Murder at Rough Point Read Online Free

crouched at the edge of the land.
    â€œThere is a very good reason for that,” she said. “Anonymity. If we were to open Land’s End, my mother and other relatives would be on us in an instant. As it is, they don’t yet know I’ve returned to the country. We wish this retreat to be exactly that, Miss Cross. Peaceful, contemplative, and productive. Oh, but here is our Miss Marcus.” She gestured to the doorway and the woman entering the room.
    I admit to having yet a second unprofessional moment. Like an unseasoned schoolgirl I rushed to my feet and met the woman in question before she’d closed even half the distance between us. “Miss Marcus, what a thrill. I’ve had the very great pleasure of seeing you perform in Providence, oh, nearly three years ago I believe it was. You were in—”
    â€œ La Traviata , wasn’t it?” Her skirts swayed as she spoke. She wore lavender silk jacquard with a pale green pattern of dogwood and bamboo—swaths of it draped elegantly around a generous figure, with flowing sleeves and a lacy décolletage cut daringly low for this time of day.
    â€œYes,” I confirmed, hearing my own eagerness and helpless to do anything about it. “Opening night. I went with my Vanderbilt cousins, Cornelius, Alice, and—”
    â€œYes, I don’t often perform in Providence, and I remember that opening night.” She pouted full, pink lips—rouged, if I wasn’t mistaken—and awakening dimples in either cheek. “It rained dreadfully and I feared no one would come.”
    â€œA little rain could not have kept us away, Miss Marcus. You were divine.”
    She tipped her head, her blond curls caught up in a beaded band sporting a tulle bow at one side. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I heard your name.”
    â€œJosephine, this is Emma Cross.” Something in the way Mrs. Wharton spoke my name once again raised my guard. My reporter’s instincts reared up inside me, banishing the starry-eyed admirer of renowned opera singer Josephine Marcus.
    I returned to my seat beside Mrs. Wharton and removed my tablet and pencil from my purse. “Will you be performing in the area while you’re here, Miss Marcus? The Casino, perhaps?” I couldn’t contain the hopeful note in my voice, although I knew full well the social Season had ended weeks earlier and it was a rare performer indeed who could be coaxed to entertain our local populace.
    â€œNo, I’m here to calm my nerves and enjoy a bit of sea air.” Miss Marcus sat opposite us. Whereas Mrs. Wharton perched properly upright with the straightest of postures, which I attempted to emulate, the opera singer reclined against the cushion at her back—a woman who sat as she pleased and, I guessed, did as she pleased, convention be damned. “I’m afraid I’ll be no use in providing gossip for your newspaper article, Miss Cross. The spring and summer seasons have left me quite diminished.”
    â€œI don’t write a gossip column, Miss Marcus,” I told her as politely as I could, although the very word raised my hackles. “My Fancies and Fashions page is about styles and trends and follows society activities during the Season.”
    â€œThat’s not all Miss Cross does, Josephine.” Mrs. Wharton went on to describe the more harrowing tales I’d retold in print. Then she and Miss Marcus traded pleasantries of the sort people do when they know each other well but haven’t seen each other in recent days. I listened, jotted down a note or two that might be of interest in my article, but my attention was momentarily drawn elsewhere.
    The drawing room looked out onto a covered veranda and the main terrace, both of which overlooked the sea. Two men presently came up the terrace steps. They were young men, not yet thirty, I estimated, and they were laughing. When one stumbled on the top step the other