Rebecca found Three Times at Dawn in an enormous bookstore at Charing Cross, and for the first time thought that those odious supermarkets of books made sense. She couldn’t resist the temptation, and began to leaf through it there, sitting on the floor, in a tranquil corner that displayed child-care books.
The publisher in fact had a name like that. Vine and Plow. Horrible, she thought. On the jacket flap there was a biographical note about Akash Narayan. It said he was born in Birmingham and had died there at ninety-two, having spent his life teaching music. It didn’t specify what type. Then it said that Three Times at Dawn was his only book, and that it had been published posthumously. Nothing else. Not even a hint of a photograph.
Nor did the back cover say much. It revealed that the story took place in an unspecified English city, and that it all unfolded in a couple of hours. But a very paradoxical couple of hours, it added, in a deliberately enigmatic tone.
Glancing at the frontispiece she discovered that the book had been written in Hindi, and only afterward translated into English. The name of the translator said nothing to her. But it was, instead, with great satisfaction that she read the curious dedication that appeared at the head of the first chapter.
For Catherine de Médicis and the master of Camden Town.
“Welcome back, Mr. Gwyn,” she said in a low voice.
Then she hurried home, because she had a book to read.