Das Mitternachtssoiret – Leseprobe
Chapter 1

The Night

Perrot carefully locked the door to his house, which he jokingly referred to as a crow’s nest in light of the numerous hooded crows on the premises, and kept the key in his paletot. He carried an oblong cardboard box intended for the hostess in his left hand. After quickly glancing up to the moonless, starry November sky, he just as quickly checked his pocket watch. Ten minutes before nine. Almost too late to avoid committing the faux pas of showing up late.

He grabbed his white bow tie trimmed with a narrow black stripe. The delay was due to this small accessory. More to the point, an atypical indecisiveness by giving this bow tie the somewhat audacious priority over an exclusively white one, but only after much hemming and hawing. Audacious, because Perrot’s midnight blue tuxedo and the social occasion would have required that exact plain white bow tie. But he had rejected this convention for reasons he could not even pinpoint himself.

Perrot hurried along the driveway with a purposeful stride, shrouded in semi-darkness. He passed the dim glow of a lantern, disappeared for a short while in the grey darkness of the unlit path before being caught by the next beam of light and the subsequent darkness ...

 

 

 

 

Perrot carefully locked the door to his house, which he jokingly referred to as a crow’s nest in light of the numerous hooded crows on the premises, and kept the key in his paletot. He carried an oblong cardboard box intended for the hostess in his left hand. After quickly glancing up to the moonless, starry November sky, he just as quickly checked his pocket watch. Ten minutes before nine. Almost too late to avoid committing the faux pas of showing up late.

He grabbed his white bow tie trimmed with a narrow black stripe. The delay was due to this small accessory. More to the point, an atypical indecisiveness by giving this bow tie the somewhat audacious priority over an exclusively white one, but only after much hemming and hawing. Audacious, because Perrot’s midnight blue tuxedo and the social occasion would have required that exact plain white bow tie. But he had rejected this convention for reasons he could not even pinpoint himself.

Perrot hurried along the driveway with a purposeful stride, shrouded in semi-darkness. He passed the dim glow of a lantern, disappeared for a short while in the grey darkness of the unlit path before being caught by the next beam of light and the subsequent darkness ...