A Masterly Murder

Начало книги

A SILVER MOON SLANTED ITS BRIGHTNESS INTO THE muddy streets of the Fen-edge town. The clear weather had brought a biting cold, so that even huddled inside his thick warm cloak, Master Wilson of Michaelhouse shivered, and his fingers and toes were so chilled that he could barely feel them. There was a dusting of frost over the rutted filth of the High Street, and the numerous potholes were glazed with a crust of ice, cunningly concealing the slushy mess of raw sewage and rubbish that waited to ooze around carelessly placed feet.

Usually, so late in the evening, the town would be still, the silence broken only by the occasional bark of a dog or the footsteps of the night-watch as they patrolled the town. But, that January, England was in the grip of a terrible disease that had rolled relentlessly across Europe, killing old and young, rich and poor, and the good citizens with the bad. The agonised gasps of the dying and the wails of the bereaved shattered the peace, and in many houses lights burned in the chambers where the sick lay.

Читать дальше →