Susan checked on the soup and after stirring it, she returned to the studio. She looked down at the scorched floor and noticed there appeared to be a pattern burned into the wood floor. Circling around the design, she realized it formed a ragged looking “A”.

Unable to remain standing at this realization, she dropped to the floor and stared in disbelief at proof of the fire’s origin. After a few moments, Susan whispered, “Oh my God, Justin was right!”

When Susan returned to the bedroom a short time later with a steaming bowl of chicken soup on a tray, she found Justin fast asleep, with his legs propped up on a pillow and the sheets pulled up above his knees. “Oh well, I guess I’ll eat this bowl and get another one for him when he wakes up.”

Seeing nothing else to do, she went back downstairs with the soup and sat down at the kitchen table. As she ate the soup, she took out a notepad and worked out a vague timeline of events from 1905 forward.

Licking the last drops of broth from the spoon, she laid down the pencil and murmured, “I believe the ‘Warning Killer’s’ victims, contrary to other physical evidence, were all killed by the same method, although, I see no reason for those particular three couples to be chosen over any other couples of their respective time periods. Oh, well, I better go wake Justin and make him eat something, before he sleeps the entire night away.”

She got up and carried her dirty dishes over and to the sink, then poured the remaining soup into another bowl and carried it upstairs.

After some grumbling and general crabbiness, he woke up, took another pain pill and ate his soup. Since the sun had already set by the time he was finished, both Justin and Susan decided to turn in and get an early start in the morning. Within minutes of their heads hitting the pillows, they were both fast asleep.

Sometime later that night within the silent house, an ethereal Emma moved through the studio, to stand before the canvas Justin had been working on prior to his accident. Before her the black and grey lines depicted a man and women sitting on a wrought iron bench within a Victorian greenhouse, facing each other with hands clasped. Lurking outside and obviously spying on the couple was the figure of another man. Emma wiped a single tear from her cheek while she stared at Justin’s charcoal sketch. As she moved from the room the spirit thought, “That looks just like what could have been seen from the back door of the house, the day I told Jebediah about the baby and Archibald caught us.”

To Be Continued…