The writer places her hands on her desk and breathes slowly. She looks out of the window towards Central Park and remembers all the times she has sat here before, watching the park change, season after season, year after year.
She is old now, almost too old. She is still able to look after herself – she has that dignity at least – but her books she dictates into a machine and her assistant Emily types them up for her. She looks at the Olivetti typewriter that still has pride of place on her desk, even though her hands are too arthritic to use it anymore. What would she do without Emily?
She wonders how many more books she has in her. This current one is her fortieth and the eleventh in the Inspector Monroe series. She doesn’t sell quite as well as she did in her prime, but who does? The trend is turning towards a more psychological approach to crime than she is used to – examining the ‘why’ rather than the ‘how’. But does it matter? She has more money than Croesus these days, as an old friend of hers used to say, more money than she has any use for, and no family to give it away to. Emily will become a very rich woman one day.
Today the writer finds herself thinking of England again. She hasn’t been back for more decades than she cares to remember, more decades than either of her husbands lived for. She thinks of England more and more these days but today it was the article in The New York Times that started her off. A story about an old house that she used to know, a mystery that was never solved, and a discovery made last month in the grounds of the house during building works.
She smooths the pages of the newspaper, which still lies open in front of her, with her gnarled hands. Some days she can imagine she is still young, that the years haven’t passed by so quickly, that she hasn’t lost so much. But she only has to look down at her hands to remember. Where did the time go? When she looks in the mirror she barely recognises herself.
She glances at the newspaper again, but she has read it so many times that she knows it almost by heart. The name of the house will stay with her until the day she dies.
She could stay quiet of course, she could die holding on to the secret.
Or she could be brave and go back to England one last time, to put things to rights.