The witness is a participant, or so my mother once told me.

From my experience, newsmen are even more relentless than police, profit being superior to justice as a great motivator of human beings. Not only the constabulary either but the gentlemen of the press, rabid dogs all, will no doubt descend upon the scene of the crime. From where I sit, I can almost sense them drawing near, having journeyed from all over the country-from Nevada, from Chicago, from Massachusetts and New York-their disparate paths converging at a millionaire’s mansion off a private park in Manhattan. There are numerous lawmen who would be highly interested in what has occurred on Gramercy Park this evening. Will he place me in restraints? Will it be that bad?īut they will come, rest assured. Hugo Delegate-for that is my name-you must accompany us to the Tombs. I summon up the mental image of a stern-faced detective with a fat, unkempt mustache. I have to wait in this room until discovery, alarm, arrest. So you see, either way, if I must assume her guilt or confess my own, it works out much the same, demanding identical action on my part. On the other hand, if she is indeed the murderer, I can prevent her day of reckoning only by taking the burden of guilt upon myself. The fact that in recent months I developed a passionate hatred for the dead man increases the possibility of my involvement in his demise. Peculiarities of the recent past, a series of strange incidents and dark coincidences, force me at least to entertain the idea that I am a monster. I have taken the rest cure for neurasthenia several times and every so often suffer faints, waking to find a small swath of my life gone. This last is not as unlikely as it sounds. Either that or I killed him, in a fit of madness the specifics of which I have no memory. She killed him, in which case they will surely hang her. Of the dead man, a schoolmate of mine, I feature two possibilities.

A massive mahogany partners desk, from England, in the William IV style, installed as proof of the late victim’s diligence, a rich boy’s insistence that he is, after all, engaged in honest work. The Turkish rug on the floor, the Empire chairs, the shelves of uncracked books, all familiar to me. I’ve been in this room before, many times in the course of my twenty-two years. Outside, rain has cooled the green spring evening. I wait for the police in the study overlooking Gramercy Park, the body prone on the floor a few feet away. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.***

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman