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She grabbed Baskerville’s collar and held on for support as they slid together down the other side of the ridge.

When they reached the bottom, Virginia looked around. Her breath caught in her throat. This was the place. She was sure of it. She remembered the clearing, and the pattern of the evergreens. The spot where the tent had been pitched was wide and level.

But there were no tracks. No trash. Nothing.

Virginia kicked the heel of her boot down through the snow to frozen dirt. She knelt and cleared a wide space with her gloves. There was only cold, hard ground. Like nobody had ever been there.

She pulled a small flashlight out of her pocket and shined the beam back and forth. Where had they gone? How could a family abandon an established campsite and leave no trace? Had they gone back into town? Found shelter somewhere else?

As she passed her beam over the clearing, she caught a gleam bouncing back. She walked closer. The gleam was coming from the top of a sawed-off stump about two feet high.

Virginia stopped and looked down. She brushed away the snow.

It was her Buck knife. The one she’d left with the little girl.

Virginia grabbed the knife, folded it shut, and stuck it into her pocket. A chill ran through her—something deeper than a shiver from the cold. She turned back toward the tent site. As she watched, the snow appeared to blow across the clearing and drift into mounds. Three of them. She backed away and clapped her gloved hands together. “Baskerville! Come!”

Virginia turned and started running across the clearing, toward the ridge. Her heart was pounding and her lungs were burning, but she wouldn’t stop. Up one side and down the other.

Baskerville kept pace as she followed their tracks back through the woods and onto the trail that led down to the lodge.

As she crested the final rise, she heard a car starting up. She looked down. It was a police car. Sheriff Gregson. He was leaving!

Virginia reached the edge of the driveway as Gregson was starting to pull away. Gasping for breath, she stepped in front of the car as the headlight beams hit her. The car jolted to a stop.

Gregson hit the horn and leaned out the driver-side window. “Hey! Watch out! I almost ran you down!”

Virginia slapped her gloves down on the hood and walked her way around to Gregson’s side. Her breath was coming out in blasts of white vapor. She could only speak in short bursts. “Hold up… Wait… I’ve got a question…”

Gregson put the car in Park. “Okay. Calm down now. What’s going on?”

Virginia caught her breath and settled herself. She pointed back into the dark woods. “There was a family. They were living in a hollow, about a quarter mile east. Mother, father, little girl.”

“You mean the Rovners?” asked Gregson.

“I don’t know,” said Virginia. “I didn’t ask their names.”

Gregson looked puzzled. “Don’t see how you could have, honey. They all froze to death out there twenty years ago.”

CHAPTER 56

THE NEXT MORNING in class, Margaret Marple couldn’t help rubbing her eyes. She hoped Luc Gestard wouldn’t notice. At the moment, he had his head buried in a French cookbook, lecturing on the anatomy of Rana pipiens, a leopard frog native to the region and cultivated for cuisine.

Marple had been up half the night with Virginia, talking her down from her disturbing tale—the mysterious apparition and disappearance of the family in the woods.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Virginia had asked.

“No, dear,” Margaret had told her. “I think you’re clairvoyant.”

Marple had no doubt that Virginia had seen what she had seen. It was not the first time the young assistant’s sixth sense had detected a presence of someone long gone. It was not a curse to get rid of, Marple had told her; it was a gift to be harnessed. She had sat on the edge of Virginia’s bed until she fell asleep.

“Margaret!”

Marple almost visibly jumped. Gestard was standing directly beside her, dangling a skinned frog two inches from her face. It looked like a pink, glistening puppet. “Cuisses de Grenouilles à la Provençale! What are the additional ingredients?”

Margaret snapped to full attention. Her mind zipped through her mental catalog of French recipes. Frog legs, frog legs… She cleared her throat, buying a few seconds until the answer snapped into her head. “Parsley… butter… and garlic.”

“Oui.” Gestard dropped the frog onto her workstation with a splat.