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the still air. Kincaid rolled over and pulled the cushion over his head, then stretched and looked at his watch. Seven o’clock.
    He had fallen asleep on the sofa, fully dressed, the lamp on, his book open across his chest, after bidding Hannah goodnight at her door. He felt surprisingly refreshed by his unorthodox night. There was just enough time for a swim and a shower before breakfast, and then it promised to be a ideal day for touring the Yorkshire Dales. Leaving his rumpled clothes in a heap on the bed, he slipped into bathing trunks and a terry-cloth dressing gown, and feet bare, let himself out of the suite.
    A hushed calm pervaded the house—no odor of coffee or bacon, no hum of conversation from behind closed doors. He paused a moment in the hall, reveling in the peace of the morning and his newly regained sense of physical well-being.
    He pushed open the door to the balcony. Perhaps he would have the pool to—
    A shrill, keening wail drifted up to him from below. An animal in distress, a puppy or kitten—his first fleeting impression shifted, and with full awareness came the realization that the pitiful cry was human. He leapt down the stairs and shoved through the doors.
    The two children stood huddled together on the steps just inside, a few feet from the Jacuzzi end of the pool.
    Sebastian Wade’s naked body bobbed gently against the side nearest them, caught in the perpetual whirlpool of the bubbling jets.

CHAPTER 4
    Sebastian floated face down, his skin mouse-colored, his yellow hair waving in anemone spikes which gave it a perverse animation. He wore, contrary to Kincaid’s first impression, a pair of bathing trunks patterned with tropical flowers.
    A heavy-duty electrical cord snaked over the first-floor balcony, disappearing into the agitated water. Kincaid propelled the now-silent children back through the doors. Their faces were still with shock and he found he couldn’t remember their names. He squatted before them and said gently, “Stay here. You mustn’t touch the water. Do you understand?” They nodded solemnly and he left them, taking the shallow stairs to the balcony three at a time.
    The cord stretched through the railing from the wall outlet near the far door. Kincaid grasped the plug with a fold of his dressing gown and gently pulled it free, then secured it by looping it around one of the balcony struts. Stopping briefly to reassure the children, he returned to the pool, slipped off his dressing gown and began the awkward business of removing the body from the water.
    Sebastian’s skin felt flaccid and waterlogged. It stillstartled Kincaid, after all his close habituation with death, that something as intangible as life’s presence in the skin could be so positively experienced. Sebastian’s body, however, unlike most, was warm, warmer than his own, the flesh butter-slick and evasive.
    Kincaid finally managed to heave him out of the pool by grasping him under the armpits, and Sebastian slid onto the brick surround with a small sucking noise. Kincaid rolled him over, checking for vital signs although the rapid decay caused by the body’s immersion in hot water made it an obviously futile action.
    The pool door swung open and he heard a gasp behind him. He sat back on his knees with an effort and rubbed his hands against his sides, an instinctive gesture.
    Emma MacKenzie stood just inside the door, still holding the handle tightly. Thank god, thought Kincaid, that it was Emma and not Penny.
    “Dear god. Sebastian. He’s dead, isn’t he?” Her voice was surprisingly gentle. She came forward and reached out her hand as if to touch him.
    Kincaid nodded. “I’m afraid so. Do you think you could go to the office and ring the local police? Then perhaps you could wait and show them the way.”
    “But … what about the children?”
    “They’ve seen the worst, already. I don’t think a few more minutes will do any further damage. Someone must stay with the body. If I send them up