Baker Street Phantom E-Book

Fabrice Bourland

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 259

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In the spring of 1932, with Londoners terrorised by a series of brutal murders, the private detective agency of Messrs. Singleton and Trelawney quietly opens its doors in Bloomsbury. The first person to call on their services is a worried Lady Arthur Conan Doyle. She tells of mysterious events at 221 Baker Street - and a premonition that the London murders signal terrible danger for mankind. Their investigation will take our intrepid heroes into a world of séances and spirits. Aided by the most famous detective of all time, they must draw on their knowledge of the imaginary to find the perpetrators of some very real and bloody crimes before they strike again...

Leseprobe

THE BAKER STREET PHANTOM

FABRICE BOURLAND

Translated by Morag Young

Pushkin Vertigo

To Véronique, Félix and Rosalie

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword by the Publisher

I Extract from an Article in the Toronto Daily News, 26 July 1932

II A Most Unexpected Visit

III Introducing James Trelawney and Your Narrator

IV A Most Unexpected Visit (Continued)

V Another Murder in London

VI A Visit to 221 Baker Street

VII More Crimes in the East End

VIII A Surprising Spiritualist Séance

IX James Reviews the Case

X A Little Reading Never Hurt Anyone

XI A Night in the East End

XII We Learn Why and How

XIII Return to Baker Street

XIV A Few Hours’ Well-Deserved Rest

XV The Search for the Piccadilly House

XVI At Highgate Cemetery

Epilogue

Note to the Reader

Notes

About the Author

Copyright

‘If I don’t kill him soon, he’ll kill me.’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Silas Hocking in the summer of 1893, reported in New Age magazine in 1895

‘He must go the way of all flesh, material or imaginary. One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of the imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s heroes still may strut, Dickens’s delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray’s worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers.’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Preface to the original edition of The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, 1927

‘There was a small doctor dwelling near me, small in stature and also, I fear, in practice, whom I will call Brown. He was a student of the occult … From what I learned I should judge that the powers of the society to which he belonged included that of loosening their own etheric bodies, in summoning the etheric bodies of others (mine, for example) and in making thought images … But their line of philosophy or development is beyond me. I believe they represent a branch of Rosicrucians.’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures, 1924

FOREWORD BY THE PUBLISHER

I received the incredible story you are about to read in the post a few weeks ago. The manuscript came with a letter written on the elegant ivory notepaper of a legal practice in Northampton. In the letter William Barnett, a partner at Barnett & Hartmann, told us that he was the son of John W. Barnett, a solicitor who had died in March the previous year at the age of ninety-one. We were of course familiar with John Barnett who for many years had been the executor of Andrew Fowler Singleton, the famous detective and author who died in April 1972. Our publishing house had dealt with him several times in that capacity.

William Barnett told us that he had recently been going through his father’s affairs. In the attic of the vast family home, he had discovered a suitcase containing an impressive collection of papers and notes of all kinds, some of sentimental value only, and a number of carefully arranged folders. The first, of a faded green, was captivatingly entitled ‘The Baker Street Phantom’. Inside was a manuscript of two hundred typed sheets, which, at first glance, bore all the hallmarks of a new investigation by Mr Singleton.

The find immediately raised unanswerable questions: why had his father let the manuscript lie rotting at the bottom of a suitcase when, immediately after Andrew’s death, he had been involved in distributing his unpublished work? Was it an unfortunate oversight or had he deliberately chosen to let it sink into oblivion? In other words, was its authenticity in doubt?

William had immediately immersed himself in the text and admitted in his letter to us that he had never read anything so disconcerting in his life.

Believing that he was neither sufficiently familiar with Andrew Singleton’s work nor adequately au fait with the science of spiritualism to determine the credibility of what he had read, William decided to send us the extraordinary manuscript on the basis that, since its creation, our illustrious house had published a number of the author’s cases. He would leave us to judge whether it should be published or not.

