The short white-sand strip of “our” beach— from which by 
now we had gone a little way to reach deep water — was empty 
on weekday mornings. There was nobody around except those 
two tiny very busy figures on the opposite side, and a dark-red 
private plane that droned overhead, and then disappeared in 
the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk bubbling 
murder, and here was the subtle point: the man of law and the 
man of water were just near enough to witness an accident and 
just far enough not to observe a crime. They were near enough 
to hear a distracted bather thrashing about and bellowing for 
somebody to come and help him save his drowning wife; and 
they were too far to distinguish (if they happened to look too 
soon) that the anything but distracted swimmer was finishing 
to tread his wife underfoot. I was not yet at that stage; I merely 
want to convey the ease of the act, the nicety of the setting! 
So there was Charlotte swimming on with dutiful awkwardness 
(she was a very mediocre mermaid), but not without a certain 
solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?); and 
as I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (you 
know — trying to see things as you will remember having seen 
them), the glossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned 
despite all her endeavors, and her pale lips, and her naked convex 
forehead, and the tight black cap, and the plump wet neck, I 
knew that all I had to do was to drop back, take a deep breath, 
then grab her by the ankle and rapidly dive with my captive 
corpse. I say corpse because surprise, panic and inexperience 
would cause her to inhale at once a lethal gallon of lake, while 
I would be able to hold on for at least a full minute, open-eyed 
under water. The fatal gesture passed like the tail of a falling 
star across the blackness of the contemplated crime. It was 
like some dreadful silent ballet, the male dancer holding the 
ballerina by her foot and streaking down through watery twi- 
light. I might come up for a mouthful of air while still holding 
her down, and then would dive again as many times as would 
be necessary, and only when the curtain came down on her 
for good, would I permit myself to yell for help. And when 
some twenty minutes later the two puppets steadily growing 
arrived in a rowboat, one half newly painted, poor Mrs. Humbert 
Humbert, the victim of a cramp or coronary occlusion, or both, 
would be standing on her head in the inky ooze, some thirty 
feet below the smiling surface of Hourglass Lake.

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