Page 4

CHAPTER 4

FIFTEEN MILES EAST, deep in the woods, snow swirled and drifted around the porch of what was once the grand Meade Lodge. It was a rambling log structure, two stories tall, with a steep A-frame roof over the main entrance. The building wasn’t just rustic. It was a semi-ruin. The furnace was ancient. The windows were leaky. Most of the heat came from wood-fired cast-iron stoves. The lodge had been built in the 1930s, and abandoned in the 1980s. Only the efforts of the local historical society had kept it from being torn down altogether.

Nobody had occupied the place in nearly half a century. But now Meade Lodge was a residence again.

A hideout, actually.

Upstairs, in one of the small, drafty bedrooms, Margaret Marple was bundled up against the chill in a pair of flannel pajamas, wool socks, and a flower-patterned robe. The room held only a small single bed, with a stack of cookbooks on the side table. For the past month, Marple had been sleeping there alone, aside from her black cat, Annabel.

The fat feline was not her bed companion of choice.

Brendan Holmes was.

After working closely for years as private investigators, she and Holmes had finally confessed their love for each other almost five months ago. The first few months had been heady, stimulating, bed-rocking bliss. But more recently Marple had felt her partner pulling away for reasons she didn’t fully understand. Was it boredom? Disappointment? Too much intimacy? Too little?

Even with all of Marple’s people skills, Brendan Holmes remained largely a mystery to her. His needs, his worries, his fears—they were often too deep for her to plumb. She was beginning to understand what her beloved Agatha Christie had meant when she wrote, “No one human being knows the full truth about another human being.”

So true. So sad.

Marple had been looking forward to life as a couple with Holmes after he quit the firm. And for a short while, her dream was a reality. She’d willingly followed Holmes here from New York City. Far from her network of friends and supports. Now, sadly, it felt like a mistake.

The lodge had been Holmes’s idea. He’d heard about it from a fellow patient when he was in rehab nearby last year. After the Brooklyn home and workspace that she, Holmes, and Poe had shared was destroyed by Oliver Paul’s bomb, this white elephant had become their temporary refuge.

The more temporary the better, as far as Marple was concerned. The place gave her the creeps. It made her anxious and jumpy, especially at night.

Suddenly she heard a rattle from outside. And a loud scratching. She pulled a pistol from beneath her pillow and checked the chamber. She opened her bedroom door and stepped onto the open balcony that overlooked the great room, which was cast in a yellow glow by a large antlered chandelier.

The front door burst open. “Anybody home?”

Marple let out a long breath of relief. She slipped her pistol into the pocket of her robe.

It was Virginia, the investigative firm’s young and dedicated assistant. Panting beside her was her white mastiff, Baskerville. The massive rescue dog was her constant companion.

A rush of cold air blew in as Virginia stamped the snow off her boots, then shut the door behind her and leaned a small pellet gun against the wall. When she lowered the hood of her parka, the light caught a stripe of magenta running through her dark-brown hair. Her latest tint.

Virginia had happily joined her displaced employers upstate after the bombing in Brooklyn. She was incredibly loyal and very capable, and though barely in her mid-twenties, she had a way of getting things done before anybody else even knew there were issues that needed to be handled. Sometimes, Marple felt, it was only Virginia’s cheerful efficiency that kept things running at all. Especially now that Holmes was out of the picture, work-wise.

Spotting Marple on the balcony, Virginia lifted her right glove into the air. Hanging from her fist was a dead rabbit. “Look! I got one!”

Marple shuddered at the sight. She couldn’t help herself. The only rabbits she appreciated were the kind that hopped through English gardens and British novels.

Virginia, who’d been raised by Quaker parents on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, loved animals dearly but made a practical distinction between pets and game. She was certainly no vegetarian.

From down the hall, another door opened. Marple looked over to see their fifth housemate, Helene Grey, make her way slowly out onto the balcony.

“What’s going on?” she asked in a groggy voice.

Recently retired as an NYPD homicide detective, Grey was now heavily pregnant with twins. She and Poe, the babies’ father, were still very much a couple, unlike Marple and Holmes. But Marple knew they had problems of their own. Like Holmes, Poe had difficulty handling relationships.

“Hi, Detective!” Virginia called out. “Look what I caught!”

Grey rested her hands on the railing and looked down. The instant she spotted the rabbit corpse, she blanched and turned away. “Nope,” she muttered.

She put her palm over her mouth and turned back toward her bedroom, retching loudly. Grey’s pregnancy had made her extremely sensitive—and perpetually nauseated.

It didn’t take much to set her off.

CHAPTER 5