I am obliged by your letter of yesterday’s date, and hasten to send you, as requested, the complete dossier of documents. When you have read them, I shall be happy to call upon you at any time conveni...

Thank you very much for your letter and kind inquiries after my health. I like my new doctor very much indeed. I think he understands me a great deal better than Dr. Coombs, and he has put me on quite...

Thank you very much for your letter and kind inquiries after my health. I like my new doctor very much indeed. I think he understands me a great deal better than Dr. Coombs, and he has put me on quite...

I really think it is very unkind of you to suggest that I like Dr. Trevor simply because he is a man. I am the last person to imagine that a woman doctor is necessarily inferior. Quite the contrary. O...

You ought to thank your lucky stars, my dear, that you are the sort of person for whom “a good husband” is enough. But then, of course, Mother never brought us up to be brainy. We always lived so quie...

I am so glad Tom finds he can wear the stockings all right. Yes, I am a wee bit proud of the pattern. And there’s one thing about it⁠—it’s quite original. He couldn’t have bought anything like it in a...

Forgive me for this rotten series of scraps and postcards, but I’m a lazy devil, and there hasn’t been a place to sit down in for the last fortnight. Lathom’s things are all over the place, and when I...

Yours to hand, and your remarks about middle-aged spinsters noted. I will try not to be (a) catty; (b) mid-Victorian; (c) always imagining myself to be truly run after. I did not know I was all those ...

All right, damn it, no! I don’t want to hector and lay down the law. You carry on in your own way, my child, and don’t pay any attention to me. I quite see what you say about taking things for granted...

Forgive me wandering away like this. It’s just a sort of talking the thing out with you before I talk it out in the book. Because, for some reason, it does seem to me important to do this job as well ...

I knew it, Bungie⁠—I knew it, I knew it! I knew we should be asked downstairs to tea. And we’ve been! Down among the Liberty curtains and the brass Benares ware! Three young women, two bright youths, ...

I am so sorry I have not written for such a long time, but I have been feeling anything but fit. This household is most trying to live with, and I really feel that in my present nervous condition I am...

Damn it all, yes, Bungie⁠—I suppose you are right. Our ideas are always ahead of our actions, or rather, askew to them, and we move lopsided, like a knight on a chessboard. We get somewhere, even if i...

Don’t be a silly ass. I thought you had more sense than the ordinary futile sort of woman. I am not in the least fascinated by Mrs. Harrison. She quite simply interests me as a type⁠—a personality, th...

Hullo, Bungie, darling! My God, but I’m played-out! I’ve been sticking to the accursed Life like a leech, and have finished the religious outlook. Having ground it out with incredible sweat and travai...

Forgive me for writing such a foul letter, and bless you for answering it so promptly. The alarming list of faults which you have produced in answer to mine relieves my mind a good deal. Thank Heaven ...

This month I must begin by wishing you very many happy returns of the day, and I trust that the mail will live up to its reputation and deliver my letter in time for the auspicious occasion. God bless...

We are all breathing again! The Bear has taken himself off for one of his camping holidays, complete with painting outfit and half a dozen scribbling pads. He is actually going to write a book!⁠—telli...

Just a line to say I am running down to Oxford to stay with the Cobbs for a week or two. It is simply impossible to work in this place at the moment⁠—the downstairs menagerie swarms over us all day. T...

Ever so many thanks for sending the order from Mrs. Pottersby; I will get on with it as quickly as I can. I have two more scarves in hand, and Mr. Perry wants two dozen calendars for people in the par...

I have been much surprised and deeply hurt by Ronnie’s letter to me, which I enclose for you to see. I cannot believe that he would have written in that spirit of his own accord. I can only suppose th...

I was very glad to get your last letter⁠—the one dated 7th October⁠—and to know that all goes on so well with you and the bridge. You took exactly the course I should have advised myself in the matter...

I have received your letter about Ronnie. No doubt you think you know best. I will not allude further to the matter. I am feeling much too upset to discuss such things just now. Mr. Harrison has been ...

Here we are again! Back home and full of beans and fit to face anything, even Lathoms and Milsoms. By the way, I’ve got to take back what I said about Lathom. I’ll forgive him anything for being such ...

Just a line to say that the unexpected has happened! Merritt is all over the book!!! Thinks it’s the biggest thing that ever happened, and has offered me a first-class contract (£100 advance, 10% to 5...

A line at Christmas-time to send our best love, and to say that all our thoughts are with you. Next Christmas, if all goes well, we shall have you back, and things will seem more like themselves. Here...

I can find only one letter for the next few weeks with any important bearing on the subject of this inquiry. My father and stepmother were in Paris from the 15th of December to the 7th of January. I r...

