CHAPTER 9Whether the old wives’ tale of a drowning man’s life flashing before him in an instantaneous kaleidoscope as death closes in is true, I wouldn’t know. I do know, however, that with death already in possession of that silent room, every detail of the last three days flashed before me with such vivid clarity and intensity that I might have been actually living it all over again.—My first talk with Phyllis, the interlude in the courtyard at the Dock Street Theatre, Jennifer and her mother’s morning call at the Villa Margherita; Strawberry Hill, and the dinner that night at Darien; Phyllis that afternoon at the Villa, and all my seesawing fears, and Felice’s hysterical outburst, and supper…and now this.
Every word they’d said came back to me with new and sharpened significance. “I lo
