The lounge floor was covered with a thick, figured green carpet. As I surveyed the room, trying to decide where most efficiently to begin my search, I noticed that the pile in front of the little fireplace was brushed back at a different angle than the rest of the rug. That seemed promising. I skirted around the brushed area and began inspecting it with my glass. I found another blond hair. No blood, but a strong smell of cleanser, something like Top Job. The carpet was still faintly damp to my touch, although it had been three days since Phillips’s death. I smelled other sections of the rug, but the odor of cleanser and the damp only came from the section in front of the fireplace.

I pulled myself to my feet. Now the problem was going to be to get the police up here for a more formal search. Their equipment could detect whether blood stuck to the rug in microscopic quantities. Maybe the thing to do was to cut off a bit of the pile and get them to examine it. If there were blood on it, they’d be more likely to want to see where the rug fragments came from. Using my Timothy Custom Knife, I cut a small section of fibers from the place where I’d found the blond hair.

As I put the fabric into a clean specimen bag, I heard a thud on the deck. I sat quite still and listened, straining my ears. The cabin was so well paneled, you couldn’t hear much above you. Then another, gentle thud. Two people had boarded the boat. Navy children playing around the docks?

I stuck the specimen bag in my pocket. Holding the knife firmly, I went to the door and turned out the light. I waited inside the room, listening. Through the hallway I could hear a faint murmur of male voices. These were grown-ups, not children.

Footsteps moved overhead, toward the bow. At the stern an engine turned over and caught. The boat, which had been floating aimlessly with the water currents, started vibrating and then began moving slowly backward.

I looked around for a hiding place. There was none. The card table and the couch offered no protection. Through the porthole in the lounge’s starboard wall I watched a destroyer slide by, then the gray concrete of a breakwater, and finally a small white channel market, its light flashing green as it swung around. We were out of the channel into the open lake. Straining my ears near the door, I heard the sharp slapping noise of wind on canvas: they were raising the sails. Then more voices, and finally a footstep on the carpeted stairs.

“I hope you’re not going to play hide-and-seek with me, Miss Warshawski. I know this boat much better than you do.” It was Grafalk.