Again, I love you, and I hope you never have to read thisletter.

Your adoring,

Swann.'

'Some farewell note,' Harry commented when he'dread it through twice. He folded it up and passed itback to the widow.

'I'd like you to stay with him,' she said. 'Corpse-sit,if you will. Just until all the legal formalities are dealtwith and I can make arrangements for his cremation. Itshouldn't take them long. I've got a lawyer working onit now.'

'Again: why me?'

She avoided his gaze. 'As he says in the letter, he wasnever superstitious. But I am. I believe in omens. Andthere was an odd atmosphere about the place in the daysbefore he died. As if we were watched.'

'You think he was murdered?'

She mused on this, then said: 'I don't believe it wasan accident.'

'These enemies he talks about..."

'He was a great man. Much envied.'

'Professional jealousy? Is that a motive for murder?'

'Anything can be a motive, can't it?' she said.'People get killed for the colour of their eyes, don'tthey?'

Harry was impressed. It had taken him twenty yearsto learn how arbitrary things were. She spoke it asconventional wisdom.

'Where is your husband?' he asked her.

'Upstairs,' she said. 'I had the body brought backhere, where I could look after him. I can't pretend Iunderstand what's going on, but I'm not going to riskignoring his instructions.'

Harry nodded.

'Swann was my life,' she added softly, apropos ofnothing; and everything.

She took him upstairs. The perfume that had methim at the door intensified. The master bedroom hadbeen turned into a Chapel of Rest, knee-deep in spraysand wreaths of every shape and variety; their mingledscents verged on the hallucinogenic. In the midst ofthis abundance, the casket - an elaborate affair in blackand silver - was mounted on trestles. The upper half