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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to
real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the
author.

Copyright © 2022 by J.K. Rowling

Cover design by Duncan Spilling
Cover photographs: figures © Duncan Spilling, scene © iStock and
Shutterstock, texture © Arigato/Shutterstock
Cover © 2022 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the
value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers
and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without

permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you
would like permission to use material from the book (other than for
review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank
you for your support of the author’s rights.

Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
mulhollandbooks.com

First ebook edition: August 2022

Published simultaneously in Britain by Sphere: August 2022

Mulholland Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a

division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Mulholland Books name
and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that
are not owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for
speaking events. To find out more, go to
hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

ISBN 978-0-316-41323-7

E3-20220804-JV-NF-ORI
 Contents

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Copyright
4. Dedication
5. Epigraph

6. PROLOGUE
1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4

7. PART ONE
1. 5
2. 6
3. 7
4. 8
5. 9
6. 10
7. 11
8. 12
9. 13
10. 14
8. PART TWO
1. 15
2. 16
3. 17
4. 18
5. 19
6. 20
7. 21
8. 22
9. 23
10. 24
11. 25
12. 26
13. 27
14. 28
15. 29
16. 30
17. 31
18. 32
19. 33
20. 34
21. 35
22. 36
23. 37

9. PART THREE
1. 38
 2. 39
3. 40
4. 41
5. 42
6. 43
7. 44
8. 45
9. 46
10. 47
11. 48
12. 49
13. 50
14. 51
15. 52
16. 53
17. 54
18. 55
19. 56
20. 57

10. PART FOUR

1. 58
2. 59
3. 60
4. 61
5. 62
6. 63
 7. 64
8. 65
9. 66
10. 67
11. 68
12. 69
13. 70
14. 71
15. 72
16. 73
17. 74
18. 75
19. 76
20. 77
21. 78
22. 79
23. 80
24. 81
25. 82
26. 83
27. 84

11. PART FIVE

1. 85
2. 86
3. 87
4. 88
 5. 89
6. 90
7. 91
8. 92
9. 93
10. 94
11. 95
12. 96
13. 97
14. 98
15. 99
16. 100
17. 101
18. 102
19. 103
20. 104
21. 105
22. 106

12. CODA
1. 107

13. Acknowledgements
14. Discover More
15. Credits
16. Also by Robert Galbraith
17. Praise for Robert Galbraith
 To Steve and Lorna,
my family, my friends
and two bulwarks against anomie,
with love
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Two forms of darkness are there. One is Night…
And one is Blindness.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Doubt
 PROLOGUE

Wounds of the heart are often fatal,

but not necessarily so.

Henry Gray FRS

Gray’s Anatomy
 1

Why did you let your eyes so rest on me,

And hold your breath between?
In all the ages this can never be
As if it had not been.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

