Gordon Dahlquist - The Dark Volume

Mrs. Daube shifted two pots to different places on the stove, making room for an iron kettle. When she looked back to the table her lips were thinly pressed together.

“The gentleman, if I may call him such, is not one to slip the mind. Yet he paid for one meal only and went on his way. We barely spoke ten words, and most of those with regard to passing the salt.”

“Would Mr. Olsteen have spoken to him?”

“Mr. Olsteen had not yet returned from the mountains.”

“What about Franck?”

“Franck does not speak to guests.”

As if the young man had just been brought back to mind, Mrs. Daube turned to a small door to the side of the stove that Miss Temple had not before noticed, draped as it was with a hanging piece of cloth, and shouted like a sailor, “Franck! Supper!”

No answer came from the hidden room.

“This bread is delicious,” said Miss Temple.

“I'm glad to hear it,” said Mrs. Daube.

“I am quite fond of bread.”

“It is hard to go wrong with bread.”

“Especially bread with jam.”

Mrs. Daube felt no need to comment, jam not presently available on the table.

“And what of our other friend?” Miss Temple continued.

“You have a great many friends for someone so far from home.”

“Doctor Svenson. He must have passed through Karthe at most two days after the Cardinal.”

“Cardinal? That fellow—all in red, and with those eyes? He was no churchman!”

“No no,” said Miss Temple, chuckling, “but that—in the city— is what everyone else calls him. In truth I have no knowledge of his Christian name.”

“Do Chinamen have Christian names?”

Miss Temple laughed outright. “O Mrs. Daube, he is no more from China than you or I are black Africans! It is merely a name he has acquired—from the scars across his eyes, you see.”

Miss Temple happily pulled her own eyelids to either side, doing her best to approximate Chang's disfigurement.

“It is unnatural,” declared Mrs. Daube.

“Horrid, to be sure—the result of a riding crop, I believe—and it would indeed be difficult to call the Cardinal handsome , and yet—for his world is a harsh one—their ferocity speaks to his capacity.”

“What world is that?” asked Mrs. Daube, her voice a bit more hushed. She had stepped closer, one hand worrying the scuffed edge of the table.

“A world where there are murders,” replied Miss Temple, realizing how much pleasure she took in disturbing her hostess, and that it was all a sort of boasting. “And people like Cardinal Chang—and Doctor Svenson, and—though I know you will not credit such a thing—myself have done our best to discover who has been doing the killing. You did meet Doctor Svenson, I know it. Mrs. Dujong found one of his crushed cigarettes upstairs—it is proven he was here.”

Miss Temple gazed up at the woman—older, taller, stronger, in her own home—with the clear confidence of an inquisitor not to be trifled with. She set down her knife and fork, and indicated the empty chair opposite her. Mrs. Daube sank into it with a grudging sniff.

“Karthe does not take to strangers, much less those that walk about looking like the devil himself.”

“How long after Chang arrived did the Doctor—”

“And then came the murders—of course men from the town went looking, even your other friend, the foreign Doctor.”

“He is a surgeon, to be precise, in the Macklenburg Navy. Where is the Doctor now ?”

“I told you—he joined the party of men to search. I'm sure I don't know what's taken them so long to return.”

“But where did they go—to the train?”

Mrs. Daube snorted at this ridiculous suggestion.

“The mountains, of course. Dangerous any time of year, and even more so after winter, when what beasts that have survived are ravenous.”

“Beasts?”

“Wolves, my dear—our hills are full of them.”

Miss Temple was appalled at two such violently complementary thoughts—the missing men and a propensity for wolves—existing so placidly next to one another in the woman's mind.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Daube, but you seem to be saying that Doctor Svenson left Karthe with a party of men, traveling into the wolf-ridden mountains, and has failed to return. Is no one worried? Surely the missing townsmen have families.”

“No one tells me,” snapped Mrs. Daube sullenly. “Merely a poor widow, no one cares for an old woman—”

“But who would know where they went?”

“Anyone else in Karthe! Even Franck,” the woman huffed. “Not that he's breathed a word to me, though one would only think, after my generosity—”

“Did either of you mention this to Mrs. Dujong?”

“How am I expected to know that?” she snapped, but then grinned with poorly hidden relish. “But I can guess how the likes of him would enjoy frightening her with stories.”

Miss Temple shut her eyes, imagining how news of the Doctor's vanishing must have been taken by Elöise.

“My goodness, yes,” Mrs. Daube went on, “ever since the first strangers—and then your man Chang—”

“Wait—what first strangers? Do you mean Mr. Olsteen and his fellows—or someone else?”

“The Flaming Star is extremely popular with travelers of all sorts—”

“What travelers? From the north like us?”

“I'm sure I do not know,” the woman whispered, “that is the very mystery of it.” She leaned over the table with a conspiratorial leer that revealed the absence of an upper bicuspid. “A boy—the same that died—came running from the livery to say a room would be wanted, the finest we had. But then the fool ran on before we knew for who or how many. Every effort was made, rooms cleaned and food prepared— such expense!—only to have not a single soul appear! And then your man Chang arrived— not from the stables, for he had no horse—and the next day, before I could switch that lying horse groom raw, I was told both he and his shiftless father had been killed !”

“But … you don't actually believe that wolves, driven down from the hills, could have stalked into the streets of this village?”

Mrs. Daube, apparently revived for having voiced her pent-up discontent, took it upon herself to dunk a piece of bread into the turnips and spoke through her chewing.

“It has not happened since my grandmother's time, but such a dreadful thing is possible. Indeed, my dear, whatever else but wolves could explain it?”

TWO MINUTES later, the sharp knife in her hand, Miss Temple again strode down the main road of Karthe. The air was cold—she could see her breath—and she regretted not having a wrap, impulsively refusing the musty brown cloak offered by Mrs. Daube (ingrained as she was to reject any brown garment out of hand). The moon had dropped closer to the shadowed hills, but still shone bright. She felt sure Elöise would have sought the murdered stable boy's hut, and all too soon Miss Temple found herself, unsettled, at its door—no longer hanging open, a sliver of yellow light winking out where it met the floor.

The door was latched from within and would not open. Miss Temple knocked—the noise absurdly loud in the night. There was no answer. She knocked again, and then whispered sharply, “Elöise! It is Miss Temple.” She sighed. “It is Celeste !”

There was still no answer. She pulled on the handle with no more success than before.

“Mr. Olsteen! Franck! I insist that you open this door!”

She was getting chilled. She rapped on the window shutters, but could not pry them apart. Miss Temple stalked to a narrow passage that ran between the cottage and the stone wall of its neighbor, straight through to the rear of the house. She swallowed. Was it likely that Elöise had gone instead to the stables? Where were the two men? Had they done something to Elöise, luring her to such an isolated place? Or was it someone else entirely in the house? Someone with a corpselike, ravaged face?