Ah, well, such was life.

The clip they had both taken from the Challenger that morning, May 2, remained on his mind as he walked. He had always had a very good recall, and the piece had been short. He was therefore able to run over it exactly in his mind, probing for points of softness, susceptibility.

Sirs,

It has been roughly a week shy of one month since I committed the perfect crime.

Perhaps in doing so I should have foreseen how little remark the press would make upon it, and how little progress the police make in solving it. Nevertheless it has been an anti-climax—especially as murder is a crime generally taken quite seriously (too seriously, if we are honest with ourselves about the numerousness and average intellectual capacity of our population) in our society—to witness how little comment my own small effort has aroused.

I therefore give you advance warning that I shall commit another perfect crime to mark this "anniversary." A second woman. It seems only just to my mind. Perhaps this declaration will excite the generally sluggish energies of England's press and police into action; though I place no great faith in the notion.

With regards,

A correspondent

Far and away the likeliest thing was that this letter was a fraud. An editor at the Challenger who needed to fill three inches of column. The second likeliest was that it was a hoax; the third likeliest was that it was a harmless delusion; far down the list, four or five spots, was the chance that someone had in fact committed a perfect crime a little less than a month earlier, and written to boast of it.

Four or five spots, though—not so far down the list, really, as to make it impossible. Lenox cast his mind back to the period three weeks or so before, which was populated with several crimes of interest.

Most of them solved, however. None of them perfect, either, that he could recall. But Graham would pull the clippings. And hadn't there been—?

But now Lenox found that he was turning up Singletary Street, which put him in sight of Rules. Soon he would be sitting next to Elizabeth. His heart began to beat a little more quickly, and as he opened the door of the restaurant where his elder brother had arranged a birthday breakfast for him, the letter slipped out of his mind.

Excerpted from The Woman in the Water by Charles Finch. Copyright © 2018 by Charles Finch. Excerpted by permission of Minotaur Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.