The corpse had been a man of considerable physical charm. His body lay face down on the gravel drive of Brandgwyn in the small seacoast town of Parnellton. Dusk of a South Carolina evening lingered, hazily exposing a thin feather of smoke from a cigar lying just beyond the reach of limp fingers, and the dusk showed, too, a dark seepage of blood from a throat wound which had stabbed the jugular vein.
This was the evening of Saturday, June twelfth.
