An Untimely Frost by Penny Richards

broad front steps and picked her way through the side lawn and around the house, tugging her skirt free of the thorny rose brambles and hoisting it high to step over fallen limbs, some as thick as her thighs. At the center of the garden stood a bronze fountain, a life-size figure of a woman holding an urn that once trickled water into the pool below. The statuary was dusted with a film of snow, scaly with lichens, and come summer it would be slick with moss. The urn held the remnants of a bird’s nest.
    The Grecian-style statue was nude but for an intricate rose vine that swirled strategically over her breasts and across her most private places. While Lilly was impressed with the beauty of the piece, she felt it a strange choice for a minister’s home and found herself wondering if it had come with the house or if the sculpture had been an addition of the Purcells.
    Near the edge of the clearing at the back of the house, a low iron fence surrounded what must have been the family burial plot. She would have a look at it before she left. Passing through what was once no doubt an herb garden, she saw that the kitchen door stood ajar. Her pulse skittered and she paused, feeling for the gun in her pocket. Then she noticed that the aperture was filled with undisturbed leaves. The door had probably stood open for years. Testing the rotting floorboards nearest the door, she leaped over them into the Purcells’ kitchen.
    Inside, she pulled off her gloves, shook the snow from her clothing, and threw back the hood of her cape. A copper kettle stood on the wood-burning cook stove. Open shelving held sturdy crockery and an assortment of cooking pots, all covered with twenty years of dust. A pair of corroded scissors lay near a porcelain washbasin edged in gold and adorned with a pretty floral pattern. There was little doubt it was the very one Billy Bishop had seen as a boy. A flakey residue caked the bottom.
    Next to the basin lay the yellowed remnants of a muslin towel with strips torn from one edge. A delicate china cup with ancient dregs of coffee or tea scaling the bottom sat next to a matching dessert plate. Any crumbs left there had long ago become a meal for the mice that had left behind their own contribution to the neglect of the house, testimony to the belief that the Purcells had left in a hurry—one step ahead of the law.
    She shivered, unable to rid herself of the feeling that she was trespassing into the Purcell home and not a house they had abandoned with so little care. She made her way to the hallway and began her inspection of the lower floor. Even in a state of decline, the former glory of the parlor was easy to see. Magnificent. Yet it all seemed . . . too much.
    Sun-faded drapes of crimson brocade hung in dry-rotted tatters. A tea cart held a crystal vase with a droopy bouquet of dried and dusty roses that sat next to a silver coffee service that was black with tarnish. Charred wood and ashes of a long-dead fire littered the fireplace, scattered about by tiny mouse feet. An exquisitely carved clock stood on the marble mantel, flanked by a pair of porcelain pheasants. Behind it hung a large landscape in the style of Landseer. The paint and gilt of the ornate gold leaf of the frame had begun to flake in the extremes of heat and cold that were slowly destroying the house and its contents. Dusty lace-edged silk antimacassars with delicate floral embroidery protected the backs and arms of the davenport that was upholstered in faded striped brocade.
    An open Bible lay on a dainty table next to a gold damask wingback chair placed near the fireplace. Curious about what the reverend or his wife had been reading before they’d left in such a hurry, Lilly bent to blow away the dust and went into a paroxysm of sneezing. She wiped at her watering eyes with her fingertips and then swiped them down the side of her skirt.
    One of the Purcells had been reading Psalms. There were five selections on the facing pages,