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hour.
    â€œWhat is zhe matter, Daavid?” queries Daisy, sensing tension, and Bliss wishes he had a sensible answer; he wishes he knew why his enthusiasm is draining, why he has lost his drive.
    â€œI don’t know…” starts the English detective, then he scuttles to the balcony and peers at the distant verdant islands. The fortress — the Fort Royal on the island of Ste. Marguerite — stands out sharply and appears strikingly forbidding as the wintry sun slips behind the island and heads for the depths of the Mediterranean. The wind is shifting to the north, kicking up whitecaps and darkening the sea from warm azure to bleak indigo, and goosebumps suddenly pepper his thighs as the chill hits.
    The sound of Daisy’s breath spins him. “What is wrong, Daavid?”
    â€œIt’s getting cold,” he says, though knows that is not the real reason for the goosebumps. “He is still there,” he adds after a moment’s thought as pulses of energy make a
whooshing
sound in his brain and raise his hackles.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe Man in the Iron Mask —
l’homme au masque de fer
.”
    â€œDaavid, zhat was three hundred years ago.”
    â€œThis is really weird,” he carries on as he focuses on the fortress. “If I told anyone in the force about this they’d have me in front of a shrink and out on mental disability in a week.”
    â€œDaavid, zhere is nothing zhere,” says Daisy, pointing across the bay to the island. “It is just a museum now.”
    Bliss knows different, though he still can’t explain the powerful feeling that washed over him the first time he entered the cell that housed the famous prisoner. “It was like he was talking to me… guiding me… begging me to write his story,” he explains, as he has explained many times before. “But now I’ve lost it. I don’t what I’m doing anymore… don’t know how it ends.”
    â€œIt will be all right —” she starts, but he cuts her off, shaking his head.
    â€œNo… no… no,” he says, and then he spots the lemon tree in the garden below. “Watch,” he commands,dragging Daisy to the edge of the balcony and pointing to the loaded tree.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNothing happened, did it?”
    She peers intently, thinking,
I missed somezhing
. “What is it, Daavid?”
    â€œThe first time I looked a lemon dropped off.”
    â€œThey drop all the time.”
    â€œNo, they don’t. That’s my point. I’ve been watching it for weeks now and I’ve never seen another, not while I was actually watching. But the first time, at the instant I looked, a lemon fell.”
    â€œBut what does zhat mean?”
    â€œIt was like a signal, the start: a green flag, a cannon shot, a whistle.”
    â€œStart what?”
    â€œThe race — my race — to discover the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask. Everything here has been guiding me…” he pauses as he loses direction and searches across the bay for his bearings.
    â€œAre you all right, Daavid?”
    â€œSee, even you think I’m going mad now.”
    â€œNo,” she says, but her concerned mien tells him something else as he turns away from the island to look into her eyes.
    â€œI have to go,” he says quietly. “I have to go now.”
    â€œBut, zhe dinner…”
    â€œI’m sorry… ” he says as the apartment’s door closes behind him, and Daisy wipes a tear from her cheek before turning back to the island with a sinking feeling.

chapter five
    S uperintendent Ted Donaldson is doing his best to support the world’s beleaguered carb producers as he battles his way through the dinner buffet at the Mitre Hotel in Westchester. “To be honest, Daphne,” he tells his old friend between the linguine and the shepherd’s pie, “I’d retire tomorrow, but the little