The Dark Volume by Gordon Dahlquist Read Free Book Online

village!”
    “With spurs?”
    “No,” snapped Miss Temple. “But that barely matters—such boots are as unlikely in that village as a tiara.”
    “I disagree—they are fishermen, there was a storm, they all increase their living through salvage.”
    “What of the boat ?” asked Miss Temple.
    “The fisherman's boat was found after the grooms. Since a savage animal was already settled on as the killer, there was only curiosity at how such a beast had managed to come aboard.”
    “Did the Doctor venture an opinion, having seen the bodies?”
    “Doctor Svenson did not share his opinions with me.”
    “Why not ?”
    “You will have to ask him , Celeste!”
    Miss Temple tossed her hair. “It is all quite obvious! The Contessa was rescued by the fisherman. Upon landing, he was of no further use to her and she killed him. Then she came across the unfortunate Jorgenses. Killing them provided her with new clothing, food, and a place to warm herself. Thus restored, she finally proceeded to the stable, where she killed the grooms and took a horse, driving the others away to make the attack look like a wolf.”
    “That does not explain the hoofprints at the cabin. Or your spurs.”
    “I cannot be expected to answer everything .”
    Elöise was silent, running her tongue against the inside of her teeth, which Miss Temple realized was a sign of the woman's irritation.
    “What?” snapped Miss Temple.
    “It is geography,” answered Elöise. “You have seen the forest, and where the river runs, and the width of its flood during the storm. Believe me when I say it was impassable for at least two days—exactly why the Jorgenses were not found sooner. Further, the fisherman's boat and the livery stable were divided from each other by still more flooding. There truly is no way , in the given span of days, that a single person, however viciously inclined, might have accomplished all five of these killings.”
    “But we found the hair,” Miss Temple said, frowning.
    “It could have been Mrs. Jorgens’.”
    “You know it wasn't,” Miss Temple replied coolly. “Why did you and Doctor Svenson quarrel?”
    “I should prefer not to speak of it,” replied Elöise.
    “Is it related to our peril?”
    “It is not.”
    Miss Temple flounced her dress across her legs. “I expect it weighs upon you cruelly,” she observed.
    Elöise said nothing.
    MISS TEMPLE pulled another hank of dark bread from their second loaf. She was not especially hungry, but gave herself over to an earnest series of bites and swallows, studying the rocky hills. She'd no experience with such landscapes, stones driving up through the earth like some primeval carcass whose flesh had been melted away by a thousand years of rain, the bones blackened with rot but remaining, stiff and unfathomably hard. The soil was gritty and coarse, sustaining only tough, greasy grasses and squat knotted trees, like sclerotic pensioners bent under the weight of impending death.
    Staring into this barren landscape Miss Temple cast her mind back to the airship. She attempted to recall the fates of each member of the villainous Cabal—it had been frenetic. The Contessa had leapt—unseen by anyone—from the dirigible's roof into the freezing sea. Francis Xonck and Roger Bascombe had been shot, the Comte d'Orkancz shot and stabbed, the Prince of Macklenburg horribly killed, and of course poor Lydia Vandaariff… Miss Temple closed her eyes and shook her head to dispel the image of the blond girl's head splitting off from her body even as the crack of stiffening blood echoed out from her mouth. The airship had become a tomb of icy water as the cabin filled—she herself had seen the sodden corpse of Caroline Stearne, murdered by the Contessa, bobbing against the rooftop hatch… But if no one had survived, or no one aside from the Contessa, then how could she explain identical murders on the shore?
    Miss Temple sighed again. Was this not a good thing? Was it not better the