“No, I wasn’t going to suggest him,” said Byron.
“What other people have we suspected that we could dredge back up? Perhaps Beaumont?”
“Oh, perhaps, but why would Beaumont wish to poison Mr. Hardy?”
“I wonder if we shouldn’t let it go,” said Jane. “I did tell you that I must stay out of it, after all. I meant it. And now, it seems I’ve been pulled right out into the deep part of the water already and I’m swimming right back into it all, but I must not do that!”
“Yes, yes, but we’re so close now.”
“We are not close at all. As I just said, everything we have done before is useless. We would have to start all over.”
“If the killer meant to kill Mr. Hardy, why have they not tried again?” said Byron.
“I don’t know,” said Jane, “but likely because of us poking our noses into it, I should think. That would make you feel frightened of being caught, would it not?”
“There, then,” said Byron. “We must keep at it and solve it, Miss Jane. Otherwise, the murderer will feel brazen and free to kill again.”
Jane laughed softly under her breath. “You’re shameless,” she told him.
BYRON DID NOTstay for luncheon. After all, he was still in the clothing he’d been wearing while trapped in the storage room at the tavern all night. He sent a servant to the Beaumonts’ asking for a horse, and the horse came and Byron rode back there to freshen up. He promised, however, that he was coming back to collect her tomorrow and that they were going to get to the bottom of all of this.
Jane, however, was not sure there was a bottom to get to. She was not sure that the entire idea of it didn’t simply stretch on and on, turning this way and that, like a windy, unending path.
She told Cassandra that she would not be doing anything else with trying to solve the murder, and Cassandra said sheshould at least write to the magistrate, and Jane said that now she was convinced that Mr. Hardy hadn’t done it.
But when Jane related the reasoning to Cassandra, her sister was less than convinced, saying that she still thought that Mr. Hardy could have done it.
At dinner, Jane had a thought.
If a person knew that William left the sleeping draught outside Mr. Hardy’s door, the ladder would be a handy way to get up into the upper level of the tavern and drug the draught and then make an escape without anyone being the wiser.
If that was the case, they needed to find the man who had set the ladder up, the gardener’s friend.
But then she scolded herself, because, no, no, she should let this thing be.
At breakfast, Cassandra regaled her with a long theory of how it was that Mr. Hardy could have engineered all of it, even if he hadn’t been there, how he would have known that William would have given it to Miss Seward, and he could have drugged it himself.
Jane didn’t think it made sense.
“Well, I don’t suppose you’ve got any better ideas,’ said Cassandra.
“I thought we were supposed to be leaving this whole business behind us,” said Jane. “You seem just as engaged with it as ever.”
Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps you do simply have to get out there and figure out what happened, Jane. Perhaps none of us will have any peace until you do. And crucially, perhaps it’s the very best way to be rid of Lord Byron.”
Jane laughed. “We’d be well shut of him, would we not?”
“Oh, he’s ever such a bother,” said Cassandra.
Byron appeared at their door before they’d yet finished breakfast. When asked, he accepted the invitation to sit downat the breakfast table with them, and he also accepted the invitation to eat a scone. He cut it open and began buttering it heavily. “I saw something last night and I don’t know what to make of it.”
“What did you see?” said Jane.
“The man, the one who climbed the ladder with me—”
“The gardener’s friend?” said Jane. “The one who put the ladder up in the first place?”
“Yes, him,” said Byron. “You’d think I’d have gotten his name, but he behaved very strangely, and so, I did not.”
