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string with, on the end of it, a small key. I helped him down and he strode across the room to a chest in a dingy far corner of the library, where only old maps and scientific instruments awaiting repair were kept. He turned the key in the lock of the chest and opened the lid, a broad smile spreading over his face as he did so. ‘I often used to berate Robert, gently, for his excessive caution in his dedication, but I do not do so now.’
    From the chest he lifted out two pieces of paper, which he handed to me. Along the top, in a hand I did not know, was written, List of the Books Mortified to the Marischal College in Aberdeen by Dr Gerald Duncan, Franeker. And beneath the lists were the books.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
    Dun smiled. ‘There is no great mystery. It has been a rule of this college for as long as I can remember that any books coming into its library had to be signed for not just by its librarian, but also by its principal. Robert would have resigned his post rather than stray from such a regulation. He may well have finished cataloguing Duncan’s benefaction, but he would not have put a single volume on the shelves until I had countersigned his receipt, which – as you see,’ he said, indicating the space beside Sim’s signature at the bottom of the second page, ‘I have not yet done. If the book – or books – his assailant was looking for was amongst Duncan’s benefaction, he will not have found it. Only Robert and I knew that this old chest was the library’s strong box, or where the key was to be found.’ He handedme Robert’s library key, and that to the strong box. ‘You must examine these lists, Alexander. Look for what it was that Robert saw. If I had the time to do it myself, I would, but I must keep a firm grip on the rudder of this college if I am to steer her through the troubled waters of the next few weeks. For now though, it grows late, and I must give thought to tomorrow.’
    At the top of the stairs, Principal Dun paused, and turned back to me. He spoke quietly. ‘There is one more thing I must ask you to do, for I can think of no other who could do it discreetly and in whom I have greater trust.’ I waited; it was evident the principal took no pleasure in what he now had to say. ‘The baillie and his constables will investigate this matter as the town deems fit, but Robert Sim was one of our number, and deserved well of us. I want you to look into his private life, his life outside these college walls. It may be that it is there, and not here, that the answer to this horror is to be found.’

FIVE
The Books
    I watched my wife through the thick glass pane of the window. The glow of one small candle set on the windowsill was all the light to be seen now in the courtyard off Flourmill Lane where our small house jostled for space with five others. Clay pots of thyme and rosemary were bracketed to the wall, and tubs of chives and lavender flowered by the doorstep. Their scents contended in the fallen darkness with the peaty smell of smoke rising from the chimney, drifting out on the night air, away from the animal odours of the backlands, where dogs, pigs and fowl were at rest for the night. She was sitting by the fire, untwisting her hair from under the cap where she had kept it all day. I liked to watch her sometimes still, unobserved, to have again that feeling that had gripped me, attended my every step, my every thought for two years; that I had come upon the one that would make me whole, and that if she was almost, almost, beyond my reach, she was utterly beyond that of others. And then to walk in and to touch her, brushher cheek, her fingertips with mine, was to live again, for a moment, the first time.
    Sarah looked up as I opened the door, only a flicker of a second between seeing me and the smile coming to her face.
    ‘You are so late, Alexander. I had begun to worry that you had fallen amongst more mischief.’
    ‘I had not expected to find you still up.