Copyright © 2022 Ann Perramond

The right of Ann Claire to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by arrangement with Bantam, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

First published in the United States in 2022.

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Headline Accent

An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

This Ebook edition published in 2022 by Headline Accent

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 1 0354 0506 0

Cover design and illustration by Ella Laytham

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About the Author

Ann Claire earned degrees in geography, which took her across the world. Now Claire lives with her geographer husband in Colorado, where the mountains beckon from their kitchen windows. When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking, gardening, herding housecats, and enjoying a good mystery, especially one by Agatha Christie.

About the Book

Ellie Christie is more than ready for a new chapter. She’s always dreamed of running her family’s historic bookshop, the Book Chalet, with her sister Meg, and after the last few years, returning to Last Word – a peaceful, Swiss-style hamlet nestled in the Colorado mountains and accessible only by ski gondola – seems like the perfect solution.

And it is, until a deadly blizzard blows through, and a man is found dead on the gondola. Conditions worsen as the police open their investigation, and soon the town is left stranded with a murderer in their midst.

Ellie and Meg may not actually be related to their favourite novelist, but they do know a lot about solving mysteries and when the police start to close in on their friends, the Christies decide to act before the killer turns the page one last time . . .

For my mother, my first reader

CHAPTER 1

A Perfect Day for Murder

I swung open the heavy oak door and blinked at the figure taking shape in the blizzard.

“What a perfect day for murder!” The woman strode into the Book Chalet, glowing like a summer sunbeam and a vision from the past. Feathers trembled atop her flapper-style beret. Pretty pin curls framed her face. Snowflakes swarmed at her sides.

I gaped, not at the greeting—that was perfectly appropriate—but at its giver.

Morgan Marin. The Morgan Marin, Hollywood legend known even to book-dwellers like me. Movies were nice, but they hadn’t rendered me tongue-tied. Morgan had reportedly retired (once again) from acting. In its place, she’d turned her superstar dazzle to my beloved medium: books. Her online reading club, Shelf Indulgence, attracted tens of thousands of devoted bibliophiles, myself among them.

I’d been dying to meet her.

And here she stood, in the lobby of my family’s bookshop in little Last Word, Colorado.

Morgan stomped faux-fur boots so plush they should have been hibernating. “You must be Ellie.” She beamed at me. “The missing Christie, returned to the roost.”

I basked in her glow, then remembered my manners and the door, still gaping as wide as my mouth. I switched to a giddy grin and shoved the door shut against suicidal snowflakes. Cowbells dangling from the door latch clonked, buying me time to formulate a sparkling reply.

“Yes,” I said.

Hardly scintillating.

“That’s me!” I added. “It’s an honor to meet you, Ms. Marin.”

I cringed. I’d gone too gushy. According to my grandmother, Morgan Marin wished to be treated like any other small-town neighbor. Essentially, she was. Unlike many of the vacation-mansion set who jetted in for weekend getaways in our remote mountain valley, Morgan had settled in Last Word permanently.

Morgan brushed snow from a long emerald coat cut like a cloak. “Please, call me Morgan, and the honor is mine. Your darling grandmother told me all about you. Traveling the world from Torquay to Tokyo on literary jobs? A Christie giving tours of Agatha Christie’s hometown?”

I bit back my usual disclaimer. If Morgan had chatted with Gram, then she truly would know all about me. My resume, my favorite books, those wince-worthy cute grandkid tales grandmothers love to overshare. Morgan would also know that, sadly, we Last Word Christies had yet to uncover a genealogical link to our favorite mystery author. That didn’t stop us from loving Dame Agatha like family.

“You’ve returned to run the Chalet with your brilliant sister?” Morgan patted her miraculously immaculate curls and hat feathers. “The era of the Christie sisters, how grand!”

My cheeks flared.

“It’s my dream job,” I said. Trite but oh so true. I’d had some great gigs since leaving home straight after high school. Like managing a beachside bookshop on a South Pacific resort island and leading tours of Agatha Christie’s stomping grounds, Torquay. Most recently (and far less fun), I’d served as a private librarian for a persnickety antiquarian book collector in London.

It was there, feather duster aimed at a leatherbound Sherlock Holmes, that I’d gotten the call. Mom, informing me that she and Dad wanted to retire early and set off on their own book-inspired travels. They hoped to hand over the Book Chalet to a fifth generation of family caretakers: my older sister, Meg, and me.

“Only if you really, truly want,” Mom had stressed.

If I really, truly wanted?

