The Day of the Lie

Начало книги

An autumn sun lit the beads of dew upon the pink tiles of Larkwood Priory, the seventeenth-century manor that had once belonged to a king’s trumpeter. For services rendered — belting out pomp for the Reformation — he’d been given a Benedictine monastery in Suffolk which he’d briskly demolished to the benefit of the local building trade, holding back enough stone and timber to erect a residence of more secular appeal. All that remained of the former abbey was a line of soaring, broken arches, the white limestone speckled with lichen and charged with the memory of cowled voices that had sung while the world lay sleeping.

With a troubled humph, Father Anselm Duffy, jazzman, beekeeper and brooder upon life’s conundrums, put the phone down and turned away from the calefactory window that faced the glistening, tangled rooftops.

‘You want a lawyer?’ he complained, entering the cloister, still hearing his friend’s anxious tone.

Читать дальше →