Authors: M.C. Beaton
Molly
M. C. Beaton
is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, many Regency romance series, and a stand-alone murder mystery,
The Skeleton in the Closet
– all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit
www.agatharaisin.com
for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter: @mc_beaton.
Titles by M. C. Beaton
The Poor Relation
Lady Fortescue Steps Out · Miss Tonks Turns to Crime · Mrs Budley Falls from Grace
Sir Philip’s Folly · Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue · Back in Society
A House for the Season
The Miser of Mayfair
·
Plain Jane
·
The Wicked Godmother
Rake’s Progress
·
The Adventuress
·
Rainbird’s Revenge
The Six Sisters
Minerva
·
The Taming of Annabelle
·
Deirdre and Desire
Daphne
·
Diana the Huntress
·
Frederica in Fashion
Edwardian Murder Mysteries
Snobbery with Violence
·
Hasty Death
·
Sick of Shadows
Our Lady of Pain
The Travelling Matchmaker
Emily Goes to Exeter
·
Belinda Goes to Bath
·
Penelope Goes to Portsmouth
Beatrice Goes to Brighton
·
Deborah Goes to Dover
·
Yvonne Goes to York
Agatha Raisin
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
·
Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener
·
Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage
·
Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death
·
Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam
·
Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate
·
Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance
·
Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison
·
Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body
·
Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns
Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers · Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble
Hamish Macbeth
Death of a Gossip
·
Death of a Cad
·
Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife
·
Death of a Hussy
·
Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster
·
Death of a Glutton
·
Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man
·
Death of a Nag
·
Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist
·
Death of a Scriptwriter
·
Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas
·
Death of a Dustman
·
Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village
·
Death of a Poison Pen
·
Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer
·
Death of a Maid
·
Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch
·
Death of a Valentine
·
Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher · Death of Yesterday
The Skeleton in the Closet
Also available
The Agatha Raisin Companion
M. C. Beaton
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York
First published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013
Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1980
The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47210-117-4 (ebook)
Printed and bound in the UK
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For Marion and Duncan Mundell,
my cousins in Glasgow, Scotland,
with all my love
CHAPTER ONE
The Atlantic liner gave a great heave, shuddered, wallowed in the trough, and groaned its way up the next wave.
Molly Maguire clutched her little sister, Mary, closer to her on the stateroom bed as the great liner creaked and juddered its way through the storm, and thought miserably,
This is how cattle must feel. Here we are, two poor little American cows on our way to England to be mated.
Mary whimpered with fright as the ship gave another monumental heave, and their ex-schoolteacher-companion, Miss Simms, let out a shriek and took an enormous pull at her bottle of gin.
Miss Simms looked with lackluster eyes at the beautiful Maguire sisters and reflected dully that she should never have accepted this post, no matter how much the money.
And as for Molly, she wished they were all back in the cosy comfort of her father’s shop in Brooklyn, when things were safe and normal before that momentous evening a year ago when she and Mary had unwittingly founded the Maguire fortunes.
She closed her eyes tightly to shut out the motion of the ship and remembered how it had all begun….
It had been a close, humid Brooklyn evening in Jane Street, a narrow alley running off Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn. The gas lamps had been lit, the other, bigger stores—Namm’s, Frederick Loeser’s, Waldorf Shoes—had all put up their shutters long ago. But the Maguire’s General Store stayed open, sometimes around the clock, in order to lure stray customers to their doors. They sold everything and anything from hairpins to coffee beans. Mr. Joseph Maguire and his wife, Nadia, had retired to bed leaving their daughters, Molly and Mary, to cope with any late-night shoppers.
The large flyblown mirror over the unused fireplace, advertising Bigg’s Tobacco in curly glass letters, reflected their tired faces; a beautiful combination of vivid blue eyes and black curly hair from their Irish father and the high Slav cheekbones of their Polish mother. The girls often took turns sleeping on a mattress under the counter. If anyone had told them that their life was hard, they would have been very surprised indeed. Both were dutiful, lively, and merry. They passed the long night hours weaving romantic fantasies. The shop bell would clang and who should be standing on the threshold but the Prince of Ruritania himself. He would fall in love with one of them, of course. Molly said it would be Mary and Mary swore loyally it would be Molly.
But usually it was only one of the local lads with his sheepish smile and thick boots, giggling and asking for “two ounces of baccy.”
The neighbors were apt to censure the Maguire parents for exposing their daughters to the dangers of nighttime Brooklyn. But Molly kept a shotgun under the counter, which her father had taught her to use, and Officer Brady made as many calls as he could to stand and drink coffee in the warmth of the little shop and admire the famous beauty of the girls.
On the fateful evening that was to change their lives, Molly had just celebrated her seventeenth birthday. Mary was nearly sixteen. The hour was eleven in the evening and the shop no longer shook with the rumble of the trains on the King’s County Elevated Railroad that ran above Fulton Street.
Molly was not feeling her usual happy-go-lucky self. Jimmy Heimlich, whose father owned the greengrocers two doors away, had asked her to walk out with him, but she had refused. And her mother had been very angry. Jimmy was a well-set-up young man and Mrs. Maguire had looked forward to a merging of the two businesses. Jimmy’s father was failing, everyone knew that. It was only a matter of time. But her infuriating daughter had said no and had refused to give a reason.
Molly could not really work out in her mind
why
she had refused Jimmy. At last she had said slowly that it was because she was not in love with Jimmy, and her angry mother had confiscated her small store of romances, saying she could not have her books back until she came to her senses.
The theater crowd from Colonel William F. Simm’s Park Theater had cheered the Spooner Stock Company to the last curtain call and had gone home without any of them calling in at the Maguires’ store. It looked as if it were going to be a quiet night.
Mary was asleep under the counter because she had school in the morning. Molly, who had finished school, had elected to stay awake.
But her eyes felt heavy and she leaned her elbows on the counter, enduring the familiar feeling of fatigue and sore feet. Her eyelids drooped lower and lower and the temptation to crawl under the counter beside Mary was nearly irresistible.
The sudden clanging of the doorbell brought her eyes open with a jerk, and then she blinked. For surely the lady standing on the threshold must have come from one of her dreams.
Despite the close humidity of the night, she was dressed from head to foot in white ermine. She had a thin, white, autocratic face with weak, pale eyes. On her scarlet hair was perched a sequined cap ornamented with long black cock’s feathers that hung down to her shoulder. She raised a hand to her forehead and her furred cuff fell back to reveal a heavy diamond bracelet circling a wrist so fragile and thin that you would have thought it would have snapped under the weight of the jewels.