How are you? And how did the season of overfeeding and Christian heartiness leave your soul? Did honourable love survive the domesticities? If so, I swear that you and your intelligent young woman are...

[The opening sheets of this letter are lost, but the date is evidently some time in January.] … proofs coming along at express speed, I am enjoying a magnificent illusion of importance and busyness. T...

What, in God’s name, are you going to do with me if I get jealous and suspicious? Or I with you, if it happens that way? I ask this in damn sober earnest, old girl. I’ve got the thing right under my e...

It is unfortunate that throughout this important and critical period, from the end of November to the end of February, we should have no help from the Milsom correspondence. It seems that Miss Milsom ...

You have seen the reviews, of course! Bless my heart and soul, what has happened to the people? Of course, it was all started by that tomfool at the Guildhall (I don’t know why Cabinet Ministers shoul...

Glory, alleluia! Then we will be married at Easter. Curse Uncle Edward’s scruples! I could make you just as good a husband in Lent⁠—but, as you say, it’s a shame to upset the old boy. Now that the rem...

Just a hasty line to say that I have had to leave Whittington Terrace on account of a very unfortunate incident, which I will tell you about later on. I am here for a few days till I can get my belong...

You will probably be very angry at what I am going to say, but I feel it is my duty to warn you against Mr. John Munting. Girls do not always know how men go on behind their backs, and it is only righ...

What on earth is all this about? Is the woman mad? Yours, in all confidence and love, E...

A little mad and quite mistaken. Do not worry. Am starting North tonight. Jack...

I have to inform you of a most disagreeable incident which has caused a disturbance in our family life, and in consequences of which I have had to turn that man Munting out of the house. It occurred w...

It was a mistake from the very beginning for Lathom and myself to set up housekeeping together. It happened purely by chance⁠—one of those silly, unnecessary chances that set one spinning out cheap pl...

Oh, how wonderful it was, darling, to see you again, even under the Gorgon’s eye⁠—such a cold stony eye, darling, and with all those people around. I had been dead all through those dreadful months. W...

Oh, my dearest, isn’t it terrible to see the summer coming, and to feel so wintry and lonely. Your letters have been a help, but what wouldn’t I give for you yourself, the real you! You will tell me a...

Your letter hurt me so dreadfully, I cried and cried. Oh, Petra, you can’t love me at all, or you wouldn’t say such awful things. You can’t really think that if I love you I ought to let him divorce m...

Of course I do forgive you. It’s you really that must forgive me for saying such awful things. I didn’t mean them. I knew really, deep down in my heart, that you loved me all the time. Of course I cou...

I hardly know how to breathe for joy! To know that I shall see you, hear your dear voice, hold your hand again! He heard me singing in the kitchen this morning and asked what I was yowling about. I sh...

Oh, darling, never say now that the luck isn’t on our side sometimes. Something even bigger than luck, perhaps. That we should save that last, wonderful evening out of the wreck⁠—so perfect, so unspea...

Oh, Petra, I am so frightened. Darling, something dreadful has happened. I’m sure⁠—I’m almost quite sure. Do you remember when I said Nature couldn’t revenge herself? Oh, but she can and has, Petra. W...

The next news I had about the Harrisons was about the middle of October, 1929, when I got a note from Lathom, written, rather unexpectedly, from “The Shack, Manaton, Devon.” He said that he was stayin...

When I heard your voice on the phone this morning, telling me what had happened, I didn’t know how to believe it. It all seemed so strange. And when I hung the receiver up, I had to pinch myself to be...

When I heard your voice on the phone this morning, telling me what had happened, I didn’t know how to believe it. It all seemed so strange. And when I hung the receiver up, I had to pinch myself to be...

The little schoolroom in the remote village of Manaton in Devon was crowded today, when Dr. Pringle, the coroner for the district, opened the inquest on the body of George Harrison, aged 56, Head of t...

Startling evidence was given today at the resumed inquest at Manaton on the body of George Harrison, 56 years old, of 15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater, who was found dead under mysterious circumstan...

I was in Africa when the news of my father’s death reached me. The work on which I was engaged was nearly completed, and I at once made arrangements for handing over the concluding portions of the job...

A damnably awkward thing has happened. Lathom turned up here last night. The girl showed him straight into my study and I was caught without hope of escape. He looked nervous and irritable, and came s...

Disregarding the hysterical tone of his last few sentences, I felt that on the whole Munting was right, and had behaved with more discretion and public spirit than I had credited him with. It was obvi...

This damned business of Lathom’s. People write books about murders, and the nice young men and women in them enjoy the job of detecting. It is a good game and I like reading the books. But the emotion...

This statement concludes the evidence, which I have to lay before you. You have already, I understand, received a brief communication from Sir James Lubbock, confirming the account of his experiment w...