Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“Not for much longer,” she said, and looked at her watch. “In about five minutes, you’re going to take it off. You know how to take a woman’s corset off, don’t you? You just pull all the little hooks out of all the little eyelets until your mouth goes dry and you start to hear me breathing. You could try and tear it off, of course. But my corsets are well-made. They don’t tear off that easily.”
I followed her into her bedroom. “That classical education of yours,” I said.
“What about it?”
“What happened to Cassandra, anyway?”
“The Greeks dragged her out of the Temple of Athena and raped her,” she said, kicking the door shut behind her. “Me, I’m perfectly willing.”
“Perfectly willing sounds perfectly good to me,” I said.
She stepped out of her dress and I stood back to get a better look at her. Call it professional courtesy, if you like. She had a fine, well-proportioned figure. I felt like Kepler admiring his Golden Section. Except I knew I was going to have more fun than he ever did. He’d probably never looked at a woman wearing a well-tailored corset. If he had, then I might have been a better mathematician when I was at school.
THIRTY
THIRTY
I stayed the night, which was just as well, since, just after midnight, Vera’s apartment had an intruder.
After our early-evening performance she was trying to coax me into a putting on a late show, when she froze on top of me for a moment. “Listen,” she whispered. “Did you hear that?” And then, when I failed to hear anything other than the sound of my own heavy breathing, she added: “There’s someone in the sitting room.” She lay down beside me, pulled the bedclothes up to her chin and waited for me to agree with her.
I lay still, long enough to hear footsteps on the parquet floor, and then sprang out of bed. “Are you expecting anyone?” I asked, hauling on my trousers, and thumbing my braces over my naked shoulders.
“Of course not,” she hissed. “It’s midnight.”
“Do you have any kind of a weapon?”
“You’re the detective. Don’t you have a gun?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But not when I have to travel through the Russian Zone. Carrying a gun would get me sent to a labor camp. Or worse.”
I grabbed a hockey stick and threw open the door. “Who’s there?” I said, loudly, and groped for a light switch.