The Irish Cottage Murder

by Dicey Deere

  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

  WYCKHADDEN by M. C. Beaton

  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