Talk:The Oldest Confession

Very strange -- missing last four paragraphs from the first edition hardback

The Appleton hardback, first edition, has the epigraph missing from the British paperback on its title page, BUT, incredibly, does not have the very final four paragraphs of the book. Here they are:

She [Eve] left in the [Duchess's] Daimler at two o'clock the following morning. They arrived at Irún at ten minutes after eight. As the seeress had predicted, her passport was stamped with quite some deference and they rolled across the bridge into France.

She had breakfast in Bayonne. While she ate a croissant and drank a café au lait she read that Jean Marie had hanged himself in his cell. She could only remember the words to the Lord's Prayer and since she knew no other she sat with her head in her hands and said the Lord's Prayer once, twice, then three times.

She spent the night in Vendome. She reached Paris quite early the next morning. She had been drinking steadily all the way, but she was not drunk.

The apartment she and Bourne had lived in seemed alien and changed. She needed a brandy. The decanter was empty. She crossed the living room, then the kitchen. She opened the cellar door. A stench assailed her. She looked down. Chern's dead hand reached. His ruined face stared. She screamed. She screamed again. She could not stop screaming.