A Moment

Of all the couples sitting in the Rivoli Bar at the Ritz that Thursday
evening, the pair that was having the most conspicuously good time
was not, in fact, a couple.
Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott, private detectives, business
partners and self-declared best friends, were celebrating Robin’s
thirtieth birthday. Both had been slightly self-conscious on first
arriving in the bar, which resembled an art deco jewel box, with its
walls of dark wood and gold, and its frosted panels of Lalique glass,
because each was aware that this outing was unique in the almost
five years they’d known one another. Never before had they chosen
to spend an evening in each other’s company outside work, without
the presence of other friends or colleagues, or the pretext of injury
(because there’d been an occasion a few weeks previously, when
Strike had accidentally given his partner two black eyes and bought
her a takeaway curry as recompense).
Even more unusually, both had had enough sleep, and each was
looking their best. Robin was wearing a figure-hugging blue dress,
her long strawberry-blonde hair clean and loose, and her partner
had noticed the appreciative glances she’d drawn from male drinkers
as she passed. He’d already complimented her on the opal lying in
the hollow at the base of her throat, which had been a thirtieth
birthday gift from her parents. The tiny diamonds surrounding it
made a glittering halo in the bar’s golden lights, and whenever Robin
moved, sparks of scarlet fire twinkled in the opal’s depths.
Strike was wearing his favourite Italian suit, with a white shirt
and dark tie. His resemblance to a broken-nosed, slightly overweight
Beethoven had increased now that he’d shaved off his recently
grown beard, but the waitress’s warm smile as she handed Strike his
first Old Fashioned reminded Robin of what her ex-husband’s new
wife, Sarah Shadlock, had once said of the detective:
‘He is strangely attractive, isn’t he? Bit beaten-up-looking, but
I’ve never minded that.’
What a liar she’d been: Sarah had liked her men smoothly
handsome, as proven by her relentless and ultimately successful
pursuit of Matthew.
Sitting facing each other in leopard-print chairs at their table for
two, Strike and Robin had initially subsumed their slight
awkwardness in work talk. Discussion of the cases currently on the
detective agency’s books carried them through a powerful cocktail
apiece, by which time their increasingly loud laughter had started
drawing glances from both barmen and customers. Soon Robin’s
eyes were bright and her face slightly flushed, and even Strike, who
was considerably larger than his partner and well able to handle his
alcohol, had taken enough bourbon to make him feel pleasantly
buoyant and loose-limbed.
After their second cocktails, talk became more personal. Strike,
who was the illegitimate son of a rock star he’d met only twice, told
Robin that one of his half-sisters, Prudence, wanted to meet him.
‘Where does she fit in?’ Robin asked. She knew that Strike’s
father had been married three times, and that her partner was the
result of a one-night stand with a woman most commonly described
in the press as a ‘supergroupie’, but she was hazy about the rest of
the family tree.
‘She’s the other illegitimate,’ said Strike. ‘Few years younger
than me. Her mother was that actress, Lindsey Fanthrope? Mixed-
race woman? She’s been in everything. EastEnders, The Bill…’
‘D’you want to meet Prudence?’
 ‘Not sure,’ Strike admitted. ‘Can’t help feeling I’ve got enough
relatives to be going on with. She’s also a therapist.’
‘What kind?’
‘Jungian.’
His expression, which compounded wariness and distaste, made
Robin laugh.
‘What’s wrong with being a Jungian therapist?’
‘I dunno… I quite liked her from her texts, but…’
Trying to find the right words, Strike’s eyes found the bronze
panel on the wall behind Robin’s head, which showed a naked Leda
being impregnated by Zeus in the form of a swan.
‘… well, she said she hasn’t had an easy time of it either, having
him as a father. But when I found out what she does for a living…’
His voice trailed away. He drank more bourbon.
‘You thought she was being insincere?’
‘Not exactly insincere…’ Strike heaved a sigh. ‘I’ve had enough
matchbox psychologists telling me why I live the way I do and
tracing it all back to my family, so-called. Prudence said in one of her
texts that she’d found forgiving Rokeby “healing”— Sod this,’ said
Strike abruptly, ‘it’s your birthday, let’s talk about your family. What
does your dad do for a living? You’ve never told me.’
‘Oh, haven’t I?’ said Robin, with mild surprise. ‘He’s a professor
of sheep medicine, production and reproduction.’
Strike choked on his cocktail.
‘What’s funny?’ Robin asked, eyebrows raised.
‘Sorry,’ said Strike, coughing and laughing simultaneously.
‘Wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.’
‘He’s quite an authority, I’ll have you know,’ said Robin, mock-
offended.
‘Professor of sheep— What was the rest of it, again?’
‘Medicine, production and reprod— Why’s that so funny?’ Robin
said, as Strike guffawed a second time.
‘Dunno, maybe the “production” and “reproduction” thing,’ said
Strike. ‘And also the sheep.’
‘He’s got forty-six letters after his name. I counted when I was a
kid.’
 ‘Very impressive,’ said Strike, taking another sip of bourbon and
attempting to look serious. ‘So, when did he first become interested
in sheep? Was this a lifelong thing or did a particular sheep catch his
eye when he was—’
‘He doesn’t shag them, Strike.’
The detective’s renewed laughter made heads turn.
‘His older brother got the family farm, so Dad did veterinary
science at Durham and, yeah, he specialised— Stop bloody laughing!
He’s also the editor of a magazine.’
‘Please tell me it’s about sheep.’
‘Yes, it is. Sheep Management,’ said Robin, ‘and before you ask,
no, they don’t have a photo feature called “Readers’ Sheep”.’
This time Strike’s bellow of laughter was heard by the whole bar.
‘Keep it down,’ said Robin, smiling but aware of the many eyes
now upon them. ‘We don’t want to be banned from another bar in
London.’
‘We didn’t get banned from the American Bar, did we?’
Strike’s memory of the aftermath of attempting to punch a
suspect in the Stafford Hotel was hazy, not because he’d been
drunk, but because he’d been lost to everything but his own rage.
‘They might not have barred us explicitly, but try going back in
there and see what kind of a welcome you get,’ said Robin, fishing
one of the last olives out of the dishes that had arrived with their
first drink. Strike had already single-handedly finished the crisps.
‘Charlotte’s father kept sheep,’ Strike said, and Robin felt that
small frisson of interest she always experienced when he mentioned
his former fiancée, which was almost never.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, on Arran,’ said Strike. ‘He had a massive house there with
his third wife. Hobby farming, you know. Probably a tax write-off.
They were evil-looking bastards – the sheep, that is – can’t
remember the name of the breed. Black and white. Huge horns and
yellow eyes.’
‘They sound like Jacobs,’ said Robin, and responding to Strike’s
grin, she said, ‘I grew up with massive piles of Sheep Management
next to the loo – obviously I know sheep breeds… What’s Arran like?’
 She really meant, ‘What was Charlotte’s family like?’
‘Pretty, from what I can remember, but I was only at the house
once. Never got a return invitation. Charlotte’s father hated the sight
of me.’
‘Why?’
Strike downed the last of his cocktail before answering.
‘Well, there were a few reasons, but I think top of the list was
that his wife tried to seduce me.’
Robin’s gasp was far louder than she’d intended.
‘Yeah. I must’ve been about twenty-two, twenty-three. She was
at least forty. Very good-looking, if you like them coke-thin.’
‘How – what…?’
‘We’d gone to Arran for the weekend. Scheherazade – that was
the stepmother – and Charlotte’s father were very big drinkers. Half
the family had drug problems as well, all the stepsisters and half-
brothers.
‘The four of us sat up boozing after dinner. Her father wasn’t
over-keen on me in the first place – hoping for something a lot more
blue-blooded. They’d put Charlotte and me in separate bedrooms on
different floors.
‘I went up to my attic room about two in the morning, stripped
off, fell into bed very pissed, turned out the light and a couple of
minutes later the door opened. I thought it was Charlotte, obviously.
The room was pitch black. I moved over, she slid in beside me –’
Robin realised her mouth was agape and closed it.
‘– stark naked. Still didn’t twig – I had most of a bottle of
whisky inside me. She – ah – reached for me – if you know what I’m
saying –’
Robin clapped a hand over her mouth.
‘– and we kissed and it was only when she whispered in my ear
that she’d noticed me looking at her tits when she’d bent over the
fire that I realised I was in bed with my hostess. Not that it matters,
but I hadn’t been looking at her tits. I’d been getting ready to catch
her. She was so pissed, I thought she was going to topple into the
fire when she threw a log on it.’
‘What did you do?’ Robin asked through her fingers.
 ‘Shot out of bed like I had a firework up my arse,’ said Strike, as
Robin began to laugh again, ‘hit the washstand, knocked it over and
smashed some giant Victorian jug. She just sniggered. I had the
impression she thought I’d be straight back in bed with her once the
shock wore off. I was trying to find my boxers in the dark when
Charlotte opened the door for real.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Yeah, she didn’t take too kindly to finding me and her
stepmother naked in the same bedroom,’ said Strike. ‘It was a toss-
up which of us she wanted to kill most. The screaming woke Sir
Anthony. He came charging upstairs in his brocade dressing gown,
but he was so pissed he hadn’t tied it properly. He turned the lights
on and stood there holding a shooting stick, oblivious to the fact that
his cock was hanging out until his wife pointed it out.
‘“Anthony, we can see Johnny Winkle.”’
Robin now laughed so hard that Strike had to wait for her to
compose herself before continuing the story. At the bar a short
distance from their table, a silver-haired man was watching Robin
with a slight smirk on his face.
‘What then?’ Robin asked breathlessly, mopping her eyes with
the miniature napkin that had come with her drink.
‘Well, as far as I can remember, Scheherazade didn’t bother to
justify herself. If anything, she seemed to think it was all a bit of a
laugh. Charlotte lunged at her and I held Charlotte back, and Sir
Anthony basically seemed to take the view that it was all my fault for
not locking my bedroom door. Charlotte was a bit inclined that way
too. But life in squats with my mother hadn’t really prepared me for
what to expect from the aristocracy. On balance, I’d have to say
people were a lot better behaved in the squats.’
He raised his hand to indicate to the smiling waitress that they
were ready for more drinks, and Robin, whose ribs were sore from
laughing, got to her feet.
‘Need the loo,’ she said breathlessly, and the eyes of the silver-
haired man on the bar stool followed her as she walked away.
The cocktails had been small but very strong, and Robin, who
spent so much of her life running surveillance in trainers, was out of
the habit of wearing heels. She had to grasp the handrail firmly
while navigating the red-carpeted stairs down to the Ladies’ Room,
which was more palatial than any Robin had visited before. The soft
pink of a strawberry macaron, it featured circular marble sinks, a
velvet sofa and walls covered in murals of nymphs standing in water
lily-strewn lakes.
Having peed, Robin straightened her dress and checked her
mascara in the mirror, expecting it to have run with all the laughing.
Washing her hands, she thought back over the story Strike had just
told her. However funny she’d found it, it was also slightly
intimidating. In spite of the vast array of human vagaries, many of
them sexual, that Robin had encountered in her detective career, she
sometimes felt herself to be inexperienced and unworldly compared
to other women her age. Robin’s personal experience of the wilder
shores of sexual adventurousness was non-existent. She’d only ever
had one sexual partner and had reasons beyond the usual for
wishing to trust the person with whom she went to bed. A middle-
aged man with a patch of vitiligo under his left ear had once stood in
the dock and claimed that nineteen-year-old Robin had invited him
into a dark stairwell for sex, and that he’d choked her into
unconsciousness because she’d told him she ‘liked it rough’.
‘I think my next drink had better be water,’ Robin said five
minutes later, as she dropped back into her seat opposite Strike
again. ‘Those are seriously strong cocktails.’
‘Too late,’ said Strike, as the waitress set fresh glasses in front of
them. ‘Fancy a sandwich, mop up some of the alcohol?’
He passed her the menu. The prices were exorbitant.
‘No, listen—’
‘I wouldn’t have invited you to the Ritz if I wasn’t prepared to
cough up,’ said Strike with an expansive gesture. ‘I’d have ordered a
cake, but—’
‘Ilsa’s already done it, for tomorrow night?’ Robin guessed.
The following evening a group of friends, Strike included, would
be giving Robin a birthday dinner, organised by their mutual friend.
‘Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, so act surprised. Who’s
coming to this dinner, anyway?’ Strike asked. He had a slight
curiosity about whether there were any people he didn’t know
about: specifically, men.
Robin listed the names of the couples.
‘… and you and me,’ she finished.
‘Who’s Richard?’
‘Max’s new boyfriend,’ said Robin. Max was her flatmate and
landlord, an actor who rented out a bedroom because he couldn’t
make his mortgage repayments without a lodger. ‘I’m starting to
wonder if it isn’t time to move out of Max’s,’ she added.
The waitress appeared and Strike ordered them both
sandwiches before turning back to Robin.
‘Why’re you thinking of moving out?’
‘Well, the TV show Max is in pays really well and they’ve just
commissioned a second series, and he and Richard seem very keen
on each other. I don’t want to wait until they ask me to leave.
Anyway’ – Robin took a sip of her fresh cocktail – ‘I’m thirty. It’s
about time I was out on my own, don’t you think?’
Strike shrugged.
‘I’m not big on having to do things by certain dates. That’s more
Lucy’s department.’
Lucy was the sister with whom Strike had spent most of his
childhood, because they’d shared a mother. He and Lucy generally
held opposing views on what constituted life’s pleasures and
priorities. It distressed Lucy that Strike, who was nearly forty,
continued to live alone in two rented rooms over his office, without
any of the stabilising obligations – a spouse, children, a mortgage,
parent-teacher associations, duty Christmas parties with
neighbours – that their mother, too, had ruthlessly shirked.
‘Well, I think it’s about time I had my own place,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll
miss Wolfgang, but—’
‘Who’s Wolfgang?’
‘Max’s dachshund,’ said Robin, surprised by the sharpness of
Strike’s tone.
‘Oh… thought it was some German bloke you’d taken a shine to.’
‘Ha… no,’ said Robin.
 She really was feeling quite drunk now. Hopefully the
sandwiches would help.
‘No,’ she repeated, ‘Max isn’t the type to try and set me up with
Germans. Makes quite a nice change, I must say.’
‘Do many people try and set you up with Germans?’
‘Not Germans, but… Oh, you know what it’s like. Vanessa keeps
telling me to get myself on Tinder and my cousin Katie wants me to
meet some friend of hers who’s just moved to London. They call him
Axeman.’
‘Axeman?’ repeated Strike.
‘Yes, because his name’s… something that sounds like Axeman.
I can’t remember,’ said Robin, with a vague wave of the hand. ‘He’s
recently divorced, so Katie thinks we’d be perfect for each other. I
don’t really understand why it would make two people compatible,
just because they’ve screwed up a marriage each. In fact, if
anything—’
‘You didn’t screw up your marriage,’ said Strike.
‘I did,’ Robin contradicted him. ‘I shouldn’t have married
Matthew at all. It was a mess, and it got worse as we went on.’
‘He was the one who had the affair.’
‘But I was the one who didn’t want to be there. I was the one
who tried to end it on the honeymoon, then chickened out—’
‘Did you?’ said Strike, to whom this was new information.
‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘I knew, deep down, knew it was all wrong…’
For a moment she was transported back to the Maldives, and
those hot nights she’d paced alone on the white sand outside their
villa while Matthew slept, asking herself whether she was in love
with Cormoran Strike.
The sandwiches arrived and Robin requested a glass of water.
For a minute or so they ate in silence, until Strike said,
‘I wouldn’t go on Tinder.’
‘You wouldn’t, or I shouldn’t?’
‘Both,’ said Strike. He’d managed to finish one sandwich and
start on his second before Robin had taken two bites. ‘In our line of
work it’s not smart to put yourself online too much.’
 ‘That’s what I told Vanessa,’ said Robin. ‘But she said I could
use a fake name until I got keen on someone.’
‘Nothing like lying about your own name to build a firm
foundation of trust,’ said Strike and Robin laughed again.
Strike ordered more cocktails and Robin didn’t protest. The bar
was more crowded now than when they’d first sat down, the hum of
conversation louder, and the crystals hanging from the chandeliers
were each surrounded by a misty aureole. Robin now felt an
indiscriminate fondness for everyone in the room, from the elderly
couple talking quietly over champagne and the bustling bartenders
in their white jackets to the silver-haired man who smiled at her as
she gazed around. Most of all, she liked Cormoran Strike, who was
giving her a wonderful, memorable and costly birthday evening.
As for Strike, who genuinely hadn’t ogled the breasts of
Scheherazade Campbell all those years ago, he was doing his best to
extend the same courtesy to his business partner, but she’d never
looked better to him: flushed with drink and laughter, her red-blonde
hair shining in the diffused glow from the golden cupola above them.
When she bent forward suddenly to pick up something on the floor,
a deep cavern of cleavage was revealed behind the hanging opal.
‘Perfume,’ she said, straightening up, having retrieved the small
purple bag she’d carried from Liberty, in which was Strike’s birthday
present. ‘Want to put some on.’
She untied the ribbon, unwrapped the parcel and extracted the
square white bottle, and Strike watched her spray a small amount on
each wrist, and then – he forced himself to look away – down into
the hollow between her breasts.
‘I love it,’ she said, wrist to her nose. ‘Thank you.’
He caught a small waft of perfume from where he sat: his sense
of smell slightly impaired from long years of smoking, he
nevertheless detected roses and an undertone of musk, which made
him think of sun-warmed skin.
Fresh cocktails arrived.
‘I think she’s forgotten my water,’ said Robin, sipping her
Manhattan. ‘This has got to be my last. I don’t wear heels much any
more. Don’t want to faceplant in the middle of the Ritz.’
 ‘I’ll get you a cab.’
‘You’ve spent enough.’
‘We’re doing OK, money-wise,’ said Strike. ‘For a change.’
‘I know – isn’t it fantastic?’ sighed Robin. ‘We’ve actually got a
healthy bank balance and tons of work coming in… Strike, we’re a
success,’ she said, beaming, and he felt himself beaming back.
‘Who’d have thought?’
‘I would,’ said Robin.
‘When you met me I was well-nigh bankrupt, sleeping on a
camp bed in my office and had one client.’
‘So? I liked that you hadn’t given up,’ said Robin, ‘and I could
tell you were really good at what you did.’
‘The hell could you tell that?’
‘Well, I watched you doing it, didn’t I?’
‘Remember when you brought in that tray of coffee and
biscuits?’ said Strike. ‘To me and John Bristow, that first morning? I
couldn’t fathom where you’d got it all. It was like a conjuring trick.’
Robin laughed.
‘I only asked the bloke downstairs.’
‘And you said “we”. “I thought, having offered the client coffee,
we ought to provide it.”’
‘Your memory,’ said Robin, surprised that he had the exact
words on the tip of his tongue.
‘Yeah, well… you’re not a… usual person,’ said Strike.
He picked up his almost-empty drink and raised it.
‘To the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency. And happy
thirtieth.’
Robin picked up her glass, clinked it against his and drained it.
‘Shit, Strike, look at the time,’ she said suddenly, catching sight
of her watch. ‘I’ve got to be up at five, I’m supposed to be following
Miss Jones’s boyfriend.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ grunted Strike, who could happily have spent
another couple of hours here in his comfy chair, bathed in golden
light, the smell of rose and musk drifting across the table. He
signalled for the bill.
 As Robin had anticipated, she was definitely unsteady on her
high heels as she crossed the bar, and it took her far longer than it
should have done to locate the token for her coat in the bottom of
her handbag.
‘Could you hold this, please?’ she asked Strike, handing him the
bag containing her perfume while she rummaged.
Having retrieved her coat, Strike had to help her put it on.
‘I am definitely quite drunk,’ Robin muttered, taking back the
little purple bag, and seconds later she proved it by turning her heel
on the edge of the circular scarlet rug that covered the lobby’s
marble floor and slipping sideways. Strike caught her, and kept his
arm around her waist as he steered her out of one of the side
entrances flanking the revolving door, because he didn’t trust her in
it.
‘Sorry,’ said Robin as they walked carefully down the steep stone
steps at the front of the Ritz, Strike’s arm still around her waist. She
liked the feel of him, bulky and warm beside her: it had more often
been she who had supported him, on those occasions when the
stump of his right leg had refused to continue to bear his weight
after some ill-advised piece of overexertion. He was holding her so
tightly that her head was almost resting on his chest and she could
smell the aftershave he’d put on for this special occasion, even over
the usual smell of old cigarettes.
‘Taxi,’ said Strike, pointing, as a black cab came gliding smoothly
towards them.
‘Strike,’ said Robin, leaning back into him so as to look into his
face.
She’d intended to thank him, to tell him what a wonderful
evening she’d had, but when their eyes connected no words came.
For a minute sliver of time everything around them blurred, as
though they stood in the eye of some slow-motion tornado of
purring cars and passing lights, of pedestrians and cloud-dappled
sky, and only the feel and smell of each other was real, and Strike,
looking down into her upturned face, forgot in that second every
stern resolution that had restrained him for nearly five years and
made an almost infinitesimal dip of his head, his mouth heading for
hers.
And unwittingly, Robin’s expression moved from happiness to
fear. He saw it and straightened up again, and before either of them
could quite process what had just happened the mundane roar of a
motorbike courier heralded the return of the world to its regular
course; the tornado had passed and Strike was guiding Robin
towards the taxi’s open door, and she was falling back onto its solid
seat.
‘’Night,’ he called in after her. The door had slammed and the
taxi had pulled away before Robin, dazed, could decide whether she
felt more shock, elation or regret.
 2

Come let me talk with thee, allotted part

Of immortality – my own deep heart!

