The Dark Volume

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…” Eloise 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 Eloise. “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.

“And you just brazenly lied to us all downstairs!”

“What ought I have said? I do not know those people, I do not know what involvement they might have had—”

“Involvement?” cried Eloise. “Why should they have any involvement—they were trying to help you!”

“But why?”

“Kindness, Celeste! Plain decency—”

“O Eloise! The hair, the bootprints—and now there have been murders here! That empty house belonged to the most recent victims.”

Eloise threw the cigarette butt to the floor. “We went looking for you, Celeste—as soon as I learned what had happened, we went the length of the road to the stables! We should have seen you on our way! But you had vanished! I was quite disturbed and frightened!”

“O you had your burly fellows,” said Miss Temple.

“I was frightened for you!”

“But I have discovered—”

“We have discovered we are in great danger! We have discovered the Doctor and Cardinal were both here —but we do not know if they survived to leave!”

IT WAS not a thought that had occurred to Miss Temple. So happy had she been to find Chang's book that the notion of its somehow being a token of his peril seemed too cruel a contradiction. It was then, looking up at Eloise—whose gaze had fallen to the cigarette stub—that Miss Temple noticed the tears brimming about the woman's eyes. She saw in an instant that Eloise was right, that anything could have happened, that Chang and Svenson could have been killed.

“No no,” she began with a dutiful cheer. “I'm sure our friends are quite safe—”

But Eloise cried out quite sharply, even as twin lines of tears broke forth down her cheeks.

“Who are you to know anything, Celeste Temple? You are a willful thing who has been happily asleep these past cruel days—who has money and confident ease, who has been rescued from your brazen presumption time and again by these very men who may now be dead or who knows where? Who I have watched over night after night, watched alone, only to have you abandon me at every adventuresome whim that pops into your spoiled-brat's brain!”

Miss Temple's first impulse was to slap the other woman's face quite hard, but she was so taken aback by this outburst that her only response was a certain cold loathing. It settled behind her grey eyes and imbued their formerly eager expression with the watchful, heartless gaze of an ambivalent cat.

Just as immediately Eloise placed a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.

“O Celeste, I am sorry—I did not mean it, forgive me—”

But Miss Temple had heard such words before, throughout the whole of her life, from her imperious father to the lowest kitchen maid, so often that she divided the persons she knew into those who had voiced—or, she suspected, harbored—such criticisms, and those, like Chang, Svenson, and up to this very instant Eloise, who had not. She was routinely obliged to retain regular contact with those in the former category, but future dealings were irrevocably changed—and as she stared coolly at Mrs. Dujong, Miss Temple ignored what a less forceful person might have recognized on the woman's face as evident regret. Instead, taking care and interest as things once more to bury fully within her own heart, Miss Temple shifted her attention, as if it were a heavy case on a train platform, to the very real and pressing tasks at hand, next to which any intimate misunderstandings must be insignificant.

“We shall not speak of it,” she said quietly.

“No no, it was horrid, I am so sorry—” here Eloise stifled an actual, presumptuous sob “—I am merely frightened! And after my quarrel with the Doctor, our foolish, foolish quarrel—”

“It is surely no matter to me either way.” Miss Temple took the opportunity to rise and straighten her dress, stepping deftly beyond the reach of any guilt-driven comforting hand. “My only concern is to confound and defeat this party of murdering villains—and learn who is responsible for these crimes—and whether anyone else survived the airship. Lives are at stake—it is imperative we find answers, Eloise.”

“Of course—Celeste—”

“Which brings me to ask, as it was impossible to do so downstairs, whether in your search you glimpsed any other figure in the village streets?”

“Was there someone we ought to have seen?”

Miss Temple shrugged. Eloise watched her closely, obviously on the point of apologizing once more. Miss Temple smiled as graciously as she could.

“It is only this morning that I have been from my bed. Suddenly I should like nothing more than to shut my eyes.”

“Of course. I will tell Mrs. Daube that we shall be some minutes more—you must take all the time you like.”

“That is most kind,” said Miss Temple. “If you would take the lantern with you and close the door.”

AS SHE lay in the dark, facing the pine plank wall, holding Chang's volume of poetry between her hands, Miss Temple told herself that in all truth it was simpler this way—and who knew, perhaps Eloise's quarrel with Doctor Svenson had been similarly impulsive and shortsighted, the outburst of an unreliable, skittish woman who had, quite frankly, always been something of a bother. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling a catch in her throat. Nothing was changed—apart from it being that much more important to get back to the city. If she slept on the train, there would be no need to speak to Eloise at all, apart from the sorting of tickets—and no reason to visit her family's cottage either. Miss Temple could find a new hotel. Chang and Svenson could seek her out there. If they were alive.

She sighed again, then sat up in an abrupt rustle of petticoats, fumbling for a candle and a match. She did not want to think about Eloise, nor the disfigured, corpse-white face in the window, nor her visions from the glass book, nor the Contessa, nor Roger. She didn't want to think about anything. Miss Temple looked down at the book in her hand, and leaned closer to the light.

She was never one for poetry or, if it must be said, reading in particular. It was an activity most often undertaken at the behest of someone else—a governess, a tutor, some relative—and so a source of resentment and disdain. Yet Miss Temple imagined Chang must feel about poetry the same way she felt about maps, maps being the one sort of reading she could happily essay. She opened the book and began to flip the pages, gauging the