‘LOOK, I’M NOT PROUD of what we did, but it was years ago, all over and forgotten. Most teenage boys go through a stage of being appalling thugs. We were no different.’ Nick Marshall – a party guest who had been early exonerated – didn’t seem to find it too hard to forgive himself his youthful excesses. His self-justifying bluster wasn’t attractive.
‘No different?’ Rafferty managed to inject his comment with sufficient contempt to help conceal the fact that he had no idea what Seward, Marshall and their pals had done to the weedy Randolph Rawlins. It certainly seemed to convince Nick Marshall that he knew what he was talking about, because, in his attempts at self-justification, he immediately blurted it all out.
‘Rufus Seward always swung both ways, even then, and little Randolph Rawlin