I have to admit that the decision to publish was not taken lightly. What was the story really? A tale retrospectively telling the first adventures of one of the best and most endearing amateur detectives of the twentieth century? If that were the case, and if it were true that events had occurred as described, we would find ourselves faced with a phenomenon with unimaginable consequences, which would resurrect ancient beliefs in the creative power of the imagination and make us consider the monsters created in the brains of our authors in a different light. Perhaps, however, it was pure fiction, deliberately unrealistic and unlikely, entirely invented by the author to give himself the opportunity to express himself more freely and candidly? As we read it, the most surprising aspect of those arresting pages was that Andrew Fowler Singleton chose to dwell on himself, his past, his childhood and his first encounter with his faithful associate, something he had never done in the rest of his work.

If it were established that this enlightening tale was just a product of his imagination, it would be unique in the author’s work. It has been proved on a number of occasions (to the satisfaction of all, we hope) that both the traditional cases he pursued, which werelimited to tangible reality, and the numerous affairs which led him to the edge of human logic and reason were all actually investigated by Andrew Singleton himself.

Unlike Arthur Conan Doyle, one of his literary heroes, Singleton really was a sleuth. We know that the illustrious British author, in a desire to right wrongs, successfully took on the case of George Edalji (found guilty in 1903 of killing livestock at several farms in Staffordshire) and the case of Oscar Slater (sentenced to life imprisonment in 1909 for murdering his landlady). In each case, having struggled to establish the truth, Conan Doyle managed to have the verdicts overturned and the two prisoners released. But those cases had none of the complexity and ingenuity of those devised by the creator of Sherlock Holmes in his stories. Moreover, later attempts to help the police find an anonymous individual in 1921 and Agatha Christie in 1926, when she mysteriously disappeared one evening in December and was not heard of for eleven days, ended in bitter failure. In both cases, with the help of a medium, Horace Leaf, Conan Doyle had attempted to put into practice the psychometric technique used in some of his fantastic tales: diagnosing the circumstances of the tragedy with varying degrees of precision by allowing the medium to touch an object which had belonged to the person who had disappeared.

As regards our manuscript, clearly deception remains a possibility. The style could easily be that of the detective but, it might be argued, what could be easier than imitating a style of writing? On the other hand, absolutely nothing in the events in question or their chronology indicates that there was any cheating. Of course, it will be pointed out that it is difficult to check whether the article in the Toronto Daily News, dated 26 July 1932, wasinvented by the author as the paper’s archives were all destroyed in a fire in 1947. However (and we have checked ourselves), accounts of the Hamilton group’s spiritualist meetings are easily accessible.

Nonetheless, even if the authenticity of the document is recognised, many aspects of the manuscript remain unclear. In particular, it appears to be impossible to determine with precision the date it was written. If we exclude the idea that it was written just after the events related (mention is made in the last lines of the manuscript of the death of Jean Leckie in 1940 and, earlier on, the death of James Trelawney, the faithful associate, killed by the Nazis a few weeks before their surrender), there is nothing to indicate whether it was written in the 1950s or 1960s, say, or whether it was written later still, during the last months of the author’s life when he was enjoying his well-deserved retirement at his cottage near Halifax in Nova Scotia, dedicating his days and nights to his two favourite activities: reading and writing.

The fact remains that, after much reflection on the part of all of our directors, we finally agreed that it was important to make this story public.

We trust that we have taken the right decision. Now it is for others to decide.

Stanley Cartwright, 23 March 2007

I

EXTRACT FROM AN ARTICLE IN THE TORONTO DAILY NEWS, 26 July 1932

HULLABALOO IN SPIRITUALIST CIRCLES

Winnipeg’s spiritualist community is proud of the fact that it includes one of the world’s foremost experts in psychic research. Over the course of just a few years, Dr Thomas Glendenning Hamilton, formerly an MP for the province of Manitoba and today chairman of the Manitoba Medical Association, has built up a formidable reputation thanks to his spiritualist work.

Dr Hamilton’s interest in psychic phenomena began fourteen years ago. He was introduced to the field by one of his university colleagues, Professor Allison. His personal experience then expanded through one of Mrs Hamilton’s friends, Elizabeth Poole, a remarkably talented medium of Scottish extraction. Dr Hamilton understood that the subject represented a new and infinite field of experimentation for a young scientist such as himself. He immediately began to carry out his research with unfailing sincerity and rigour, something that has always been unanimously saluted by his colleagues on all sides.

