“The dog came back.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“No, it isn’t … So do you want to hear the rest of it?” Dumbly, Jury nodded.
The rest of it is told by Harry Johnson, who sits down by Richard Jury in the Old Wine Shades. Over three successive nights, Harry spins out this story of a good friend of his whose wife and son (and dog) disappeared one day when they were in Surrey. No trace, no clue, no lead as to what happened.
He’s a fascinating bloke, this Harry Johnson – rich, handsome and brainy on the subject of quantum mechanics and superstring theory, which has some pretty funny notions about the nature of reality.
Jury wonders, Is Harry Johnson winding me up? The dog did come back – but how? And from where? When Jury investigates, all seems to be just as Harry described it.
Until they find the body.