Mrs. Grenville—the former Star Macklin—was an attractive blond woman about thirty-five years old who was restless by nature. She had married Chet at twenty-two when he was fifty. She met a man at her tennis club during the first year of their marriage, and had met many more in many places since then. If Chet suspected, he had paid no attention, but a short time ago Star had announced that she was divorcing him and mentioned that she was expecting to take with her half of the money he’d made in a lifetime in the notions market. He had called his personal attorney and asked him to recommend a divorce specialist. His attorney had recommended Alan Becker. Chet had asked, “Is he a good lawyer?” and his attorney said, “You didn’t ask for a lawyer. You asked for a divorce specialist.”

Becker had resolved their marital differences promptly and efficiently with a twelve-gauge Remington pump shotgun. What he had not noticed when he’d gone to visit Star was that Star had a visitor that afternoon, because the visitor’s car was parked out of sight in the section of the horse barn where the caretakers often parked stake trucks to unload hay. When she came down to answer the front door, the visitor, a young waiter named Darryl Mosher, was upstairs in the master bedroom. He had looked out the window and seen Becker doing his job. He’d made a great witness in Becker’s murder-for-hire trial.

Today’s job showed that Becker had emerged from prison a changed man. He no longer used a shotgun, as he had in his early jobs. Now he carried a .38 revolver. He had come to this change after trying out a .45 Colt Commander for one of his first jobs after prison and having to crawl around afterward searching for the ejected casings. The .38 was not as powerful as the .45, and its power was a tap compared with that of a shotgun blast at four feet, but so far everyone he’d shot was dead, the revolver didn’t eject any brass, and that was sufficient.

The woman he was going to see today was his favorite kind. Her husband was having an affair with a replacement for her that she didn’t know about, but the husband had sufficient foresight and knowledge of his wife to know that she would be angry when she found out. He knew that when she was angry, she could be vengeful and punitive. He was avoiding all that unpleasantness by hiring Becker early. She would not ruin her last moments with a lot of amateurish attempts to hide, run, call for help, or fight back. That would also make Becker’s day easier. She would die happy, secure in the belief that her husband still loved her, appreciated all her efforts and virtues, and wanted to stay with her until they both died of congestive heart failure at ninety-two.