The Grenadillo Box
A Novel
Chapter One
Clumsiness rather than cleverness marked the
starting point. To put it another way, the
discovery happened after two blunders.
It was New Year's Day, 1755, in the midst of
Lord Montfort's dinner, when I stumbled first.
The platter I was serving tipped and sent a
pyramid of oranges madly spinning over the
Turkey carpet. Puce with self-consciousness, I
squatted to gather them up, threading my way
between a forest of silk-stockinged and mahogany
legs. But I needn't have worried; no one had
noticed. They were ablaze with alarm at the
cause of my slip - a deafening gun blast that
had rudely interrupted their party. It had
reverberated through the building, a truly
deafening noise, made more earsplitting perhaps
by its unexpectedness; loud enough to make the
door shudder and the glass in the window frames
rattle; loud enough to ring in my ears several
minutes afterwards.
The people assembled in that room cried out,
pressing hands to their ears as if to ward off
the penetrating sound, but none of them went
straight to the nub of the matter. None asked ... read full excerpt from: The Grenadillo Box: A Novel ebook
