Murder, She Wrote: The Maine
Donald Bain, Jessica Fletcher

Excerpt

I stepped down the stairs and pushed on the door. Why did this feel familiar? I put my shoulder to the wood, pressed as hard as I could, and managed to gain a few inches more, but not enough for easy access. Could I squeeze through the narrow opening? I pushed my arm and shoulder through first, forced my knee in, then the hip. My head was last and there was a panicky moment when I thought I might get stuck there permanently, with my body half in the cabin and my head wedged between the frame and the door.

Once inside, I groped along the wall for a light switch but found none. After the brilliant sunshine of the deck above, it took more than a moment before my eyes became accustomed to the dim light in the small, fusty cabin. But once they had, I was not happy with what I saw. The long dark shape I’d made out peering through the cabin portholes from above was now discernable. A man was lying diagonally across the berth that filled the triangular space of the small cabin. His head was thrown back, and his mouth gaped open; a trickle of blood had dribbled from the corner of his mouth down his cheek and pooled in the creases of his neck. He was dead. Very dead…