Page 19 of Whispers at Dusk
Her eyes were closed, making it look like she slept peacefully.
Her hands were folded on her chest. A bouquet of wildflowers had been set within them.
She’d been wearing a long-sleeved velvet dress and the skirt of it had been stretched out around her so that she appeared to be a fairy-tale princess, indeed.
She had been young. Twentysomething, Mason thought, perhaps thirty.
He was startled when Wilhelm, at his side by then, suddenly cried out and fell to his knees, choking on a sob.
He looked up at Mason with his face knit in grief. “She was one of ours! My God, my dear God! This time, he’s murdered an officer of the law!”
Three
They didn’t go to the morgue under the circumstances, but rather the medical examiner they were due to meet, Dr. Dag Andersen, came to them. It was important to get him to the scene as soon as possible. He would be the first to touch the dead girl in situ, offering his preliminary investigation. He arrived along with his assistants and a forensic crew. In minutes, another two new arrivals included Jeanne Lapierre and Edmund Taylor, detectives from Paris and London respectively.
They met and spoke only briefly and grimly. Dr. Andersen, his concentration on the corpse, did the talking. He believed the girl had been dead about twenty-four hours, exsanguinated like the others. In his estimation, someone adept with a needle and phlebotomy had killed her at another location, draining her blood in the same way anyone might take a blood sample—though not usually through the throat—except taking the drainage all the way. In his opinion, thefangmarks had been added after death.
Della glanced at Mason.
His theory was probably correct. Thefangswere sharpened teeth the killer had gotten from somewhere. He probably used different saliva, but none of it was found in a DNA sample in any database.
Della and Mason, just as Wilhelm, Lapierre, and Taylor, were quiet as they listened to Andersen’s preliminary findings.
But she observed the men. Lapierre was tall and straight, white-haired, and probably in his mid-to late-fifties. He had the look of a man who had been on the job a long time and, while saddened, was no longer shocked by anything one human being might do to another. She didn’t think he’d be where he was in French law enforcement if he wasn’t capable and accomplished.
Taylor was younger than Lapierre, either in his late-twenties or early thirties. The Englishman was tall and broad-shouldered, serious and intense as he stood, listening. He was an imposing man with dark eyes that matched his neatly clipped hair, but younger though he might be, he had the same look in his eyes. He was silent, grim, and thoughtful, and Della believed he’d be the kind of man to put his nose to the ground and work a case with absolute purpose.
He had probably seen a lot in his years.
Detective Wilhelm stood as silently as the others, but she could see he was hurting. He had known the young woman; she had been a friend, and he had cared about her. Della wanted to suggest he didn’t need to be there, but she heard Edmund quietly say he didn’t need to suffer, and Wilhelm tell him no because he needed to be there to know everything.
Edmund fell silent. Best to let Wilhelm deal with the death in his own way as any of them might.
Sometimes it was just best to work a case.
Della stood in silence, observing Dr. Andersen, listened to his assessments, and studied the members of their team they were just meeting. Then Dr. Andersen finished his preliminary work and called his assistants. They’d be winding their way down a path carefully with the body to get it to the morgue vehicle. She saw something moving in the bushes.
She almost spoke out, but then she looked slightly uphill through a bank of trees and realizedsomeoneseemed to be moving, but not rustling the bushes at all, not causing the least bit of sound or motion.
A Norwegian ghost?
Forensic crews were working the area; she carefully stepped broadly around them and walked a narrow trail that led deeper into the woods.
“Della?”
Mason was calling her.
“Just taking a peek in a different direction,” she called back. She hoped he would take on the necessary conversation with the French and English detectives and Wilhelm.
Maybe he would have trust in her, enough to let her follow this strange lead without coming after her and bringing the others along with him.
A Norwegian ghost. She winced. Because, of course, the question was there—would he speak English? She did know some words. As kids, they’d learned you always made a point of knowing the sentence,Excuse me please, do you speak English?in the language of any country they traveled to. And it was true she had seldom met people in the Scandinavian countries who didn’t speak English, and often another language besides their own as well.
But a ghost...
She came upon him at last. He knew she was there, but his attention was on the proceedings.
Her fears might well be justified. This ghost had not died anytime recently, not unless he’d been buried in costume. He was clad in trousers, a linen shift, over-tunic, and a cape that was secured around his shoulders with a handsome brooch. His belt held a knife and an axe. And whatever his burial method, she was certain he’d been so clad when he’d been given his final send-off.
