"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. Mireille Pavane cannot recall exactly when she began messing about with books and literature but since then (brainwashed at a young age by the French and Russian writers and E.M. Forster) it has remained an abiding love. Mireille continues to scribble away in secret when not otherwise distracted by a professional career or gardening duties in her alternate life. She also has an unhealthy curiosity and fondness for footnotes which she attempts to curtail from time to time. Mireille is a member of the international and local chapters of the Village Idiots' Guild.
