a telephone booth-sized structure Sweeney assumed was an outhouse.
She stood and looked at the little building. It was in a pretty spot, just above the river, with views across to the other bank and a path that led down to what must have been a small beach. In winter, under a thin and unattractive covering of snow and ice, the studio looked a bit forlorn, but she could imagine it surrounded by leafy trees and gardens, the green banks of the sparkling river beckoning a tired artist. She climbed three wooden stairs to the porch and tried the front door, but found it well secured with a shiny padlock. The windows were obscured by curtains and when she stood up on tiptoes to try to look through the narrow pane above the door, she saw only molding, the top of a wall. Darn.
She climbed down off the porch and studied the building. So this was where he had carried on his affaires de couer, Sweeney thought, or his affairs of something else. It was also where Mary had modeled for Gilmartin on her last day of life.
The wind blew through the trees, stirring up the bone-bare limbs, which clacked against each other alarmingly. A branch that had been wedged in a little tree next to the studio flew and skittered down onto the ground. The wind came hurrying through the trees again and she felt suddenly afraid.
She turned to go. But the outhouse stood there like an unfinished sentence. She would just make sure there wasn’t anything there of interest. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was hoping to find, but it had been Gilmartin’s and who knew, maybe there was some Victorian graffiti scrawled on the walls: “I killed Mary.” “Mary and Herrick forever.” Sweeney allowed herself a small smile.
She made her way across the little yard between the studio and the outhouse, and stood there, gathering her courage, then strode over and threw the door open.
She saw blood.
Red blood, frozen on the wooden floor of the outhouse. Eyes staring lifelessly at nothing, the body stilled in an improbable position.
She screamed and almost fled, then forced herself to look.
An unfortunate ermine—she only knew its name because she had studied art and she had seen countless of those snowy white pelts in European portraits of royalty—had retreated here after being attacked by some predator of the woods. Its throat had been opened. The blood had pooled beneath it and frozen. Its white coat was absolutely pristine, though, and its eyes looked somehow peaceful. Sweeney checked to make sure that there wasn’t anything else to see in here, and shut the door.
She waked quickly back toward the house and felt better as she came out into the sun, her shirt sticky with perspiration inside her layers of winter clothes.
As she caught sight of Birch Lane, she decided to go visit with Sabina. She had been wanting to ask her about last night, about what she had seen in the window that had scared her so. She walked along the road and in five minutes, she was striding up Sabina’s driveway.
The door was already open, just a crack, but through the thin aperture, she could see Sabina’s cat. It had one paw around the edge of the door as though she were trying to open it, and she mewed plaintively at Sweeney.
“Sabina?” Sweeney called out, the door yielding to her gentle pressure. It was very cold in the hallway, probably because the door had been left open, and Sweeney shivered as she called out again. “Sabina? It’s Sweeney. I just wanted to see if you’re okay. You seemed pretty shaken up last night.”
Silence. Sweeney stepped carefully over the cat, who was rubbing desperately against her legs. As she came into the morning room, she saw that it was very messy. Papers and magazines lay on the floor, and then as she stood there, she realized that it wasn’t just messy, that someone had knocked these things from the coffee table and the bookcases. Paintings and picture frames lay broken and jumbled on the floor. Shards of glass from a broken vase glittered on the oriental carpet.
“Sabina?” she called again, more desperately this time, going quickly toward the library. “Are you okay?”
In the moment that she saw Sabina’s body lying on the floor of the library, Sweeney felt as though Death had finally shown his face. He had been stalking her all this time, leaving small clues, titillating her with his mysterious ways.