Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel - Plot & Excerpts
He sat in the kitchen typing. Jane did not come home. He had to keep stopping, sometimes for many minutes between sentences, trying to reassemble forgotten conversations but able only to trace an outline of events in which he hardly believed any more. Lord Malquist had instructed him that the journal should conceal its commercial inspiration and be ostensibly a private diary in which the ninth earl’s part was coincidental, if dominant. But Moon decided not to mention his bomb or Marie’s death or the General. He supposed that the General was dead too. The bomb sat by his elbow as he typed, watch-ticked contentedly, the metal key recessed into its flat bottom turning slowly as an hour-hand towards oblivion. Moon had not noted the exact time when he pressed the plunger but he calculated that he had until ten or half past in the morning. There was no hurry. * * * When the flames of his notebook had guttered out, Moon had stared in disbelief at the three bodies on the carpet (the Risen Christ was the only one to show any sign of life: a sudden gabble of obscure protestation) and had gone to sit half way up the stairs in the cubic centre of the house, hugging his bomb to him, and he had sat quite still until the water from the overflowing bath blotted its way down the stair-carpet and reached him over an hour later.
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