Free The Frankenstein Murders by Kathlyn Bradshaw Page B

need is to press on to the Orkneys.
E DWARD F REAME’S J OURNAL
    Looking upon a map, the Orkneys lie immediately north of the northeast corner of Scotland, from which they are separated by the Pentland Firth. To my eye, they appeared as a group of islands bunched loosely together within a rectangle of sea, perhaps no more than fifty miles from north to south and thirty miles east to west. The principal island, aptly named Mainland, consisted of a series of low hills surrounded by broad, cultivated lowlands. The lowlands were dotted with farms that have been inhabited for many generations. I estimated it might take a man on horseback no more than a half hour to travel from one side of Mainland to the other. Farmhouses were distributed more or less evenly over the lowlands. There was a general absence of anything resembling a village, a weary treaveller must make do with small clusterings of stone houses at crossroads, with a shop, public house, and blacksmith. On Mainland, in the village called Kirkwall, I took a room at one of the larger cottages on a single street leading to the houses along the harbour.
    With so few families living on the island, I was able to speak with a number of people who were there when Victor Frankenstein passed through on his way farther north. There was, however, little information to be gained. I was directed to travel to
one of the remotest of the Orkneys,
and once there speak with Auld LiamConnelly, the patriarch of the family who lived on the island upon which Victor Frankenstein had chosen to stay.
    As promised, the next morning my Kirkwall innkeeper secured for me a boatman who was well acquainted with the many shoals and other dangers that lay on our route to Victor Frankenstein’s Orkney island. Unlike many of the rest of the Orkneys, where there are mostly farmers, this island’s industry derived its living from fishing. After witnessing the well-maintained yet clearly worn condition of boats I had seen on Mainland, the new one on this island stood out clearly — freshly painted, with all the rig and trim in fine condition. With some skill, my boatman pulled up on the rocky shore. He did not wait for me on the shore, but preferred to visit with relations nearby. I was left to do my work on my own on a remote Scottish island. As I watched man and boat sail away on grey water, I imagined I felt something akin to what Victor Frankenstein must have felt when delivered to his chosen spot for self-exile, where he planned to create yet another monster as mate for the first.
    My arrival on the island had not gone unnoticed; two of the inhabitants emerged from their cottages and stared openly at me. The boatman had supported the suggestion that I speak with Auld Liam Connelly, as he would know of any happenings on the island. Not yet prepared to speak with anyone, I decided first to explore, and so, hailing the older of the two men, I called out my intention to look in what had been Victor Frankenstein’s cottage. The only response I received was a sharp nod before they retreated. Their aloofness did little to discompose me as I preferred to examine alone what had been Victor Frankenstein’s home for many weeks. The dwellings were all of the same basic construction, nothing more than low stone buildings with thatched roofs and stone chimneys set at one end of the peak. There were but three dwellings on the island, and it was easy to know which had been Frankenstein’s, for not only was it the empty one, it stood at some distance from the other two.
    Inside the third cottage, there was little to see; the place had been abandoned, the lab dismantled by Victor Frankenstein himself after he had destroyed the creature he had promised to bring to life. I looked about the room, my eyes seeking even the smallest fragment of something that would give me a clue to Victor Frankenstein’s work. There was little evidence that this was the place in which Victor Frankenstein had