After the world’s tumultuous years, I was more than ready to come home. I yearned to savor time with Gram and my niece, who’d somehow metamorphosized into a teenager in my absence. Most of all, I really, truly wanted to work with my big sis in my favorite bookshop in the world.

I’d been home for about three weeks now and was still pinching myself silly.

Morgan unbuttoned her voluminous coat. Layers of flapper silk glistened under lasso-length strings of dusky pearls.

“Amazing outfit,” I said. Here I’d been feeling pretty put-together in my nice jeans, cable-knit sweater, and on-time arrival via the best commute in town, down the steep stairs from the loft above the shop.

Morgan shimmied, silk and feathers jitterbugging. “Can you guess who I am?”

I could. I’d bet my freshly minted library card that Morgan was the star of the day’s book, The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie. “Emily Trefusis.”

“Yes! Emily, amateur sleuth, at your service! Now, where is Ms. Ridge? Has she started yet? I brought props.”

Ms. Ridge, our indispensable shop assistant, organized Mountains of Mystery. I hadn’t been home for a meeting in years, but I knew Ms. Ridge operated with the precision of a punctilious typesetter. At exactly eight o’clock, she’d sent me to the lobby to watch for stragglers. In deference to the storm, she was allowing five extra minutes for arrival.

“She’s in the Reading Lounge,” I said. “She’ll be starting soon.”

She’d be counting down the seconds until launch.

Morgan frowned at the door, a furry boot tapping like an agitated yeti.

On cue, the door whipped open. A young woman stomped inside. Her shoulder dipped under a bag the size of carry-on luggage. She wore a scarf so elaborately knotted it could rig a schooner, along with a look of harassed ennui I recognized from her rare appearances on Shelf Indulgence.

“There you are, Renée-Claude, finally!” Morgan fussed at her assistant. “Hurry now. We can’t miss the murder.”

I checked that the door was unlocked for any members still trekking through the wintry wonderland. Then I trotted after Morgan and Renée-Claude, heedlessly thinking that I didn’t want to miss the murder either.

At the entrance to the Reading Lounge, I paused the way I might for a sublime work of art or stunning vista. Bookshops in general had that effect on me. The lounge was particularly special. It was a sanctuary, a refuge for readers.

A bookshelf arched around the opening, filled with covers the colors of a muted rainbow. Light beckoned from the far wall of windows. Pine logs crackled in a river-rock fireplace, its chimney flanked by bookshelves rising to meet soaring beams and trusses.

I stepped inside. Ten hardy readers sat in a wobbly oval of armchairs. Earlier, two members told me they’d snowshoed in. Now, that was book-club commitment. Morgan and Renée-Claude would have braved the slick hairpin road down. Most members, however, likely took the serene route, the gondola line that glided between our mountainside hamlet and the larger base village down below. The best commute around, after mine.

Ms. Ridge held up a book. She sat upright, her spine as straight as her blunt-cut salt-and-pepper bob.

“The Sittaford Mystery,” she said.

Good. I hadn’t missed anything. I tiptoed toward my seat between Gram and Meg but found it taken.

The fluffy occupier, Agatha C. (as in “Cat”) Christie, slit open a blue eye, assessed me, and slid the eyelid shut.

Pretending to sleep?

My new roommate was too adorable to begrudge, even if last night she’d purred into my eardrum and kneaded my scalp with the aim of overtaking my pillow. She’d succeeded, but I could get my cuddling revenge.

I scooped up the long-haired Siamese and sat, easing Agatha onto my lap.

The queen of the Book Chalet did all things on her own terms. Agatha rose, treated me to her signature ornery frown, and hopped over onto a dozing Gram. Gram startled, wrapped her hands around Agatha, and they both closed their eyes again.

I shared a grin with Meg. We’d been doing that a lot lately, delighted to be reunited.

Ms. Ridge held up another edition. “The story was first published in the United States under the title The Murder at Hazelmoor.”

This dust jacket featured a manor alone on a snowy moor. I glanced outside. Snowflakes pirouetted over the meadow and cloaked the distant mountains. With the crackling fire and snowy landscape, I could easily imagine us transported to Hazelmoor.

At Ms. Ridge’s prompt, the book clubbers debated title preferences. Sittaford or Hazelmoor?

Piper Tuttle, a local society reporter and gossip maven, had a firm opinion. “The murder title. Readers love murder. It makes them happy to be alive.”

I could see that. Kind of . . .

