Miss Temple set her knife on the floor, needing both hands to turn Franck, but as his face rolled into view she covered her mouth and wheeled away, fighting nausea. The hired man's features were pale as paste and his eyes stuck despairingly wide, but his plaintive expression was not the source of Miss Temple's horror. Steeling herself, she carefully peeked back, then spun away again, waving the indigo fumes away from her face, a prickling tang of bile in her mouth. Miss Temple had never seen anything like it—Franck's throat was gone. She could see the gleaming ridges of his spine.
She forced her eyes away from the wound to the rest of his body, doing her best to imagine how Doctor Svenson would proceed. Were there other scratches or cuts—as there surely must be to credit an animal with the killing? Miss Temple found nothing… and then, more than this, she realized that she was not—as she surely ought to have been—standing in a spreading pool of the poor man's blood.
In point of fact, there was no blood anywhere. How could that be? Could he have been killed out-of-doors and then thrown through the window? It was possible—but still, such a massive wound must flow even then, and there was not a drop that she could see, not even on the fellow's shirt. With trepidation, Miss Temple knelt and extended the knife, using the tip to peel back the dead man's collar.
In a crease of skin between his battered neck and shoulder was a tiny crust of blue flakes… of dark blue glass.
THE MURDER had been done by an insertion of blue glass, freezing the flesh around it without the slightest spray of blood. Then the killer must have taken the time to pry out—with a knife? with their fingers? —every morsel of flesh that had been alchemically transformed, leaving an appalling wound no one would think to question.
Miss Temple lurched toward the dim front room. But how had Franck come to be here by himself? And what had he seen to make his death necessary? And where were Elöise and Mr. Olsteen? Miss Temple had assumed the three to be together—had the others simply fled? Or had Franck come alone? But then where was Elöise—in the company of the broad-shouldered huntsman with whom she was far too taken…
And how was it that the front door was still latched? Even if Franck had been killed outside and then thrown through the window, the window showed no evidence of anyone returning through it back to the yard—the glass splinters were proof enough of that. Yet both doors were latched from the inside, indicating that whoever latched them to begin with… must still be inside…
The noise of a wooden chair scraping against a floorboard pierced her thoughts. She wheeled toward the middle room. The scrape was redoubled as a bureau was pushed, and then the end table that must have been atop it clattered—was thrown!—to the floor, bouncing into view with the shocking force, in the tiny still cottage, of a cavalry charge. Miss Temple screamed. Behind her the table was kicked aside. She heard footsteps—heavy, stomping—tore the latch free and wrenched on the handle as a sickening wave of indigo fumes reached around her shoulders like a pair of clutching hands. The door was open. Miss Temple leapt through it.
THE DOOR of the Flaming Star yawned open when she reached it. Something was wrong. Miss Temple burst into the common room, shouting for Mrs. Daube, for Elöise, to no answer. She clawed the latch in place on the door and then launched herself up the stairs— snatching Chang's book—no sign of Elöise, but Olsteen's door was open and his bags ransacked and scattered across his room. She careened to the kitchen, calling again, her breath coming raw and her head palpably beginning to swim. She was not well. She ought to be in bed with tea, with someone kind in a chair reading ridiculous items from a newspaper as she slipped into sleep. But instead Miss Temple rounded the corner into the kitchen and skidded off balance into the wall as her boot slid through an overturned bowl of turnips. The table lay on its side, the food was strewn everywhere amidst sharp blue-white chips of broken plates and upended dripping pans. The door to the yard hung wide and Miss Temple rushed to it. Behind her the front door rattled against the vicious kick of what sounded like a plow horse.
Mrs. Daube was on her knees in the grass, gasping for air. Strewn all around her, tangled and wet, lay linens and clothing, as if a willful child had sorted through a week's worth of laundry only to toss whatever he did not fancy to the ground. Miss Temple dug her hand under the innkeeper's arm, trying to haul her up.
“Mrs. Daube—you are in peril—”
The woman did not seem to hear, or even note being moved. She muttered and shook her head, a bead of clear saliva suspended from her lips.
“Mrs. Daube, this way—have you seen Mrs. Dujong?”
Dragging the innkeeper, Miss Temple kicked through the balled-up sheets toward a gate at the far end of the yard. Another kick roared from inside the inn, and then a third—a savage battering the door could never bear.
“Mrs. Daube! Please! Have you seen Elöise? Have you seen Mr. Olsteen?”
At last the innkeeper looked up, eyes wide and black, blood at the corner of her mouth. “Mr. Olsteen?”
“Do you know where he is?”
“She… she came back—”
“Elöise? Where did they go?”
“She…” Mrs. Daube choked with fright, still overtaken by what she must have seen. “She—she made me help her—but then Mr. Olsteen—no!”
This last came at the realization that Miss Temple dragged her toward the gate—swinging open, another sign of Elöise's flight. Mrs. Daube moaned like a beast, dug in her heels, and fought away from Miss Temple's grip, only to topple back to her knees, dissolving into tears. Elöise had made Mrs. Daube help her how? To search through Olsteen's bags? But why tip the table and scatter the laundry? Had Olsteen caught up with them—had Elöise escaped, with him in pursuit?
Miss Temple spun to the kitchen door with a sudden chill. The kitchen lamp had blown out—the only glow the creeping firelight from the common room. Then this was blotted out by a shadow in the door, thick and impenetrable. With a cry of her own Miss Temple abandoned the sobbing innkeeper and clawed her way through the gate.
SHE HAD not gone fifteen steps before the night was split with a scream from Mrs. Daube. Miss Temple sobbed aloud and drove herself on, desperate as a hawk-sought hare. If only she could find Elöise—dear, stupid Elöise—perhaps the two together might defend themselves. Yes, Miss Temple scoffed, with their little knives. The bark of her breath fogged in the cold.
The rough dirt path ran to the rear of the other houses of Karthe village, but each was bordered by a stone fence with a heavy gate. By the time she might reach any one and raise the house with shouting, she would be captured. Her gasps were ragged and her body slick with sweat—she would get another fever, she would die, she would trip and snap her ankle like a twig. She looked to the rising hills—could she leave the path and hide in the rocks? No. Such a choice was to abandon Elöise, which Miss Temple could not—perhaps as much in pride as in care—allow herself to do.
The path abruptly dropped into a ravine split by a trickling watercourse tumbled with smooth stones. On its other side, flat on the path in the moonlight, lay the broad figure of Mr. Olsteen. Miss Temple hurdled the dribbling stream and crept near. Olsteen's throat was whole, but the pulsing stain on his once-white shirt betrayed a wicked puncture near his heart. His eyes caught hers and his hand slapped toward her, ineffectual and weak. It held the curved skinning knife previously carried by Elöise Dujong.
“Should have killed you both on sight,” he gasped. A welling of gore spat past his lips and Olsteen's further words were wetly smothered by blood.