All year, with its many losses, she had remained on the whole dry-eyed. But now, the slip of paper shaking in her hand, she stared about her and found her face in a wall mirror, and saw it begin to disintegrate there. For now they came. In the end, tears. In such streams, such floods, that it was hard to tell, in the distorted image, if the face was laughing or crying; and to the assistant who hurried into the room, alarmed at the noise, it seemed, weirdly, that the medical officer was doing both.
About the Author
Lionel Davidson was born in 1922 in Hull, Yorkshire. He left school early and worked as a reporter before serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas, was published in 1960 to great critical acclaim and drew comparisons to Graham Greene and John le Carré. It was followed by The Rose of Tibet (1962), A Long Way to Shiloh (1966) and The Chelsea Murders (1978). He has thrice been the recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award and, in 2001, was awarded the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award.