The face in the shadows

"You'd better stay away from me," the little girl whispered to Ellen Stacey, "or they'll get you like they did Amy. She was my friend. So they killed her." The little girl's voice held such hushed horror that Ellen felt a chill of fear. Who were they? Did the dazed child have real enemies, or were they the shadowy figures of her imagination? The young actress had found Cecily Vandering huddled on the terrace of the Cloisters Museum, half-unconscious from drugs. She wore the uniform of one of New York's most exclusive schools and in her bag were identification cards with a Fifth Avenue address and three packets of heroin. Her divorced parents had tried vainly to discover who was giving drugs to their carefully guarded daughter, but they dismissed her tale of shadowy figures as fantasy. Yet Ellen's interest in the pathetic child aroused someone's anger. There was an anonymous warning, a nearly fatal "accident." Ellen began to wonder if Amy Thornhill, Howard Vanderling's gentle fiancée, had really been murdered by thieves who broke into her apartment, or if she had been killed by an enemy who was determined to keep Cecily lonely, confiding in no one. Here is an enthralling novel of ro