The Shivering Sands

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I am wondering where I should begin my story. Should it be on the day when I saw Napier and Edith being married in the little church at Lovat Mill? Or when I was sitting in the train starting out on my journey to discover the truth behind the disappearance of my sister Roma? So much of importance happened before either of these significant events; yet perhaps I should choose the second alternative because it was then that I became inescapably involved.

Roma—my practical, reliable sister—had disappeared. There had been enquiries; there had been theories; but no indication of where she had gone had been revealed. I believed the solution to the mystery was to be found where she had last been seen; and I was determined to discover what had happened to her. My concern for Roma was helping me over a difficult period of my life, for sitting in that train was a lonely and bereaved woman—brokenhearted, I should have said had I been a sentimentalist, which I was not. Indeed, I was a cynic—so I assured myself. Life with Pietro had made me so. Now here I was without Pietro, like a piece of driftwood—lost and aimless—and with only the smallest of incomes which it was imperative to augment by some means, when this opportunity was offered to me by what appeared to be the benign hand of fate.

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