I sat quietly, my notebook open, while I waited for the librarian to fetch the Taylor material. Had it not been so cold in the room I might have enjoyed the peacefulness. Instead, my thoughts lingered on whether I’d caused permanent damage to my still burning nose and throat, and how misleading the suffix ‘wort’ was. No wonder it was attached to ‘mug’.

After ten minutes, I heard a low jangle of keys and the librarian reappeared, pushing a trolley containing several large volumes. She walked right past me and went back to her computer, where she started typing.

‘Are you sure this is the correct reference?’ she asked.

‘It should be. I saw it in a book containing Taylor’s recipe for the grand Māori perfume.’

She looked puzzled. ‘There’s a bit of a hiccup.’

I went over to her desk, and even though I was convinced I hadn’t made a mistake I felt my cheeks begin to redden with embarrassment.

‘The problem is we don’t have the material you want.’

My heart began to thump in my chest. ‘Oh,’ I stammered. ‘That’s odd. I’m pretty certain I got it right. I’m usually quite careful.’ I was completely unnerved.

‘Let me go and check with my colleague.’

I needed some important papers to shuffle and rearrange in order to take the spotlight off my stupidity, but I had nothing. At a loss, I started picking pencils out of the container on the desk, testing their sharpness against the tip of my finger.

The librarian came back. ‘It looks like you might have made a simple oversight concerning the terms “notebooks” and “journals”. Easy to do if the reference isn’t terribly accurate to begin with. The good news is that the notebook you’re after exists. The bad news is that we have the journals, but the item you want is at the city library, in the heritage collection. I’ve jotted down the reference for you.’

She handed me a piece of paper and took a step back, a small act of discretion for which I was grateful.

‘Do you know where to go?’ she asked.

I felt myself blush and I could practically hear Jerome spluttering and laughing. Even Archer, who had graciously endured several minor slip-ups while I was carrying out his research, would have raised an eyebrow at such a sloppy start.

‘I’m sorry,’ I apologised. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Perhaps you’d like to look at some of Taylor’s journals while you’re here. I put a selection on the trolley.’