She looked over the selection. “What I really would like is a drink, if I can get one.”

“Certainly. I can offer you a carbonated beverage, or perhaps a pink gin? But are you sure you won’t have some cheese?” She looked up and wondered why he was wearing sunglasses indoors. He proffered the board once again and, in moving it toward her, accidentally jabbed her arm just a bit with the tip of the sharp knife that he held in his hand, which was wrapped, she noticed, in a cast that extended into his sleeve.

As she reacted, the most surreal thing occurred. All the men put down their newspapers and rose at the same moment as if there’d been an announcement for their flight’s departure. But instead of heading toward the door, they all slowly moved toward her. She quickly got to her feet.

The burliest of the men wore glasses, a fake mustache, and a panama hat. He said to the steward in sunglasses, “Is this her?”

I replied, “Yes, Bob, this is her.”

I took off my cap and sunglasses and smiled at Martha Prentice, or whatever her name was.

Martha’s eyes darted in every direction, but she was surrounded.

I reassured her: “I know. You’re surprised to see me. It’s such a shock when you think someone is dead and then they come back to life. It’s happened to me twice. Marie Prasquier and, of course, yourself. And looking at you now, one would almost think Vera had come back to life as well.”

I gestured toward Martha’s lustrous hair, which now duplicated Vera Driscoll’s trademark coif. “You know, when I mistook your resurrected self for Vera on Treasure Island, I tried to imagine why someone who would want to slip out of the country as quietly as possible would dress and style herself to look exactly like the stunning Vera Driscoll, who is, after all, something of a public figure. The only reason I could come up with was that you’d gotten possession of something so helpful to your departure from the United States that it made it worth your while to look like the former Edna Drisch Vernon—something like, say, Vera’s passport. Vera had shown it to me one night when she’d sneaked into my hotel room. Funnily enough, Russ Hewett had also broken into my room at the Claremont, on the last night of his life. Which was also the last time anyone saw Vera. I’d thought it odd that although Russ was planting something in my room rather than searching it, I found it in a shambles. And then, of course, I knew everything.”