Saturday, June twelfth, with its curtain waiting to rise on the slow, perilous after-drama which inescapably crouches on the heels of a death by violence, broke as a scorcher.
Margot awoke to the humid discomfort of a sleep that had been fitful and had brought her no rest. The morning was an airless furnace, while the cheery sunshine crashing in through her bedroom windows seemed directly to offer itself as a parboiled insult. No wonder, she thought, that the ladies of the Southland paced their movements to the tempo of an underdone minuet.
As she bathed and dressed she tried to gather together her moist wool wits in order to face the day with a semblance of intelligence. The tableau of Francine and Henry clinging to each other down on the lawn last Thursday night had never left her. Wit