Emmet Jackson pensively stroked his handlebar mustache. If pressed, modest Emmet described himself as one of Last Word’s top-100 cowboy poets. Counting Emmet, I knew of two, yet I preferred his image. Droves of lyrical cowpokes reciting sonnets to their herds.

Emmet also favored the Hazelmoor title, but for a different reason. “Sounds lonesome. A good place to wander and ponder.”

Ms. Ridge nudged the discussion onward. “Let’s talk about our sleuth, Emily Trefusis. How do you think she compares to Agatha Christie’s more well-known sleuths, Poirot and Miss Mar—”

“Ohh, ohh!” Morgan waggled her arm like a schoolkid with the A+ answer.

“Yes?” Ms. Ridge said.

Morgan bestowed her glow on Ms. Ridge. “My dear Ms. Ridge, first let me compliment you. You’ve arranged an absolutely perfect day for murder. How do you do it?”

Emmet Jackson belly-laughed.

Piper’s eyes glittered, and I wondered if she was here for the book or the bookish celebrity.

“Thank you, Ms. Marin,” said Ms. Ridge with her usual polite formality.

Ms. Ridge had a first name. Katherine. I’d never felt right addressing her by it. Even when we’d first met—way back when I was in college—I’d had to practically beg her to call me Ellie.

Meg and I agreed: Ms. Ridge could time-travel to St. Mary Mead in Miss Marple’s era. She’d fit right in as the competent village woman known for her punctuality, efficiency, and tea cakes. Not that Meg or I wanted Ms. Ridge to go anywhere in time or place. We needed her. With Mom and Dad off globetrotting, Ms. Ridge was our encyclopedia of all things Book Chalet.

Ms. Ridge smiled thinly. “You’re also, ah, very well attired for our discussion of Emily Trefusis, Ms. Marin. Now, to return to . . .”

But Morgan wasn’t done.

She stood, shimmied, and beamed at each book clubber before returning to Ms. Ridge. “As you so wisely noticed, Ms. Ridge, Emily has inspired me. She gave me the best idea! Renée-Claude, show them.”

With a sigh, Renée-Claude rose and held the massive bag aloft.

“We can re-create the séance!” Morgan declared. “I didn’t have a tippy table like they used in the book, but I did rustle up an Ouija board.”

“Rustling,” Emmet chuckled. “Nice . . .”

Morgan dubbed him a “doll.”

Emmet reddened to the tips of his prominent ears.

Was Emmet a fellow Shelf Indulgence fan? Or was he smitten? Cowboy poets were romantics. Hopeless romantics, I thought, if as bashful and blushing as Emmet.

Morgan bubbled on. “This way, we can all inhabit the characters, examine their fears, their motivations . . .”

Heads bobbed. Emmet was already merging side tables for the Ouija board. Even Gram and Agatha fluttered awake.

I looked to Meg, raising my eyebrows in a silent question. Was this how book club worked?

“Let’s see how it goes,” she whispered.

Meg had told me about Morgan too. More like warned me. Morgan was a star, Meg had said. A mega-influencer.

I knew that.

Morgan could bestow bountiful publicity on the Book Chalet with a social-media post. Or devastate us with a single negative word.

Meaning we sure shouldn’t squelch Morgan’s séance.

“It’ll be fun!” Morgan clapped her hands.

“Fun?” Ms. Ridge repeated weakly.

“Great fun,” Morgan insisted. “I promise, Ms. Ridge, we won’t re-create the actual murder. Although, you did order up the perfect setting.” She added in ominous delight, “Who knows what will happen . . .”

Book clubbers laughed along with her.

I didn’t join in. I ached for Ms. Ridge. Her chin dipped to her notes as her careful schedule veered off course.

I felt something else too. In the warm, snow-bright lounge, a chill tiptoed up my spine.

Absurd, I assured myself. Yes, the wintry scene resembled our book, but little Last Word was no setting for cold-hearted crime.

CHAPTER 2

The Stranger Visits

“Eyes shut, everyone.” Morgan’s voice bounced to the rafters and back. “Minds honed. Focus. Concentrate.”

She made spirit summoning sound like a spin class.

I squeezed my eyes shut. As in spin class (the few I’d grudgingly attended), I sure didn’t want to be singled out for lack of effort.

“Silence,” Morgan commanded. “Strong silence. Shhh . . .”

Silence only made sounds louder. Agatha and Gram softly snored. Meg was restless, I guessed. Her corduroys swished as she crossed and recrossed her legs. The fire wheezed. Paper rustled. Wind moaned in the eaves.

