When Harper reached the elegant marble gate of 834, he expected that he might have to climb it. To his surprise, he found it unlocked. It seemed wrong that the gate should be left open, but he did not stop to think about it. He sprinted past the line of curling willows, took the stone stairs to the house two at a time, and at last stopped in front of the entry doors. Light radiated from the windows on the first floor, but only two windows on the second floor were illuminated. Harper slammed the polished brass knocker against the wood with a resounding blow.
A well-dressed servant opened the door immediately. He looked pale and deeply unhappy. He glanced at the silver Inquisition emblems on Harper's collar and quickly stepped aside to allow Harper in.
"Thank you for coming so quickly, Captain," he murmured.
"Should I take you up to Miss Let...to the body?" The man looked horrified at the words that had come out of his mouth.
"I can show myself up." Harper felt a change in himself the moment he knew the woman was dead. The pounding blood in his veins and his racing heart all suddenly went flat. The moment when he might have arrived in time to save the woman had passed. His passion and hope cut off like the gas in the safety valve of a streetlamp.
"Which room is she in?" Harper asked.
"I don't know. I haven't been up. They...She...I don't know, sir." The doorman flushed, clearly unsure of how to treat Harper, or how to even address the body upstairs. No rules of etiquette dictated polite behavior in the wake of a murder. The doorman foundered into a series of apologies. Harper was accustomed to such awkwardness and carried on.
"That's fine," Harper said. "I'll find it."
A staircase dominated the entryway. It rose in a majestic curve of marble and highly polished brass. Harper strode up the steps. He was used to having full run of other people's homes during the first paralyzed hours after a crime. He took in the house as he went up. The floor was laid out in a checkerboard of white and rose marble. Light gleamed from crystal chandeliers and glinted across the gilded scrolls that decorated the wallpaper.
A few steps from the second floor, Harper stopped. The stairs ahead of him were wet and smelled of soap. Someone had washed this section of the staircase less than an hour ago. Harper went up more slowly, checking each step before he set his muddy boots on it.
Deep in the groove, where the brass railing met the pale marble stairs, was a thin line of bright red blood. Several long black hairs were caught there also. Harper noted the length of the hairs, then continued.
The staircase opened into a wide hallway. Six tall doors lined both walls of the hallway. Light glowed from beneath two of the closest doors on the right. Harper noticed a few more spots on the floor where the marble shone wetly from a recent cleaning.
As he moved closer, Harper heard the voices of two men coming from behind the farther of the two doors. The men spoke in hushed tones, and Harper couldn't clearly distinguish their words. He unbuttoned his overcoat to allow himself easy access to his pistol. Then he started down the hall.
He stopped, noticing that the signs of cleaning ended at the first door. Harper nudged the door open.
It was clearly a girl's bedroom. The rug, the wallpaper, the swaying curtains, and even the big canopy bed were all white. A pattern of gold and pale pink roses covered the carpet. White lace dripped over the edge of the dressing table. The bed billowed up from the rest of the room like a wedding cake in a bakery window.
Harper stepped into the room slowly, studying each foot of floor before marking it with his filthy boots. Blots of vivid red led him from the door to the far side of the bed.
The girl lay on her side. A pool of blood formed a dark red halo around her head. Harper crouched down beside her. The entire back of her skull was a mat of black hair, blood, and jutting bone.
Her neck hung awkwardly between her cracked skull and shoulders. As Harper looked over her body, he noticed old yellow bruises beneath newer blue ones. When he pulled aside the white sleeve of her nightgown, he found that the marks were still red, the bruises not yet darkened.
From the old woman's words, Harper knew that a man had been beating the girl. From the marks on her body, it was obvious that the beatings had been going on for quite a while. Perhaps the girl had attempted to escape and fallen down the stairs. Or possibly the man had thrown her down.
Harper guessed what the men in the other room whispered about so urgently. They could clean up the stairs and hall, but they couldn't wash away the broken bone and deep bruises on the dead girl's body. Harper decided that it was time to talk to them.
Harper stood to leave when he noticed that he had made a mistake upon entering the room. He had thought the glass doors to the girl's balcony had been open. Now, as the curtains fluttered in the storm wind, he saw that the doors were still closed. The glass had been broken out. Harper checked for any shards of glass on the white rug. There were none.
He stepped out onto the balcony. It was too dark to see clearly, and the rainwater hid the glitter that the broken glass would have given off. Harper moved his gloved hands through the water, feeling for the hard edges of glass. He found dozens of shards in just a few moments.
"She's in here," he heard a man say, and then the door to the girl's room swung wide. As Harper watched from the dark balcony, three men entered the room. Harper recognized the first two from the Brighton Inquisition: Captain Brandson and Abbot Greeley. A man in a dark violet dressing gown followed after them.
Brandson's pale face was spattered with orange freckles, and his black coat, like Harper's own, was soaking from the rain. Brandson's fine red hair dribbled water down his face. He had clearly left his cap behind when he had been called to the murder. It was like Brandson to forget something like that.
The abbot's thick shock of white hair was perfectly dry. Despite his age, he looked much more fit than Brandson. He gestured to the dead girl's body offhandedly, as if she were a curiosity he had already seen.
The third man Harper did not know, but his face seemed familiar. He was in his late forties, a few years younger than the abbot. His black hair was streaked with gray and swept back in a rather handsome manner. The elegance of his tall, slim form almost allowed Harper overlook the white bandage wrapped around his right hand. As if sensing Harper's eyes on him, he hid his hand in the pocket of his dressing gown.
"As you can see..." Abbot Greeley directed Brandson's gaze. "The intruder broke in through the glass doors there and attacked her while she was preparing for bed—"
"I don't think that was the case."
The three other men jumped at the sound of Harper's voice. He stepped in from the balcony.
"Captain Harper." A flush of anger colored Abbot Greeley's tanned face. "What in the name of God are you doing here?"
Even at the best of times, a deep, mutual hostility seethed between Harper and Abbot Greeley. Because the abbot was his superior, Harper masked his animosity with expressionless professionalism. As a rule, the abbot did the same. For five years they had maintained that tenuous illusion of civility. But since Peter Roffcale's murder, even that had begun to collapse.