Seven years after he began organising regular séances with Miss Poole, Dr Hamilton managed to obtain his first so-called ‘psychograph’ or spirit photograph. This process rests on the theory that a photographic plate can be developed to reveal not only the person posing in front of the camera but also the form of a spirit, invisible to the naked eye and whose presence is only revealed once the picture has been developed. Other photographs followed and met with great success here in Canada, and also in the United States and Europe. Spiritualists consider them to be unimpeachable proof of the survival of the soul after death.

However, it should be noted that the ‘teleplasm’ (the term used for the substance which materialises) photographed by Dr Hamilton only represented anonymous spirits, ordinary men and women who had not known fame during their lifetimes.

Through Elizabeth Poole, contact was made with the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, the English explorer David Livingstone and the French astronaut Camille Flammarion between 1923 and 1927. But communication with these illustrious figures was limited to automatic writing where a medium writes messages for the living while in a trance, dictated by spirits. Their bodies had never been captured on a photographic plate.

However, according to Dr Hamilton himself, this time everything points to it being the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the great British writer, creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, who established his presence on several occasions during a series of meetings organised in spring and early summer. The face of that fervent supporter of the spiritualist cause was photographed on 27 June at a special séance, which will henceforth figure in the annals of psychic science.

Thanks to the surprising success of these experimental meetings, the status of the city of Winnipeg has suddenly been raised to that of Boston, London, New York and Paris, the traditional capitals of spiritualist research.

Dr Hamilton will resume his work in September. At this rate, the last shadows surrounding that invisible kingdom might well be removed soon and it will finally be possible to establish positively and definitively that the human soul does indeed survive after the physical death of the body.

We are grateful to Dr Hamilton for giving us an account of the séances of recent weeks, exclusively for readers of the Toronto Daily News. He has also entrusted us with extracts from his notes taken during the meetings where, amongst other things, the incredible dialogues between flesh-and-blood individuals and elusive spirits from the other side are transcribed. They give us a more precise idea of the materialisations and, for our most suspicious fellow citizens, allow us to judge the degree of seriousness and meticulousness the Winnipeg group has applied to its experiments.

SCRUPULOUSLY ORGANISED SÉANCES

In order to help readers picture the meetings more easily, we should specify, before going into details, that the meetings are held in a specially furnished room on the second floor of Thomas G. Hamilton’s home in the centre of Winnipeg: ten wooden chairs are arranged in a circle around a solid rectangular table made of unvarnished wood, a gramophone is placed on a shelf at the back of the room and there is a wooden spirit cabinet. In two corners, opposite the psychic cabinet, a collection of photographic and stereoscopic devices with different kinds of lenses, as well as magnesium lamps used for the flashes, are permanently ready to be operated from a distance thanks to an ingenious system of remote triggers.

As Dr Hamilton has indicated, communications of this level were only possible thanks to the presence of three peerless mediums with so-called ‘physical effects’, that is to say the ability to produce ectoplasm, the semi-solid substance which leaves the body of the living in certain circumstances and which serves to clothe ethereal entities. In this instance they were Miss Mary Marshall, referred to in the accounts of the séance under the pseudonym Dawn; her sister-in-law Mrs Susan Marshall, referred to under the pseudonym Mercedes; and a young man who has asked to remain anonymous and who was referred to as Ewan.

As well as the mediums and Dr Hamilton, the other individuals present at the séances were W. B. Cooper, the well-known businessman; H. A. Reed, a telephone engineer for Manitoba Telephone System which contributed towards the supply and technical maintenance of the photographic and phonographic equipment; James Archibald Hamilton, Dr Hamilton’s brother; Dr Bruce Chown, a paediatrician at Winnipeg Children’s Hospital; Lillian Hamilton, Dr Hamilton’s wife; and the businessman John D. MacDonald.

SÉANCE OF 6 MARCH 1932: WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

In spiritualist terminology, a spirit guide is the spirit of a deceased person who communicates with the living during a séance through the lips of an entranced medium and acts as an intermediary for contacting other spirits. To improve the quality of communication, Dr Hamilton often works with several mediums, which means that the same guide can express him-or herself through two or three different mediators in turn during a séance. In addition, for convenience it has become usual to refer to a spirit guide by attaching his name (if known) to that of the medium whose voice he is borrowing. So, in the following exchange Walter-Dawn refers to the entity known as Walter who is speaking through the medium Dawn. But Walter can suddenly decide to express himself through the medium Ewan or the medium Mercedes. He will therefore then be referred to as Walter-Ewan or Walter-Mercedes.

