“… should have been struck down in the prime of life,” Clancy was intoning, “by a cerebral hemorrhage-” He broke off and looked at Miss Somers, who had stopped writing and sat motionless with her pencil suspended over the sheaf of paper on her knee. “What’s the matter?”

Miss Somers seemed not to have heard him, and began writing again. “… in the prime of life…” she murmured, scoring the words laboriously into the cheap gray paper.

“What am I supposed to say?” Clancy demanded. “That the boss blew his brains out?”

“… by a cer-e-bral hem-orrh-age…”

“All right, all right, cut that.” Clancy had been pleased with himself for having hit on such an acceptable-sounding cause of death. It had been a kind of hemorrhage, had it not? There was bound to have been plenty of blood, anyway, seeing it was a shotgun Jewell had used on himself. The Clarion would not say it was suicide, nor would any of its rivals; suicides never got reported in the press-it was an unspoken convention, to spare the feelings of the relatives and make sure the insurance companies would not seize on it as an excuse to renege on paying out to the family. All the same, Clancy thought, better not to print an outright lie. It would get around soon enough that the boss had topped himself-Jesus, there was an apt phrase!-no matter what convenient lies were told. “Just say at the tragically early age of forty-five and at the pinnacle of his professional career and leave it at that.”

He thrust his hands into his pockets and crossed clatteringly to the window and stood looking down at the river. Did no one ever clean this glass? He was hardly able to see out. Everything was shimmering in the heat out there and he could almost taste the cindery dust in the air, and the river had a bilious stink that no thickness of grimed glass could shut out. “Read it over to me so far,” he growled. He had been on fine form on the course today, with three bogeys and a birdie at the ninth.