Chapter Twenty
JANE MIGHT HAVE been gloomier in the hours that followed if she hadn’t already effectively mourned the end of her association with Lord Byron before it had been formally cut off.
As it was, there was little for it, so she made her way up the stairs to continue her work on First Impressions, and she lost herself to that for the rest of the day.
Then there was dinner, and afterward, she told Cassandra that she had sent Byron off that afternoon and Cassandra said she thought it was for the best, and Jane agreed.
It was late evening, nearly time for retiring to bed, when Mr. Beaumont arrived at their house. He was red-cheeked, a little out of breath, as if he’d been running about for hours.
“One thing you can say about Byron, he’s not one to be out at all hours,” said Mr. Beaumont.
“No, that’s… he is one to be out at all hours, but I have looked in all the places that one can be out at all hours, and he is in none of them, and I had hoped, perhaps, he was here, because I know he and you were playing at something to do with murder, but he is not, is he? ”
“Lord Byron is missing?” said Jane.
Mr. Beaumont was in their sitting room at this point, running a hand through his hair, looking distraught. “Perhaps I shouldn’t worry about him, it is only that he was in quite a bad way this week, and he can do… things in those states.”
“What sort of things?” said Jane.
“I’ve never heard him threaten to end his own life, but sometimes, he does things that make me think that is all he wants. Did you know he kept a bear at Trinity?”
“The college?” said Cassandra.
“Yes,” said Beaumont. “It had to be muzzled. It was mostly docile, but it was a bear, you know. You can’t keep a bear in your rooms as a pet.”
“You think he kept the bear because he was hoping it would kill him?” said Jane.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Beaumont. “Maybe not. Maybe he has simply left, I suppose. He did not take his horses but maybe he simply took others. He did not take his things, but maybe he will send for them. He did not say goodbye, but maybe that is only because he is often a bit thoughtless, our Byron. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that. ”
“You’re worried about him,” said Jane. “I do know where he went last.”
“Oh?” said Beaumont.
“He went to see Mr. Hardy,” said Jane. “Or, rather, to ransack Mr. Hardy’s bedchamber in search of the murder weapon.”
“Oh, dear!” said Cassandra. “You would not write to the magistrate, but you told him?”
“Well, those things are quite different from each other!” cried Jane.
“Mr. Hardy?” said Beaumont. “All right, thank you. I shall go and seek him there.”
Beaumont did not return that evening, but there was a letter delivered from a servant saying that he was grateful for their help, however, that Mr. Hardy had not seen Byron yesterday, and that Beaumont could only determine that Byron had left without saying goodbye.
Jane and Cassandra passed the note back and forth, both full of anxiety.
“If Mr. Hardy would kill Miss Seward, maybe he would work himself up to killing a baron,” said Cassandra.
“Yes, especially to conceal his first murder!” said Jane. “It is only that I still don’t understand any of it.”
“We have to write to the magistrate now,” said Cassandra.
“Yes,” said Jane, nodding, her stomach churning. “Yes, I suppose we must. First thing in the morning, I shall set it all down in a letter, and we shall send it off.”
BUT MORNING DAWNED and Jane thought to herself that it was possible that Lord Byron was not dead, but simply captured somewhere.
She thought to herself that the tavern itself had storage spaces, rooms full of barrels of ale and the like, and that Byron could be tied up in one of those, trying to get free, very much alive.
So, she got out of bed as the sun was struggling into the sky and rang for the maid, had herself dressed, and set off down the path to town quite early, before anyone else was awake.
Jane worried the tavern itself would be locked up and she had made a few plans for getting in that involved breaking panes of glass and the like. But she was lucky enough to find the back door unlocked.
She let herself in.
Inside, the tavern was dusty and dark, the only light the red-gold rays of the sunrise that made it through the windows.
She crept through the hallways, half-expecting Mr. Hardy to appear around any corner, his expression severe, his hands full of bottles of laudanum.
You must drink, Miss Austen, he would say.
Except he was never there.
And this was fanciful, after all.
But so was the idea that Byron was still alive, she realized. If Mr. Hardy wanted to silence Byron, he would have to kill him. There was no reason to keep him alive and tied up in a room full of barrels of ale.
She realized that she was not here on a mission to rescue Lord Byron. She was, instead, here on a mission to discover his body.
There weren’t many doors here on the lower level. There were two storerooms, one in which the books were kept, and one which only had stored goods, and there was the door that led to the kitchens.
She looked in the kitchens.
They were empty.
She looked in one of the storerooms, and it was empty, too.
The other storeroom was locked.
However, she’d seen a set of keys hanging on a hook in the last room she’d been in.
She darted back there and eased the keys down off the hook, doing her best to keep them from jangling. Holding them tightly against her chest, she started back for the hallway.
Voices.
She backed away, into the shadows, and waited.
“He was in such a temper last night,” came the voice of Betsy. “I don’t know what to do with that man. He gets worse by the day, I think.”
“Yes, he’s a mess without Miss Anne,” rejoined the other voice. “I can’t think Mr. Hardy will be happy here without her.” It was another woman.
The two voices got louder, and then seemed to be lingering just at the door of the room where Jane was hiding.
“I think he’ll leave, after all,” said the other voice. “Even though he claimed this was his home and he wouldn’t ever wish to be anywhere else. I think he can’t help himself.”
“You might be right,” said Betsy. “But I thought Mr. Hardy and Mr. Seward were reaching an agreement about keeping the place open.”
“Mr. Eves won’t be pleased about that,” said the other voice.
“Mr. Eves can be displeased all he likes,” said Betsy.
The other woman laughed delightedly. “You wouldn’t say that to his face, however.”
“I suppose not,” agreed Betsy, somewhat dejectedly.
And then, finally, the two voices moved on. They went into the kitchen and their voices were too far away, too muffled to make out.
Jane moved out of her hiding place, taking the keys with her, and went back to unlock that room.
It was dark in there, no windows at all. She would have liked a candle or a lamp, but she settled for leaving the door open, even though that might give her presence away, especially if this room was meant to be locked at all times. Seeing the door ajar like that might cause an alarm.
She imagined Mr. Hardy shutting the door on her and turning the key—
Except I have the key here, she said to herself.
And then she moved further into the room, which did seem to be filled with barrels of ale and big bags of flour and rice and things of that nature.
Then, from a distant corner, she heard a groan.
She rushed in the direction of the noise.
He was just a shadowy figure, lying on the ground, and she wasn’t sure…
“Miss Jane!”
“Lord Byron? It’s you?”
“It is,” he said, getting to his feet. He brushed at the front of his pants. “Let’s get out of here.”
She came closer. “You smell like you’ve been drinking again!”
“Well, that wasn’t truly by choice,” he said. “Let’s go. I shall tell you everything.”