Maria Jane Jewsbury

To My Own Heart

The days following their night at the Ritz were, for Robin, full of
agitation and suspense. She was well aware that Strike had posed a
wordless question and that she’d silently returned a ‘no’, far more
forcefully than if she hadn’t been full of bourbon and vermouth, and
caught off guard. Now there was an increase of reserve in Strike’s
manner, a slightly forced briskness and a determined avoidance of all
personal subjects. Barriers that had come down over their five years
working together seemed to have been re-erected. Robin was afraid
she’d hurt Strike, and she didn’t underestimate what it took to hurt a
man as quietly confident and resilient as her partner.
Meanwhile, Strike was full of self-recrimination. He shouldn’t
have made that foolish, unconsummated move: hadn’t he concluded
months previously that a relationship with his partner was
impossible? They spent too much time together, they were legally
bound to each other by the business, the friendship was too valuable
to him to jeopardise, so why, in the golden glow of those
exorbitantly priced cocktails, had he jettisoned every good resolution
and yielded to powerful impulse?
Self-reproach mingled with feelings still less pleasant. The fact
was that Strike had very rarely suffered rebuffs from women,
because he was unusually good at reading people. Never before had
he made a move without being certain that his advance would be
welcome, and he’d certainly never had any woman react the way
Robin had: with alarm that, in his worst moments, Strike thought
could have been disgust. He might be broken-nosed, overweight and
one-legged, with dense, dark curly hair that schoolfriends had
dubbed pube-like, but that hadn’t ever stopped him pulling gorgeous
women before. Indeed, male friends, to whose eyes the detective’s
sexual appeal was largely invisible, had often expressed resentment
and amazement that he had such a successful sex life. But perhaps
it was insufferable vanity to think that the attraction he’d held for
previous girlfriends lingered, even as his morning cough worsened
and grey hairs started to appear among the dark brown?
Worse still was the idea that he’d totally misinterpreted Robin’s
feelings over a period of years. He’d assumed her slight
awkwardness at times when they were forced into physical or
emotional proximity had the same root as his own: a determination
not to succumb to temptation. In the days following her silent
rejection of his kiss, he kept going over incidents he’d thought
proved the attraction was mutual, returning again and again to the
fact that she’d broken off her first dance at her wedding to follow
him, leaving Matthew abandoned on the dance floor. She and Strike
had hugged at the top of the hotel stairs, and as he’d held her in her
wedding dress he could have sworn he’d heard the same dangerous
thought in her mind as filled his: let’s run away, and to hell with the
consequences. Had he imagined it all?
Perhaps he had. Perhaps Robin had wanted to run, but merely
back to London and the job. Maybe she saw him as a mentor and a
friend, but nothing more.
It was in this unsettled and depressed mood that Strike greeted
his fortieth birthday, which was marked by a restaurant dinner
organised, as Robin’s had been, by their mutual friends Nick and
Ilsa.
Here, for the first time, Robin met Strike’s oldest friend from
Cornwall, Dave Polworth, who, as Strike had once predicted, Robin
didn’t much like. Polworth was small and garrulous, commented
negatively on every aspect of London life and referred to women,
including the waitress who served them, as ‘tarts’. Robin, who was at
the opposite end of the table from Strike, spent much of the evening
making laboured small talk with Polworth’s wife, Penny, whose main
topics of conversation were her two children, how expensive
everything in London was, and what a twat her husband was.
Robin had bought Strike a rare test pressing of Tom Waits’s first
album, Closing Time, for his birthday. She knew Waits was his
favourite artist, and her best memory of the evening was the look of
unfeigned surprise and pleasure on Strike’s face when he unwrapped
it. She thought she sensed some return of his usual warmth when
he thanked her, and she hoped the gift would convey the message
that a woman who found him repugnant wouldn’t have gone to so
much effort to buy him something she knew he’d really want. She
wasn’t to know that Strike was asking himself whether Robin
considered him and the sixty-five-year-old Waits contemporaries.
A week after Strike’s birthday, the agency’s longest-serving
subcontractor, Andy Hutchins, handed in his notice. It wasn’t entirely
a surprise: although his MS was in remission, the job was taking its
toll. They gave Andy a farewell drinks party, which everyone except
the other subcontractor, Sam Barclay, attended, because he’d drawn
the short straw and was currently following a target through the
West End.
While Strike and Hutchins talked shop on the other side of the
pub table, Robin talked to their newest hire, Michelle Greenstreet,
known to her new colleagues, at her own request, as Midge. She
was a Mancunian ex-policewoman, tall, lean and very fit, a gym
fanatic with short, slicked-back dark hair and clear grey eyes. Robin
had already been made to feel slightly inadequate by the sight of
Midge’s six-pack as she stretched to reach the topmost file balanced
on a cabinet, but she liked her directness, and the fact that she
didn’t seem to hold herself superior to Robin, who alone at the
agency wasn’t ex-police or military. Tonight, Midge confided in Robin
for the first time that a major reason for wishing to relocate to
London had been a bad break-up.
‘Was your ex police as well?’ asked Robin.
‘Nope. She never held a job for more than a coupla months,’
said Midge, with more than a trace of bitterness. ‘She’s an
undiscovered genius who’s either gonna write a bestselling novel, or
paint a picture that’ll win the Turner Prize. I was out all day making
money to pay the bills, and she was at home pissing around online. I
ended it when I found her dating profile on Zoosk.’
‘God, I’m sorry,’ said Robin. ‘My marriage ended when I found a
diamond earring in our bed.’
‘Yeah, Vanessa told me,’ said Midge, who’d been recommended
to the agency by Robin’s policewoman friend. ‘She said you didn’t
keep it, either, you fookin’ mug.’
‘I’d’ve flogged it,’ rasped Pat Chauncey, the office manager,
breaking unexpectedly into the conversation. Pat was a gravel-voiced
fifty-seven-year-old with boot-black hair and teeth the colour of old
ivory, who chain-smoked outside the office and sucked constantly on
an e-cigarette inside it. ‘I had a woman send me my first husband’s
Y-fronts in the post, cheeky cow.’
‘Seriously?’ asked Midge.
‘Oh yeah,’ growled Pat.
‘What did you do?’ Robin asked.
‘Pinned ’em to the front door so they were the first thing he’d
see when he come home from work,’ said Pat. She took a deep pull
on her e-cigarette and said, ‘And I sent her somefing back she
wouldn’t forget.’
‘What?’ said Robin and Midge in unison.
‘Never you mind,’ said Pat. ‘But let’s just say it wouldn’t spread
easy on toast.’
The three women’s shouts of laughter drew Strike and
Hutchins’s attention: Strike caught Robin’s eye and she held it,
grinning. He looked away feeling slightly more cheerful than he’d
done in a while.
The departure of Andy placed a not-unfamiliar strain on the
agency, because it currently had several time-consuming jobs on its
books. The first and longest-running of these involved trying to dig
up dirt on the ex-boyfriend of a client nicknamed Miss Jones, who
was locked into a bitter custody battle over her baby daughter. Miss
Jones was a good-looking brunette who had an almost embarrassing
yen for Strike. He might have derived a much needed ego-boost
from her unabashed pursuit of him, were it not for the fact that he
found her combination of entitlement and neediness thoroughly
unattractive.
Their second client was also the wealthiest: a Russian-American
billionaire who lived between Moscow, New York and London. A
couple of extremely valuable objects had recently disappeared from
his house on South Audley Street, though the security alarm hadn’t
been tripped. The client suspected his London-based stepson and
wished to catch the young man in the act without alerting either the
police or his wife, who was disposed to consider her hard-partying
and jobless offspring a misunderstood paragon. Hidden spy cameras,
monitored by the agency, were now concealed in every corner of the
house. The stepson, who was known at the agency as Fingers, was
likewise under surveillance in case he tried to sell the missing
Fabergé casket or the Hellenistic head of Alexander the Great.
The agency’s last case, codenamed Groomer, was in Robin’s
view a particularly nasty one. A well-known international
correspondent for an American news channel had recently broken up
with her boyfriend of three years, who was an equally successful TV
producer. Shortly after their acrimonious split, the journalist had
found out that her ex-partner was still in contact with her seventeen-
year-old daughter, whom Midge had dubbed Legs. The seventeen-
year-old, who was tall and slender, with long blonde hair, was
already featuring in gossip columns, partly because of her famous
surname and partly because she’d already done some modelling.
Though the agency hadn’t yet witnessed sexual contact between
Legs and Groomer, their body language was far from parental-filial
during their secret meet-ups. The situation had plunged Legs’
mother into a state of fury, fear and suspicion that was poisoning
her relationship with her daughter.
To everyone’s relief, because they’d been so stretched after
Andy’s departure, at the start of December Strike succeeded in
poaching an ex-Met officer by the name of Dev Shah from a rival
detective agency. There was bad blood between Strike and Mitch
Patterson, the boss of the agency in question, which dated back to
the time Patterson had put Strike himself under surveillance. When
Shah answered the question ‘Why d’you want to leave Patterson
Inc?’ with the words ‘I’m tired of working for cunts,’ Strike hired him
on the spot.
Like Barclay, Shah was married with a young child. He was
shorter than both of his new male colleagues, with eyelashes so
thick that Robin thought they looked fake. Everyone at the agency
took to Dev: Strike, because he was quick on the uptake and
methodical in his record-keeping; Robin, because she liked his dry
sense of humour and what she inwardly termed a lack of
dickishness; Barclay and Midge, because Shah demonstrated early
on that he was a team player without any noticeable need to
outshine the other subcontractors; and Pat, as she admitted in her
gravelly voice to Robin while the latter was handing in her receipts
one Friday, because he ‘could give Imran Khan a run for his money,
couldn’t he? Those eyes!’
‘Mm, very handsome,’ said Robin indifferently, tallying her
receipts. Pat had spent much of the previous twelve months openly
hoping that Robin might fall for the charms of a previous
subcontractor whose good looks had been equalled by his
creepiness. Robin could only be grateful that Dev was married.
She’d been forced to temporarily shelve her flat-hunting plans
because of the long hours she was working, but still volunteered to
stake out the billionaire’s house over Christmas. It suited her to have
an excuse not to return to her parents in Masham, because she was
certain Matthew and Sarah would be parading their new-born child,
sex so far unknown, around the familiar streets where once, as
teenagers, he and Robin had strolled hand in hand. Robin’s parents
were disappointed, and Strike was clearly uncomfortable about
taking her up on the offer.
‘It’s fine,’ said Robin, disinclined to go into her reasons. ‘I’d
rather stay in London. You missed Christmas last year.’
She was starting to feel mentally and physically exhausted.
She’d worked almost non-stop for the past two years, years that had
included separation and divorce. The recent increase of reserve
between her and Strike was playing on her mind, and little as she’d
wanted to go back to Masham, the prospect of working through the
festive season was undeniably depressing.
 Then, in mid-December, Robin’s favourite cousin, Katie, issued a
last-minute invitation for her to join a skiing party over New Year. A
couple had dropped out on finding out that the wife was pregnant;
the chalet was already paid for, so Robin only needed to buy flights.
She’d never skied in her life, but as Katie and her husband would be
taking it in turns to look after their three-year-old son while the
other was on the slopes, there’d always be somebody around to talk
to, should she not wish to spend most of her time falling over on the
nursery slopes. Robin thought the trip might give her the sense of
perspective and serenity that was eluding her in London. Only after
she’d accepted did she learn that in addition to Katie and her
husband, and a couple of mutual friends from Masham, Hugh
‘Axeman’ Jacks would be of the party.
She told Strike none of these details, only that she had the
chance of a skiing trip and would like to take it, which meant slightly
increasing the amount of time she’d planned to take off over New
Year. Aware that Robin was owed far more leave than she was
proposing to take, Strike agreed without hesitation, and wished her
a good time.
 3

