“Do you have a doctor capable of performing an autopsy?” he asked.
The Squire swiped at the fly again. “Dr. Higginbottom’s done them in the past. I’ll get one of the men from the village to help Nash carry her there.”
“Is he any good?”
“I suppose so. Although I don’t actually know for certain.” The younger man’s lips parted, his eyes widening as a new thought seemed to hit him. “Oh, Lord, I can’t believe this. Why would anyone from around here want to kill a stranger?”
“Where was she from?”
Rawlins shook his head. “I don’t believe I ever heard her say.”
“I take it she was staying at the Blue Boar?”
Rawlins nodded. “It’s the only place hereabouts suitable for a woman of quality.”
Sebastian rose to his feet. “Perhaps the innkeeper will be able to tell us more about her.”
The keeper of the Blue Boar was a gnarled little man named Martin McBroom. He had bushy side-whiskers and a full head of ginger hair that curled exuberantly and was slowly fading to white. Peering over the top rim of a pair of thick spectacles perched on the end of a bulbous nose, he shifted his watery gaze from Sebastian to the young Squire and back again.
“You’re saying it was Mrs. Chance they found down by the river?” His voice rose to a high-pitched squeak. “Oh, bless us. The poor lady. The poor, poor lady.”
“Where was she from, Mr. McBroom?” asked Rawlins, resting both forearms on the carefully polished counter between them. “Do you know?”
The innkeeper scratched his side-whiskers. “Said she was from London, though I don’t think she came from there direct. You’ll need to be asking that girl she brought with her—Peg is her name. And a sly, worthless thing she is, if you ask me.”
“Is Peg here now?” asked Sebastian.
“Haven’t seen her about, although I suppose she could be in the lady’s chamber.”
“We’ll need to take a look at it, Mr. McBroom,” said Rawlins. “Her room, I mean.”
“Oh, I don’t think I can let you do that.” The innkeeper drew his chin back against his neck and shook his head. “Wouldn’t be proper, it wouldn’t.”
Rawlins leaned into his forearms. “Mr. McBroom, she’s dead. Not only that, but we don’t know anything about her. Unless we find something in her room to tell us, we won’t even know whom to notify about what’s happened.”
“Well . . .” The innkeeper pursed his lips and made a sucking sound. “I suppose you are justice of the peace now.”
The red in Archie Rawlins’s cheeks deepened considerably. “I am, yes.”
“Still don’t seem right, to be letting strange men go through her room. Put their hands on her things.”
The Squire straightened with a jerk. “Mr. McBroom!”
“If it would make you feel better,” said Sebastian, volunteering his absent wife without a second thought, “we could ask Lady Devlin for her assistance.”
The young justice of the peace looked horrified at the thought of involving a real viscountess in a murder investigation. But the innkeeper peeled off his glasses to rub his eyes and said, “That would be better—her being a gentlewoman herself and all. But it still don’t seem right, us poking about in her things.”
“It’s not right,” said Sebastian. “But the fault for that lies with whoever murdered her.”
Chapter 4
Hero Devlin sat on a rustic stone bench at the edge of the broad village green, an open notebook balanced on one knee, her six-month-old son, Simon, on a rug spread on the grass at her feet.
The strengthening sun had burned off the morning mist, and she was grateful for the dappled shade cast by the spreading chestnut tree beside them. The air was sweet and clean and filled with cheerful birdsong, and she found herself smiling. For the moment, Simon was content to play with his toes and chatter happily at these fascinating appendages, which left his mother free to draw up the outline for a new article she was planning.
She’d been born Miss Hero Jarvis, daughter of Charles, Lord Jarvis, the ruthlessly brilliant King’s cousin who loomed as the acknowledged power behind the Hanovers’ wobbly dynasty. Standing nearly six feet tall and possessing an education typically given only to sons, Hero was in her own way as ruthless as her father. But her radical philosophies were of the kind that gave Jarvis fits.