IT WAS twelve-thirty when Spig left Molly asleep and went quietly downstairs and out into the night. He would have taken the dog, in spite of Miss Fairlie, but she was in Tip’s bed where she was not allowed, wagging her tail, alert with a special knowledge that to-night was different. Tip asleep with his arm around her shaggy ruff. He didn’t take a g*n.
Once he had been at Eden in the dark of a winter’s dawn, but he’d never been there at night before. The late moon through the ragged cumulus cast a filtered glow, bright as hoar frost on the open lawns, intensifying the darkness crouching under the trees, as he left the white bridge at the head of the Cove and came up the turf into the gardens.
Death is a flower that blooms at night. It came into his mind, as if he were in some way himsel
