“But that is not the same at all,” cried Miss Temple. She called to the driver in her firmest voice. “Sir, we will require you to take us to the cabin of Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens. It is most urgent.”
The man pulled his horse to a stop and turned. He glanced once at Miss Temple but then settled on Elöise as the person in charge. Miss Temple sighed and spoke in the most patient tone she could muster.
“It is necessary we visit the cabin of Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens. As you can see, I am wearing the poor woman's dress. It is incumbent upon me—for religious reasons, you understand—to pay my respects to her memory. If I do not, it is impossible that I shall sleep soundly ever again.”
The man looked again at Elöise. Then he turned and snapped the reins.
Miss Temple took another bite of mutton, for she was extremely hungry still.
IT WAS perhaps twenty more minutes until he stopped the cart and pointed to their left. Through the trees Miss Temple saw a winding path washed away in more than one spot, like a penciled line incompletely marred by the jagged pass of a gum eraser. She scrambled from the cart without assistance and then gave a hand to Elöise, whose expression was far from her own excitement.
“We will not be long,” Elöise called to their driver. “It is just…just along that path?”
He nodded—Miss Temple wondered if the man possessed a tongue—and pointed. Miss Temple took her companion's hand and pulled her away.
The washed-out sections were moist and required careful steps to avoid thick mud, but in minutes they were out of sight of the cart, no matter how Elöise kept glancing back.
“He will not leave us,” Miss Temple finally said.
“I'm glad you think so,” answered Elöise.
“Of course he won't. He has not been fully paid.”
“But he has.”
“You think he has, but he surely plans to charge us that much more again once we are stranded with him in the hills.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I am used to people wanting money—it is the dullest of things. But now we can speak—and look, Elöise, there it is!”
THE CABIN was small, and nestled comfortably between the trees on one side and a lush meadow. All around them Miss Temple could see the flotsam left from the flooding rain and its recession. The air was tinged with a certain whiff of corruption, of river mud churned and spread like a stinking condiment amidst the grasses and the 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 husband and wife were in the bed,” said Miss Temple. “If the Doctor were here he might confirm it—but the stains suggest two occupants. Of course, we have no idea where the bodies were found.”
“With their throats torn out,” said Elöise, “the blood would be prodigious.”
“Where was the child?”
“What child?”
“There is her cot,” said Miss Temple. “Surely you would have been told…”
Elöise sighed. “After a certain point it was simpler not to mix with the villagers at all. Perhaps there is an orphan. Lina never said.”
“But was she here?” asked Miss Temple. “Did she see it?”
“Of course she wasn't,” said Elöise. “Any wolf would have killed a child as well.”
Miss Temple did not reply. She stepped past the bed to the small cabin's only window. It was latched, but she could see, fine as the tip of a needle drawn across the worn wood, a tiny scratch. Something sharp had been driven between the frame and the pane. Miss Temple slipped the latch and pulled the window open, only to have it stick half-way.