Rowena gave a skeptical, under-her-breath sort of laugh, “Oh, come on, Torrey! I wish you hadn’t seen what happened. You’re my friend. But there’s something I can’t tell even you. But thanks for sticking by me. Lack of evidence freed me, what with my grandfather raising hell with Inspector O’Hare—‘an outrage, arresting my granddaughter’… and ‘the damned stallion out of control, my granddaughter shouting at me, “I can’t stop him! Get out of the way!” Altogether, an accident…’ And now, as you just heard on the radio. My grandfather’s revised official version.”
Torrey nodded. And waited.
“Anyway, this morning after I had breakfast at the police station, I sneaked home. I went up a back staircase and changed my clothes. Then I came here. I can’t stay at Ashenden Manor. Can you imagine me having dinner across the table from my grandfather, with his sprained shoulder in a sling? Both of us pretending that in the meadow I didn’t try to kill him! Pretending to my brother Scott and my mother and her new husband that it was all a mistake, an accident that Sergeant Jimmy Bryson misconstrued!”
Torrey was thinking: Why, Rowena, why?
Other titles from St. Martin’s Minotaur Mysteries
A MURDER IN THEBES by Anna Apostolou
AQUARIUS DESCENDING by Martha C. Lawrence
MY BODY LIES OVER THE OCEAN by J. S. Borthwick
MURDER WITH PEACOCKS by Donna Andrews
A COLD DAY IN PARADISE by Steve Hamilton
CROSSROAD BLUES by Ace Atkins
ROMAN BLOOD by Steven Saylor
TELL NO TALES by Eleanor Taylor Bland
FAREWELL PERFORMANCE by Donna Huston Murray
DEATH AL DENTE by Peter King
JITTER JOINT by Howard Swindle
LARGER THAN DEATH by Lynne Murray
A GIFT OF SANCTUARY by Candace Robb
THE SILLY SEASON by Susan Holtzer
SEARCH THE DARK by Charles Todd
EMERALD FLASH by Charles Knief
DEAR MISS DEMEANOR by Joan Hess
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE WITCH OF
THE BEST-KEPT SECRET by Les Roberts
THE IRISH COTTAGE MURDER by Dicey Deere
Minotaur is also proud to present these mystery classics by Ngaio Marsh
ARTISTS IN CRIME
CLUTCH OF CONSTABLES
LIGHT THICKENS
PHOTO FINISH
THE IRISH COTTAGE MURDER
Copyright © 1999 by Dicey Deere.
Excerpt from The Irish Manor House Murder copyright © 2000 by Dicey Deere.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-12841
ISBN: 0-312-97131-1
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / May 1999
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / June 2000
eISBN 9781466848818
First eBook edition: June 2013