Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #7)

“You’d have my arm firmly around you,” Daniel said, “and I have skated on the pond behind our house since childhood.”


“We’ll see when we get there,” I said. “At this moment I’m just enjoying being in the snow. It hardly ever snows in my part of Ireland, and if it does it’s only a light dusting that soon melts in the rain that follows it. My, how it dazzles. Come on, let’s walk where nobody has trodden before.”

I started to run across what had been a meadow and was now an expanse of pristine whiteness. The snow crunched deliciously under my feet and I looked back at the trail my footprints had left.

“If I were a criminal, you’d have no trouble following me, would you?” I called out. “Come on, Daniel. What are you waiting for?”

“Molly, a little decorum, please, and besides, you don’t know how deep the snow might be.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “It doesn’t come over the tops of my boots. Don’t be such a ninny. See?”

I took two more steps and suddenly found myself sinking into snow up to my knees. I hadn’t realized until this moment how very cold the snow could be. It almost took my breath away.

“Daniel, help me out,” I gasped. I glared at him as he started laughing.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he chuckled.

Feeling foolish and angry, I bent down, scooped up a snowball, and threw it at him. It hit him square in the chest.

“Good shot, Molly,” I yelled with delight.

For a second he looked startled, then he brushed himself off. “Right,” he called. “You asked for it!” and he bent to make his own snowball.

I struggled free of the snow and started to run. A snowball hit me in the back. I paused, scooped, and threw back one of my own, then picked up my skirts, raising them to a level that bordered on impropriety and ran on again, squealing in delight like a ten-year-old. At the edge of a meadow the ground rose in a series of tree-covered hillocks. I headed in that direction as another snowball whizzed past me.

“Missed me,” I shouted, but I could hear him gaining on me. The hills and trees were ahead. We could turn this into a game of hide-and-seek. The snow was deeper here again, however, and I clambered and slithered up the nearest slope. Daniel still hadn’t caught up with me. I started to run down the other side, then almost stumbled over something beside the tree. It was white and I didn’t realize what it was until almost too late. I grabbed onto a bare tree branch and pulled up, recoiling in horror. It was a woman’s body.





FIVE

She was young and beautiful, with a delicate little elfin face surrounded by rich chestnut hair, and she was clad only in a flimsy white dress and white stockings with dainty little black evening shoes. Her porcelain flesh was as white as the snow and she looked like a large white china doll lying there.

“I’ve got you now. You’re at my mercy,” Daniel shouted as he came blundering over the rise. Then he saw my face. “What is it?”

Silently I pointed to the ground at my feet.

“God Almighty,” Daniel exclaimed, although he was usually most careful about swearing in my presence. “Don’t touch her and stand back. I want to get a good look at the scene of the crime. There will be footprints.”

“Scene of the crime?” I asked nervously.

“Young ladies don’t usually wander out into the snow with no warm outer garments and certainly not in those shoes. She was probably killed and brought here.”

He came forward cautiously and examined the ground around the dead girl.

“Strange,” he muttered. “I see no prints but those the girl herself made. How can that be?”

He squatted beside the girl, lifted her wrist, then dropped it again as if it burned him. “I felt a pulse. She’s still alive. Quickly, help me off with my jacket. We must warm her up.”

“My cape is warmer,” I said, untying the neck before he could object. I helped Daniel raise the girl from the snow and we wrapped the fur-lined cape around her.

“We must get help fast,” Daniel said. “And a warm drink. You stay with her. Here, put my jacket around you. I’ll go and alert the constable at the gate. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

He ran off while I knelt in the snow, cradling the unconscious girl in my arms. Her flesh felt so cold to my touch that it was hard to believe she could be still alive. But as I looked down at her face I saw her eyes flutter open and look around in wonder. They were an incredible blue and her wide-eyed stare only added to her doll-like quality.