Eyes with the glow and hue of wine

Like yours, can daze a man outright…

Emily Pfeiffer
A Rhyme for the Time

On 28 December, the ex-boyfriend of Miss Jones, who’d lived an

apparently blameless life for weeks, finally slipped up in grand style,
buying a large quantity of coke in front of Dev Shah, then taking it in
the company of two escorts, before taking them home to Islington.
The exhilarated Miss Jones insisted on coming into the office to see
the pictures Shah had taken, then tried to embrace Strike. When he
pushed her gently but firmly away she seemed more intrigued than
offended. After paying her final bill, she insisted on kissing Strike on
the cheek, told him boldly that she owed him a favour and hoped
he’d call it in one day, then departed in a cloud of Chanel No. 5.
The following day, the mother in the Groomer case was sent to
Indonesia to report on a catastrophic air crash. Shortly before her
departure, she called Strike to tell him her daughter was planning to
spend New Year’s Eve at Annabel’s with the family of a schoolfriend.
She was certain Groomer would try to meet up with her daughter
there and demanded that the agency place detectives in the
nightclub to keep watch.
Strike, who’d rather have asked almost anyone else for
assistance, called Miss Jones, who’d be able to take Strike and Midge
into the members-only club as her guests. Strike was set on taking
Midge with him, not only because the latter would be able to tail
Legs into the bathroom if necessary, but because he didn’t want Miss
Jones to think he’d engineered the situation in the hope of sleeping
with her.
 He felt a callous sense of relief when Miss Jones called him two
hours before the proposed rendezvous to tell him her baby daughter
had come down with a fever.
‘… and my bloody nanny’s phoned in sick and my parents are in
Mustique, so I’m screwed,’ she told him petulantly. ‘But you can still
go: I’ve left your names at the door.’
‘I’m very grateful,’ he told her. ‘I hope she gets better soon.’
He rang off before Miss Jones could suggest any further
meetings.
By 11 p.m., he and Midge, who was wearing a dark red velvet
tuxedo, were to be found in the basement of the club in Berkeley
Square, sitting opposite each other at a table between two mirrored
pillars and beneath hundreds of golden helium balloons, from which
dangled gleaming ribbons. Their seventeen-year-old target was
sitting a few tables away with her schoolfriend’s family. She kept
glancing towards the restaurant entrance, wearing a look of mingled
hope and nervousness. Mobile phones weren’t permitted in
Annabel’s, and Strike could see the restless teenager’s mounting
frustration at being forced to rely solely on her senses for
information.
‘Five o’clock, party of eight,’ Midge said quietly to Strike. ‘You’re
getting looks.’
Strike spotted them as Midge said it. A man and a woman at a
table of eight had turned in their seats to look at him. The woman,
who had long hair of the same red-gold as Robin’s, was wearing a
skin-tight black dress and stilettos that laced all the way up her
smooth brown legs to her knees. The man, who was sporting a
brocade dinner jacket and a foppish cravat, looked vaguely familiar
to Strike, though he couldn’t immediately place him.
‘D’you think they’ve recognised you from the papers?’ suggested
Midge.
‘Bloody well hope not,’ growled Strike. ‘Or I’m out of business.’
The photo the press used most often dated from Strike’s time in
the military and he was now older, longer-haired and carrying much
more weight. On those occasions when he’d had to give evidence in
court, he’d always done so wearing the heavy beard that grew
conveniently quickly when he had need of it.
Strike found his observers’ reflections in a nearby pillar and saw
that they were now talking with their heads together. The woman
was very good-looking and – atypically, in this room – she appeared
not to have had anything obvious done to her face: her forehead still
wrinkled when she raised her eyebrows, her lips weren’t unnaturally
plump and she was too young – perhaps mid-thirties – to have
submitted to the surgery that had left the oldest woman at her table
with an unnervingly mask-like appearance.
Beside Strike and Midge, a portly Russian was explaining the
plot of Tannhäuser to his much younger female companion.
‘… but Mezdrich has updated it,’ he said, ‘and in this production
Jesus now appears in a movie of an orgy in Venus’s cave—’
‘Jesus does?’
‘Da, and so the church is unhappy and Mezdrich will be fired,’
finished the Russian gloomily, raising his glass of champagne to his
lips. ‘He’s standing his ground, but it will end badly for him, mark my
words.’
‘Legs on the move,’ Strike informed Midge as the teenager stood
up with the rest of her party, the ostrich trim on her mini-dress
wafting fluffily around her.
‘Dance floor,’ Midge guessed.
She was right. Ten minutes later, Strike and Midge had secured
a vantage point in a niche off the tiny dance floor, from where they
had a clear view of their target dancing in shoes that appeared a
little too high for her, her eyes still darting frequently towards the
entrance.
‘Wonder how Robin’s enjoying skiing?’ Midge shouted up to
Strike, as ‘Uptown Funk’ began pounding through the room. ‘Mate of
mine broke his collarbone first time he tried it. D’you ski?’
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘Nice place, Zermatt,’ said Midge loudly, and then something
Strike didn’t catch.
‘What?’ Strike said.
 ‘I said, “Wonder if she’s pulled?” Good opportunity, New Year’s
—’
Legs was gesturing to her schoolfriend that she was going to sit
the rest of the dance out. Leaving the dance floor, she snatched up
her evening bag and wound her way out of the room.
‘She’s going to use her mobile in the bogs,’ predicted Midge,
taking off in pursuit.
Strike remained in the alcove, his bottle of zero-alcohol beer
already warm in his hand, his only companion an enormous stucco
Bodhisattva. Tipsy people were crammed on the sofas near him,
shouting at each other over the music. Strike had just loosened his
tie and undone the top button of his shirt when he saw the man in
the brocade jacket walking towards him, stumbling over legs and
handbags as he approached. Now, at last, Strike placed him:
Valentine Longcaster, one of Charlotte’s stepbrothers.
‘Long time no see,’ he yelled when he reached Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, shaking the proffered hand, ‘how’s it going?’
Valentine reached up and pushed back his long, sweaty fringe,
revealing widely dilated pupils.
‘Not bad,’ he shouted over the pounding bass. ‘Can’t complain.’
Strike could see a faint trace of white powder inside one nostril. ‘You
here on business or pleasure?’
‘Pleasure,’ lied Strike.
Valentine shouted something indecipherable in which Strike
heard the name of Charlotte’s husband, Jago Ross.
‘What?’ he shouted back, unsmiling.
‘I said, Jago wants to name you in the divorce.’
‘He’ll have a job,’ Strike said loudly back. ‘I haven’t seen her in
years.’
‘Not what Jago says,’ shouted Valentine. ‘He found a nude
picture she sent you, on her old phone.’
Fuck.
Valentine reached out to steady himself on the Bodhisattva. His
female companion with the red-gold hair was watching them from
the dance floor.
 ‘That’s Madeline,’ Valentine shouted in Strike’s ear, following his
eyeline. ‘She thinks you’re sexy.’
Valentine’s laugh was high-pitched. Strike sipped his beer in
silence. At last the younger man seemed to feel no more was to be
gained from proximity to Strike, so he pushed himself back upright,
gave a mock salute and stumbled out of sight again, just as Legs
reappeared on the edge of the dance floor and collapsed onto a
velvet stool in a flutter of ostrich features and palpable misery.
‘Ladies’,’ Midge informed Strike, rejoining him a few minutes
later. ‘Don’t think she could get phone reception.’
‘Good,’ said Strike brutally.
‘D’you think he told her he was coming?’
‘Looks like it.’
Strike took another mouthful of warm beer and said loudly,
‘So how many people are on this skiing trip with Robin?’
‘I think there’s just six of them,’ Midge yelled back. ‘Two couples
and a spare bloke.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike, nodding as though the information were of only
casual significance.
‘They’ve been trying to fix her up with him,’ said Midge. ‘She
was telling me, before Christmas… Hugh Jacks, his name is.’ She
looked at Strike expectantly. ‘Huge axe.’
‘Huh,’ said Strike, with a forced smile.
‘Haha, yeah. Why,’ Midge shouted in his ear, ‘don’t parents say it
out loud before they choose the name?’
Strike nodded, eyes on the teenager now wiping her nose on
the back of her hand.
It was a quarter to midnight. With luck, Strike thought, once the
new year had been rung in, their target would be scooped up by the
schoolfriend’s family and taken safely back to their house in Chelsea.
As he watched, the schoolfriend arrived to drag Legs back onto the
dance floor.
At ten to midnight, Legs disappeared once more in the direction
of the Ladies’, Midge on her tail. Strike, whose stump was aching
and who wished he could sit down, had no choice but to lean up
against the gigantic Bodhisattva because most of the free seats were
littered with bags and discarded jackets he didn’t want to move. His
beer bottle was now empty.
‘D’you not like New Year’s Eve or something?’ said a working-
class London voice beside him.
It was the woman with red-gold hair, now pink-faced and
dishevelled from dancing. Her approach had been masked by an
upheaval in the seats ahead of him, as nearly everyone had stood up
to flood onto the too-small dance floor, excitement mounting as
midnight drew closer.
‘Not my favourite,’ he shouted back at her.
She was extremely pretty and definitely high, though speaking
perfectly coherently. Several fine gold necklaces hung around her
slender neck, the strapless dress was tight across her breasts and
the half-empty champagne flute in her hand was in danger of spilling
its contents.
‘Nor mine, not this year,’ she shouted up into his ear. He liked
hearing an East End accent among all these upper-class ones.
‘You’re Cormoran Strike, right? Valentine told me.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And you’re…?’
‘Madeline Courson-Miles. Not detecting tonight, are you?’
‘No,’ he lied, but he was in far less of a hurry to shoo her away
than he had been with Valentine. ‘Why isn’t this New Year your
favourite?’
‘Gigi Cazenove.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Gigi Cazenove,’ she said more loudly, leaning in, her breath
tickling his ear. ‘The singer? She was a client of mine.’ When she saw
his blank look, she said, ‘She was found hanged this morning.’
‘Shit,’ said Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Madeline. ‘She was only twenty-three.’
She sipped her champagne, looking sombre, then shouted in his
ear:
‘I’ve never met a private detective before.’
‘As far as you know,’ said Strike, and she laughed. ‘What d’you
do?’
 ‘I’m a jeweller,’ she shouted back at him and her slight smile
told Strike that most people would have recognised her name.
The dance floor was now heaving with hot bodies. Many people
were wearing glittery party hats. Strike could see the portly Russian
who’d been talking about Tannhäuser pouring with sweat as he
bounced out of time to Clean Bandit’s ‘Rather Be’.
Strike’s thoughts flickered towards Robin, somewhere in the
Alps, perhaps drunk on glühwein, dancing with the newly divorced
man her friends were insistent she meet. He remembered the look
on her face as he’d bent to kiss her.
It’s easy being with you, sang Jess Glynne,
Sacred simplicity,
As long as we’re together,
There’s no place I’d rather be…
‘One minute to 2015, ladies and gentlemen,’ shouted the DJ and
Madeline Courson-Miles glanced up at Strike, drained her
champagne flute and leaned in to shout into his ear again.
‘Is that tall girl in the tux your date?’
‘No, a friend,’ said Strike. ‘Both at a loose end tonight.’
‘So she wouldn’t mind if I kissed you at midnight?’
He looked down into her lovely, inviting face, the hazel eyes
warm, her hair rippling over her bare shoulders.
‘She wouldn’t,’ said Strike, half-smiling.
‘But you would?’
‘Get ready,’ bellowed the DJ.
‘Are you married?’ Strike asked.
‘Divorced,’ said Madeline.
‘Dating anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Ten –’
‘In that case,’ said Cormoran Strike, setting down his empty
beer bottle.
‘Eight –’
Madeline bent to put her glass down on a nearby table but
missed the edge: it fell onto the carpeted floor and she shrugged as
she straightened up.
 ‘Six – five –’
She wound her arms around his neck; he slid his arms around
her waist. She was thinner than Robin: he could feel her ribs
through the tight dress. The desire in her eyes was like a balm to
him. It was New Year’s Eve. Fuck everything.
‘– three – two – one –’
She pressed herself into him, her hands now in his hair, her
tongue in his mouth. The air around them was rent with screams
and applause. They didn’t release each other until the first raucous
bars of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ had been sung. Strike glanced around.
There was no sign of either Midge or Legs.
‘I’m going to have to leave soon,’ he shouted, ‘but I want your
number.’
‘Gimme your phone, then.’
She typed her number in for him, then handed the phone back.
With a wink, she turned and walked away, disappearing into the
crowd.
Midge didn’t reappear for another quarter of an hour. Legs
rejoined her schoolfriend’s party, her mascara smudged.
‘She kept trying to find somewhere she could get reception, but
no luck,’ Midge bellowed in his ear. ‘So she went back to the bogs for
a good sob.’
‘Too bad,’ said Strike.
‘Have you got lipstick on you?’ asked Midge, staring up at him.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Met an old friend of my mother’s,’ he said. ‘Well – happy 2015.’
‘Same to you,’ said Midge, extending a hand, which he shook.
As she looked out over the jubilant crowd, where balloons were
being batted around and glitter was exploding from party poppers,
Midge shouted into Strike’s ear, ‘Never seen in the new year in a
toilet before. Hope it’s not an omen.’
 4

Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.

Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter’s own release.

