Mountain Ice (David Dean Mysteries)

Cynthia must have finally slept because the noise in the hall startled her to full wakefulness, her husband as well.

"Sounds like Gladys didn't get lucky," Dean mumbled.

"Or else she brought him back here," his wife answered sleepily.

Then there were voices, Gladys with a shrill laugh, than hushed giggling, a stumble on the steps, a grunt and finally silence. Dean lay there, listening. It was his turn to hear measured breathing beside him as Cynthia drifted off to sleep. He glanced at the clock. One-twenty. Then one-thirty-four, then one-forty-six. Finally, he thought he felt a breeze and quietly rose to see if giggly Gladys and her tipsy admirer might have left the front door ajar. They hadn't, but as long as he was awake and unable to sleep, he went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. He was sitting there, in the dark, when he first heard a step on the stair. His first thought was Gladys' would-be lover having second thoughts and making a quick exit so he ducked around the corner of the dining room, so as not to embarrass the man. He peeked out and was startled by a white-clad specter on the stairs.

She moved like a somnambulist, so trance-like Dean hesitated to speak for fear of startling her. Then the awkwardness of his silent position hiding in the darkness extended beyond the point of propriety of making his presence known. He shrunk further back into the shadows of the dining room. Edith Shipton moved down the hall, causing Dean to think her destination was his and Cynthia's quarters but she stopped in front the small room occupied by Donald Ryland. She was but a few feet beyond where he stood. As Dean watched, scarcely breathing, she lifted the ancient white dress above her head in one motion and dropped it to the floor. She stood there, naked, a gaunt figure in her thinness. She was as white as the garment she now casually pushed with one foot behind a hall table. The hall night-light cast a strange and wild look on her face. Dean was close enough that he could smell the musk of her freshly washed body as she took a deep breath and let out a long and resigned sigh. She reached up to unclasp her now-blonde hair, dropping it in a cascade about her shoulders. A moment's hesitation, a quick hand on the door knob, and Edith Shipton disappeared into the bedroom of her long ago lover.

All that Dean could picture in his mind's eye was Annie Quincy, plying her despised trade in a darkened room. But Edith's Annie was a minister's wife, not a common prostitute. Then Dean remembered Donnie's copies of the telling notebook. Had the boy deciphered and shared the lines of this far different Annie?