Page 37 of In Want of a Suspect
“Yes.” The word came out ragged, and Lizzie looked up in surprise.
Darcy’s face was stricken and pale, and he looked... hopeless. Fear thundered through Lizzie’s heart and she ducked under his arm and looked at the lifeless woman’s face and gasped.
It was Leticia Cavendish.
At first, all Lizzie could see was her eyes—blue as the summer sky, wide open and unseeing. Other details emerged slowly—her hat, knocked off her head. Her hair, lightly mussed. The gray riding habit streaked with mud on the skirts.
“But how... why...?” She turned and looked back at Darcy, who seemed fixed in place. “Darcy!”
“There’s nothing we can do,” he said, drawing her away. Lizzie let him, and closed her eyes against the horrid image of Leticia’s eyes open and unseeing, her awkward slump on the cold, dead grass.
More bystanders were approaching now, and the screaming maid was being consoled by another lady. A few men came up to Darcy, demanding to know what was going on.
“Send for the Runners,” was all Darcy said, refusing to let anyone else approach. “No one shall touch her until the Runners arrive.”
Shock and horror roiled through Lizzie as she stood next to Darcy, facing the growing crowd. A few distraught wails rose up among the gathering and at least two ladies swooned, but Lizzie guessed that had less to do with genuine shock and more with the number of handsome young men willing to catch them.Lizzie set her face grimly, not wanting to show any emotion, but as she stared at the passersby, questions began to boil up inside her. What had happened to Leticia? Who had waylaid her? And how had they managed to kill her in a park full of people?
She assessed the scenery around them. They were tucked into a pocket of the park that boasted plenty of trees and shrubbery, obscuring their position from the track of Rotten Row. Not completely hidden by any means, but hidden enough from the flow of riders that as long as someone wasn’t looking directly at them...
Lizzie turned and forced herself to look at Leticia.
She’d seen a dead body before, of course. While working to clear Bingley’s name, she’d befriended a maid named Abigail, who’d worked in the home of the slain Mr. Hurst; and Lizzie had arrived minutes after Abigail had been pulled from the Thames, drowned because she’d helped Lizzie. And she’d seen the life fade from Wickham’s face after he’d been shot by Lady Catherine de Bourgh. This was somehow both the same, and completely different. It was nevernotshocking to see the human form completely empty of life. Leticia was pale, as Abigail had been, although she wasn’t soaking wet, but her face was twisted into a horrible expression—shock, and anger, and... terror?
Perhaps Lizzie had too vivid an imagination.
“What are you doing?” Darcy hissed as Lizzie took a step closer to Leticia, but Lizzie didn’t respond. In the distance, she could hear the shrill of the Runners’ whistles and she knew she didn’t have much time.
Lizzie avoided looking into Leticia’s eyes, which had been so full of fire the day before, as she removed her gloves, reached out a trembling hand, and touched Leticia’s cheek. It was cool, but even her own cheeks were cold in the early spring air.
“Lizzie!” Darcy hissed, appalled.
She didn’t respond. Her hand dropped to Leticia’s neck, searching for a pulse. Nothing, but... she was still slightly warm. It was then that Lizzie noticed the redness around Leticia’s neck, which had been partially obscured by the way her riding jacket’s collar had ridden up.
Leticia Cavendish had been strangled.
“She was murdered,” Lizzie said in a whisper to Darcy, her eyes already searching the crowd. “And not very long ago.”
She surveyed the scene once more, trying to envision how this sad fate might have befallen Leticia Cavendish. She was wearing a riding habit—where was her horse? Lizzie looked about the ground, trying to discern if any hoof marks could be seen, but she saw nothing that would indicate a heavy creature. Had Leticia been lured away from her horse to a hidden grove on foot?
In the grass, a mere five paces away, she saw something glint in the weak spring sunshine.
She strode over to inspect the object, which was gold and clearly very fine. She picked it up and wasn’t entirely surprised to see it was Leticia’s necklace with its pink topaz pendant hanging from a heavy chain, the clasp broken. It appeared to be unblemished and the gems were intact. Lizzie turned it over, wonderingif it was too much to hope for that it would bear an inscription of some sort, some hint at who had been important enough to her to gift her such a fine piece. But there was nothing.
Had this been a robbery, then? But if someone was so bold as to kill a woman in a busy park in the middle of the day, then why drop a valuable piece of jewelry? Unless they’d been in such a hurry to get away...
“Let us pass! Move along!”
The imperious tone of the Runners startled Lizzie, and she pocketed the necklace before she thought it through. Instinct told her the necklace was important, and she didn’t trust the Runners not to “lose” it.
Normally, whenever Lizzie and Darcy had to deal with authority figures, they were in grudging agreement that it was best for Darcy to step up and do the talking, and, once they were lulled into a false sense of security, Lizzie would dart in with her questions. But when the Runner looked between them and Leticia’s still form and barked, “What happened here?” Darcy didn’t say a single word.
Uneasiness grew as murmuring from the crowd heightened, and Lizzie realized that Darcy was incapable of assuming his normal role. She stepped forward and said, “She’s dead, sir. We heard a scream and my companion and I came riding over to see if we could assist. The maid over there found the body. We tried to see if we could offer any assistance, but...”
She felt herself falter. It wasn’t the heavy stare of the Runner that overwhelmed her as much as it was the futility of thesituation. Leticia Cavendish was dead. Someone had killed her before she’d had a chance to meet with Lizzie and Darcy.
The Runner nodded sharply, seeming to take her reaction for shock. In short order, two Runners stood guard over Leticia’s body and two more began to try to disperse the crowd. Another sidled up to the man in charge and whispered, “Undertaker or doctor?”
The head Runner made a pained face. “She’s one of this lot”—nodding at the members of the ton watching on in horror. “Call a doctor.”