The telephone persisted shrilly. There was no closing your ears to a sound like that, repeated over and over by a person who evidently meant to get his point across, one way or another. I raised my head from the pillow. My brain ached with champagne and sorrow. I lifted my hand to the sun that splintered through the shutters and saw the ring on my finger like an exotic object, a thing never before seen in human history, a band of gold clamped above my knuckle. I rolled over and fell from the bed, aching in every joint and sinew, each tendon screaming with its own particular anguish. Like the telephone, over and over. I stumbled naked out of the room and found the receiver in the parlor. The shutters were still closed, the room streaked with bands of light.

“Hello?” I said.

A man’s voice. “Mrs. Randolph.”

“Who’s this?”

A rush of static came over the line, like the fellow at the other end was simply breathing into the mouthpiece, considering his words. “Mrs. Randolph, it’s Jack,” he said at last.

“Jack! Jack from the Prince George?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re up awfully early. Say, I’ve got a little news for you—”

“Listen, Mrs. Randolph. It’s important. You got a minute?”

“Sure I do. But it’s not Mrs. Randolph anymore, you know. It’s—”

“I know, I know.” He made a sound of impatience, a grunt. “Listen up. You heard the news about Oakes?”

“Sir Harry? What about him? Has he left town already?”

“He’s left town, all right,” said Jack. “He’s dead. Murdered last night in his own bed.”

Jack wanted to meet me all the way out at Lyford Cay, an odd and awfully inconvenient location, because he had something important to tell me, and you couldn’t trust a telephone line not to have an operator listening at the other end. I was shaking a little, from shock and lack of sleep. I asked what about, and he said he couldn’t say, just that it was important, Mrs. Rand— Mrs. Thorpe. I said I had my shift at the canteen, the ladies were counting on me, which was true. I said how about after lunch, and he hesitated and said all right, in such a way that I felt it wasn’t all right at all. Then he hung up so suddenly, the telephone swallowed the last of his words to me.