How wonderful her white body would be, at full stretch on a bed. I could spend an hour just gazing at her.

“Are you fond of music?”

“Awfully. You should see me dance.”

“Do you know what? I think we should move on. Come and have a cup of tea at my place. I’ll get the gramophone out and we’ll dance.”

“The very idea! I’ve only just met you!”

“That’s no problem. We’ll make up for lost time later.”

“If you were an Englishman I’d slap your face.”

“But since I’m not, why not kiss me instead?”

“There are too many people watching,” she said, encouragingly.

Everything would have been fine if I’d got up and left just then. I would have had a magnificent night, in London, where the great Casanova endured six weeks of celibacy. But fate decreed that at just that moment I should glance across at Maloney’s table.

I don’t know whether it was in fact or in my imagination—I can’t always tell them apart—but I had the distinct impression that Maloney was signalling to the girl.

And suspicion welled up in me even more strongly than before: not ordinary suspicion, it was more like some ecstatic, primeval, almost metaphysical terror. She was clearly working with them. Our chance meeting with her had been prearranged. And if I now took her home, God knows what might happen.

But what could happen? What was I afraid of? How could anyone be afraid of such a beautiful, delicate creature? I really couldn’t explain my feelings. Murder and robbery I could easily associate with Maloney, but they would have been the very last thing …

My mind was filled with shadowy, convoluted imaginings, the thought that I was about to become inextricably entangled in the dark enigma that surrounded Llanvygan. The threat over the telephone, the midnight rider, the death of William Roscoe were all bound up in that fear. And the fear was stronger than I was. Fear is a passion.

“Darling,” I said to Pat, “not this time. I’ve just remembered that my nephew has arrived from the country and will be sleeping in my flat tonight. But all is not lost that is delayed. Promise me we’ll meet again.”

She gave me a look of undisguised contempt.

I took my leave of Maloney, arranged to see him the following day, and trudged off home.

The next morning I was of course deeply upset by what had happened, and I cursed the morbidly suspicious character I had been born with. Where others are made bold and carefree by drink, it just fills me with black bile. But it was too late. I never saw her again.

Over the next few days I continued my intellectual preparations for the Welsh adventure. I leafed once more through the folios containing Fludd’s literary legacy. I found the Latin text hard going, thickly interspersed as it was with cabbalistic Hebrew, but I don’t think I would have understood much more had it been in Hungarian. As I scribbled my notes the feeling never left me that the Earl would make everything clear.

From Fludd’s Medicina Catholica I learnt to my surprise that all diseases can be attributed to meteors, winds, the various regions of the earth and the archangels who blow the winds. And furthermore, that the soundest method of understanding a man’s character was through his urine, following the principles of the little-known science of uromancy.

I read his biography by Archdeacon Craven, and re-read Denis Saurat’s excellent Milton and Christian Materialism, which devotes an extremely interesting chapter to Fludd.

According to Saurat, the intellectual circle that included Fludd and Milton did not view the soul as independent of the body. As committed Christians they had not a moment’s doubt about its immortality, which forced the conclusion that the body too must be immortal. I was reminded of the Pendragons’ motto: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body.’

What, I wondered with a dismaying sense of superstitious confusion, would that have meant to people of past centuries, inclined as they were to take things literally? Who knows, they might even have thought that they too would rise from their graves in some not-too-distant future. According to the legend, the night rider did just that, when impelled to deal out justice on behalf of the murdered physician.

Maloney had cancelled the meeting at which we were to decide on our precise travel arrangements. I had by now more or less assumed I would be travelling alone, when, on the very last day before we were due to leave, he suddenly appeared.

“Hello, Doc! Well, are we going to Wales?”

“I certainly am. What about you?”

“I dithered about it for a couple of days.