They cantered past the airstrip, now sporting two Gulfstreams, his in the hangar, then down to a bend in the Beaulieu River, where they dismounted. Stone produced lunch from his saddlebag, and they sat down under a tree to smoked salmon sandwiches and half a bottle of champagne. Dorley Alder took a leather-backed notebook from his pocket, said,I told you that youd made an ally. Ill now prove it. The gun with which my nephew was shot was his own gun. I know, she admitted. Thats why I was particularly careful to listen. I remember you told Paul Drake that he was marrying a widow because he was afraid of any situation for which he couldnt find a precedent. More than that? Mason interrupted,I asked you repeatedly if you had left your apartment and every time you assured me that … “ Im afraid we failed to make note of that. She deliberated for two or three seconds, then said, quietly,He was here. I probably knocked harder than I needed to but when there was no response I assumed that she still hadnt heard me. Then I saw a tiny button of a doorbell and pushed it. I heard the sound peal inside. For no particular reason I stepped back over to the front window and looked in again. I really wanted to see her. But I didnt. I tried the bell again and again but got no response. I opened the exterior glass door and knocked hard on the wooden interior one. And the force of my knock pushed it back so that all I had to do was step inside. You mean hes crazy? Not really. But I once told her that after Arch and I had had a really good fuck he liked to just lie there and think out loud. I didnt mind because I was feeling good and remembering how fine it had been. But it was then that he was relaxed and confident and felt that he could talk about whatever was on his mind. In Berlin he had taken me out to dinner, an expensive spot just off the Kurfürstendamm, as I recall, made his usual fuss about ordering the wine, and then said that my mother had written him that I was thinking of returning to the States. I told him that I was only thinking about it, mostly because five years abroad seemed about enough. My only problem was a job. I didnt have one lined up mostly, I liked to think, because I really hadnt tried. Well, I dont think its a bullet hole anyway. I think theres a ladder down in the basement. Im afraid that wont do. Theyll need an apartment or a house. Oh, and a phone number, too. My guess is he didnt think it through. He got so excited about naming his price to Showalter that he didnt realize that there was no way Showalter could leave him alive. Now hes hiding from him.’ He had liked her. He could have maybe come to love her, given time..