During the séance on 6 March (the 296th in the series of materialisations), the Hamilton group established contact for the first time with an entity claiming to be the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle. That day, an excellent differentiated mass was recorded on a photographic plate.

The following is taken from the notes recorded during the séance:

Ewan becomes entranced.

Walter-Ewan: ‘Mercedes, sit on the other side of thecabinet beside Dawn. Don’t let go of Dawn’s hands.’

Mercedes, fully conscious, seats herself near the cabinet. The next half-hour is taken up with nonsense talk between Dr Chown and a Ewan trance-personality. The cameras have been ready since before the séance began.

At 9.30 Walter asks Dr Chown if he is ready to take a picture.

At 9.31 Dawn stands, bows three times, raises her right hand, holds it over her breast and speaks in a deep voice in the quiet deliberate manner characteristic of the control Black Hawk.1

Black Hawk-Dawn: ‘Good evening, friends. Pale Face (Walter) has been with you and is still here. He is doing something for you and hopes that conditions will be satisfactory. I have just been asked to make the medium stand on her feet. She will be seated as soon as you get the message. I think from what I can see that it will not be long …’

(The entity ceases to dominate the medium.)

At 9.43 Dawn (entranced) very quietly says: ‘One, two, three, four!’

The flash is fired on the fourth count. The exposure seems to have a very marked effect on her for she breathes very heavily. At 9.47 she again counts up to four.

Dr Chown: ‘Sorry, we were ready for only one flash.’

Walter-Dawn: ‘Oh, I thought you were ready for two. Place the medium on the floor, please.’ (Ewan is placed on the floor.) ‘Thank you. How long would it take you to get ready?’

Dr Chown: ‘Sorry, I can’t do another tonight. We should have received some new plates. Dr Hamilton has ordered them but I don’t know when we’ll get them.’

Walter-Dawn: ‘Well, at least we have one picture.’

Dr Chown: ‘If we get one good exposure we will be very grateful.’

The photographic plate very clearly reveals ectoplasm about eight or ten inches in length leaving the medium’s mouth and flowing down towards the ground. At the top of this whitish mass, two points can be distinguished in the shape of relatively well-formed eyes with slightly dilated pupils. Darker points can be seen in each eye. The outline of white mass is well defined on the left eyebrow, while on the right eyebrow it is broken by a shadow above the outer corner of the eye. At the bottom of the ectoplasm one can make out an imperfect face with a head of hair.

SÉANCE OF 17 APRIL 1932: A MESSAGE IN AUTOMATIC WRITING

Six weeks later, on 17 April, the following message was delivered in automatic writing through an entranced Mercedes: ‘The lodger has left his box. He absolutely must return! He must! A.C.D.’

The message is obscure. Neither Walter nor any of the other spirits present that day understood its meaning. They also let it be known among the group that the entity, which claimed to be Conan Doyle, was displaying extreme agitation and seemed unable to formulate a clear and coherent message. They were nevertheless going to try to help him.

They insisted that a certain number of special séances be organised with the chosen members. A small group met on 20 April with Dawn, on 22 April with Ewan and the complete group came together on 24 April. On 27 April a hand teleplasm was recorded. 

1. Black Hawk is the name of another spirit guide. The term ‘control’ refers to a psychic entity, which can control the séance. (Note from the Editor of the Toronto Daily News)

II

A MOST UNEXPECTED VISIT

MY friend James Trelawney and I never imagined for a moment what would follow when there was a knock at the door of our rooms in Montague Street towards the end of the morning of Friday, 24 June 1932. We knew no one in London and since Miss Sigwarth, our landlady, had let someone come up without calling up from downstairs in her shrill voice – something we had asked her not to do – it probably meant that the visit was professional. It was not a moment too soon. Three months had passed with nothing to fill our days and the wait was starting to get James down.

‘Mr Singleton?’ a lady’s voice asked my associate when he opened the door.

