Page 85 of Crossroads Magic
I moved up the hallway to where it narrowed around the foot of the stairs.
Benedict put a hand on the newel post and a foot on the first step and looked at me.
“I figured out that my mother died around midnight on the solstice,” I told him.
He looked thoughtful. “How did you figure that out?”
“Rigor mortis,” I said. “Google told me it takes a few hours to come on, then it passes after six to eight hours. You found her around six a.m. and moved her to the bedroom. You laid out her body, Ben. She couldn’t have been in rigor then. So I figured she died around midnight and that made sense to me, it being solstice.”
“Beware presumptions…” Benedict murmured.
“But it wascold, that night,” I said. “You said it even snowed a little. The snow washed out the blood on the front of her gown. Ben, does the cold make rigor mortis come on more quickly?”
“Yes,” he said flatly. “Your mother was still in rigor when we found her. I only laid out the body later, when it passed.”
I gripped my hands together. “How much faster will rigor mortis set in, if it’s very cold?”
“Normally, it takes two hours for the first rigidity to appear, usually in the face. It progresses to the limbs over the next few hours, and full rigor is achieved six to eight hours after death. It remains for another twelve hours. But the cold…it’s unpredictable how fast rigor will set in with the cold. I only know coldisa factor.”
“So she could have died much later in the night,” I said. “Say, at three in the morning? Then, if rigor set in very quickly, it would track with you finding her in full rigor.”
Benedict looked up the stairs. He was thinking, I realized. Then he looked at me. “Yes,” he agreed, his tone low. “It could have happened that way.” Then, “Yes, it probably did happen that way.”
I drew in a breath. “This changeseverything.”
Benedict smiled. “Look at you. Lady Sherlock.”
I laughed and covered it with my hand. “I shouldn’t be happy about something like this, but…”
“I know,” he said. His voice was very low. His gaze was on my face.
No, on my mouth.
My laughter evaporated. My insides fizzed. My heart began to thunder.
How long did we stand there with an untaken kiss between us? It felt like days passed while fear and longing and hope flared and fought each other in my heart and mind.
The front door of the inn opened and Harper stepped in, bringing in with her a swirl of frigid air. She stamped her boots on the mat, shedding white flakes. “It’s snowing,” she announced and shut the door.
Coldness gripped my middle.
“I…should take care of…” I began inadequately, and moved back to the dining room, where I picked up my unfinished breakfast and took it into the kitchen to dispose of it.
?
When I got back to the sitting room after clearing up breakfast, Ghaliya was still sleeping, but it seemed natural, and her color was good. I left her alone and went back to the wing chair. I’d found my mother’s stash of new notebooks in the little cupboard next to the sofa.
It was an odd collection of styles and sizes that made me think she had acquired the notebooks from a vast range of sources. Most dedicated journal-keepers had strong preferences about what they used for their journals, and stayed loyal to one type of notebook or another, even acquiring dozens of them if a notebook went out of production.
I took one of the new notebooks back to the wingchair and found a working pen in the little desk. I wasn’t ready to sit at the desk, yet. Just as I wasn’t ready to use my mother’s room, yet.
I wrote down the names of everyone in the town, who had been here the night my mother died.
Hirom
Olivia
Wim