I forced myself to sit still despite tickles at my temples. Before I left London, my stylist had chopped my wavy hair to shoulder-length layers and a “face-framing fringe.” In dry mountain air, fringe tended to turn into face-tormenting static. I momentarily obsessed—again—about whether to grow out my bangs, then chided myself. Focus, Ellie. Summon!

But . . . summon whom? In all her instructions, Morgan had failed to specify.

I defaulted to the obvious, the spirit I’d most like to meet: Agatha Christie. I imagined her in sturdy middle-age, tweed-clad and strolling our aisles. Perhaps she already had visited in spirit. Once, in a Poirot mystery, she’d written the perfect description of the Book Chalet.

I attempted to summon her words. The books owned the shop rather than the other way around? Books, left to multiply and run wild?

Later, I’d track down the exact quote. Emmet would enjoy the image of great milling herds of books.

Appropriately, cowbells roused me from my musings.

Morgan huffed. Eyes popped open.

“I’ll check,” I offered, scooting my seat back.

Morgan abandoned silence. Her voice, deep with melodrama, wavered after me.

“Spirit, speak. Speak! We feel your presence . . . Become manifest!”

Morgan really was a great actor, I thought, hurrying through the shop. I did feel a presence, an unsettled air. Yet when I reached the lobby, I saw no one, ghostly or otherwise.

“Hello?” I called. “Is anyone here?”

Someone had come inside. Zigzags of tread-packed snow speckled the mat. I turned in a slow circle, scanning the lobby. Books looked back from neat stacks on the display tables. No one sat in the club chairs tucked in the corner or browsed the wall of new-release mysteries.

The lobby, however, was just the tip of the Book Chalet. Previous family caretakers hadn’t simply allowed our books to multiply. They’d actively encouraged their spread, squeezing in aisles wherever they could. Some stopped in dead ends, others in unexpected nooks. All were perfect for discovering new reads and getting lost in a book.

As well as actually lost. The visitor might have taken a wrong turn.

A floorboard creaked back in the shelves.

Whoops rose from the lounge.

Morgan’s voice rang above the others. “D! Spirit, tell us the next letter.”

They fell silent, waiting for a sign. I listened too.

Creak. A pause. Creak, creak.

Slow footsteps.

I tiptoed toward the dark aisles, then stopped short. I read mysteries. I would not be one of those ill-fated characters who skips off to dark spaces to check on bumps and thumps.

I returned to the entry and flicked on every overhead light.

Books lit up before me, but there were still those blind corners. Now that I’d conjured the thought of someone—something—lurking, the image stuck. An active imagination was an occupational hazard of a life with books.

“E! The spirit talks,” Morgan exclaimed. “D. E . . .”

I could guess where she and the spirit were heading.

I started with history and regional nonfiction. Enticing titles tempted me to browse. I resisted, peeking around corners and into dead ends. No one appeared, but someone had come before me. I didn’t have to be Miss Marple to spot more rectangles of boot-packed snow.

Annoyance overtook trepidation. Why not simply answer?

Unless they hadn’t heard. Most likely it was an innocent misunderstanding and an entirely innocent visitor.

However, when I turned a corner and bumped into a figure, I nearly jumped out of my slip-on sneakers.

“Ms. Ridge!” I slapped a hand to my heart. “Sorry! I . . .” How to explain I’d talked myself into a fright?

Ms. Ridge hadn’t flinched, and she balanced a coffeepot on a silver tray. “Is something wrong, Ellie?”

“No, no. I thought someone was in the shop. It’s nothing.”

Blunt bangs covered Ms. Ridge’s forehead to her eyebrows. I could still detect fretful furrows.

“I loved your introduction and the different covers,” I said, hoping to cheer her up. “The title discussion was great too. So much fun!”

She shot a grim glance back toward the lounge.

A cheer rose.

“A!” Emmet bellowed. “D. E. A!”

“Not as fun as that, I’m afraid,” Ms. Ridge said.

“Even more so, truly.” I meant it. A parlor game was nothing compared to the tricks, twists, and turns of Agatha Christie. “I hope we get to your other discussion points. What’s next on your list?”

“Red herrings?”

“Love them!” I over-enthused.

“I do too,” Ms. Ridge murmured. Chin dipped, she turned on her sensible soles and headed toward the storeroom and its fickle old twenty-cup coffeemaker.

I hurried on with my search until a strange sound stopped me. Rather, a lack of sound.

