The Hunt (A Case for Frey & McGray) Read Online Free PDF Page B

still sleeping on the sofa where he had carefully placed her. Betsy, their old servant, had changed her into the first clean garment she’d found: a blue summer dress of thin silk, so the girl had curled up to keep herself warm. Her long eyelashes quivered in her troubled slumber.
    Adolphus forced himself to look away. If he saw his sister’s young face, he could never let Clouston take her. He steeled himself to pick her up, gently wrapping her in a woollen blanket that George had brought.
    The few steps from the study to Clouston’s coach were the hardest Adolphus had ever taken, and when the girl was secured on the seat he did not want to leave her.
    Clouston closed the carriage door. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
    Adolphus shook his head. ‘Ye’ve done all ye could.’
    Again Clouston patted him on the back. ‘I shall come back and check on you very soon. Is that all right?’
    Adolphus didn’t really hear the question. He only reacted as the doctor was about to leave. ‘Wait!’ he gasped.
    Clouston looked back. ‘Yes?’
    ‘What was it she said? Before she attacked ye?’
    The doctor cleared his throat and swallowed with difficulty. It would be useless to conceal the truth; old George had heard her too.
    ‘She … Well, she mentioned the Devil.’
    ‘But she was delirious,’ Clouston had added promptly, almost as a sort of apology. ‘She could have said anything
.
’
    Adolphus had spent all day in his late father’s study, with nothing in his head but that short sentence.
She mentioned the Devil …
    He only became aware of the hour when George came into the room to light the candles, but that was not enough to stir him. He stayed in the armchair, motionless, deep in thought.
    What had it been? Had his senses failed him? Had his own mind snapped as well?
    He shook his head.
    No.
    He
had
seen it. He knew it so well he could not fool himself; he could see it every time he closed his eyes, as if it were scarred on to his retinae: the silhouette of a deformed, twisted figure, moving spasmodically as it made its way towards a window.
    And that silhouette had horns.

1
1 January 1889
    When summons come at three in the morning on New Year’s Day, you know that you have hard times ahead.
    It took me a while to hear the banging at the front door, for I was sleeping deeply, still recovering from my rushed trip back to Edinburgh. I had spent Christmas at my uncle’s estate in Gloucestershire – a trip which had not ended well at all.
    I realized I’d been dreaming of my late mother, something that had not happened in years. We lost her to a virulent bout of typhoid fever. In a blink she was gone. Even though I could not remember the dream itself, I was left with a vivid, lingering sadness. A remnant of the pain we had endured during her last few days, which had become a recurrent ache throughout my life, like one of those memories triggered by a familiar smell.
    In the dream I had been in London, which I missed dearly, for I’d not visited my home city since November, when the most ghastly affairs had forced me to Scotland. I had left the capital in apparent disgrace, under direct orders from the prime minister himself, and unable to tell the complex facts to anyone.
    The world still thought I had been jilted by my fiancée, demoted and forced to take on the most humiliating and ridiculous post the British CID could offer. I would be assisting the newly formed Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly. Yes, such a preposterous department indeed exists, and it does
exactly
what its name suggests.
    So there I was, exiled from my beloved capital, in a new post which gave me hardly any joy. A sad resident of
Edin-bloody-burgh
, a city where I knew no one except my younger brother Elgie – who would in fact be leaving in a few months – and where the days were even greyer than London’s. And yes, dear reader, that is indeed possible.
    Now I belonged