Assassin: A Novel

THE GODS WOULD NEVER HAVE THE NERVE TO RAIN ON HIS wedding. Or, so Commander Alexander Hawke told himself. The BBC weather forecast for the Cotswolds region of England had called for light rain Saturday evening through Sunday. But Hawke, standing on the church steps of St. John's, basking in the May sunshine, had known better.

Hawke's best man, Ambrose Congreve, had also decided today, Sunday, would be a perfect day. Simple deduction, really, the detective had concluded. Half the people would say that it was too hot, while the other half would say that it was too cold. Ergo, perfect. Still, he had brought along a large umbrella.

"Not a cloud in the sky, Constable," Hawke pointed out, his cool, penetrating blue eyes fixed on Congreve. "I told you we wouldn't need that bloody umbrella."

Hawke was standing stiffly in his Royal Navy ceremonial uniform, tall and slender as a lance. Marshal Ney's ornamental sword, a gift from his late grandfather, now polished to gleaming perfection, hung from his hip. His unruly hair, pitch-black and curly, was slicked back from his high forehead, every strand in place.

If the groom looked too good to be true, Ambrose Congreve would assure you that this, indeed, was the case.

Hawke's mood had been uncharacteristically prickly all morning long. There was a definite tightness in his voice and, were Ambrose to be perfectly honest, he'd been rather snappish. Curt. Impatient.

Where, Congreve wondered, was the easygoing, carefree bachelor, the blas youth of yore? All morning long the best man had been giving this storybook groom a decidedly wide berth.

Heaving one of his more ill-disguised sighs, Ambrose peered hopefully up into the now cloudless sky. It wasn't as though Ambrose actually wished for rain on this radiant wedding day. It was just that he so despised, detested really, being wrong. "Ah. You never do know, do you?" he said to his young friend.

"Yes, you do," Hawke said, "Sometimes you actually do know, Constable. You've got the ring, I daresay?"

"Unless it has mysteriously teleported itself from my waistcoat pocket to a parallel universe in the five minutes since your last enquiry, yes, I imagine it's still there."