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- Herausgeber: Mireille Pavane
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
“Who am I, detective? A principal? An accomplice? An accessory? Or innocent?”
What does the detective see before him? Another pampered princess? A sheltered child barely clinging on to the social camouflage of a properly schooled lady upholding family dignity and pride? The performance of a cold-hearted suspect hiding guilt behind bland, vacant eyes and every semblance of co-operation, reason and reasonableness?
Stories, myths, gossip, rumor. These phantasms are as powerful as gods, disembodied, insubstantial, immortal armies impossible to fight or capture or elude, their agents as punishing and relentless as the Furies - and sometimes they are made of flesh and blood, taking the form of two NYPD detectives, intruding upon the sanctuary of my domain, this house and the courtyard beyond it, ordered and serene, enclosed by a high walled garden, a garden my mother had once tended as a girl...
A long time has passed since heiress Claire Leighton left the cocoon of her idyllic childhood. Yet the tendrils of the past still linger. Old sins, as they say, cast long shadows - and the innocent are as much in danger as the guilty of being ensnared in the tangled web of love, greed, lies, wickedness, and murder.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Mireille Pavane
Innocence
Table of contents
INNOCENCE Mireille Pavane
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
THANK YOU FOR READING
ALSO BY MIREILLE PAVANE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INNOCENCE
Mireille Pavane
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Mireille Pavane
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover design © Mireille Pavane
Cover image: Unsplash
DEDICATION
To R., in consideration of all your patience
in listening and writing back
EPIGRAPH
On ne peut point régner innocemment
(No one can reign innocently)
— Antoine Louis Léon de Richebourg de Saint-Just, Sur le jugement de Louis XVI (1er discours), speech to the National Convention (November 13, 1792)
CHAPTER ONE
“ And what was your relationship like with Mr. Morton-Parker, your late stepfather?”
It is nearly 9:30 a.m. on a Monday morning. I have been awake for several hours since the doorbell rang as I was warming milk on the stove for my coffee. On any other weekday morning, those hours would have found me in the office, attending to the papers set before me by my secretary and ensconced in brisk conferences with the firm’s staff. This morning, a police detective stands before me in the living room, patiently asking questions which he assures me are routine. His partner has been wandering around the room, picking up items and examining them, examining me, with a dispassionate curiosity, interjecting questions from time to time. This is the least that one should expect when there is a death in the family.
“ Miss Leighton?”
I have been brought up to value privacy. Being caught in the snares of a camera lens or spotlight, being the object of scrutiny in a press article, being ogled on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at a society gala, being the subject of gossip and whispers behind glossy smiles, being judged by strangers is a corrosive poison—a lesson drilled into me by my mother and, later, my gran, as steadfastly as math and valency tables and Latin verbs were by my schoolmasters. Things always get distorted from the truth, however elusive the concept of absolute truth may be. The distortions take shape, their existence and reach as real and corporeal as the things built by hand. Ask the widow whose congressional candidate husband ate the barrel of a gun the day before the sordid corruption and strippers scandal broke in the evening news, or the society queen who stood stoically by her husband through countless affairs but chose to toast the loss of her husband’s crown as a stock market golden boy and titan of industry with a vodka martini and a full bottle of sleeping pills.
Stories, myths, gossip, rumor. These phantasms are as powerful as gods, disembodied, insubstantial, immortal armies impossible to fight or capture or elude, their agents as punishing and relentless as the Furies—and sometimes they are made of flesh and blood, taking the form of two NYPD detectives, intruding upon the sanctuary of my domain, this house and the courtyard beyond it, ordered and serene, enclosed by a high walled garden, a garden my mother had once tended as a girl, with dark and red ivy and a stone lion’s head fountain whose expression is as forbidding as the leonine pair at the front gates, shutting out the world beyond its sheltering walls.
“ Miss Leighton?”
