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hers she nodded her head, at which point it was my part to withdraw. I suggested I might be allowed access to the contents of Mr Pimbo’s desk during her conference with the doctor. She rang a handbell and the little servant appeared.
    â€˜Peggy will show you to the master’s study. The desk is unlocked. I do not know what’s in it.’
    The study into which the maid showed me was on the ground floor, and stood next to the salon in which I had met old Mrs Pimbo. Its window looked out of the side of the house over a dusty path, a lawn and a clump of bushes, or what the up-to-date Mr Pimbo would have called a shrubbery.
    â€˜This is sad news about your master, Peggy,’ I remarked as she showed me in.
    â€˜Yes, Sir. We are shocked, Sir.’
    â€˜Had the servants noticed anything that might explain it? I wonder if Mr Pimbo had recently changed in his manner.’
    She shrugged her thin shoulders.
    â€˜There’s only one thing they’re saying in kitchen, Sir. That he’d gone off his food. In two days he’d not ate a proper meal but only piddled it round his plate. That’s what cook said, not me, Sir. I never saw it. I’m only three weeks here, and I’m not let in to wait table just yet.’
    â€˜Have you been told anything of how you are all situated? About what the future may now bring?’
    â€˜No, Sir. Nothing. But if I am going home I shall not mind.’
    â€˜You have not been happy here?’
    â€˜I didn’t say that, Sir.’
    But I could tell it was true. I felt the whole household to be locked in unhappiness, but without a key to the secret it was not possible to know why.
    This thought reminded me that one of my tasks this day was to find a more tangible key. I dismissed Peggy, and made a quick survey of the room to see where a man might keep one – a large brass key to match that which I had yesterday seen in Hazelbury’s hand. There was no hook-board of the kind on which keys are hung. Two small vases stood at each end of the mantel, both empty, and a flat matching dish between them on which lay a clay pipe and nothing more. On a side table there was a snuff barrel, half full, from which I took a pinch and enjoyed a sneeze.
    I looked through the bookcase. Pimbo had not been a very interesting reader. There were the usual volumes: sets of sermons by forgotten divines, a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress , another of Robinson Crusoe . There was no poetry, no plays. I pulled down one tattered book whose title on the spine I could not read. It was an old account of El Dorado, ‘written by one that hath been there and beheld its golden glories’. He had it no doubt for professional reasons.
    Next I addressed myself to the desk. It was in the form of a large and solid inlaid escritoire, with a lid that hinged down to form a writing surface. The interior, considerably deeper and more spacious than the lady’s writing desk I had seen the day before in the salon, was subdivided into small square compartments and narrow drawers, for ordering documents and stationery.
    I went through the little drawers first. They were reserved for the accoutrements of writing: quills, pen-knife, sealing-wafers, wax, tapers, a tinderbox. There was no key. Then I turned to the open compartments, each of which was stuffed with paper.
    I settled myself into an armchair and began to glance through the contents of these in turn, and found that the papers had been more or less rationally organized. There were many mundane household letters, all of which had been stuffed into the compartments towards the left hand side of the desk – estimates tendered, accounts rendered, demands submitted and receipts remitted – mostly in connection with repair works or domestic supplies and services. I noticed that many of these were of quite an old date and not many had been countersigned as ‘paid’, while there were a number of increasingly exasperated