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Chapters (206)
  1. Praise for Maplecroft
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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  12. A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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  20. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
  21. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  26. BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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  29. I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
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  31. Nance O’Neil
  32. THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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  37. AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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  43. THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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  46. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  53. BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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  55. CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
  56. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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  62. HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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  67. A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
  68. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  71. Nance O’Neil
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  84. Emma L. Borden
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  88. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  91. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  93. RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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  101. Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
  102. Emma L. Borden
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  104. Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
  105. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  107. Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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  109. DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
  110. Emma L. Borden
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  115. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  119. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  130. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  131. Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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  137. Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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  139. Emma L. Borden
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  144. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  150. Emma L. Borden
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  153. FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
  154. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  165. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  176. Emma L. Borden
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  186. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  197. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  205. Inspector Simon Wolf
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“One moment.” Wolf ducked past me, back into the store; he returned with a long stick. A cane? A tool of some variety? I didn’t notice. He used it to push back the lank, sticky curtains and give us something to see by, not that the daylight could show us much of note. With the morning sun streaming inside, we saw more clearly than at first, but there wasn’t anything new to encourage us.

We saw a room that looked like somehow, it’d been filled with a rancid tide. Oh, and there was blood, yes. A watered-down stain pooled along the bed, and along the floor—matching Ebenezer’s statement that Matthew had fallen half on the bed, half off it. And when I stepped back to the darkened hall I realized there was more diluted blood on the floor. We’d walked right through it.

Now that I knew it was there, I tiptoed around it as much as possible. And while Wolf made his inspection, I made mine.

I knew from Ebenezer’s testimony that the bloody stain left by Mrs. Hamilton was approximately thirty hours old. It was still half wet, like everything else—but unlike everything else, a gummy sputum was mixed with the froth that had surely spilled from her mouth. Quite a lot of it, really. It’s a wonder we hadn’t slipped and harmed ourselves.

I peered around the door’s jamb and saw Wolf cutting buckshot out of the far wall with a pocketknife, like a proper alienist. He dropped it into a glass vial and used a wad of cotton for a stopper. Then he pulled out a tape and measured the room—I offered to hold one end, for accuracy—and when he was finished recording the dimensions, he retrieved a sketch pad from his inner jacket pocket.

How he could stand to remain in that filthy, stinking room, I had no idea, but somehow the man had acclimated to breathing without his handkerchief. More power to him. I left him to sketch what he found important, and returned to the storefront area, which only felt grim and sad—rather than murderous and unsettling.

I stood in the middle of the room, staring down the two aisles of products and back again at the counter, and the register, and the faint tracks my fingers had left in the slime that coated everything. From a certain angle, I could even see our footprints on the floor, when the light hit them just right. The whole place was tainted with something, and I was seized with the impulse to dash home and run myself a bath.

But I could do that later.