47
He didn’t remember getting back to the guesthouse, only that it was morning and he was slumped against the wall on Mrs. Greyson’s back veranda, clutching an empty bottle of whisky he had taken from her cabinet. The sun was rising over the trees at the end of her garden, and birds were singing from the rooftop.
He sat up, his vision blurring as his stomach lurched. He reached out, and found Mrs. Greyson’s antique cast iron clock on the veranda beside him, the time saying a little after six thirty.
It was an effort to get up. It was an effort to get back through the kitchen, to replace the clock on the mantle in the exact same place and to hide the bottle behind a couple of others. It was even an effort to close the front door he had left wide open, at the same moment as a voice came f
