Reading progress update: I've read 94 out of 315 pages.
On the extreme right of the terrace a flight of steps led down to a little lawn from whose farther side a rustic path wound to the river’s edge, sometimes running straight for a yard or two, sometimes breaking into wooden steps, slippery now with the wet. He came down it with accustomed feet. It was a path to tread in sunny weather, going down to the boathouse on a summer afternoon—not like this, not in the dark of a January morning. He remembered that it was New Year’s Day.
And then he came out on the river path and focused the torch on that dark, sprawled shape. It was James Paradine, and he was dead.
Oh, this is just sooo good! No sign of Miss Silver yet, but this is a delicious family mystery with the overbearing patriarch and the familial hangers-on, in the vein of Penhallow and Simeon Lee from Hercule Poirot's Christmas- although James Paradine wasn't as despicable a person as either of the above.
