The Norfolk Mystery. Ian Sansom
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Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This ebook first published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2013
Copyright © Ian Sansom 2013
Cover image © Science & Society Picture Library / Getty Images
Ian Sansom asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007360482
Ebook Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9780007360499
Version: 2017-11-03
For my parents
Contents
REMINISCENCES, of course, make for sad, depressing literature.
Nonetheless. Some stories must be told.
In the year 1932 I came down from Cambridge with my poor degree in English, a Third – what my supervisor disapprovingly referred to as ‘the poet’s degree’. I had spent my time at college in jaunty self-indulgence, rising late, cutting lectures, wandering round wisteria-clad college quadrangles drinking and carousing, occasionally playing sport, and attempting – and failing – to write poetry in imitation of my great heroes, Eliot, Pound and Yeats. I had grand ambitions and high ideals, and absolutely no notion of exactly how I might achieve them.
I certainly had no intention of becoming involved in the exploits and adventures that I am about to relate.
By late August of 1932, recovering at last from the long hangover of my childhood and adolescence, and quite unable, as it turned out, to find employment suited to my ambitions and dreams, I put down my name on the books of Messrs Gabbitas and Thring, the famous