The bright-yellow plane circled lazily upwards into the darkening sky, leaving Thomas and me standing beside our luggage on the shore of the frozen lake. I was glad to be out of the plane and on the ground. Snow was moving in fast.

"I hear snowmobiles, I think," Thomas said, as he turned towards the lodge. Thomas had a business meeting at this remote lake on the edge of Haliburton County and I had come along to spend a little time with him. The luggage loaded into the trailer behind one of the snowmobiles and helmets firmly on our heads, we began our disappointingly sedate trip up the hill to the cabin, as our host had called it.

A wide screened veranda wrapped around three sides of the two-story log 'cabin'. Ten bedrooms at least, I thought.

"Have the other guests arrived?" I asked one of the drivers, as he opened the massive oak front door.

"Yes, ma'am. You're the last, and just in time too. Weather's coming in." The first few flakes of the approaching storm swirled through the doorway with us. Beyond the door, the room, easily thirty by fifty feet, with walls constructed of wide old logs, rose at least ten feet to a beamed ceiling. Scattered rugs, mostly brightly-coloured orientals, and comfortably shabby, overstuffed furniture warmed up all that exposed wood. Fires burned at either end of the huge room.

"Mr. Beauchamp, Dr. McPhail, welcome to Inverness." The man holding out his hand in greeting was David McKnight, the manager of the lodge.

"We've taken your luggage up to your rooms. Would you like to meet everyone, or go ahead upstairs?" he asked as he took our coats.

"Let's say hello before we go up, Anne," Thomas suggested. Thomas hadn't said much about the other people who were going to be at the lodge. I knew that one of them, Michael Barrington, had been a business rival for some time. Their host, Cooper Thwaite, headed an international conglomerate and wanted to involve either Thomas or Barrington, or perhaps both in a new enterprise. Barrington's son and daughter and their spouses had come for the weekend as well but were out cross-country skiing.

Cooper Thwaite was the quintessential Marlboro man, tall, weather-beaten with chiselled, handsome features and beautifully styled white hair. Only long fleshy ears and a gap between his front teeth marred the overall effect. His attractive wife, number two or three, judging by her age, was called Melinda.

Short, heavy Royce Barrington, on the other hand, wouldn't have been out of place in a small-town Rotary meeting. He smiled all over his round face when he was introduced. Andrea Barrington was and would remain wife number one, I thought. She looked the sort of content, comfortable woman a man like Barrington would prefer.

"Thomas, I'm so glad you could bring Dr. McPhail. Welcome to Inverness, my dear," Thwaite went on, turning to me. He held my hand a few seconds longer than custom demanded, although, as I'm too short for glamour, and on the wrong side of forty, I suspected the handholding of being his habit with women.

The Barrington children came in and were introduced, all in their mid-twenties, cheerful and rosy from their adventures in the snow. I stood back watching the males in the room, including Thomas, circle around Melinda Thwaite. Andrea Barrington walked over and sat down beside me on a long sofa.

"Have you ever met Melinda and Coop before, Anne?"

"No, I haven't," I said.

"I haven't seen you around at any of the functions in the city. Do you live in New York?"

"No, I live part of the time in Toronto and also in a country home in Ontario." I could see her interest in me fading. I supposed she thought she would never have to meet me after this weekend.

"Darling Melinda, surrounded by men as usual. Don't be upset by Thomas, dear; he can't help it. None of them can." She raised her glass of scotch and drained it. Comfortable Mrs. Barrington had had more to drink than was good for her. Her daughter and daughter-in-law, Beth and Karen huddled near the closest fireplace, ignoring their husbands who formed part of the admiring group by Melinda.

Thomas came over to me and suggested we go up to our room and change for dinner.

"What's going on?" I asked when we were alone. "Quite a bit of tension down there."

"Tension? I didn't notice. Coop wanted to talk to me about his plans for the weekend, as far as business is concerned. Who's tense?"

"All the ladies. I do believe they are all a little annoyed with our lovely hostess."

"Melinda? Beautiful as an angel and as thick as she is beautiful. I noticed the lads all gathered round."

"Have you noticed it before, the tension when she's around?"

"All the time, honey, all the time." Thomas laughed as we walked down the stairs.

Dinner went quite well, probably because the food was excellent, the wine plentiful and Mrs. Barrington abstained. I enjoyed her daughter, Beth, a historian who worked for the city of New York, and Beth's husband, Kevin Argyle, a city planner. The Barrington son was in business with his father. His wife, Karen, had worked for a large charity before her marriage, but was "too busy with her social commitments" to continue. She was also a few months pregnant and having a little trouble with the no-drinking rule. She sat next to the host, watched carefully by her mother-in-law across from her.

Melinda's companions were Brad Barrington and Kevin Argyle. If I'd been Andrea Barrington, it would have been my son I watched. He drank heavily and steadily and monopolized Melinda. I wondered if her elderly husband noticed. Karen certainly did.

After dinner Cooper, Thomas, Royce and Brad moved to the other end of the long room and sat around a low table spread with file folders and laptop computers. Perhaps bridge, had been Cooper's suggestion to the rest of us.

I played, but not very well, so left the table to Andrea, Kevin, Beth and Melinda. Karen had disappeared at the first mention of cards.

The evening ended early, for me at least. Thomas' business meeting went on past midnight.

When he came to bed, he curled up against me, snuggling his face in my hair. "Sorry about this evening, dear heart. Coop insisted."

"That's okay. I just looked at their lovely pictures and then came upstairs to read."

Moments later, his breathing smoothed out and he was asleep, but I was wide awake again.

Knowing from long experience that sleep wouldn't come, I slid out of my side of the bed, put on a robe and started out to find the kitchen.

A pale glow from lighting on the stair-risers led the way downstairs. The kitchen lay to the right of the stairs through a heavy pine door. Earlier, I'd noticed that it swung smoothly and easily for the tray-laden server, but when I pushed, it pushed back. Cold wind, strong gusts that swirled snow around the kitchen, piling it into corners, struck me as I forced my way into the kitchen.

Wide double doors led from the kitchen onto a patio that must have been used as a dining area in the summer. I could just see in the glow from the automatic light in the refrigerator's ice dispenser that something fairly large held one of them wide open.

The large object was Cooper, covered with a thin drift of snow, lying in a pool of red, still warm to touch, but definitely dead.

I wondered where that manager went at night. He would be the logical person to take charge, seeing it was the host who had died. I didn't want to be the one to tell Melinda. Then I remembered Thomas.

I pulled open the heavy door, slipped through and let the wind slam it shut again. Better to keep that room as cold as possible for now.

Thomas was snoring gently when I came in, little flutters of breath that sound like a tiny car reving up.

"Thomas," I called as I shook his shoulder.

He was instantly awake, one of those people who has no transition between sleep and awareness.

"What is it? What's the matter," he asked as he sat up and took my hands. "Your hands are freezing and you're shaking."

"I found Cooper's body in the kitchen."

"Heart?"

"No, a blow to the head, from what little I could see. I just made sure he was gone, and then came up to get you. I didn't know where to find that McKnight fellow."

"I think he has rooms in the other wing." Thomas was up and dressed in a sweatshirt and pants by the time I finished giving him all the details of what I had seen. He thought perhaps I wanted to stay in the room, but there was no way I was spending any time alone anywhere in the house except the bathroom, until the cops got there. I was sure Cooper had been murdered.