Decider [antikvár]

Chapteri OK, so here I am, Lee Morris, opening doors and windows to gusts of life and early death. They looked pretty harmless on my doorstep: two middle-aged civil Englishmen in country-gent tweeds and flat caps, their eyebrows in unison raised enquiringly, their shared expression one of embarrassed anxiety. 'Lee Morris.^' one of them said, his diction clipped, secure, expensive. 'Could we speak to him?' 'Selling insurance?' I asked dryly. Their embarrassment deepened. 'No, actually . . .' Late March evening, sun low and strong, gold light falling sideways onto their benign faces, their eyes achingly narrowed against the glare. They stood a pace or two from me, careful not to crowd. Good manners all around. I realised that 1 knew one of them by sight, and 1 spent a few extended seconds wondering why on earth he'd sought me out on a Sunday a long way from his normal habitat. During this pause three small boys padded up the flagstoned passage from the depths of the house behind me, concentrat-edly threaded a way around me and out through the pair beyond and silently climbed like cats up into the fuzzy bursting