Helen Jackson
January

On the whole, Robin had enjoyed her time in Zermatt. She’d

forgotten what it felt like to have eight hours’ sleep a night; she’d
enjoyed the food, the skiing and the company of her friends; and
suffered barely a tremor when Katie told her, with a look of concern
that turned to relief when Robin responded calmly, that Matthew had
indeed brought Sarah back to Masham over Christmas, along with
his new-born son.
‘They’ve called him William,’ said Katie. ‘We ran into them one
night in the Bay Horse. Matthew’s aunt was babysitting. I really don’t
like that Sarah. Sooooo smug.’
‘Can’t say I’m that keen on her either,’ said Robin. She was glad
to know she’d avoided the almost inevitable meeting in their home
town, and with luck, next Christmas it would be Sarah’s family’s turn
to host their grandson, so there’d be no danger of a chance
encounter.
The view from Robin’s bedroom was of the snow-coated
Matterhorn, which pierced the bright blue sky like a gigantic fang.
The light on the pyramidal mountain changed from gold to peach,
from ink blue to heather depending on the angle of the sun, and
alone in her room, staring at the mountain, Robin came closest to
achieving the peace and perspective she’d sought in coming on the
trip.
 The only part of the holiday with which Robin would gladly have
dispensed was Hugh Jacks. He was a couple of years older and
worked in pharmaceutical chemistry. She supposed he was quite
nice-looking, with a neat sandy beard, broad shoulders and large
blue eyes, and he wasn’t precisely unlikeable, but Robin couldn’t
help finding him slightly pathetic. No matter the subject under
discussion, he somehow managed to bring it back to his divorce,
which appeared to have blindsided him. After six years of marriage,
his wife had announced that she wasn’t happy, that she hadn’t been
happy for a long time, packed her bags and departed. Hugh told
Robin the whole story twice in the first few days of the holiday, and
after the second, almost identical recital, she did her best to avoid
sitting next to him at dinner. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the hint,
but kept targeting her, encouraging her to share details of her own
failed marriage in a lugubrious tone that would have been
appropriate had they both been suffering from the same terminal
disease. Robin adopted a bracing attitude, telling him there were
plenty more fish in the sea and that she was personally glad to be
free again. Hugh told her how much he admired her feistiness with a
slightly more cheerful look in his watery blue eyes, and she was
afraid he might have taken her declaration of happy independence
as a tacit invitation.
‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’ Katie asked her hopefully, one evening in a
bar, when Robin had just succeeded in shaking Hugh off after
another hour of anecdotes about his ex-wife.
‘He’s all right,’ said Robin, who didn’t want to offend her cousin,
‘but he’s really not my type, Katie.’
‘He’s usually quite funny,’ said Katie, disappointed. ‘You aren’t
seeing him at his best. Wait until he’s had a drink or two.’
But on New Year’s Eve, with a large amount of beer and
schnapps inside him, Hugh became first boisterous, though not
particularly amusing, then maudlin. At midnight, the two couples
kissed their partners, and the bleary-eyed Hugh opened his arms to
Robin, who let him kiss her on the cheek and then tried to free
herself, while he breathed drunkenly in her ear:
‘You’re so lovely.’
 ‘Thanks,’ said Robin, and then, ‘could you let go, please?’
He did so, and Robin went to bed shortly afterwards, locking her
door. Somebody knocked on it soon after she’d turned out the light:
she lay in the darkness, pretending to be asleep, and heard
footsteps walking slowly away.
The other less-than-perfect aspect of her break had been her
own tendency to brood about Strike and the incident outside the
Ritz. It was easy enough not to think about her partner while trying
to keep herself vertical on skis, but otherwise her disengaged mind
kept returning to the question of what would have happened if she’d
cast off her inhibitions and fears, and let him kiss her. This led
inexorably to another question, the same one she’d asked herself
while pacing the warm white sand in the Maldives three years
previously. Was she to spend every holiday, for the rest of her life,
wondering whether she was in love with Cormoran Strike?
You’re not, she told herself. He gave you the chance of a
lifetime, and maybe you do love him a bit, because he’s your best
friend, but you’re not in love with him. And then, more honestly, and
if you are, you need to get over it. Yes, maybe he was hurt when
you didn’t let him kiss you, but better that than he thinks you’re
pining away for love of him. A lovesick partner is literally the last
thing he’d want.
If only she could have been the kind of woman who could have
enjoyed a kiss one drunken evening and then laughed it off. On the
evidence of what she knew about Strike’s past love life, that was
what he liked: women who played the game with an insouciance
Robin had never learned.
She returned to the office in the second week of January,
bringing with her a large box of Swiss chocolates. To everyone who
asked, Strike included, she said she’d had a wonderful time.
 PART ONE

The heart is the central organ of the entire system

and consists of a hollow muscle;
by its contraction the blood is pumped to all parts of the
body
through a complicated series of tubes…

Henry Gray FRS

Gray’s Anatomy
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
placed in the grounds. One of them was coated on the inside to the
thickness of about an eighth of an inch with the composition, and
was also partially covered on the outside; while the other was left in
the plain wood state. A flooring was placed at about the centre of
each of these, and through the holes in front shavings were put and
then ignited. The box which was not coated with the composition
was soon in flames; while the fire in the other went out without
having had any effect upon the general structure. The building which
was in flames was then placed contiguous to the partially-coated
outside of the other, and although it was not materially injured, the
exterior coating peeled off in some places, and the wood became
charred; the interior, however, appeared perfectly uninjured by the
flame.
If the results of these experiments were really such as the
description would seem to imply, it might excite surprise how it
happens that no practical results have followed. But there are always
numerous reasons why an experiment, which succeeds under
circumstances made for the occasion, should not be available in
practice; and it is probable that some such discordance may exist
here. Perhaps the mode in which we may more consistently look for
the practical attainment of the object in view is by the adoption of
some improved mode of building, in which either wood is not
employed at all, or, where sparingly used, measures are taken to
shield it from the action of fire. One such method is Leconte’s,
described as follows.
This plan consists in the employment of iron frames to receive
concrete matter for forming the walls. The basement story of the
building is constructed according to the ordinary methods up to one
foot or more above the ground. On the basement so constructed is
to be erected the patent wall, formed of frames entirely of cast-iron,
in one or more pieces, or a combination of cast-iron and wrought-
iron plates. These frames are to be set one on the other until the
required height is attained, the necessary stability being obtained by
means of steady pins at the corners of one frame fitting into holes
made in the corners of the frame which is opposed to it. Suitably-
shaped frames are employed for the internal partition walls, and for
doorways, window-frames, &c. The flues of the chimneys are formed
of iron or other metal pipes, placed in the thickness of the walls.
When the required elevation is obtained, a concrete of any suitable
material is poured into the framing, and fills up the vacant space,
giving firmness and solidity to the structure; the concrete being
made of gravel and lime. To give steadiness, lead is to be introduced
between the joinings of the iron-work. The doors and window-
frames are to be fastened to the walls by any of the usual known
methods. The main beams and cross beams of floors and roofs may
be of cast-iron, or formed of iron and wood; or they maybe formed
of one or more pieces of plate-iron, bent up into an oval form, and
straightened by an iron or wooden bar passing through them
lengthwise, the upper edges of the metal being turned over to
increase the strength. In the interval between the beams there are
to be iron rods running in various directions, and supporting a
metallic wire-work, which forms the foundation for the ceiling.
Similar wire-work is to be employed in lieu of laths for plaster
surfaces. All the iron-work is to be painted over with some suitable
composition to prevent oxidation.
A plan for the same purpose has been proposed by Mr. Varden as
follows:—“It appears probable that common fir or oak joists with
their lower edges chamfered, and coated over with a mixture of
alum, black lead, clay, and lime, or some similar composition, would
(if closely floored above with earthenware tiles, bedded all round
into the plastering, the joists being made air-tight) resist the action
of flames, at least for a considerable time. Fire could not descend
through such a flooring so as to communicate with the rooms below,
till the tiles used in it had become red-hot; neither could it ascend
until the tiled floor above gave way, from the burning of the joists;
which, if coated as proposed, would not take fire from below till the
tiling over them acquired a sufficient heat to cause the distillation of
the turpentine from the wood. In general, there is not furniture
enough of a combustible nature in any room to do this. The
battening against the outer walls might be of larch, as that wood
burns less freely than most others; but if the walls were brick, or
lined with brick, battening of any kind will be unnecessary. If this
plan should be thought likely to answer the end proposed, houses
built in the common manner might be altered at a moderate
expense, by taking up the boarded floors, and substituting
earthenware tiles.”
Another Plan, proposed by Mr. Frost, consists in forming the floors
of rooms of hollow earthenware tubes embedded in cement,
combined so as to form a sort of flag-stone, covering the whole
floor. These hollow tubes are square in section, about an inch and a
half on the side externally, with a tubular space of an inch and a
quarter on the side internally; they are formed of brick earth,
prepared in a superior manner, and pressed through moulds by
machinery; and their length is about two feet. In forming a floor of
these tubes, the centering, after being prepared and fixed in the
usual manner, is first covered with a coating of cement of a quality
sufficiently fine to form the ceiling of the apartment to be floored
over; and if it is desired that there should be mouldings or
ornaments in this ceiling or its cornices, moulds for them can be
placed in the centering, so as to form a part of it. One or two coats
of cement having I then been laid over the centering, a stratum of
the square tubes laid side by side, and breaking joint, is next
embedded in fine cement, and the interstices between them also
filled in with that material. One thin coating of cement is then laid
over the whole stratum; and in a week, when this is dry, another
stratum of tubes is laid over the first in a contrary direction, bedded
and filled in with cement as before, and finished by a coating of the
same material. This, when dry, may have a second coating to serve
as the floor of an upper apartment, or the covering of a roof, as the
case might be.
Mr. Loudon gives descriptions of two methods, the one for building
houses in general fire-proof, and the other for imparting that
property to houses already built. He considers the two main points
for consideration to be, to have staircases of iron or stone, or both
combined, and to avoid having any hollow partitions or floors. A
house having a stone or iron staircase, and having all the partitions
either of four-inch brick-work, or of brick nogging, in whatever way it
might be set on fire, could hardly be burned down, if ordinary
exertions were made to extinguish the flames. One apartment might
be set on fire, but before the flames could spread to the one under
or over it, or to a staircase adjoining it, the fire might be
extinguished. In a house so constructed, there would be no piece of
timber that was not in close contact with mortar, at least on one
side; and all the strong pieces of timber, such as joists, rafters,
quartering in partitions, &c., would be closely embedded in mortar
on two sides. Where the partition could not be made entirely of
brick, the interstices might be filled up with a mortar prepared of
clay with a small proportion of lime. The same material might be
filled in between the joists, and where it was desired to render the
roof fire-proof, the rafters might be made of iron, or the space
between wooden rafters might be filled in with thin mortar. This
mode of proceeding would lengthen the time required for the drying
of a newly-built house, and would also add somewhat to the
expense; but it is conceived that the increased safety would more
than counterbalance these inconveniences.
In respect to the means of giving a fire-proof quality to a house
already built, Mr. Loudon remarks:—“All the interstices between the
floors, in the partitions, and in the roof, where there was a ceiling
formed to the rafters, might perhaps be filled in with earthy matter
in a state of powder. This powder might be clay or loam mixed with
a small proportion of Roman cement; it might be injected into the
vacuities, through small orifices, by some description of forcing-
pump or bellows, which, while it forced in the powder, would permit
the escape of the air; and, while this operation was going forward
steam might be injected at the same time, so as to mix with the
mortar and be condensed by it; by which means the whole mass
would be solidified with a minimum of moisture. In short, in
rendering houses fire-proof, the next important object to using fire-
proof materials, is that of having all the walls and partitions, and
even the steps of wooden staircases, filled in-with such materials as
will render them in effect solid. On examining into the causes of the
rapidity of the spread of the flames in London houses when on fire,
it will almost invariably be found, that whatever may have
occasioned the fire to break out, the rapidity of its progress has been
in proportion to the greater or less extent of the lath and plaster
partitions, the hollow wooden floors, and the wooden staircases.
Were the occupiers of houses sufficiently aware of the danger from
lath and plaster partitions, especially when inclosing staircases, they
would never occupy such houses, or, if they did, they would not give
such rents for them, as they would for houses with brick-nogging
partitions. It appears to us to be the duty either of the general or
local government or police to see that no houses whatever are built
without stone or iron staircases; and that no partitions and floors are
made hollow; or, if they are, that the materials should be iron and
tiles, or slates, or stones, or cement, or other earthy composition.”
 Chapter XIII.
MISCELLANEOUS PROCESSES.
The various processes and details which have occupied the
preceding chapters, are for the most part necessary to the
production of every house. There are, however, many articles of iron
and a few of brass employed in the interior and exterior fittings; but
were we to enter into details respecting the iron manufacture, in
order to show the modes of producing these articles, it would be
difficult to confine this volume within reasonable limits. A few
miscellaneous processes and details may, however, be collected in
this chapter.
The principal metallic articles employed in the construction or
permanent fittings of a house, are nails and screws; hinges; locks
and keys; stoves and grates; bells, and the mechanism for hanging
them; iron railings and bars; brass handles, plates, and other
decorations; latches and fastenings, &c.

Nails.
Nails are made of iron, either cut by means of a machine into the
tapering form which we call cut brads, or wrought by means of
hammers into the various forms of flooring nails, tacks, &c. Screws
are made by forcing a piece of iron wire into a cavity, the surface of
which is cut into a spiral or screw-like form; this spiral cuts a similar
spiral on the surface of the iron wire, which then becomes a screw;
and one end of the wire is hammered or pressed down so as to form
the head of the screw. Hinges of the commoner kinds are made by
two flat pieces of iron, with a kind of projecting tube at one edge.
These tubes are partially cut away, so that the two pieces may lap
into each other; and a spindle or pin being passed down through
both tubes, acts as an axis, on which both parts of the hinges turn.
The more costly hinges require elaborate workmanship in their
construction.

Locks and Keys.

Locks and Keys form a curious part of the hardware manufacture.
The lock is made of a great many pieces, put together with screws.
One part of it is always a moveable latch or bolt, which is capable,
by tolerable force, of being thrust partially out through a hole in the
side of the lock; and it is this bolt which, catching in a box or cell
fixed to the door-post, secures the door to which the lock is
attached. The object of the key is to act as a lever which shall move
the bolt; and the great point of attention in the matter is, that no
key or lever but one of a particular size and shape shall be able to
move the bolt; herein is the security which we feel in a good lock.
Wolverhampton and its neighbourhood is the great seat of the lock
manufacture.

