There will be much disappointment, I fear, among my fellow scholars. From the Senior Common Room of St. George’s College, where anxious colleagues ask daily, “Finished yet, Hilary?” to the far distant lecture halls of Yale and Columbia, where I understand that the phrase “In Professor Tamar’s forthcoming publication” is constantly to be heard, the world of learning waits with impatient eagerness for my long-promised work on the concept of causa in the common law. How then am I to admit that I have yet again allowed myself to be led astray from the true path of Scholarship and that what I now offer my readers is no more than the chronicle of my defection?
Would it not perhaps be more seemly to refrain from publishing any account of my investigation of the Daffodil affair and to allow the whole matter to rest in obscurity? The mere facts of the case, after all, are hardly in themselves of sufficient importance to warrant publication. The reason for the high mortality rate among the advisers to the Daffodil Settlement; the identity of the white-robed figure seen on the cliffs on Walpurgis Night; how Julia Larwood came to be arrested in evening dress one morning on a beach in Jersey — of what serious interest or value can it be to my readers to be informed of such matters? And yet the case provides so striking a demonstration of the methods by which Scholarship, when applied even to such trifling questions, may dispel Error and reveal Truth that it will perhaps afford not only instruction to the public but much needed encouragement to other scholars. I have accordingly been persuaded, despite my misgivings, that it would not be right to withhold an account of it.
It was far from being my intention, when I made my way to London shortly before Easter, to permit myself to be distracted from the labours becoming to the Scholar. My former pupil, Timothy Shepherd, now in practice at the Chancery Bar, finding himself obliged by a combination of his professional commitments and his arrangements for the Easter vacation to be absent from London for a period of some three weeks, had invited me to make during that time such use as I might wish of his flat in Middle Temple Lane. Happening to have reached a part of my researches which required frequent visits to the Public Record Office, and which therefore could not conveniently be pursued in Oxford, I accepted his invitation with alacrity and gratitude. I regretted, naturally, that Timothy himself would be absent, for I have always found him a most generous host; but the friendship I had long enjoyed with other young members of his Chambers at 62 New Square assured me of agreeable company when I sought respite from my labours.
There was nothing to forewarn me, on my arrival in the capital, of the dark and sinister events in which I was shortly to become embroiled. The sun was shining on Lincoln’s Inn Fields; the azaleas were blooming in the gardens at the edge of New Square; the barristers hurrying in wigs and gowns across Carey Street were exchanging seasonable gossip about who was going to get Silk — it is on Maundy Thursday, as my readers are doubtless aware, that the Lord Chancellor announces which members of the Junior Bar are to be elevated to the eminent and lucrative rank of Queen’s Counsel.
My young friends in 62 New Square, when not engaged in deploring the inadequate remuneration negotiated on their behalf by their Clerk, Henry, with their instructing solicitors, were innocently employed in activities befitting to the Chancery Bar: Selena Jardine, if my memory serves me, in a lengthy and acrimonious piece of litigation relating to the rights of the debenture holders in a public company; Desmond Ragwort in advising on the construction of documents affecting the title to certain land in the West Country; Michael Cantrip in sundry possession actions in various county courts. In the Revenue chambers next door, Julia Larwood was peacefully studying the latest Finance Bill.
Everything, in short, was proceeding in a manner appropriate to its nature and the season, with no such departure from the natural order of things as might be expected to be the portent of hidden danger and mysterious death. Or so, at any rate, it seemed to me. I did not realize, of course, how odd it was for Cantrip to be sent to the Channel Islands.