A Ghastly Catastrophe

Where others might have placed a birdcage or a bowl of goldfish, Stoker had installed a glass case of the aforementioned dermestid beetles, a particularly nasty variety of insect whose only purpose is to strip the flesh from the bones of other animals. Blue eyes may, as in Stoker’s case, be remarkable for their sapphirine brightness, but these eyes were an uncommon shade tinted with grey, like a storm on a summer sea. About the woman in black?” “A woman who might well have been Asphodel, here in the same place Quincey’s body was found. The leads in this investigation had been maddeningly opaque, and here at last was a clue that required immediate attention.