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By Root 1230 0

but don’t know where. They don’t give us much notice as a rule. A glorious day, which makes life feel much more worth living. We had our Easter service today, as we shall probably be moved by then, and I stayed to Communion afterwards. You will keep an eye on Hazel won’t you Harry old boy—she is a dear sweet girl—and on Mother and Daphne too. Goodnight Harry and best love from Hubert.” After which Harry had written, “My last letter from my darling boy: FINIS.” But underneath, in a ruled ink box, there was a little memorial:

At the counter Raymond raked his beard. “Ah, Rob—any interest?”

“This Hubert Sawle—any relation of G. F. Sawle and Madeleine Sawle?”

“Very good, Rob … yes … Hubert was G. F.’s brother.”

“Totally unheard-of.”

“Till now …”—Raymond nodded at the book.

“And Daphne Sawle was the sister. You see, I met this woman last week who was Daphne Sawle’s grand-daughter.”

“Right …”

“I got a bit lost in her story, about the biography of Cecil Valance, you know. She said her grandmother had written her memoirs. I meant to chase it up.”

“I don’t know,” said Raymond; and as this was something he didn’t like saying, he got to work.

“Of course the house in ‘Two Acres’ was round here, wasn’t it?”

“Stanmore, yep.”

“Anything there?”

Raymond peered, scrolled down and up, tongue on lip. “Demolished five or six years ago—well, it was a ruin already. No, Rob, there’s no one called Sawle except G. F. and Madeleine, who I happen to know was his wife.”

“Are you on Abe?”

“G. F. edited Valance’s letters, of course.”

“That’s right,” said Rob, again with the private glow of perceived connections, the protective feeling for his quarry that came up in any extended search. “I’ve an idea Daphne wrote under the name Jacobs.”

“Oh yes …” Raymond’s large hands made their darting wobble above the keyboard.

“She’s totally forgotten now, but she published this book of memoirs about thirty years ago—she was married to Dudley Valance, then to an artist called Revel Ralph.”

“Right … here we are … Daphne Jacobs: Assyrian Woodwind Instruments—that the one?”

“Um …”

“Bronze Ornaments of Ancient Mesopotamia.”

“I don’t think she goes back quite that far.”

“Corpus Mesopotamianum …”—that slowed him up for a second. “There’s loads of this stuff.”

“I think her book’s called The Short Gallery.”

“O-kay—here we go—The Short Gallery: Portraits from Life. Aha, seven copies … Plymbridge Press, 1979, 212 pp … First Edition, £1. There you are!”

Rob came round and looked over Raymond’s shoulder. “Scroll down a bit.” There were the usual anomalies—fine copy in fine dj, £2.50; ex-library, with no dj, damp-staining to rear boards, some light underlining, £18, with an excitable sales pitch, “Contains candid portraits of leading writers and artists A Huxley, Mary Gibbons, Lord Berners, Revd Ralph &c sensational account of teenage affair with WW1 Poet Dudley Valance.”

“Wrong!” said Raymond. “Right?”

“Love ‘Revd Ralph,’ ” said Rob. “Now that’s amusing. ‘Inscribed by the author “To Paul Bryant, April 18, 1980.” ’ ” With it was the sixteen-page catalogue, which Garsaint sometimes had, for the Revel Ralph “Scenes and Portraits” exhibition at the Michael Parkin Gallery in 1984, with a posthumous foreword by Daphne Jacobs—reassuringly unsigned: £25.

The final copy, from Delirium Books in LA, floated aloft in a bookman’s empyrean of its own: “Sir Dudley Valance’s copy, with his bookplate designed by St. John Hall, inscribed and signed by the author ‘To Dudley from Duffel,’ with numerous comments and corrections in pencil and ink by Dudley Valance. Book condition: fair. Dust-jacket, losses to head of spine, 1cm repaired tear to rear panel. In protective red morocco slipcase. An exceptional association copy. $1,500.”

“Take your pick,” said Raymond.

“Mm, I will,” said Rob. Jennifer Ralph’s description of the book as “rather feeble” tugged against his more indulgent curiosity. Of course she would have known some of the figures whose portraits appeared in it, which made a difference. “And how much do you want for Hewitt?”

“Hundred?”

Rob raised an eyebrow.