Hearing my name, I got up from the sofa where I had been reading and straightened my clothes, discreetly tugging my waistcoat down.

‘Sadly, no, my dear lady. My name is Trelawney, James Trelawney, at your service,’ my friend replied, with a slightly excessive bow. ‘I am Andrew Singleton’s associate. But, please, do come in. Mr Singleton will be delighted to receive you.’

When I caught sight of our visitor in the doorway, my heart began to hammer. The slender figure and the haughty carriage of the head reminded me forcibly of my late mother as she  appeared in a few photographs taken more than a quarter of a century ago and for ever fixed in my mind. Fortunately, as soon as she came forward and I was able to observe her more closely, I quickly regained control of myself.

She was tall (about five foot seven) and slender, somewhere between fifty-five and sixty, and there was no doubt that she had been extremely beautiful in her youth. Under her grey woollen coat, she wore a long black dress, belted at the waist, which made her look yet more slender. Her light-brown hair was dotted with grey in places, which just underlined her natural stylishness.

She entered the main room of our flat, which served as a dining room as well as a sitting room, and looked around at its rudimentary furnishings: the table and four straight-back chairs in front of the ebony sideboard; our two desks by the window looking out onto the street, one (James’s) laden with newspapers, the other (mine) overflowing with books and magazines. An old map of London hung over the stone fireplace, which separated the two parts of the room, and beyond it were the sofa, where I stood without saying anything, and two elegant armchairs on a colourful rug.

Who could be asking for me? James’s name appeared first in the cards we had recently sent out. I was supposed to be his assistant.

James understood what was bothering me because he immediately came over and stood by my side. Our visitor could now study us together, which made me feel even more awkward. My friend was a kind of colossus, standing more than six foot three tall and built like a rugby player. Although we were both twenty-three, he looked older than me. I was thin and dark, whilst he was blond and muscular. Since our arrival in London, I had started growing a moustache in an attempt to make myself look older, less inexperienced.

‘I am Andrew Singleton,’ I said at last, stepping forward.

‘If you have come to entrust us with a case, please rest assured that you have come to the right place,’ James added in a professional tone.

‘Thank you. But I realise that I have not introduced myself. My name is Jean Conan Doyle and—’

‘Jean Conan Doyle? The widow of …?’ asked James, dumbstruck.

‘Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, indeed.’

‘Good heavens!’ cried my friend. ‘It is an honour to make the acquaintance of the widow of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.’

James’s enthusiasm seemed to amuse our guest. It should be said that my friend had a lively, cheerful personality, and people were quick to warm to him. What is more, as I had been able to judge on a number of occasions, his success with the fair sex was undeniable.

We invited Lady Conan Doyle to take a seat on the sofa, which she did with entirely aristocratic elegance, while we each took an armchair opposite her. Her striking emerald-green eyes had become sombre once more as she looked from James to me. The feverish movement of her hands betrayed a fierce agitation. She was obviously uncertain how to begin.

‘I heard that you were the son of Francis Everett Singleton of Halifax,’ she said suddenly, turning her gaze on me.

‘You understood correctly. I am indeed Francis Singleton’s son.’

‘That’s a relief. I have the pleasure of knowing your father. We met several times during the trips my husband and I made to America and your beautiful country, Canada.’

‘I didn’t know that. But, as to those meetings, and knowing your reputation, I think I would be right in suspecting that they were related to his spiritualist work?’

‘You would be right,’ Lady Conan Doyle replied as her face lit up again. ‘And it is because of your father’s spiritualist activities that I decided to appeal to his son for help, never doubting for a moment that you would demonstrate the same open-minded attitude to our ideas, which exceed the understanding of most people.’

‘Well …’ I started to say, unable to conceal my dismay. ‘That’s to say … on that particular point, Lady Conan Doyle, our views—’

‘He means that on that particular point, as on all others, dear lady,’ James hastened to say, ‘the views of father and son are very similar, as is the nature of things. And what’s more, I can assure you my views chime exactly with Singleton’s.’

‘Ah, if you only knew what a relief that is! It would have been impossible for me to reveal my torment to obtuse and materialistic minds.’

James leant back in his chair, aware that he had saved a situation that my sensitivity might have compromised. As always when I felt extreme vexation, I squeezed my left earlobe until it almost bled and forced myself to smile politely.

