Hagar Read Online Free PDF

softened as she spoke, in a way that made Rose
smile.
    But a thought came to her, as the
lantern-beam flashed across the open door to the bedroom beyond.
Smoke had blackened the ceiling on that whole side of the room, and
smutted the furniture. Yet the door-frames weren’t charred, and
when Rose stepped into the bedroom, her earlier impression was
confirmed. The fire had raged across the outside wall that faced
the gallery, had burned the floor on that side of the room, and had
burned the bed.
    When Rose – very gently – turned back the
unsullied coverlet that someone had brought in from some other room
of the house, she caught again, above the horror of roasted flesh,
the faint whiff of nitre.
    “It looks like she was planning to go to bed,
when the girl – or whoever it was – brought her the poison,” the
fiddler remarked after a time of silence. The lantern-light, fully
uncovered now, shivered with the shaking of his hand. “She’s still
dressed,” he added, his voice held steady with an effort, “but she
hadn’t taken off her shoes. She’d let her hair down, though, and
women often leave that for last. Odd,” he went on after a moment,
“that it wasn’t burned.”
    “But fortunate,” returned Rose drily. “Since
it was only by her hair, and her dress, that we – and of course the
good Lieutenant Parton – knew it was she, and not someone else.”
She walked to the end of the bed, and carefully drew back the hem
of that lavender gown, to better expose the woman’s black kid
slippers, and stockings of white knitted silk. “Bring the lantern
close, if you would…”
    Hannibal edged forward, eyes averted.
    Carefully, Rose felt at the woman’s toes
through the soft leather. Her foot was a good inch shorter than the
shoe that contained it, and even the dimness of the single candle
didn’t conceal the fact that the pale spots worn by the joint of
the big toe didn’t match the shape of the toe itself. When she
removed the shoe and stocking, the tale was clearer still.
    “That looks like the kind of blisters you get
when you wear shoes that don’t fit you.” Hannibal bent closer, and
no longer sounded sickened. His dark brows pinched down over the
bridge of his nose. “When you’re getting your shoes second-hand…
and no good Creole lady is going to let her toe-nails get into that
condition!”
    “Not while she has a maid to trim them,”
commented Livia dispassionately.
    “Who—?”
    “I expect,” said Rose, “that Lieutenant Shaw
will be able to find that out, once he knows to look for a missing
red-haired girl along the docks and waterfront.” She slipped the
shoe and stocking back on – Hannibal turned away queasily again,
but Livia, who had certainly seen worse damage to human flesh in
her years as a slave, held the stiffening ankle steady while Rose
worked. “Look,” Rose added, and guided Hannibal’s lantern back to
the burned ruin of the woman’s hand. “That’s not a wedding-ring
that a poor woman would wear; I’m guessing it’s Leonie
Neuville’s.”
    “How did you know?” Hannibal slipped the
lantern-slide half down, to shine the beam around the shambles of
the room. “What does flash-paper have to do with this? And why
would Leonie Neuville use it in the murder? How easy is it to
obtain?”
     
    Rose had turned away from the body, and began
to gingerly work open the drawers of the small secretaire that
stood beside the French doors out onto the gallery. The fire had
seized them violently, but the cypress-wood was tough. The contents
– household books, stationery, a box of pen-nibs – were mostly
undamaged. “For a white woman, not difficult, if she knew what to
ask for. And the advantage is that it localizes the burns.” She
held the lantern close as she scanned the pages of the day-books,
then replaced them with a grimace: Nothing.
    “Meaning you can lay it over the face, and
wrap the hands, but leave the dress and the hair untouched.”
    “Particularly the