I had, admittedly, been reading through my few notes after supper, but had ordered everything as best I could before I’d gone out for my walk, and would have told him so had Helen not stepped smoothly in to take my part.

“’Tis clear you need a better place to do your work,” she said, and bade me gather up my papers and my new-bought books and follow her.

She led me to a room that I’d not yet discovered, being that it lay behind the kitchen where I very rarely ventured, since that was the maid’s domain. But entering this small room was, to me, like finding sanctuary.

“I do believe that it was once the scullery,” she said, “but when we took these rooms we also took the furniture, and from this it is obvious the former tenant used this as his writing chamber, so my husband does the same. I’m sure he would be pleased to have you use it also, while you hold his place in this inquiry.”

“I might not leave a room like this,” I warned her.

Everything had been designed to make a masculine retreat. An ebony-cased eight-day table clock ticked out the hours in comforting measure on top of a walnut-tree bookcase with locking glass doors. Above the open hearth that waited only for a fire, a brave ship sailed forever just before the storm across a seascape in a heavy frame, with candle sconces gleaming from the wall to either side.

The most impressive piece of cabinetry in the room was the scrutore. It was fashioned of walnut-tree also, inlaid with veneers set in circles and starbursts. Fully three feet broad, it stood as tall as me, with drawers below and a fall-front square panel which, when let down upon its hinge, became a level writing surface. Helen unlocked this and let it down now, revealing cleverly made inner drawers and pigeonholes behind and, at their center, a compartment with its own small door.

She told me, “There, you see? The perfect place for you to keep your papers. And your books, which I believe will fit just here.”

She pointed to the opening between the banks of small drawers at the back of the writing surface, directly beneath the central compartment with the door. My new-bought books, when laid together on their sides, did fit there perfectly.

She said, “I am afraid the drawers are very likely full already of my husband’s papers, but at least you can leave yours here undisturbed.”

I reached to test the rounded length of molding at the top edge of the scrutore’s row of pigeonholes, and felt it give. “This drawer is empty,” I confirmed, as it slid open.

Helen looked at me with wonder. “How on earth did you know that was there? A secret drawer!”

“Not very secret. Every scrutore I have known of this design does have one.” I might have added most had more than one, but we were interrupted by the sound of knocking from the street door, and she turned away from me.