III

INTRODUCING JAMES TRELAWNEY AND YOUR NARRATOR

YOU will no doubt have already realised that, contrary to what my friend James Trelawney had managed to suggest, I was not, at that time, an enthusiast of the spiritualist religion. For me, that ‘morbid belief in the survival of the dead’ was just a residual infantilism in the brains of grown-up children, grown-up children who, what is more, benefit from a very conspicuous social position, as was the case with my father.

I only discovered the details of the meetings between the Conan Doyles and my father, the wealthy merchant Francis Everett Singleton, later on. In fact, they met just twice. The first occasion was in 1914 in Halifax in the province of Nova Scotia during a trip Arthur Conan Doyle made to North America at the invitation of the Ottawa government. The second time was in 1923 during one of the numerous series of lectures on spiritualism that the writer gave around the world. On that occasion, the Conan Doyles had been invited to a dinner organised by the MP and spiritualist Thomas G. Hamilton at his home in Winnipeg. My father was on the very select guest list. He and Arthur Conan Doyle had long discussions about their respective admiration for the spiritualist movement – the writer’s official conversion dated from 1916 and my father’s from even further back, from 1909, although the two men were almost the same age. Lady Conan Doyle, although initially resistant to this new religion, was converted in 1919 before discovering the gift of automatic writing in 1921. At the end of the dinner, a séance was held by the medium Mary Marshall, Dr Hamilton’s new protégée.

I was only three weeks old when my mother died as a result of complications in childbirth and six months old when my father was converted. I connect the two events in my mind because it is clear that for my father the death of his wife was the main reason for his spiritualist mania. What at first appeared to be a desperate attempt by a bereaved man to contact his deceased wife’s spirit became a single-minded, over-riding and obsessive preoccupation, which he devoted himself to, and which was an indication of the more spiritual, even mystical, direction his life had taken. Until then, Francis Everett Singleton had been a well-known figure in high society in Halifax, Ottawa and Toronto. From what I have been told, before I was born, illustrious figures from the world of art, men of letters and politicians were often received at our house. After his conversion he saw no one, apart from a few fellow believers with whom he took part in meetings around séance tables. From that moment every minute of his existence was dedicated to communicating with spirits.

Despite our entreaties, my father always refused to let us, my three brothers, my sister and I, participate in these séances, saying that it was not a place for children, and I gradually came to doubt the veracity of those so-called communications. In the face of his persistent refusal, I responded with polite disinterest in the spiritualist cause, which over time turned into veritable contempt. Without doubt, my conduct was partly due to an automatic rejection of everything paternal; by attempting to keep any contact with his dearly departed wife for himself alone, this man, for so long admired by all, had somehow stolen what every child holds most dear. He had deprived me of the mother I had not known and whose absence would haunt my soul and wither my heart until my last breath.

However, I should clarify that, although I openly disdained my father’s convictions, this did not mean I did not believe in the survival of the soul after death. On the contrary, my opinion on the subject had long been formed by reading Plato and Plutarch. It was simply that I strongly doubted that our dear lost ones had nothing better to do once they had passed over than take part in ludicrous circus tricks for a tableful of notables in their sixties.

My father was not unaware of the way I regarded him and, I am now sure, he suffered without ever letting it show. In any case, he did nothing to resolve the situation and in the end I cut myself off in silence and solitude. At the age of twelve he sent me away to boarding school at Dartmouth and I only came home at weekends. Those were the happiest days of my childhood. I learnt Latin, Greek and Italian, perfected my French and, above all, developed the taste for poetry and literature which would never leave me. I wrote my first poems at Dartmouth.

At eighteen I returned home to Halifax. But adolescence and the rebellious feelings it brings made my father’s activism for the spiritualist cause unbearable to me. Wanting to escape him and the bourgeois provincialism of Halifax as quickly as I could, I decided after a few months to leave the family home and go as far away as possible, first to Ottawa and then to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and finally Boston where I studied English literature for three years.

Boston has always been one of the intellectual capitals of the United States, with a wealth of publishers and publications of all kinds. I immediately felt at home in that immense city. What is more, it was the city of Edgar Allan Poe, the author I venerated above all others.