"May have? It sounded more certain than that. What exactly happened here?"

Dr. Aarons puts down his papers and decides to give details in the hopes that this will ward off any overly excited teenagers. "The murder scene had enough blood spilled there to have killed two men. It was dripping down the walls and running down the floor. Donovan was covered in blood but none of it was hers. The blood is of two blood types, neither of them Donovan's-- we're looking for the second victim now."

Jing Yi is giving increasingly strong looks of 'Do Not' directed at Inaaya. That is a lot of blood, and Inaaya does not need to add hers to it.

Inaaya hates talking to people she can't just tell the truth with-- if she could just say 'has she talked to a single other person who doesn't think she's a degenerate in years' it would be so much easier-- except she can't. There are reasons she can't.

"Ghastly stuff. To be clear, Donovan and one body were found with blood covering themselves and, uh, the place it happened?"

"In Donovan's cell."

...that does raise questions about where the other body could have got to? "I'm assuming you have checked to make sure no staff or patients are missing?"

"None of them are."

...Which implies corpse number two came from outside the asylum. That's great. Excellent. Highly Ideal.

"You know, I don't think anyone's said what the actual cause of death was. Not that I can't picture some things, given all the blood."

"It is not," Dr. Aarons says, "appropriate for young ladies' ears. Knives were involved."

"...I'd say she can handle knives. She's both an intellectual and emotional prodigy."

Are we really doing this again.

"Being good at math isn't why I can handle hearing about knives but I've been living in the London slums since I was twelve and can, in fact, handle hearing about knives."

"I don't see what connection any of this has to Roby."

"...this makes twice that there has been a murder with a wildly implausible amount of carnage where it's extremely unclear how it could possibly have happened in the first place but equally extremely unclear who else could possibly have done it, which is an incredibly specific thing to have happened twice, and while I recognize that we do not live in a novel it still seems plausible enough that there's something there that we should at least check."

"It does seem remarkably similar to what happened to his family. Down to the impossible suspect."

"...All right," Dr. Aarons says. "You can see her. But with Mr. Jing and Mr. Digby, and a nurse to guard you."

"Completely reasonable." Which means she still can't talk about the queer thing openly but-- it's better than nothing.

Valentine Donovan's room is right next to Roby's; apparently they didn't have a room secure enough in the women's section, and it's not like she would be allowed to leave.

...Hmm. He doesn't know if that means anything but it sure is an arrangement.

The room is tiny, dim, and chilly. There is a bed, table, and two chairs, and no possessions. A barred window gives a view of the sky.

Jing Yi resists the urge to make a joke about being a murder investigation chaperone. Inaaya would not appreciate it, and the nurse probably would really not appreciate it.

That's... incredibly depressing.

(Honestly she's not mostly here to investigate. She's mostly here because, Jesus Christ, if she had to live like this for more than a year she might snap and kill someone too.)

"...Hi."

What an opener.