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I discreetly placed in the breast pocket of my suit.
    I felt a comforting stillness in that room. Warm, golden sunshine penetrated the chamber of death, and the body of Elizabeth resembled that of a pre-Raphaelite beauty. A gentle peace had somehow settleditself. Mario, obviously a devout Catholic, crossed himself and began to weep quietly. I felt I had inadvertently taken part in some religious rite.
    That evening, the news of Elizabeth’s death filled the airwaves, various commentators offering eloquent assessments of her place in world literature. The local press was not quite so compassionately inclined. Elizabeth’s mysterious passing from—it turned out—a heart attack in her sleep was ludicrously compared to the sudden death of Errol Flynn in Vancouver in October 1959. Accompanied here by Beverley Aadland, a seventeen-year-old starlet, the fifty-year-old matinee idol had been at a surgeon’s flat to receive treatment for a slipped disk. He regaled those in attendance with anecdotes about W.C. Fields and John Barrymore and then retired to a bedroom to relax before the doctor went to work. A few minutes later, Miss Aadland stepped into that room and returned immediately screaming in horror: “Something is terribly wrong with Errol—he’s turned black!” Although adrenaline was injected into his heart, the actor died a few minutes later. After the autopsy, the newspapers gleefully reported that Flynn had the body of a tired old man.
Sic transit gloria.
In their accounts of Elizabeth’s death, the local papers suggested that only persons with secrets to hide lost their lives in hotel rooms.

6
    Although in the main retired, I still see a few patients; I could not leave for Toronto at once. I booked my flight a month ahead, fairly confident that I had plenty of time to deal with Elizabeth’s remains. I was wrong. Two weeks after her death, I received a phone call from Richard Johnston of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Room at the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library.
    â€œI’d like you to take a look at the papers found in Elizabeth Delamere’s flat. I gather you are her literary executor.”
    â€œCorrect. I shall attend to everything in due course. I was going to get in touch with you next week. Can we wait until then?”

    This was, however, a personage who was not about to be brushed off. “The documents point in a fantastical but inescapable direction.”
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œElizabeth Delamere was not the lady’s real name.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œElizabeth Delamere was Evelyn Dick, the Hamilton prostitute accused of killing her husband and convicted of murdering her own baby.”
    â€œI am aware of Elizabeth’s past. I was her analyst.”
    â€œSo you were in on the secret?”
    â€œI wasn’t in on any secret. I was aware of her past.”
    â€œYou realize that the existence of the typescript of her autobiography puts me in a difficult position. I suppose you intend to embargo this portion of the archive? You can count on me to be discreet, although I imagine that much more attention will be paid to her now that she has died and given the number of awards and prizes she has won. It’s a tricky situation.”
    â€œOn the contrary, Elizabeth was well aware the truth would eventually be revealed. She did not wish her real identity to be known in her lifetime. I’m not sure she would have wanted her autobiography to be published so soon. But she certainly wanted it published. She left it to my discretion as to when and under what conditions it should be released.”
    â€œYou might consider sooner rather than later.”
    â€œI dare say there is a great deal in what you say.”

7
    In the popular imagination, Karla Homolka has replaced Evelyn Dick as the best-known female murderer born in Canada. Homolka’s husband, Paul Bernardo, had a copy of Brett Easton Ellis’s
American