Stoves and Grates.

Stoves and Grates are made in a variety of forms. Their
employment is obviously greatly dependent on the kind of fuel
employed. In the kitchens of the old baronial residences, large logs
of wood were thrown upon an immense stone or brick hearth, and
there kindled. But when coals became commonly used in London
and other great towns of England, about the year 1400, the use of
some kind of stove or grate began to be felt, since the fuel was too
valuable to be scattered on a wide-spreading hearth. From that time
to the present, one continual series of improvements has taken
place, having for their objects, to add to the elegance and neatness
of a room, to facilitate culinary occupations, and to derive the
greatest possible heat from a given quantity of fuel. It is only within
a very few years that the principles regulating the last-mentioned
circumstance have been at all well understood. Some parts of the
metal for a grate or stove are produced by casting, others by
forging, and others by rolling or pressing; and they are put together
principally by rivets. For further details on this subject we refer to
our seventh chapter.

Bells.
Bells are, generally speaking, made of an alloy of copper and tin,
which possesses more resonant qualities than most others. There is
also a little ball or clapper suspended in the bell, which, by striking
against it, produces the same effect as the hammer which strikes the
outside of a church bell. The bell is generally fixed in a different part
of the house from the handle with which it is rung, and the
connexion between them is made by means of copper wire. As the
wire has to turn round many corners and angles, it is fixed, at each
corner to a crank, which is a kind of hinge or lever, so contrived as
to transfer motion in a new direction at right angles to the former.
Considerable care is required on the part of the bell-hanger, to
prevent the wire from becoming entangled or interrupted in its free
communication from the handle to the bell.

Brass Handles, Ornaments, &c.

Those are produced by turning, by casting, by stamping, or by
drawing. In the first mode, the article is placed in a lathe, and
turned by tools made of hard steel: in the second mode, melted
brass is poured into moulds formed generally of sand, by which any
desired form is produced: in the third mode, two stamps, one called
a matrass and the other a die, are cut or moulded to similar figures;
a piece of sheet brass is laid on the matrass or lower stamp, the die
or upper stamp is laid on the brass, and a powerful blow, either from
a hammer, or from machinery, forces the brass to assume the form
given to the two stamps. By the last mode, a slip of thin brass is
forcibly drawn between two rollers, whose surfaces are indented
with the requisite device, which device is thereby impressed on the
bars. In one or other of these ways, most of the brass-work in our
houses is made.
Iron railings and bars of various kinds are made either by forging
or casting, and do not call for further notice here.

Preservation of Timber.
In our notices of the timber which enters into the construction of a
house, no mention was made of the existing methods of preparing it
so as to resist the action of dry rot and other decomposing agencies.
Timber so prepared is not in very general use in house-building, and
hence the notice of it occupies a more fitting place in the present
chapter.
Vegetable matter, in common with all organic substances, is
subject to decomposition and decay, as soon as life becomes extinct;
and although the process is comparatively slower in its
commencement and progress in vegetable than in animal matter, it
is not, under ordinary circumstances, the less certain. During the
existence of a plant, its various organs, under the influence of the
mysterious principle of life, perform their respective functions in a
manner similar to that of which we are more readily conscious in the
animal frame. The plant absorbs its food from the soil and the
surrounding air; it digests that food under the influence of
respiration, and prepares rich and nutritive juices which circulate
throughout its whole vegetable frame, and deposit materials of
growth wherever they are wanted; it sheds its leaves in autumn,
undergoes a season of torpor, and again becomes active and
vigorous; thus it is clad in fresh leafy honours in the following spring.
All this is the effect, or rather the result, of vitality. The plant dies,
and then its constituent parts gradually assert their individual
existence, and resume their original affinities. Some pass into the
air; some form new compounds; and others, which during the life of
the plant ministered to its healthy action, now work energetically
and destructively on each other; so that the original mass gradually
decomposes under the influence of various causes. The first step to
decay is a process of fermentation, which is more or less rapid in
proportion as heat and moisture are more or less present. In the
absence of damp air, even the vegetable mass will of itself supply
moisture; for, according to Count Rumford, the best-seasoned timber
retains one-fourth of its weight of water. A certain extent of moisture
is essential to vegetable fermentation; but a complete saturation
appears inimical to it. A temperature not so low as to produce
freezing, nor so high as to produce rapid evaporation, is also
favourable to it. The humidity of the air in ships, and in houses built
on clay or in moist situations, and the difficulty of obtaining a free
circulation of air, contribute greatly to this fermentative process.
The chemical constitution of the vegetable kingdom yields to
analysis only three or four ultimate elements, viz., oxygen,
hydrogen, and carbon, and sometimes nitrogen. The most active
agent in the process of decomposition is the oxygen contained in the
dead plant, whether such decomposition proceed under the rapid
influence of fermentation, or be produced more slowly by the
operation of the law which renders decay the necessary
consequence of organization. As soon as the tree is felled, the
oxygen begins to be liberated and to act upon the woody fibre,
combining with its carbon, and producing carbonic acid gas. The
tenacity of the several parts is thus gradually destroyed. After timber
is felled, and during the process of seasoning, a gradual diminution
of strength may be remarked. The effect, however, of seasoning is to
deprive the wood of superabundant moisture, and of those
vegetable juices which would otherwise induce a rapid
decomposition.
In addition to the natural decay of timber, the decomposition is
often accompanied by the apparently spontaneous vegetation of
parasitical fungi, inducing a species of decay to which the term “dry
rot” is applied, probably in consequence of the attendant
phenomena; the wood being converted into a dry friable mass,
destitute of fibrous tenacity. It is uncertain whether the seeds of
these fungi exist in a dormant state in the juices of the timber, and
wait only until the first stages of decomposition furnish them with a
nidus favourable to their growth; or whether they float in the
atmosphere and settle in places favourable to their vegetation. It is
found, however, that badly-seasoned timber is peculiarly subject to
this species of decay; and hereby the former of the two suppositions
is favoured.
From the moment when timber is felled, the process of decay
commences, and although so slowly in many cases that we are not
conscious of it, yet there is a limit to the existence of the most
durable articles of wood, however carefully preserved. Dryness,
cleanliness, a free circulation of air, or the entire exclusion of it, are
among the best checks to vegetable decomposition: while damp
accumulations, and a vitiated atmosphere, rapidly induce it.
Unseasoned timber should never be used in carpentry, and the
best-seasoned timber should be used only in a dry state. Diseased
and decayed portions of the wood should be cut out, together with
the sap-wood, which, being more soft and porous than the spine, is
more liable to fermentation.
The iron fastenings used about timber frequently cause its
premature decay. Iron, under the influence of moisture becomes
rusty, that is, oxygen, either from the air or from the wood itself,
unites with the metal, forming an oxide, which, in its turn acts upon
the woody fibre, and gradually destroys its tenacity. The iron is
further subject to attack from the acid juices of the wood; this
effect, however, varies in different woods. Oak contains a smaller
proportion of oily or resinous particles than many other kinds of
wood; and, in addition to the usual vegetable acid common to most
woods, oak contains an acid peculiar to itself, called gallic acid. In
teak, on the contrary, the quantity of acid is not only smaller, but the
resinous particles are very abundant, and these form a sort of
protecting covering to the iron fastenings. Maconochie states, on the
authority of the shipping built in India and used in the India trade,
that the average duration of an iron-fastened teak ship is thirty
years; and that it is a misapplication of expense to use copper
fastenings with teak, as the additional advantage gained is not at all
commensurate with the additional expense. But it is different with
oak; the action of oak on copper is by no means so destructive as on
iron, and the reaction of the metal on the wood is not so destructive.
The methods which have been from time to time adopted for the
preservation of timber are so numerous, that a slight sketch of them
would probably fill a good-sized volume. We will name a few of the
most successful, and terminate this notice with a description of the
method now in practice.
Maconochie recommends all the iron fastenings to be provided
with a protecting paint, and to impregnate the timber with some oily
preparation, which he proposes to effect thus: the wood is to be
placed in a steam-tight chamber, and subjected to the action of
steam, by which the air will be expelled from the timber. Then by
condensing the steam, and repeating the process until all the elastic
fluids are withdrawn from the wood, and its juices converted into
vapour, the wood becomes freed from them, and if plunged into oil,
and subjected to atmospheric pressure, all the internal cavities of
the wood will be filled with oil. In this way, Maconochie had in daily
use a steam-chamber capable of containing twenty or thirty planks
of timber forty feet long, in which, while the planks were steaming,
to render them flexible, they were impregnated with teak oil. He
says the oil may easily be procured from the chips and saw-dust
used for the fuel of the steam-boilers; for it has been ascertained
that Malabar teak contains such a quantity of oleaginous (oily) or
terebinthinous (turpentine) matter, that the chips from the timber
and planks of a ship built of it will yield, by a proper process, a
sufficient quantity of tar for all its own purposes, including the
rigging; and that, although oak timber does not contain so much of
these substances, the chips of the fir alone consumed in the Royal
Navy, would be more than sufficient to supply tar to saturate the
oak.
There have been many other proposals to saturate timber with
different substances; the most successful of which, up to the process
of Mr. Kyan, was that of M. Pallas, whose plan was to saturate the
timber in a solution of sulphate of iron, and then precipitate the salt
by means of lime-water. About the year 1822, Mr. Bill produced
samples of timber impregnated throughout with a substance
resembling asphaltum. These samples were subjected to a trial of
five years in the dry-rot pit at Woolwich, and withstood the fungus-
rot perfectly. Sir John Barrow recommends kreosote, which he says,
“in a vaporous form, penetrates every part of the largest logs, and
renders the wood almost as hard as iron—so hard as not easily to be
worked.”
Mr. Kyan’s plan, now so universally adopted, is to soak the timber
in a solution of bichloride of mercury, commonly called corrosive
sublimate.
“Aware of the established affinity of corrosive sublimate for
albumen, Mr. Kyan applied that substance to solutions of vegetable
matter, both acetous and saccharine, on which he was then
operating, and in which albumen was a constituent, with a view to
preserve them in a quiescent and incorruptible state; and obtaining
a confirmation of his opinions by the fact, that during a period of
three years, the acetous solution, openly exposed to atmospheric air,
had not become putrid, nor had the saccharine decoction yielded to
the vinous or acetous stages of fermentation, but were in a high
state of preservation, he concluded that corrosive sublimate, by
combination with albumen, was a protection against the natural
changes of vegetable matter. He conceived, therefore, if albumen
made a part of wood, the latter would be protected by converting
that albumen into a compound of protochloride of mercury and
albumen; and he proceeded to immerse pieces of wood in this
solution, and obtained the same result as that which he had
ascertained with regard to the vegetable decoctions.”—Birkbeck.
It having been found that the precipitate caused by the
Kyanization was soluble in salt water, Sir William Burnett has lately
substituted chloride of zinc for corrosive sublimate, and the resulting
compound which this forms with the albuminous portion of the
wood, effectually resists the action of salt water.

