The Dark Volume Read Online Free PDF Page B

trees.
    “I'm sure I don't know what you hope to find,” said Elöise.
    “I do not either,” replied Miss Temple, “but I do know I have never seen a wolf in a boat. And now we can speak freely—I mean, honestly, wolves!”
    “I do not know what you would like me to say.”
    Miss Temple snorted. “Elöise, are our enemies dead or not?”
    “I have told you. I believe they are dead.”
    “Then who has done this killing?”
    “I do not know. The Doctor and Chang—”
    “Where are they? Truthfully now, why did they leave?”
    “I have been truthful, Celeste.”
    Miss Temple stared at her. Elöise said nothing. Miss Temple wavered between dismay, mistrust, and condescension. As this last came most easily to her nature, she allowed herself an inner sneer.
    “Still, as we are here, it seems perfectly irresponsible not to investigate.”
    Elöise pursed her lips together, and then gestured about them at the ground.
    “You see the many bootprints—the village people collecting the bodies. There is no hope of finding the sign of an animal's paw, nor of disproving any such signs were here.”
    “I agree completely,” said Miss Temple, but then she stopped, cocking her head. To the side of the cabin steps, pressed into the soft earth was the print of a horse's shoe—as if the horse had been tethered near the door. Miss Temple leaned closer, but found no more. What she did find, on the steps themselves, was one muddy bootprint followed by a thin trailing line.
    “What is that?” she asked Elöise.
    Elöise frowned. “It is a horseman's spur.”

    FOR ALL her bravado, Miss Temple found herself taking a deep breath when she opened the cabin door—slowly and with as little sound as possible, and wishing she'd some kind of weapon. The interior was as simple as the outside promised—one room with a cold stove, a table and workbench, and a bed—plain and small, yet large enough to hold a marriage. Beyond the bed was an achingly little cot, and beyond this Miss Temple saw the trunk where her dress had undoubtedly been kept. She felt Elöise behind her, and the two stepped fully into the room, amidst the trappings of dead lives.
    “I'm sure the others have… have cleaned,” said Elöise, her voice dropping to a whisper.
    Miss Temple turned back to the door, to the hinges and the handle.
    “Do you see scratch marks? Or anything that would suggest a forceful entry?”
    Elöise shook her head. “Perhaps Mr. Jorgens opened the door himself upon hearing a noise—they apparently had dogs, if there was barking—”
    “They were killed in bed—I saw the bedding, quite covered in blood.”
    “But that could be only one of them—when the other had opened the door, allowing the animal inside.”
    Miss Temple nodded. “Then perhaps there are signs of violence in the door's vicinity …”
    “Celeste,” began Elöise, but then stopped, sighed, and started to look as well.
    But there was nothing—no scratches, no blood, no sign at all. Miss Temple crossed to the bed—at least someone had been killed there.
    “Can you search the stove, in case anything untoward has been burned?”
    “Such as what?”
    “I'm sure I do not know , Elöise, but I speak from experience. When the Doctor, Cardinal Chang, and I searched the workroom of the Comte d'Orkancz—we knew the Comte had been keeping a woman there who had been injured by contact with the blue glass—I located a remnant of the woman's dress, which proved a helpful clue.”
    Elöise took all this in with a tolerant sigh and set to clanging about with a poker. Miss Temple pulled back the bed's patchwork quilt. The mattress below was marked with rust-brown stains, soaked through the absent sheets. The marks were heaviest near one end of the bed— the head, she assumed—but spread across its width in a series of lines and whorls.
    “There is nothing here but ash,” muttered Elöise, setting down the poker and wiping her hands with a grimace.
    “I believe both