“My parents decided to name me Hazel. My gran—on Mum’s side—was born in Hazel Grove in Cheshire, up in the northwest. At the time of my birth, my mother worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Cromwell Road in London. She was one of the workers who’d helped pack up hundreds of items that were transported to areas not so likely to be bombed. Some were sent as far away as Cornwall for storage. The museum closed in 1939, but only for a short period. The public wanted it open, although even the objects that remained had been moved to the basement to keep them safe. The war dragged on and the museum was used as a shelter, eventually as a canteen. But Mum worked right up until two days before I was born. While she was in hospital—childbirth at that time meant seven to ten days in bed, a practice that would now be considered barbaric—she sent my father to register my birth. An elderly male clerk at the registry office asked for the baby’s name, and when my father said ‘Hazel,’ the clerk said, ‘Oh, come now. You’d best rethink that. You can’t be naming your child after a nut.’ So my father changed the spelling—added an extra z, switched letters around, added a y. In that instant, I became Hazzley. Mum was not impressed, but she didn’t bother going through the paperwork required to change my name back to what it was supposed to be. My father was soon to return to his unit, and they were trying to spend every moment together after she came home from hospital.”

Cass returned and set down a tray that held glasses, white wine, Pellegrino, slices of lime. She went out again to make a decaf latte for Gwen.

Hazzley carried on. “I didn’t arrive in this country until the early sixties. Lew was a Canadian studying history in London. We were both history students. I had a job at the Victoria and Albert Museum, same place my mum had worked. She had taken me there many times when I was a child, and I was captivated by the place.

“Lew and I married young, and I quit my job in England when I left for Canada, though I was sorry to let the job go. Lew helped set up the museum here; he was an advisor and became a jack of all trades behind the scenes. We’re lucky to have a museum in this city. It was still a small town when we first arrived. Lew was happy at his job and that kept him busy, along with his readings of Conan Doyle. He belonged to a group dedicated to keeping the works of Doyle in the public eye, and he prided himself that he owned most of Sir Arthur’s books in first edition. Took a while to collect them, but he was a man of patience. Well, he was patient most of the time.

“While he was getting set up in his job, I began to edit articles for a history magazine. I did that for a long time, working from home in an upstairs bedroom that I converted to an office while raising Sal—she’s our daughter. After many years, the magazine shut down, and I branched out. I edit for a national magazine now. Occasionally, I receive requests from history journals. It’s all freelance, but the people who do the hiring get to know who’s out there and who’s willing to take on a job. After Sal grew up, Lew and I began to travel to different parts of the world. We returned to England several times.”