The Green Remains Read Free Page A

Just last night at dinner he’d pronounced: “I think you’re going to see that all of these changes won’t be necessary.”
      Nora wasn’t on either side—she didn’t have experience in their kind of business. As an only child, she’d often wished for the kind of companionship and understanding she thought a brother or sister would have provided, the comfortable relationship Kate and Simon usually enjoyed. She was confident they would work through this hitch. People can’t agree on everything.
      Nora drew in great gulps of fresh air—deep, cleansing breaths to expand her lungs. Her baby waved inside her, kicking during his own morning calisthenics. As she rounded the corner of Bowness Bay, her gaze flitted across the shallow water along the pebbly shore. Simon had explained that the lake dropped to well more than two hundred feet at its center, but here the water was clear, and Nora searched for small fish among the waving grasses at its edge. A few yards ahead, the tip of an overturned green scull caught her attention; it was wobbling up and down at the stony shore, disturbing its neatness.
      As she came abreast of the scull, the next slopping wave nudged it higher onto the pebbly shingle. Without pausing, Nora left the path and reached out to pull on the scull’s tip to keep it on shore. Someone would be looking for it later today. She was surprised when it barely budged, and she heaved harder, throwing her small frame into the effort. It must be filled with sand and water, she thought, and tugged harder. There was a sucking sound, and suddenly the scull slid up the bank, knocking Nora off balance and onto her knees on the damp sand. She was abruptly opposite the swollen, glassy-eyed face of a very dead man, partially covered in muck. He lay curled on his side, half-hidden by the scull. There was a greenish cast to his skin, mottled with gouges and missing pieces of flesh. His swollen, purple lips grinned grotesquely at her; one eye socket was empty. The distorted features shifted with the next wave.
      Nora’s stomach roiled, and her breakfast threatened to come back up. She sucked in air and gasped. Then she heard her own screams echoing across the water as she realized the dead man was someone she knew.

Chapter Two

    “But surely the study of fingerprints and footprints, cigarette ash, different kinds of mud and other clues that comprise the minute observations of details—all these are of vital importance?”
    — Agatha Christie, Murder on the Links

    9:20 AM

    From his porch across the curve of Bowness Bay, hidden by a stand of juniper bushes, Daniel Rowley watched the commotion as a crowd gathered near a pregnant girl. She waddled like a duck, and her screams had woken him far too soon.
      He had reluctantly opened his eyes, then had felt the pressure on his bladder and had swung his thick legs over the cot’s edge to land with a heavy thump on the bare wooden floor. There was a chill in the room this morning, and he knew he must have fallen into bed again without banking up the fire. A glance down at his still-clothed body had confirmed this. He’d wiped his grimy hands across his face and had staggered to the toilet, ignoring the dull headache he’d come to expect.
      The screams had stopped, and after splashing cold water on his face, Daniel had toweled off with a corner of the torn bathrobe he’d thrown over the bathroom door. He’d crept to the rickety porch, careful to stay out of sight.
      A police siren announced official business. A police car skidded to a stop near the footpath. Thankfully, the constable turned off the siren before running over to the screamer—that American writer, Daniel realized, who’d been staying at the lodge. She sat huddled on a bench between Kate and Simon Ramsey. Simon had his arm around her, and all three were speaking to the officer.
      Simon stood and walked the officer over to an upturned green scull. The policeman knelt, then came quickly