Soluble Glass.
A remarkable method of preserving wood-work, and rendering it
fire-proof, was invented some years ago by M. Fuchs, in
consequence of his discovery of a kind of glass which could be
prepared and kept in a liquid state, and hardened only on being
exposed in a thin layer to the air.
Soluble glass is a union of silica and an alkali, which has, in
addition to some of the properties of common glass, the property of
dissolving in boiling water. The preparation of soluble glass does not
greatly differ in its early stages from that of common glass, an
account of the manufacture of which will be found in the eighth
chapter.
When sand and carbonate of potash are heated together, the
carbonic acid is not entirely driven off, unless the sand be in excess,
but the whole of the gas may be expelled by the addition of
powdered charcoal to the mixture.
Carbonate of potash and pure sand being taken in the proportion
of two to three, four parts of charcoal are added to every ten parts
of potash and fifteen of sand. The charcoal accelerates the fusion of
the glass, and separates from it all the carbonic acid, a small
quantity of which would otherwise remain, and exert an injurious
effect. In other respects the same precautions that are employed in
the manufacture of common glass are to be observed. The materials
must first be well mixed, then fritted, and finally melted at a high
heat, until a liquid and homogeneous mass be obtained. This is
removed by means of an iron ladle, and the glass pot filled with
fresh frit.
The crude glass thus obtained is usually full of bubbles: it is as
hard as common glass: it is of a blackish gray, and more or less
transparent at the edges. Sometimes it has a whitish colour, and at
others is yellowish or reddish, indicating thereby that the quantity of
charcoal has been too small. Exposed to the air for several weeks, it
undergoes slight changes, which tend rather to improve than injure
its qualities. It attracts a little moisture from the air, which slowly
penetrates its mass without changing its aggregation or appearance,
except that it cracks, and a slight efflorescence appears at its
surface. If after this it be exposed to heat, it swells up, owing to the
escape of the moisture it has absorbed.
In order to prepare the glass for solution in water it must be
reduced to powder by stampers. One part of the glass requires from
four to five of water for its solution. The water is first boiled in an
open vessel, the powdered glass is added gradually, and is
continually stirred, to prevent its adhesion to the vessel. The boiling
must be continued for three or four hours, until no more glass is
dissolved. If the boiling be checked before the liquor has thus
attained the proper degree of concentration, carbonic acid will be
absorbed by the potash from the air, and produce an injurious effect.
When the solution has acquired the consistence of syrup, and a
density of 1·24, it is fit for use. It is then allowed to repose, in order
that the insoluble parts may be deposited: while it is cooling a film
forms on the surface, which after some time disappears, or may be
dissolved by depressing it in the liquor.
Soluble glass being employed only in the liquid state, it is
preserved for use in solution. No particular care is necessary to
preserve the liquid, as, even after a long space of time, it undergoes
no perceptible change, if the solution have been properly prepared.
The only precaution is not to allow too free an access of air to it.
Soluble glass may be prepared by using carbonate of soda,
instead of that of potash. This glass has the same properties as the
other, but is more valuable in its applications. The solutions of these
two kinds of glass may be mixed in any proportion, and the mixture
is sometimes more useful than either of the solutions separately.
 The solution of soluble glass is viscid, and when concentrated
becomes turbid or opalescent. The solution unites with water in all
proportions. At a density of 1·28 it contains nearly 28 per cent. of
glass, and if the concentration be carried beyond this point, it
becomes so viscid that it may be drawn out in threads like molten
glass. When the solution is applied to other bodies, it dries rapidly in
the air, and forms a coat like a varnish; a property which leads us to
notice some of the numerous and varied applications of this curious
preparation.
It is well known that all sorts of vegetable matter, such as wood,
cotton, hemp, linen, paper, &c., are combustible, but in order to burn
them, two conditions are necessary,—an elevated temperature, and
free access of air to supply the oxygen necessary to their conversion
into water and carbonic acid. When once inflamed their own
combustion supplies the heat necessary to the chemical action,
provided they be in contact with the air. If deprived of such contact,
and made red-hot, they will yield inflammable volatile products, but
the residual carbon will not burn, because deprived of air; and thus
the combustion will cease of itself. Such is the property of all the
fixed fusible salts, if they be composed of substances incapable of
yielding their oxygen at a low red heat, either to carbon or
hydrogen. Such salts melt as the vegetable matter becomes healed:
they form upon it a coating impermeable by air, and either prevent
or limit the combustion. The phosphate and borate of ammonia have
such a character, but they are so readily soluble in cold water as to
be liable to objections which are not found in soluble glass. This last-
named substance forms a solid and durable coating, which suffers
no change by exposure to the air (since soluble glass possesses the
valuable properly of being almost entirely unaffected by cold water):
it does not involve any great expense, and is easy of application. But
in order that it may not fail, particular care must be taken, both in
preparing and employing it. To cover wood and other bodies with it
the solution must be made of a pure glass, otherwise it would
effloresce and fall off. But still a slight degree of impurity is not
injurious, although after a few days a slight efflorescence will
appear: this may be washed off by water, and will not occur a
second time. When a durable coating is to be applied to wood, the
first solution must not be too strong, for if it be it will not be
absorbed: it will not displace the air from the pores, and
consequently will not adhere strongly. A more concentrated solution
may be employed for the after-coats, but each coat must be dry
before another is applied, and the drying, in the most favourable
weather, will occupy at least twenty-four hours. When the glass is
made with potash the coating is liable to crack: this defect does not
apply to glass made with soda.
Although soluble glass is of itself a good preservative from fire, yet
it fulfils the object better when mixed with incombustible powders,
such as those procured from clay, whiting, calcined bones, powdered
glass, &c. In applying soluble glass to the wood-work of a public
building at Munich, ten per cent. of yellow clay or yellow earth was
added. After six months the coating had suffered but little change: it
was damaged only in a few places, where it had need of some
repair. This arose from the very short time allowed for the
preparation and application of the glass.

On Veneering.
In our notice of the interior fittings of houses of the better class, it
was stated that the process of veneering is sometimes adopted for
wainscoting. This process is most generally used for articles of
furniture, and deserves to be noticed on account of its ingenuity.
The employment of wood for articles of domestic use or
ornament, gives rise to many departments of mechanical labour,
according to the manner in which the grain of the wood is to be
made conspicuous or visible. In the antique pieces of furniture still
existing in old mansions, the wood employed, such as oak, walnut-
wood, mahogany, &c., was always solid; but in modern times, the
desire of making a respectable appearance, at as small an outlay as
possible, has led to the method of veneering,—that is, making some
article of furniture of some cheap wood,—such as deal,—and then
covering it with thin leaves or sheets of some more expensive and
beautiful wood, such as rose-wood, maple, satin-wood, zebra-wood,
pollard oak, &c. So very prevalent has this custom become, that
almost every house now contains some article of domestic furniture,
whose surface is covered with a kind of wood more valuable than
that of which the bulk of the article is made.
It must be obvious, that the mode of procuring or preparing the
thin leaves of veneer calls for great care and nicety, since they are
seldom thicker than a shilling. When the method of veneering was
first introduced, the sawing was effected by hand, in a manner more
rude than the necessities of the case warranted; but when circular
saws became introduced, they were found very efficacious for
cutting veneers. Mr. Brunel, in 1805, took out a patent for
improvements in the machinery for sawing timber, in which he
employed a large circular saw, composed of several pieces fitted
together, and placed in a frame at such an elevation that the lower
edge was a little below the lower side of the timber. The timber was
placed in a carriage, and moved towards the saw by a rack.
In such a manner as this veneers are now cut from the timber in
this country. But it is stated that the Russians have devised a very
curious and effective method of cutting veneers, without the use of
a saw, and without making any waste of material. It is a planing
machine, the action of which is so accurate, that veneers thin
enough for the covering of books, and for lithographic and other
engravings, have been produced; thus serving the place of paper.
The operation is begun by placing the timber from which the leaf is
to be cut upon a square axle, where it is revolved, and made circular
by a turner’s gouge. The blade of a plane of highly-tempered steel,
and rather longer than the cylinder of wood, is fixed at the extremity
of a frame six or seven feet in length, in such a manner as to exert a
constant pressure upon the cylinder, and pare off a sheet of equable
thickness, which folds upon another cylinder like a roll of linen. The
frame to which the blade is attached is moveable at its lower
extremity, and by the action of a weight it depresses in proportion as
the mass diminishes in substance. That this depression may be
progressive and perfectly regular, the inventor has appended a
regulator to the machine consisting of a flat brass plate, preserved in
an inclined direction, upon which the frame descends as the
regulator itself is advanced. The motion is communicated to the
cylinder of wood by several cog-wheels, which are turned by a
crank. One hundred feet in length of veneering may be cut by this
machine in the space of three minutes.
When veneers are produced by the action of circular saws, as is
now almost universally the case in England, it is evident that both
surfaces must be rough, from the marks of the serrated edge of the
cutting instrument; and it is in this rough state that they are
purchased by cabinet-makers or others who employ them in
veneering articles of furniture. The operations which are then to be
performed are, to bring the surface of the veneer to a tolerable
level, to fix the veneer to the article of furniture, and to clean and
polish it when so fixed.
Supposing the top of a sideboard to be the article which is to be
veneered. The workman cuts out a piece of veneer, a little larger
than is actually required, to allow for waste; and then lays it flat on
his work-bench. With a veneering plane—which is a small-sized
plane, having an iron jagged with notches like the teeth of a very
fine saw—he works steadily over the whole surface of the veneer,
carrying the plane in the direction of the grain of the wood. The
action of this plane-iron removes all the saw marks, which were
irregular in their course, and gives instead of them a series of
regular parallel channels from end to end of the piece of veneer;
these channels are but small in depth, and their object is to retain
the glue which is afterwards used in the process of veneering.
The surface of the deal or other wood on which the veneer is to
be laid, is in like manner planed with these parallel indentations; and
then the process of veneering proceeds. The wood, having been well
warmed before a fire, is coated with warm melted glue; and the
piece of veneer is laid down flat on the veneered surface, and
rubbed backwards and forwards, in order that the glue which is
between the veneer and the under-wood may be pressed into all the
little grooves produced by the plane. When the glue begins to get
cool, the veneer can no longer be pressed to and fro, and is then
left. This glueing has the general effect of making the veneer adhere
to the foundation beneath; but there are parts where, from the
accumulation of too much glue in one part, or from the presence of
air which had not been expelled by the pressure of the hands, the
veneer rises up as a kind of blister, convex on the upper surface. The
workman employs a veneering hammer to level these
protuberances. This veneering hammer is a piece of wood three or
four inches long, and an inch in thickness, having a straight strip of
iron plate fixed to one edge. The workman, placing the iron edge
down upon the veneer, presses on the block of wood with his hand,
and works all over the surface of the veneer, expressing all the
superfluous glue from the parts which had formed the
protuberances. As this redundant glue must have some place from
whence to escape, the workman begins rubbing at the centre, and
thence proceeds towards the edge, at which the glue finally exudes.
There is a curious plan adopted for ascertaining whether there are
any parts, imperceptible to the eye, where the veneer does not
adhere closely to the foundation—viz., by sound. The workman
strikes the veneer all over with a wooden or other hammer; and if
the sound be distinct and solid, he knows that the proper degree of
adhesion has taken place; but if the sound be hollow and dull, it
indicates the existence of a vacant space between the veneer and
the foundation; and a greater degree of rubbing or pressing is
consequently necessary. If the surface of the piece of veneer be of
large dimensions, two workmen are required to level all parts of the
veneer before the glue gets cold and loses its fluidity.
But this operation—however good the glue may be, or however
well the veneer may be pressed down—is not sufficient to cause the
veneer to adhere permanently to the foundation, especially at the
edges, where the air is liable to enter, and to cause the veneer to
rise. To prevent this inconvenience, the veneer, at and near the
edges, is kept down, either by the pressure of heavy weights, or, still
better, by the action of screw-presses. These screw-presses consist
of two pieces of wood or clamps, which are brought to any degree
of closeness by means of two wooden screws, each screw passing
through holes in both clamps, the handles of the two screws being,
respectively to each other, outside the opposite clamps. The clamps
are opened, by means of the screws, to such a width as to admit the
edge of the veneered wood between them; and the screws are then
worked up till the clamps grasp the wood tightly, where they remain
till the glue is quite cold, and the veneer closely adhering to the
foundation.
But even all this care is not in every case sufficient to produce a
firm adhesion of the veneer to the foundation. It frequently happens
that, when the hardened veneered surface is tried with the hammer,
a hollow sound indicates that there is yet a place where the veneer
has a vacancy beneath it. In such a case, the only remedy is one of
a curious kind—viz., to lay a hot iron on the defective part of the
veneer, by which the glue beneath is remelted. A small part of the
veneer, reaching from the defective part to the edge, is also similarly
heated, and the glue beneath remelted. Then, by means of the
veneering hammer, the superfluous glue which had caused the
defect is squeezed out, and pressed to the edges of the veneer
through the kind of channel which had been prepared for it by the
heated iron.
Where the surface of the wood to be veneered is more or less
cylindrical, such as a pillar, the front of a drawer, &c., the piece of
veneer has a curvature given to it, corresponding in some degree to
that of the surface on which it is laid, by the action of hot water,
before the glueing is effected. By sponging one side of the veneer
with hot water, it causes that side to swell, while the other side
remains dry; the consequence of which is, that the wetted surface
rises into a convex form, leaving the other side hollow or concave:—
this is, in fact, an instance of warping, where a thin piece of wood is
either unequally heated or damped on opposite sides. The hollow
side is then laid on the glued foundation.
 When the veneered surface is dry, its edges are trimmed, and its
surface scraped and sand-papered, preparatory to the finishing
processes which the piece of furniture is to undergo.

