Session 5

Tuesday 13th November

The private detective Walsh contacts Withers about Edwards and Lawrence Bacon. Edwards has long gone from the last known address, leaving no trace. Bacon has run his shop in Islington for several deacdes and is still there. He rarely if ever leaves and the shop is open by appointment only.

Nathaniel Browne visits Talbot Estus to return ‘Le Roi en Jeune’. Michael Gillen seems to have moved out, and Estus is dishevelled and his apartment is a mess. He has beens truggling to make any headway at all on his novel and seems unwell. A passionate discussion on The King in Yellow ensues, and Browne lends Estus his copy of ‘der Wanderer durch den See’. Estus reveals a dream he has had, of Cassilda’s palace surrounded by flocks of black flying creatures similar to the Springer Mound Monsters.

Wednesday 14th November

Withers hears from his private detective about Malcolm Quarrie. Quarrie left the Royal Society in 1926, apparently to go overseas.The current resident of his former address does not no where but holds some mail for him, including letters from Pembroke College, Oxford.

Withers asks Andrew Saunders if he can help, as he has a contact at Oxford, and Saunders calls his friend John Tolkien to ask if John can find out anything about Quarrie. Tolkien recalls Quarrie’s name – he was fellow scholar of Anglo-Saxon who once corresponded with him, as they had a mutual acquaintance. Quarrie wrote a book called ‘British Gods’ which was astudy of pre-Roman Anglo-Saxon deities. Tolkien owns a copy and invites Saunders to dinner in Oxford on Saturday.

Saunders also contacts the Archaeology Department at Oxford and locates Professor Hudson, who was on the Springer Mound dig in 1907, as a graduate student. This dig was nothing more than a training dig organised by a now deceased Professor, and it found nothing of interest. However, when Hudson lists the students on the dig he mentions a ‘Charles Edwards’ who he is sure died at the Somme.