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the reasons old lags became and remained old lags—had all seemed so important to her at one time. Now she cursed the hubris that had made her think she had something to contribute to the academic discussion. With a deadline bearing down, she could barely summon up the interest to finish the thesis, let alone remember why she’d started such a long, painful, and expensive process in the first place.
    What on earth was wrong with her? She had her heart’s desire. The basics: food, clothing, shelter. The esteem of students and colleagues—well, most of them. A sense of self, hard won though it had been. The success of her novels, bringing both satisfaction and financial reward. And now, the man with whom she was, without question, going to spend the rest of her life. The gods having their little senses of humor, they’d sent a policeman, no less. She and her policeman had met, in fact, over a murder in Scotland. Hardly a propitious beginning. But very quickly she’d known, without second-guessing the knowledge, without a shred of reflexive self-doubt: This was it.
    She had returned from the mystery conference in Scotland, had a break-off dinner with Gerald, and then she’d waited to hear from Arthur St. Just, the Cambridgeshire DCI who had run off with her heart. And waited. Feeling more like a conceited fool each day, she’d waited.
    Breaking it off with Gerald had been the right thing to do, and inevitable in any case. That was all right. But … where was St. Just? That detective with the burning eyes, as she’d come to think of him. The man whose integrity seemed to surround him like a force field, compelling her to reexamine all her preconceived notions about the police. She found him absurdly attractive, like a matinee idol of the thirties, his face all craggy planes and angles, the kind of face that photographed so well in black and white.
    What now? she had wondered. Was she to be reduced to blockbuster, bodice-ripper prose?
    But she couldn’t have been wrong. She knew she had not misread the signs, misheard the words. She’d begun keeping a journal, so unique had it been in her experience to long for the sight of another human being in this way. She felt she’d go mad otherwise, for she wasn’t the type of woman to confide in girlfriends. Then she’d torn up the journal, afraid of its discovery.
    And so she’d waited some more, “focusing” on her thesis. And then, a little over three months ago, and one week after her return (it had seemed no less than two years), a handwritten letter had arrived on embossed notepaper: Would she do him the honor of having dinner with him at St. Germaine’s? She should have known. Arthur St. Just was an old-fashioned man. No phone calls for such in important occasion: no less than a formal invitation would do. He’d arrive on time with flowers, wearing his best suit and aftershave, driving a newly washed and hoovered car.
    She’d played hard to get for all of three minutes, then she’d dialed the number he’d provided.
    After that, with very little fuss or soul searching, Portia had settled into their relationship, although settled was the wrong word. Rather, she quickly had reached a near-constant state of ease and contentment. There was no drama between them, and no cause for it. She knew he would appear when he said he would. There was no angst. He loved her with a clear, unwavering, forthright, and simple intent, which she soon reciprocated, likewise without reservation.
    Smiling at the thought, she pulled the manuscript of her latest DCI Nankervis novel from the right bottom drawer of her desk. Her mystery writing, she knew, served as an escape from the opaque, brocaded prose of her dissertation, and from anything else that might be troubling her. Time and again her mind returned to her inspector, working his way through a complex investigation in the jagged peninsula of England known as Cornwall. It was all far more engrossing—and more solvable—than the