Anyway, I am not habitual about it, and I do not make a practice of going out and procuring laudanum. So, no, I don’t think that I would have done that.”
“But if you did, maybe you gave it to Miss Seward. Maybe it was still an accident—”
“I don’t think so,” said Byron.
“But you don’tknow,” she said.
“There is something to what Eves said, about Hardy slinging the blame about like he was slinging a paintbrush. In our very brief conversation, he accused both Mr. Seward and Mr. Eves. He also told us that he was in Farnham, which is going to be difficult to confirm unless we want to ride all the way out there and look for this midwife.”
“Yes,” said Jane, “and I found all that business about wild carrot curious.”
“Did you.” He smirked at her. “Well, we should probably not talk about that. We are in public, and it would hardly be proper to explain such things to an unmarried woman.”
