I will not lay out the particulars of how such a thing was done, because the how is not knowledge worth passing to anyone, and because the horror of it lies not in the method but in the fact that a son could sit across a table from his dying father and smile while arranging his end.

It is enough to say that the plot was real, that it had been documented by people whose profession it is to document such things, and that it had been aimed, coldly and patiently, at hurrying a frail old man out of the world for the sake of a signature on a will.

What undid me was not the cleverness of it.

Cleverness I could have understood.