He blinked. Twice. “Did you?”
“It was lye poisoning. The meat he’d eaten was tainted with it.”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw and shook his head. “Miss Caulfield, this is not—”
“I am sorry. I realize that Mr. Walsh was your friend, but—”
“He was not my friend.”
“You don’t know why he is here at the prince’s party, but I can see that you harbor a suspicion. What is it?”
“You will not relent until you have had your will in this, will you?”
“No.”
“Then go, if you will, and find the majordome. Bid him bring two sturdy footmen. Tell no one else.”
Ravenna’s belly tingled. “You will not disappear with him while I am gone and then pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about when I ask you about it later?”
His handsome brow screwed up. “Why would I do such a thing?”
“You have a secretive air about you.”
“I am nothing but what you see, Miss Caulfield.”
She did not believe him. The quiet distance in his eyes now told a different story.
“I will go find him,” she said, and, the tingling in her belly alive, she went.
THEY HAD DIVESTED Mr. Walsh of armor in the gallery while footmen blocked either end of the passage. Now the clock atop the mantel of the chateau’s least used parlor chimed two as Lord Vitor dismissed the butler and footmen, and closed the door. The servants had provided lamps. Ravenna watched him place them around the body stretched out on the table.
“Aren’t you a guest at this party?”
Lord Vitor untied Mr. Walsh’s cravat. “Just as you.”
“Not really. You are a member of this society while I am here accidentally.”
“Accidentally?”
“Until recently my sister was a governess. Now, however, she is a duchess and she intends for me to wed a prince. Sir Beverley and Mr. Pettigrew know everybody in Europe and England, and they thought it would be great fun to throw me before one and see what happened.”
He looked up briefly beneath the fall of dark hair over his eyes, then returned his attention to the corpse.
“If you are a guest,” she said when he did not speak, “why did the butler do everything you asked?”
“I am well known to the royal family’s servants. I have visited Chevriot before.”
“Why doesn’t the prince travel with a physician?”
“He did. When we disembarked in Bordeaux, he put his physician and two most trusted counselors in a carriage and sent them to Nantes for a holiday.”
She laughed. “Why?”
“I suspect it was because his father insisted upon them attending him here.”
“They are at loggerheads over the prince’s dissipated lifestyle?”
“Occasionally.” He reached into the breast of his coat and drew forth a flat metal object. She watched as he opened it into a blade and, with quick efficiency, cut the coat from Mr. Walsh’s body. Then he removed the dead man’s boots.
Clearly a blade had done the grisly deed. Blood stained the shirt at his waist and the length of his breeches to his feet, heavily concentrated in the groin area.
Lord Vitor tugged the bloodied shirt from the trousers. “Do turn away now, Miss Caulfield.”
“I have seen it before.”
The crease appeared in his cheek. “Bulls and rams, perhaps?”
She could not lie, however curious she was to finally see a human man’s instrument and ballocks. She had given medical treatment to most animals’ male parts, and had assisted at plenty of geldings. But the people whose ailments she had begun treating in the past few years drew the line at allowing intimate care of human men. Mostly she saw women patients and only when Dr. Snow could not be summoned swiftly enough or when the ailment was minor—a simple wound or broken bone or fever. “Yes,” she said. “But I am entirely comfortable with this.” She gestured to the nether regions of the body. “For both of us to examine the wound will be more thorough.”
“You might be comfortable with such an examination,” he said, cutting her a slanted glance, “but I don’t believe that I am prepared to witness your comfort with it.”
“Coming from the man I encountered in the stable last night, I don’t believe that for a moment.”
It was not chagrin that crossed his face then, or amusement, but clear discomfort.
She turned to searching Mr. Walsh’s clothing. Of the finest quality, it suited his young, reasonably fine figure. A high brow and good nose completed the portrait of knightly dash. Ravenna’s own nose had long since gone numb, and her toes and fingers too. But Lord Vitor had bid the footmen to carry the dead man to this unheated chamber to preserve the state of the body for as long as possible.
There was little of interest to study among the dead man’s outer garments, nothing at least to suggest that Mr. Walsh’s gold tooth represented a general state of wealth. His possessions included a snuffbox from which the insignia had rubbed off from wear, a threadbare kerchief, an aged knife scabbard, and a clip for holding bills containing a single pound note.
“If the murderer had intended to rob him,” she said, “he might have taken the tooth. It’s the most valuable thing about him.”
“Perhaps his traveling bags will prove otherwise.”
She studied the empty scabbard. “The blade meant for this is at least six inches long. Long enough to do great damage.”
Her companion did not respond.
Mr. Walsh’s waistcoat pocket offered up a piece of paper. Ravenna unfolded it, then paused.
“May I turn around now?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Walsh’s breeches were rolled into a ball on the table beside the body, the groin now covered with the bloodied shirt. His legs stretched pale and hairy to his bared feet.
“Shall I read it aloud?” she said.
Lord Vitor extended his hand. She gave it over and watched him read, trying not to think about how the hand holding the paper had been on her face. She could not recall the last time a man had touched her, except Petti, of course, whose displays of affection tended toward fond pats. On her sister’s wedding day Ravenna had bussed the duke on his cheek and felt his scar against her lips, and she did the same with Papa when she occasionally saw him.
“What does it say?”
He passed it to her.
“Come to my chamber at ten o’clock,” she read aloud. “No signature. I suppose murderers don’t like to sign their names.”
“Not typically,” he agreed.
“Really? Do you know much about murderers?”
He wiped his hands on a rag and drew a bed linen over Mr. Walsh’s body, covering the face set in its grimace of horror. “I know that there is a murderer nearby now.”
“The blood caught in the clothing is wet on the inside but drying on the edges. The blood on the floor was barely dry when I discovered him, and his body was not yet the temperature of the air. I believe he died within an hour of the time we discovered him, which was at twenty minutes past eleven or thereabouts. With the snow, no one from too great a distance could have done it. I wonder if he went to his ten o’clock assignation. Are you convinced it is murder?”
“I am fairly certain,” he replied grimly. “Most men do not choose to emasculate themselves.”
She could not contain her surprise.
He nodded.
She gathered her composure. “Done in the midst of a snowstorm without ease of escape . . . Stabbing in the groin . . .” Her pulse jiggled. “It was a crime of passion.”