Page 11 of A Matter of Murder

“More than cracks,” Darcy said. “The skull looks bashed in.”

Bingley made a strange gasping noise and Lizzie looked up in alarm. Was he going to retch?

Mr. Bennet pulled his son-in-law away from the body and thumped him on the back. “Well, that settles it, then. A constable. Does this village happen to have one?”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Grigson said. “I’ll call for him right away.”

Lizzie’s eyes met Darcy’s, and for a moment she forgot about their animus. He had pulled a body from the flue, and its skull was cracked in. It could only point to one thing.

Murder.

But Lizzie’s excitement was ruined by Caroline proclaiming, “I won’t stay here! Not if there are skeletons and goodness knows what else!”

“Caroline,” Bingley said with a heavy sigh.

“No, Charles! I mean it!”

“All right,” Jane said, clapping her hands together sharply. “Now, we’ve all had quite a shock. I’ll ring for tea, and we’ll postpone dinner—”

Mrs. Bennet appeared to regain consciousness abruptly. “Jane, you can’t expect us to take tea in the same room where a dead man lies!”

“Of course not, Mama—we can use the morning room for now. In fact, should we perhaps—”

“I have a question,” Lydia interrupted. She had managed to calm herself far more quickly than Caroline, and she was peering toward the body with wide-eyed interest. “How do you know it’s a man, Mama?”

Lizzie looked to her youngest sister. It was a good question, and it was always disarming when Lydia spoke sense.

“Because only men get murdered,” Mrs. Bennet explained.

“Ah,” Lydia said, nodding.

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “That’s not true at all,” she quickly corrected. “In my experience, women are murdered just as often as men. In fact, it’s rather disconcerting, when you consider the numbers—”

“Oh, stop it, all of you!” Caroline snapped. “I don’t want to spend another second more in this room, discussing murder! It’s all you ever talk about!” She stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She could be heard muttering to herself as she went down the hall.

“Oh dear,” Lizzie said. “I do believe we might have driven Caroline to the brink.”

Her words came out a bit less sympathetic than she meant them. “She’ll recover,” Jane said firmly. “We all will. Now, to the morning room. I’ll call for tea.”

She gave Lizzie a significant look as she corralled their younger sisters to help Mrs. Bennet to her feet and steered the rest of the ladies out of the room.

“I don’t always talk about murder,” Lizzie muttered when her sisters and mother were gone.

“Yes, you do,” Darcy said.

“Even a little bit is more than your mother can manage,” Mr. Bennet said.

“Well then, isn’t it fortuitous for her that this body has clearly been dead for a good long while, and whoever is responsible is likely long gone?”

She knew that her father, Charlotte, and Darcy recognized her sarcasm for what it was, but Bingley, bless him, did not. “Er... no? Because wouldn’t that make the killer all the more difficult for you to find?”

Lizzie turned to him. “Me? Oh, no.”

Now Bingley looked truly confused, even more so than when the body had first appeared. “You aren’t going to investigate this case?”

“That depends. I thought I wasn’t allowed to investigate dangerous cases anymore.” She looked at her father as she said this.

Mr. Bennet had the decency to look slightly abashed, but it gave Lizzie no satisfaction. She couldn’t help but think of that fateful day when the last letter from Lady Catherine had arrivedin the post. After she hadn’t shown up to Lady Catherine’s appointed meeting spot, Lizzie had known that the other lady wouldn’t simply move on. And when she got the next letter, she wasn’t going to hand it off, no—surely there would be some sort of clue in the letters, something Lizzie could use. So when the crisply folded note arrived, she’d actually been excited to break the seal right there in the front hall, pulse thundering in anticipation.