Manufacture of Glue.
The preparation of this useful article forms a curious and
important branch of national industry. The chief use of glue is for
binding or cementing pieces of wood together, as practised by the
carpenter and cabinet-maker, in which trades very large quantities
are constantly employed.
Glue (which is nothing more than gelatine in a dry state) is
obtained from the hides, hoofs, and horns of animals; the refuse of
the leather-dresser, and the offal of the slaughter-house; ears of
oxen, calves, sheep; parings of parchment, old gloves; and, in short,
animal skin and (by a late improvement) bones, are all employed for
making glue.
The first process in this manufacture is to free the materials from
dirt, blood, and other matters which do not afford glue. For this
purpose they are steeped in lime and water, and then placed in
baskets, and rinsed by the action of a stream of water. They are
then removed to a sloping surface, and allowed to drain, and
whatever lime remains is deprived of its caustic property by the
reabsorption of carbonic acid from the atmosphere, since the
presence of lime would prove injurious in the subsequent processes.
The gelatine is removed from the animal matter by boiling. This
process is effected in a somewhat shallow boiler, which is provided
with a false bottom, pierced with holes, and elevated a few inches,
thus serving as a support to the animal matter, and preventing it
from burning by the heated bottom of the boiler. The boiler is filled
about two-thirds with soft water, and then the animal substances are
added: these are piled up above the brim of the boiler, because soon
after boiling commences, they sink down below the level of the
liquid. The contents of the boiler are occasionally stirred up and
pressed down, while a steady boiling is maintained throughout this
part of the process.
As the boiling proceeds, small portions of the gelatine are drawn
off into egg-shells, when, in the course of a few minutes, if the liquid
gelatine becomes, by exposure to the cool air, a clear mass of jelly,
the boiling process is complete,—the fire is smothered up, and the
contents of the boiler left to settle for ten or twenty minutes. The
stop-cock is then turned, and the gelatine flows into a deep vessel,
kept hot by being surrounded with hot water, and thus it remains for
several hours, during which time it deposits any solid impurities. It is
then drawn off into congealing boxes, and prepared as we shall soon
explain.
The undissolved matter in the boiler is treated with boiling water a
second, and even a third time, and the above process continued
until nothing more can be extracted. The subsequent solutions are
often too weak to be made into glue, but they are economically used
with fresh portions of animal matter.
A clear idea may be formed of this part of the manufacture by the
annexed illustration, which represents a section of three vessels, on
different levels. The uppermost vessel, which is heated by the waste
heat of the chimney, supplies warm water to the animal matter
contained in the second vessel: the third vessel receives the liquid
gelatine, and retains it in a fluid state, while the solid impurities are
being deposited.
 The gelatine is drawn off from this third vessel into buckets, and
conveyed to the congealing boxes. These boxes are of deal, of a
square form, but somewhat narrower at bottom than at top. The
liquid glue is poured through funnels, provided with filter-cloths, into
the boxes until they are entirely filled. This process is conducted in a
very cool and dry apartment, paved with stone and kept very clean,
so that any glue which may be spilt may be recovered. In twelve or
eighteen hours the liquid glue becomes sufficiently firm for the next
process, which is performed in an upper story, furnished with
ventilating windows, so as to admit air on all sides. The boxes are
inverted on a moistened table, so that the cake of jelly may not
adhere to it: this cake is cut into horizontal layers, by means of a
brass wire, stretched in a frame, and is guided by rulers, so disposed
as to regulate the thickness of the cake of glue. The slices thus
formed are carefully lifted off, and placed on nets stretched in
wooden frames. As these frames are filled they are placed over each
other, with an interval of about three inches between every two
frames, so that the air may have free access. Each frame is so
arranged as to slide in and out like a drawer, to allow the cakes to be
turned, which is done two or three times every day.
An experienced writer on manufactures thus observes, concerning
this part of the process:—“The drying of the glue is the most
precarious part of the manufacture. The least disturbance of the
weather may injure the glue during the two or three first days of its
exposure. Should the temperature of the air rise considerably, the
gelatine may turn so soft as to become unshapely, and even to run
through the meshes upon the pieces below, or it may get attached
to the strings and surround them, so as not to be separable without
plunging the net into boiling water. If frost supervene, the water
may freeze, and form numerous cracks in the cakes. Such pieces
must immediately be remelted and reformed. A slight fog even
produces upon glue newly exposed a serious deterioration, the damp
condensed upon its surface occasioning a general mouldiness. A
thunder-storm sometimes destroys the coagulating power in the
whole laminæ at once, or causes the glue to turn on the nets, in the
language of the manufacturer. A wind too dry or too hot may cause
it to dry so quickly as to prevent it from contracting to its proper
size, without numerous cracks and fissures. In this predicament the
closing of all the flaps of the windows is the only means of abating
the mischief. On these accounts it is of importance to select the
most temperate season of the year, such as spring and autumn, for
the glue manufacture.”
When the glue is properly dried a gloss is imparted to each cake,
by dipping it in hot water, and passing over it a brush, also wetted
with hot water. The cakes are then placed on a hurdle, dried in the
stove-room, or in the open air, if the weather be sufficiently dry and
warm. It is then packed in casks for sale.
It has been found by experiment that when two cylinders of dry
ash, one inch and a half in diameter, were glued together, and after
twenty-four hours torn asunder, a force of 1260 pounds was required
to produce the separation, thus making the force of adhesion equal
to 715 pounds per square inch. Another experiment made the force
of adhesion to equal 4000 pounds on the square inch.

The House-Decorator of Italy.

In an interesting notice, by Mr. Wilson, of the present state of the
arts in Italy, read before the Society of Arts, in Scotland, in
November, 1840, a few details are given of the skill with which the
house-builder converts the commonest materials into tasteful
decorations. The following is an abstract of that part of the notice
which relates to the subject of the present volume:—
Notwithstanding the comparatively small employment afforded to
Italian architects in the present day, yet there can be no question as
to the skill displayed in erecting their designs. The masonry is
excellent, and the ancient Roman brick-work is rivalled by that of the
present generation; houses are built of brick, in which all the
exterior decorations are moulded in that material as perfectly as if
executed in stone. The skill with which the Italian workmen build in
brick, may be exemplified by the Florentine practice of arching over
rooms without centering of any description. Two thin moulds of
board, the shape of the intended arch, alone are used: these are
placed at each end of the apartment which it is intended to cover in,
and pieces of string are stretched from the one to the other, guiding
the workman as he advances in the formation of his arch, which he
builds, uniting the bricks by their thin edges (greatly thinner than
those we use), and trusting entirely to the tenacity and quick-setting
of the cement.
Plastering is also carried to a perfection in Italy, of which we have
very little idea in this country; rooms are so exquisitely finished, that
no additional work in the shape of house-painting is required; but
the polish of the plaster, and its evenness of tint, are such as to rival
those of the finest porcelain. Sometimes the plaster is fluted, or
various designs are executed in intaglio upon it, in the most beautiful
manner. Scagliola, a very fine preparation from gypsum, is the
material chiefly used. An instance of the cheap rate at which this
work is done, is afforded in the new ball-room in the Palazzo Pitti
grand-ducal residence at Florence, which, including mouldings,
figures, bas-reliefs, and ornaments, was executed at a cost of two
crowns for every four square feet.
A most beautiful art among the Italians, and one which might be
advantageously introduced into this country, is that of making what
are termed Venetian pavements. This method of finishing the floors
of rooms is conducted in the following manner. In the first place a
foundation is made of lime mixed with pozzolana, and small pieces
of broken stone; this is, in fact, a sort of concrete, which must be
well beaten and levelled. When this is perfectly dry, a fine paste, as
it is termed by the Italians, must be made of lime, pozzolana, and
sand; a yellow sand is used which tinges the mixture; this is
carefully spread to a depth of one or two inches, according to
circumstances. Over this is laid a layer of irregularly broken minute
pieces of marble of different colours, and if it is wished these can be
arranged in patterns. After the paste is completely covered with
pieces of marble, men proceed to beat the floor with large and
heavy tools made for the purpose; when the whole has been beaten
into a compact mass, and the paste appears above the pieces of
marble, it is left to harden. It is then rubbed smooth with fine-
grained stones, and is finally brought to a high polish with emery
powder, marble dust, and lastly, with boiled oil rubbed on with
flannel. This makes a durable and very beautiful floor, which in this
country would be well adapted for halls, conservatories, and other
buildings.
The carpentry of the Italians, as observable in ordinary houses,
displays little skill and indifferent workmanship, but in the roofs and
floors of important buildings, they satisfactorily prove their
knowledge of scientific principles, and several of their designs are
well known to British architects.
 With regard to the working of iron, in comparison with our system,
the Italian is primitive indeed; yet at times he can and does produce
very good specimens of workmanship, but at a heavy cost;
consequently they are generally content with very ordinary
productions. A manufactory of wire, and of driving and screw nails,
by means of machinery, now occupies the villa of Mecænas at Tivoli;
the articles produced are very well made. Copper is extensively used
in Italy, and there are productive mines in the Maremma Toscana.
The workmanship of articles made of this metal is respectable;
various utensils are made of brass in a neat and satisfactory manner,
but in the interior finishing of houses, if much nicety is required,
articles of foreign manufacture are used.
House-painters may be mentioned in the last place, and these
display much taste and skill; and there is a class of them who greatly
excel those in this country, having more the feeling and taste of
artists. Surrounded by the finest models in this art, the Italian
decorator enjoys every advantage in its study, and he inherits
besides from the best periods of art, or rather from antiquity, taste,
and a good system of workmanship. He is not a mere machine,
employed in the use of the moulds, stamps, and other mechanical
contrivances, which too often keep the decorative arts within such
narrow limits.

Fresco Painting.
The proposed introduction of Fresco Painting into our public
buildings will, it is hoped and expected, have the effect of employing
the artist in fresco upon the walls of our dwelling-houses. Already
have a few of the mansions of our nobility been thus decorated, and
in anticipation of its general introduction it may not be out of
character with this little work to describe the process in detail.
Respecting the origin of the term fresco there are two opinions;
according to some the term is said to have been adopted because
the practice of it is used in the open air. Thus in the Italian language,
andare al fresco signifies “to take the air;” or “to walk abroad in the
air;” but a more probable explanation is to be found in another
meaning of the word fresco, viz., “new,” or “fresh,” as applied to the
state of the plaster in which it is wrought. The artist traces his
design, colours it, and completely finishes in one day so much of his
picture as will occupy the wet plaster ground that has been prepared
for him, so that when the ground is dry, he may not retouch any part
of his work. This is the characteristic distinction of painting in fresco
—a method by which the painting is incorporated with the mortar,
and drying along with it becomes extremely durable, and brightens
in its tones and colours as it dries.
It will therefore be readily conceived that the artist in fresco has to
encounter difficulties of no ordinary kind; a few of them are thus
noticed by a writer in Rees’s Cyclopædia:—“From the necessity there
is in the progress of this style of art, that it should be executed with
rapidity, and from the impossibility of retouching it without injuring
the purity of the work, the artist, unless he be endowed with very
extraordinary powers of imagination and execution indeed, is obliged
to prepare a finished sketch of the subject, wrought to its proper
hue and tone of colour, and so well digested, that there may be no
necessity for making any essential alterations in the design. This,
which is a very useful mode of proceeding in all fine works of
painting, is absolutely indispensable in fresco, to those who are not
determined to give the rein to their ideas, and leave as perfect
whatever may first present itself. There is no beginning in this, by
drawing in the whole of the parts at one time, and correcting them
at leisure, as is the custom with oil-painters, who may therefore
proceed to work without a sketch; here all that is begun in the
morning must be completed in the evening; and that almost without
cessation of labour, while the plaster is wet; and not only completed
in form, but also, a difficult, nay, almost impossible task, without a
well-prepared sketch, must be performed, viz., the part done in this
short time must have so perfect an accordance with what follows, or
has preceded, of the work, that when the whole is finished, it may
appear as if it had been executed at once, or in the usual mode,
with sufficient time to harmonize the various forms and tones of
colour. Instead of proceeding by slow degrees to illuminate the
objects, and increase the vividness of the colours, in a manner
somewhat similar to the progress of nature in the rising day, till at
last it shines with all its intended effect, which is the course of
painting in oil, the artist working in fresco must at once rush into
broad daylight, at once give all the force in light, and shade, and
colour, which the nature of his subject requires, and this without the
assistance (at least in the commencement) of contrast to regulate
his eye; so that here, as has been said, a well digested and finished
sketch seems indispensably requisite.”
The custom of decorating walls with paintings is very ancient.
Those discovered by Belzoni, among the royal tombs of Egypt, prove
the existence of the art among the Egyptians many centuries before
the Christian era. There is also abundant evidence that it was
practised by the Etruscans and Romans. But the more common
practice up to the time of Augustus seems to have been to paint the
walls of houses of one single colour, and to relieve this with fantastic
ornaments. According to Pliny, Augustus was the first to suggest the
covering of whole walls with pictures and landscapes. About the
same time a painter named Ludius invented that style of decoration,
now called arabesque or grotesque, many beautiful examples of
which have been discovered at Pompeii and other places. The
invention of the Arabesque style, as its name implies, has been
improperly claimed for the Arabians of Spain; whose religion
forbidding the representation of animals, they employed foliage,
stalks, stems, tendrils, flowers, and fruit, in a variety of forms and
combinations, with which they adorned the surfaces of their
buildings. Hence the fanciful combinations of natural objects
occupying a flat surface came to be called Arabesque, although it
differed so much from the Mohammedan compositions as to contain
animals real or fabulous. That the term is badly chosen, especially as
applied to the fanciful enrichments on the walls of Pompeii, &c., will
be seen from the fact that such ornaments were invented and
executed long before the sons of Ishmael had learned to draw. The
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