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husband and wife were in the bed,” said Miss Temple. “If the Doctor were here he might confirm it—but the stains suggest two occupants. Of course, we have no idea where the bodies were found.”
    “With their throats torn out,” said Elöise, “the blood would be prodigious.”
    “Where was the child?”
    “What child?”
    “There is her cot,” said Miss Temple. “Surely you would have been told…”
    Elöise sighed. “After a certain point it was simpler not to mix with the villagers at all. Perhaps there is an orphan. Lina never said.”
    “But was she here ?” asked Miss Temple. “Did she see it?”
    “Of course she wasn't,” said Elöise. “Any wolf would have killed a child as well.”
    Miss Temple did not reply. She stepped past the bed to the small cabin's only window. It was latched, but she could see, fine as the tip of a needle drawn across the worn wood, a tiny scratch. Something sharp had been driven between the frame and the pane. Miss Temple slipped the latch and pulled the window open, only to have it stick half-way.
    “The wood has warped,” said Elöise, pointing to an imperfection in the upper frame.
    Miss Temple leaned forward and looked out the window to the ground, some five feet below. Who could say what climbing or jumping might be possible? She was about to shove it closed when her eye caught something flicked by the wind. At first it seemed a shred of cobweb, but when she reached out to take it she saw it was a hair. She plucked it from the splinter where it had snagged. A very black hair, and some two feet long.

    IF THERE was anything else to find in the cabin, it escaped them. Retracing their steps across the moist forest floor, Miss Temple glanced at Elöise, who walked ahead. The one black hair was wound in a loop and stuffed into the pocket of her dress—Miss Temple's dress had no pockets (not that she normally sought pockets, it was why one carried a bag, or walked with servants). Elöise's hand persisted in absently plucking at it as they went, as if her mind wrestled with the truth behind their discovery.
    Miss Temple took the moment to study Elöise—for she had not before in all their time together taken any particular time to examine the woman, involved as they had been with fires and killings and airships. The tutor's brown hair was piled sensibly behind her head and held in place with small black pins. To her sudden surprise Miss Temple noticed within Elöise's hair one thin strand of grey—and then upon searching, two or three more. Exactly how old was she? To Miss Temple the very idea of a grey hair was outlandish, but she accepted that time did grind all before it (if not in equal measure) and became curious about how such a thing felt. Such projection of interest, if not sympathy, drew Miss Temple's eyes down Elöise's body, where she found herself satisfied by the woman's practical carriage, her slim but sturdy shoulders, and her ability to walk without whinging over muddy and rough terrain. Of course, she knew Elöise had been married, and that married life expanded a woman's experience in a way that left Miss Temple morally ambivalent. On the one hand, experience tended to improve a person by removing illusions—and at the least giving them more to speak of at the table—but on the other, there was so often in married women a certain vein of mitigation, of knowledge that served to reduce rather than expand their thoughts. She suddenly wondered if Elöise had children. Had she ever had children? Had they possibly died?
    With a sudden urge, for she had no vocabulary to express the deep unsettled thoughts behind such questions, Miss Temple stepped up her pace and took Elöise's restless hand in hers.
    “We must be careful,” she said, looking down at her boots and away from the surprise on her companion's face. “Never having been acquainted with the late Mrs. Jorgens, it is strictly possible the hair is hers…”
    Elöise nodded. Miss Temple took a