Free i a72d981dc0406879 by Unknown

from the kitchen door.
    Furthermore, it was too silent. I would have guessed its
occupants were sleeping, except that the door had been unlocked,
and in this city, even in a good neighborhood, one does not go to
bed-or remain there-without first locking the front door.
    Nor does one sleep to midmorning when one has sent out an
invitation. My mind was all full of alarms. I broke my own silence,
and stillness, and strode after Frances, who by now had advanced
almost to the end of the hall. She was peering curiously into the
dining room when I caught up with her. I said in a harsh whisper:
"We should leave. We should not even have come in. Something is not
right here!"
    In an odd, flat tone of voice, not matching my whisper at all,
Frances pronounced one word: "No."
    My mind worked fast and clean as a lightning strike. I grabbed
my friend's hand and pulled her after me, back up the hall.
Speaking low and fast, I said, "We've seen enough. If Mrs. Locke is
in this house, she will be upstairs. No one has been down here this
morning."
    "Then we will go up," Frances declared loudly, wrenching her
hand from mine with a vicious twist of her wrist. "I must see
her!"
    Oh, help! I thought, and warned, "This feels like a trap
to me."
    "Don't be silly, Fremont," said Frances, sounding more like
herself as she rustled up the stairs. "Who would want to trap
us?"
    "Any number of people I can think of," I grumbled under my
breath. But I followed her.
    "Mrs. Locke, are you here? Mrs. Locke, it's Frances, I'm
concerned about you!"
    The stairs went straight up without a turning, and so deposited
us at the rear of the house on the second floor. It was slightly
brighter up here, as the dark wood stopped at chair-rail height and
the walls had been covered with a cream damask wallpaper. Thinking
that if we must do this it had best be done quickly, I took
charge.
    "Her bedroom will be at the front, no doubt," I said, moving
ahead of Frances and marching purposefully onward.
    "I wonder where everyone is," Frances fretted. "I would have
thought she'd have a maid."
    I myself would have thought the hawk-faced Patrick would be
somewhere about; I rather doubted mediums could afford maids. I
reached the front bedroom a few steps ahead of my friend. The door
was open. The medium slept in a monstrous great bed with an ivory
canopy . . . but I did not think she was sleeping. In the doorway I
turned. "Don't touch anything," I said, for I knew with a certainty
what we would find, and that Frances would not be satisfied until
we'd found it.
    Until we'd found her.
    Yes, the shape in the bed was indeed Abigail Locke. And she was
indeed dead.
    Frances said, "Oh-" ending in a strangled sound, deep in her
throat.
    "Stabbed while she was sleeping, I should guess," I murmured.
Stabbed through the heart-or, at least, in the chest. There was a
lot of blood, which had pooled around her; the smell of it was not
noticeable until one had approached close to the bed.
    For a moment I forgot Frances as Michael's lessons took over my
mind: Observe, observe! What do you see? I saw Abigail Locke's eyes
were closed, which meant either she had been dispatched without
awakening, which seemed hardly likely unless she'd been drugged, or
the killer had closed her eyes for her; I saw there had not been
much of a struggle. It was a relatively neat, clean kill by someone
who knew enough, and had strength enough, to strike the fatal blow
straight off. By the color of theblood, I saw she had been killed
not long before our arrival, which set off yet another alarm in my
mind. And of course I also saw the knife, which had the look of a
ritual dagger. It had been withdrawn from the wound and laid
carefully between the medium's breasts. The dagger's hilt lay in
her blood like a cross on a crimson field.
    Frances had begun to breathe convulsively, with her hand over
her mouth and nose. Her eyes were unnaturally wide. She swayed, as
if she might fall, and her other hand reached out for the bedpost
to