Morgan had just announced another letter, D. The final piece in the word I’d been totally expecting: D. E. A. D.

No cheer rose. No excited clapping, crowing, or chanting.

The lounge had gone deadly silent.

I noticed Gram first. She and Agatha still snoozed, models of doing what they wanted. The other book clubbers sat tight as teeth around the Ouija board. They stared at a man turned to the wall of windows.

His hands disappeared into the pockets of a wool overcoat, oversized and out of place in its businessman cut and shoulder pads straight from the ’80s. Snow-white hair tufted. A thin satchel in faded black dangled from his right side.

He wasn’t doing anything, just standing. Yet somehow his stillness set me on edge.

Meg scooted back from the armchair circle and approached the visitor. “Hello, sir?”

Her move snapped me from spectator mode. I hurried to join my sister.

To my relief, the man turned and smiled. At least I thought it was a smile. Thin lips stretched across a pale face.

“That view,” he said.

I relaxed even more. Just another visitor mesmerized by our wall of glass.

“Even better when we can see the mountains,” Meg said. “I’m sorry, sir. We’re not open yet.”

His face reminded me of a prematurely aged child. Round cherub cheeks, etched with lines too deep and numerous for an age I guessed to be fifties or sixties.

Caught staring, most members pretended to study their books. Morgan didn’t bother. She leaned back with the air of a disdainful queen. Legs crossed. Fingernails tapping on red velvet armrests.

She was ticked, I guessed. He’d disrupted her grand finale.

“Apologies,” he said, neither sounding sorry nor making a move to leave.

“Are you looking for something?” I asked tentatively. “A book?”

The smile stretched thinner. “I am looking. I lost something important.”

He turned back to the windows.

Morgan removed her hat and rearranged its feathers as if that task was ever more fascinating than our visitor. Efficiently, she turned one tuft into two, like an iridescent horned owl.

The other members—except for snoozing Gram—dropped their reading ruses and stared once again. We were all mystery fans. We wanted to know. What was he seeking? What had he lost?

I broke first and asked.

“Sadly, a treasure that appears to be absent.” He kept his stare fixed out the windows.

No one spoke for uncomfortable minutes.

Emmet broke the silent standoff with a cowboy drawl. “Well, now, partner. If that’s the case, I’d say it’s time for you to saddle up and mosey on out.”

He didn’t move.

“Mosey along, then,” Emmet repeated and made to get up. Chair legs scraped against floorboards. A book fell with a slap, and flustered apologies ensued.

My chest tightened.

I glanced at Meg. My big sister pushed back her glasses, new frames she’d chosen for their descriptor: bookish. The frame designers had envisioned “bookish” as the mahogany of vintage leather covers, flecked with golds evocative of gilt fore-edges and aged pages. The colors highlighted Meg’s hazel eyes and chestnut hair, traits we’d both inherited from Mom. The overall feel—serious mixed with fun, artsy, and all-around fabulous—perfectly captured both “bookish” and my big sister.

At the moment, Meg was leaning into serious.

“Sir,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “This is a private gathering.”

I drew a breath and willed him to leave.

To my surprise, he did. The stranger turned and actually moseyed, pausing to peer down each aisle he passed.

Meg and I followed.

My sister remained seriously silent.

I succumbed to a bad habit when nervous. Chirpy chatter. “We open at ten. We offer hot cocoa at our Coffee Cantina. Coffee too, of course, and books. Lots of books. Obviously. Mysteries especially. We’re known for mysteries.”

No response until he reached the door.

“I’ll be back then. I’m looking forward to it.”

I wasn’t.

The door shut behind him as laughter sailed in from the lounge.

“M,” Morgan sang out.

Meg and I leaned over the window display, watching as the man slowly ambled down Upper Main.

Behind us, the spelling spirit picked up speed.

“A,” Morgan cried and then a moment later, a chorus of voices, “N! Man!”

Dead man.

Good, I thought. The spirit had spelled. Maybe now Ms. Ridge could serve up her red herrings. Which made me realize—Ms. Ridge hadn’t been in the circle of readers.

“Where’s Ms. Ridge?” I scanned the lobby again.

Meg did the same. “Didn’t she go to make coffee?”

We headed for the storeroom. The carafe sat by the sink, empty.

No fresh coffee.

No Ms. Ridge.

“Something feels wrong . . .” I waited for Meg to do that comforting big-sister thing and convince me otherwise.

She didn’t. Behind her bookish frames, Meg’s serious expression took on a worried frown.