The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

compared to a monstrosity like Harschmort, was a great, crenellated cube bristling with gables and pipes and brickwork, more than half smothered in ivy whose leaves looked to Svenson, under the insidious moonlight, like the scales of a reptile’s skin.
    The ground-floor windows of the house were blazing with light. With a prick to his curiosity, the Doctor saw that the only other so lit was a gable window in the highest attic, which made, as he counted the windows, four completely dark stories in between. He approached the gate with caution—being shot for trespassing would be a particularly stupid way to die—and found it chained. He called out to the small guard’s hut on the other side of the wall, but received no answer. He looked up—the gate was very high—and shuddered at the prospect of climbing. He preferred to find another, less egregious point of entry, and remembered from Bascombe’s blue glass card an image near an orchard, of a crumbled wall that, could he find it, would be simple to scramble over. He set off around the side, tramping through the high, dry grass drifting—from the wind, he supposed—up against the stone—like sand.
    Svenson tried to form a plan of action, a task at which he never felt particularly skilled. He enjoyed studying evidence and drawing conclusions, even confronting those he had managed to entrap with facts, but all of this activity—running through houses, climbing drainage pipes, rooftops,
shooting,
being shot
at
…it was not his
métier
. He knew his approach to Tarr Manor ought to be an order of battle—he tried to imagine Chang’s choices, but this didn’t help at all: it only spelled out the degree to which he found Chang utterly mysterious. Svenson’s trouble was contingency. He was searching for several things at once, and depending on what he found, all of his goals would shift. He hoped to find Miss Temple, though he did not think he would. He hoped to find the women from the train, which was also to say that he wanted to know if Elöise was corrupt as he feared, or perhaps a duped innocent like Coates. He hoped to find some information about Bascombe and the previous Lord Tarr. He hoped to find the true nature of the work at the quarry. He hoped to find the truth behind Lorenz and his machinery, and what it had to do with these men from the city. He hoped to find who was in the coach and thus more about the two men who had journeyed from the city themselves to meet it. But all these goals were a jumble in his head, and all he could think to do was to enter the house and skulk about with as much secrecy as possible—and what, his stern skeptical logic demanded, would he do if he found someone from the Cabal who could name him directly, aside from Lorenz? What if he were to be brought before the Contessa, or the Comte d’Orkancz? He stopped and sighed heavily, a dry pinch in his throat. He had no idea what he would do at all.

    When he found the crumbled gap in the wall, Svenson peered over it first to make sure the path was safe. He was much closer to the house here—it seemed that there were only a few small fruit trees and fallow garden beds between him and the nearest windows. He recalled the newspaper report of Lord Tarr’s death—had he not been discovered in his garden? Svenson heaved his body up and over the wall, scraping his hands just a little, and dropped onto grass. The nearest windows were actually dark; perhaps this was the old Lord’s study, which no one was presently using (did that mean Bascombe was not in residence?). Svenson padded quietly across, stepping on the grass to avoid boot prints in the earthen beds. He reached the windows; the inner two were actually a pair of French doors—from the wall he had not seen the stairs that rose from the garden to meet them. Svenson leaned forward and adjusted his monocle. One of the doors was broken, a whole pane of glass missing near the handle. He looked on the steps below him and found no glass—of course, it would have been cleaned up—but then turned again to the missing pane. Around the wooden frame small flicks of wood had broken away. If he read the signs correctly, the blow had come from within, punching the glass outward. Even if Svenson credited that it was an animal that slew the old Lord (which he did not)—and why should an animal break open the door in such a way to reach through to the lock?—he would expect the assailant to come from outside. If he were already on