“Elöise?” she called.
There was a glowing lantern somewhere above, but not in view, as the stairway turned back at a tiny landing. She climbed up, boots echoing despite her care. At the top of the stairs were three doors. The two to either side were closed. The lantern light came from the middle one, open wide.
On its narrow bed lay the wrapped bundle Lina had prepared that morning, but there was no other sign of Elöise. Miss Temple took up the lantern and returned to the landing. She looked at the two closed doors and weighed—given that the inn seemed empty, and that no light came from beneath either door—what to her mind was a very minor moral choice.
The first room was certainly let out, for there were several leather travel bags—one on the bed and three on the floor—and an odd long leather case, as if for a parasol, set into the corner. The bags were lashed tight, however, and aside from a chipped white dish smeared with ash she saw no sign of a particular occupant.
The third room had no occupant at all, for the bed was stripped of blankets. Miss Temple sniffed for the slightest whiff of indigo clay, but perceived only a problem with mice under the floorboards. She dropped to a crouch to look under the bed. Directly before her lay a slender book. She picked it up. The book's cover of pale white pasteboard—Persephone, Poetic Fragments (translated by a Mr. Lynch)—was finger-smeared with long-dried blood.
She recalled their first meeting, on the train—a man reading such a volume, a straight razor open on the seat beside. The book was Chang's.
BELOW HER someone rattled the inn's front door. Miss Temple leapt out of the empty room, hurriedly set the lantern and the book next to Lina's bundle, and ran down the stairs. As she dashed into the common room, wondering who could be at the door and whether running to them so openly was a very stupid thing, a woman emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron.
“You must be the other young lady.” The woman smiled tolerantly as she crossed to unlatch the door. “I was told you'd arrive.”
Before Miss Temple could say a word—or even fully form the question as to where the woman had been hidden—Elöise Dujong burst in from the street, followed by two men. She rushed to Miss Temple and clasped hold of her hands.
“O Celeste—there you are!” Elöise turned back to the men with a relieved smile. “You see—she is no figure of my imagination!”
“I had begun to think it, I confess,” chuckled the older of the two, a tall, broad fellow with black hair that curled about his ears. He wore a thick traveling cloak that covered his body, down to a pair of black leather riding boots.
“This is Mr. Olsteen,” said Elöise, extending her hand, “a fellow guest at the Flaming Star, who quite nobly agreed to walk with me.”
“Can't have a lady alone in the street.” Olsteen chuckled again. “Not with everything I hear about these mountains!”
“And this is Franck.” The second man was shorter than Olsteen and young, with rough, sullen eyes. His hands—which the fellow persisted in squeezing into fists—were unpleasantly calloused. “Franck is Mrs. Daube's hired man here at the inn—our hostess, whose acquaintance I see you have already made.”
“I haven't, actually,” managed Miss Temple, ignoring the gaze of both men upon her person.
“We have been searching for you, Celeste,” continued Elöise, as though this was not perfectly obvious. “Apparently some of the regrettable events from farther north have anticipated our arrival. When you did not return at once I became worried.”
“We walked all the way to the stables,” said Olsteen. “But they said you had already gone.”
“And yet we did not pass in the street,” observed Miss Temple innocently. “How very queer.”
“Mr. Olsteen is one of a party of hunters just back from the mountains. And both Mrs. Daube and Franck informed me—”
“Of the deaths, I expect,” said Miss Temple, turning to their hostess. “The wretched occupants of that particular squat cottage—across the road and some twenty yards along? Quite recent, I should think, and one can only guess how horrid.”
To this no one replied.
“Because it had no lights,” Miss Temple went on, “nor smoke from the chimney—alone of the entirety of Karthe. Thus one draws conclusions. But tell me, how many were killed—and, if I might be so pressing, who were they? And killed by whom?”
“A boy, Willem,” said Franck, “and his poor father.”
“Not young Willem,” Miss Temple asked with sympathy, “the morning boy at the stables?”
“How did you know that?” asked Franck.
“She's just come from the stables,” said Olsteen with a shrewd smile. “No doubt this Willem's death was all the other lad could speak of.”
“You are correct, sir.” Miss Temple nodded severely. “People will peck at another person's tragedy like daws at a mislaid seed cake.”
Elöise reached out for Miss Temple's hand.
“But the groom did not say who had done the murders,” added Miss Temple, a touch too hopefully.
“I shouldn't expect he did,” said Mrs. Daube.
“Shall we retire for a moment to our room?” Elöise asked Miss Temple.
“Of course.” Miss Temple smiled at Olsteen and Franck. “I am obliged to both of you for your kindness, however unnecessary.”
Elöise dipped her knee to Mr. Olsteen, gently turned Miss Temple toward the stairs, and then respectfully addressed their hostess.
“Mrs. Daube, if it would be no trouble for us to dine in some twenty minutes?”
“Of course not, my dear,” answered the innkeeper evenly. “I shall just be carving the joint.”
THE WOMEN sat side by side on their bed, door latched, whispering closely.
“It is Chang's,” exclaimed Miss Temple, holding out the bloodstained book. “I found it in the other room.”
“I'm sure it must be. And here…” Elöise dug in the pocket of her dress and came out with a small smooth purple stone and a cigarette butt. She snatched the stone away with her other hand and held out the cigarette butt to Miss Temple. “… is evidence of Doctor Svenson.”
Miss Temple studied the butt-end without success for crimping. “Are you sure it must be his?”
“It was crushed to the floor just here.”
“But perhaps Mr. Olsteen, or one of his fellows—may they not have been in this very room?”
“As I'm certain many men read poetry.”
Miss Temple did not see the comparison at all.
“I have seen Chang with this very book,” she explained. “The consumption of tobacco is as common as cholera in Venice.”
“Doctor Svenson purchased a quantity of Danish cigarettes from a fisherman,” answered Elöise. “You will see the maker's mark.”
She turned the foul thing in her hand until Miss Temple could indeed discern a small gold-inked bird.
“Well, then,” Miss Temple said, “perhaps it tells us more. I found another such remnant—though I do not know if it bore this mark—in the abandoned house I examined on my way back from the livery. If the Doctor had also been inside it—”
“You went into an abandoned house? Alone? In the midst of these murders?”
“I did not know I was in the midst of anything,” began Miss Temple.