PROLOGUE

She hadn’t liked Leonard Sims one bit. He was sly and spiteful, never missing an opportunity to make a jibe at her expense. In spite of her resolve not to, she’d often been reduced to tears and he’d laughed at her in triumph.

See. You’ve got the backbone of a slug. You feel like one too.

No one cared enough to protect her from his unrelenting cruelty, but perhaps they didn’t even notice. That was the more likely explanation, and she was used to not being noticed. So when she understood that Leonard Sims was dead, she was glad at first. Serves him right, she thought. He’d pushed just once too often. But then she had to go with them when they carried the body in a chest down to the frozen lake. They needed a cab to get there and at first none came by because it was late and the snow was thick and blowing in everybody’s face. The cabbie hadn’t wanted to take them, said his horse was tired and he was on his way to the stables.

This poor girl has got to visit her old aunt who lives near the shore. You can see how perishing she is. Open your heart.

The cabbie agreed when they paid him double the usual fare.

They didn’t bother to tell her what they were doing and, of course, she didn’t ask. After the cabbie left, she had to stand there, in her too-thin coat, shivering with cold, to keep lookout. She was so afraid, she was actually whimpering, but the swirling snow blotted up the sounds as the two men vanished into the darkness.

They hauled the chest across the lake to where a short promontory thrust out from the shore. Here they must have shoved it under the overhang. It took them almost ten minutes to trudge there and back through the knee-high snow and they both cursed the weather.

Never mind. When the ice melts, the bloody thing will sink to the bottom and never be found. Goodbye, Sins, and they had both laughed at the joke.