“All right, Riverton,” Jasper announced to the forbearing butler, “you may have him pulled out.”
Two footmen waded into the water, and Jasper turned to the gathered guests. “I need all of you to remain on the property for now. Are there any others still abed?”
Shrugged shoulders and dense expressions met him.
“Oliver, have your staff check all the rooms, not just the bedchambers. I’ll also need to speak to the staff, so gather them as promptly as you can. As for the ladies who were here last night?—”
“They were hardly ladies,” Hastings snorted. Sir Daniel and the two newcomers joined him in sharing mischievous glances. Jasper tamped down the urge to box Hastings in the teeth.
“I will need their names and how to contact them,” Jasper finished, ignoring the earl’s smug grin.
Though he sincerely doubted the women who’d joined in the revelry last night had anything to do with the man’s death, he couldn’t overlook them. Most likely, he was a drunken guest who’d imbibed too much, stumbled out onto the darkened lawn, fallen into the water, and drowned.
Oliver came to stand beside Jasper as the footmen dragged the body toward shore. The pond wasn’t deep; the footmen were only in up to their shoulders.
Jasper showed the viscount the handkerchief. “Are these initials familiar to you?”
Oliver peered at the mucky linen with the pale blue embroidered letters but only frowned. “I don’t know whose they could be.”
Jasper would ask again later. Oliver had smoked a fair amount of opium and consumed far more drink than Jasper had the previous night and was looking peaky. The footmen in their sopping clothes climbed out onto the marshy lawn, pulling the dead man’s body by the arms. His legs had not even cleared the water before they dropped the poor sod and scuttled away, unnerved to have been handling a corpse. Jasper thought again of Leo and how she would have handled the task with enviable composure.
He crouched next to the man and rolled him over onto his back. As he’d suspected, the man had been young. Twenty-something, if Jasper were to guess. His drenched black cape, plastered to him, was reminiscent of what a barrister might wear, or a university student. His hair was brown, and a smattering of freckles crossed his fair-skinned face, now cast with an ashen blue pallor. A gash marred his left cheek, and his left eye was blackened from an altercation before his death.
“My God,” Oliver gasped, then turned in haste to retch into the reeds. Jasper stayed crouched, observing the body and waiting for his friend to finish. When he did, he wiped his mouth and stared at the body. “It is Niles.”
“Niles who?” Jasper asked.
“Foster. Niles Foster. A family friend.”
“Was he here last night?” He had no memory of meeting this man at the soiree. Oliver shook his head. “No. I didn’t invite him.”
Jasper peered at the black cape. “Why is he wearing this?”
“He is—or rather, was—a parliamentary aide,” Oliver answered, sounding distant and blinking rapidly, appearing to be in a mild state of shock.
Jasper moved to the body’s feet and with some effort, thanks to the sopping laces, removed the man’s left shoe.
He took it over to the boot prints he’d seen near the water’s edge and tried to align it with either of the two sets. Neither matched. So long as Oliver and Riverton were correct, and no other guests had been at the pond that morning or the night before, it looked as though Niles Foster hadn’t been alone when he’d gone into the water.
“Might he have arrived without an invitation?” Jasper asked after replacing the shoe and then searching the man’s coat pockets. He found nothing in them, but with Foster’s arms splayed wide at his sides, the cuffs of his sleeves had ridden up, exposing his wrists. Thin, matching bands of red bruised the skin on each wrist. Ligature marks.
Some color had come back into Oliver’s cheeks after retching, and he slurred less when he answered, “No. I don’t think so.”
Jasper rose to his feet, his attention stuck on the ligature marks. “You say he was a family friend?”
“My father’s best mate from Oxford was Niles’s father,” he answered, then frowned. “I just saw him last week. Niles, I mean. His father is dead.”
Looking ill again, Oliver ran a hand down his face, gripping his chin. “We argued.”
“What about?”
Oliver paled again. “I need to sit. Put something in my stomach. Can we discuss it inside?”
Residue from his own hangover felt like a greasy wash in Jasper’s stomach. He wished like hell that he’d gone home the night before.
He turned to one of the waterlogged footmen. “Send word to the Kensington constabulary that there has been a suspected drowning at Hayes Manor. Let them know I’m present.”
Jasper’s attention shifted back toward Foster’s blackened eye, cut cheek, and the ligature marks on his wrists. The injuries,at least on the surface, resembled those Leo had described as present on Constable Lloyd.
