ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The whole gang – Patrick Riley, Missy Lyda, Eric Frisch, Mary Anne Bigane and Joe Bigane – slogged through the early drafts of this one, criticizing, counseling, supporting. As always, I’m grateful.

Thanks, too, to the ever-patient Sara Porter of Severn House for managing this book, and me, with grace and aplomb.

First, and last, thank you, Susan. Again. For it all.


The gold Rolex Day-Date on his wrist had cost eleven thousand dollars. It was still keeping perfect time, but that would be expected. It was water resistant to a depth far greater than the shallows at the marsh end of the small lake. And it had been engineered to run on the faintest of movements: the gentle lapping of the water through the rushes was more than enough to engage the self-winding mechanism. It was a gentleman’s wristwatch, designed for a man who need make only subtle gestures – a wealthy man, a man of nuance.

He had dressed well. His gray gabardine trousers were of the finest wool, light for the warming spring. His white shirt was cut to precise specification, sent over from Jermyn Street in London. His shoes were English as well, lace-up brogues polished by a houseman to a high gloss.

His attire had not fared as well as the wristwatch. The press had gone from the trousers and soft, milky flesh protruded where the water reeds had abraded the wool. The shirt was now a putrid green, mucked by the moss at the shore. And the shoes had puckered and blistered, since even the finest of leathers, no matter how well oiled, are not meant to withstand even partial submersion.

His face, of course, had suffered the worst of it. The part of the forehead closest to the bullet hole had gone, nibbled away in tiny bites by the sunny fish and microscopic urchins that worked the shore of the small lake.

His eyes, though, still commanded. They remained as clear and direct as they’d been in life, demanding that notice be taken, witness be made, to the truth of the horror they had seen.

Загрузка...