Mr. Crampton broke the silence. “You two seem quite glum.”
“Yes, well, it’s partly because we had hoped we’d discovered who the murderer was,” said Byron. “And we haven’t, so we are still doing a great deal of uncovering of secrets, but to no real end. Which is frustrating.”
“Mmm, sounds it,” said Mr. Crampton.
“But it’s also because I can’t bear the idea of leaving you here with that Mr. Lovell,” said Byron. “We have to do something about that.”
“Oh, he’s been with me forever,” said Mr. Crampton, with a shrug. “He’s a bother in many ways. He forces me to do his bidding and molests my person and won’t let me get married and is a tyrant in every way, but I am used to it. The devil you know and all of that.”
“Even so,” said Byron, “it is insupportable. Something must be done.”
“I can’t see what,” said Mr. Crampton. “If I dismiss him, he will tell everyone that I am buggering everything in sight—oh, dear me, apologies, Miss Austen, for using such a word.”
“It’s all right,” said Jane. “It is only a word, after all.”
“Right,” said Mr. Crampton. “And how else can I get rid of him?”
“Perhaps we simply threaten him into silence,” said Byron.
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Crampton. “He has told me numerous times he’d be quite happy to face the hangman’s noose so long as he takes me down with him. ‘If I go down, you go down,’ he says.”
“Well, he says that,” said Byron, “but most men have a sense of self-preservation when it really comes down to it. I think he is all threat and that he would fold like a pack of cards if you exerted any pressure.”
Mr. Crampton smirked. “My lord, you have met him. You don’t really think that.”
Byron hesitated, rubbing his chin. Finally, he said, “Yes, all right, upon further consideration, I am remembering what he is like.”
“He will not fold.”
“Perhaps not,” said Byron. “But I still say that he will not go to the gallows. If he accuses you, you can leave him to it, I suppose. Leave him to hang, and you can go to the continent. Everything’s better there, really.”
“Better?” said Mr. Crampton. “What with the war and Napoleon and all of that?”
“Well, true, I suppose,” said Byron.
“That’s what you’d do, I suppose, if you happened to be charged with sodomy. Simply pack up and leave England entirely?”
“Oh, if I had an excuse to do it, I’d do it now,” said Byron. “This whole country sickens me. We Englishmen all pretend to be civilized, but we are backward, priggish, repressed, and ever so preoccupied with propriety. I should like to live in a looser manner, and I don’t think anyone who’s ever met me would be surprised to hear that.”
“He should beyourvalet.”
Byron smirked. “Oh, I should kill him if he were my valet.”
Mr. Crampton’s eyes widened.
“Not that I’m countenancing murder, of course,” said Byron.
“Lovell is not your affair,” said Mr. Crampton. “He is my issue to solve. You may wash your hands of it and forget all about it.”
“Oh, I have your permission for that?” said Byron dryly.
“Indeed you do. Now, if there’s nothing else, perhaps the two of you can be on your way,” said Mr. Crampton.
“Mr. Crampton,” spoke up Jane.
“Yes, Miss Austen?”
“It’s only that it occurs to me that we had no idea you were at the tavern that night. We have never compiled any sort of list, you see, and that might be where we really ought to have started, back at the beginning. I wonder if you would be so good as to tell us everyone you can remember seeing, and give me a piece of paper and a pen so that I might write the list down?”
