BrokenTune

He and Peggy had never quarrelled, Ray thought. Perhaps that had been part of what was wrong. Ray considered himself – because he had been told it often enough by other people – easy-going, which was on the helpful side in a marriage, he supposed. On the other hand, Peggy had never been demanding, had never held out for anything he thought unreasonable, so there had simply been no occasion for quarrelling. He hadn’t particularly wanted to spend a whole year in Mallorca, but Peggy had (some place very primitive and simple, simpler even than southern Italy), so Ray had decided to look on it as a long honeymoon, and had decided he could spend the time well by painting and reading, especially reading art history books, so he had agreed. And the first four months, she had been amused and happy. Ray could even say the first eight months. The novelty of the rather barefoot life had worn off by then, but by then she had been painting, fewer hours a day but more constructively, he had thought. His thoughts trailed off, and he was as lost as ever for a reason for her dying. Coleman now had her paintings, had corralled every one, and also all her drawings, and had shipped them to Rome, not asking Ray if he might like one. Ray reproached himself for having let it happen. For this, Ray felt extremely bitter against Coleman, so bitter he tried to forget it whenever he recalled it. He looked now at the Lido lights, a long low streak ahead. He thought of Mann’s Death in Venice, of the hot, festering sun beating on that strip of land. Passion and disease. Well, this was not at all the weather, there was no disease, and the passion was only in Coleman.

This is certainly different. Instead of a lead up to a death, we have the aftermath of one in this book. It's not a spoiler - the first sentence of the book tells us this.

I somehow can't believe Ray is a trustworthy character, but so far we have no clues otherwise, except that Coleman also suspects Ray to hide something (to say the least).