The Ropespinner Conspiracy [antikvár]

the place was perfectly situated for the evening's business. It stood almost exactly at the midpoint of the five-mile crescent of the bay; from the air, the sweeping shoreline resembled a crude sickle slicing into the water, marked by a pale, foamy smear where the easy wash of the bay tides met the dark rocks footing the bluffs. The house sat close to the cliff. It was a loose, sprawling geometry of shingle and clapboard in the middle of what had once been a wide clearing in the surrounding pine forest—a glade, now covered with a roughly cared-for lawn. According to local legend, the Vikings had landed here and been slaughtered on the spot by local Indians, themselves now long since driven off, first by loggers and finally by the insistent encroachment of resort houses. To sailors entering the bay on a misty day, the forest had an Arcadian, primeval appearance. The tree line formed a seamless viridian stripe along the bluff tops, interrupted 3