Pieces Of Eight

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Once again I thank the expert professionals whose advice and guidance has made this a better book than ever an author could produce by himself: my editors Julia Wisdom and Anne O'Brien, and my agent Antony Topping.

The corpse lay in a lake of blood that drenched its pious black coat, its lank white hair, and the clerical bands that descended from its comprehensively slit throat where bone gleamed from the bottom of a tremendous slash. The mutilating fury of repeated knife strokes had rendered the face unrecognisable, such that the victim's identity was given only by his clothes and the wide-gaping mouth full of long brown teeth that were one reason — though not the only one — that he'd so seldom smiled in life.

"Good God!" said Captain Peter Garland. "Cover him up, and get the women out of here!" He looked to Mr Bains, the house steward, and then to the two menservants, and finally to the herd of maids and cooks peering in horror through the chapel door. But none of them moved.

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