Scarweather by Anthony Rolls

Author:Anthony Rolls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2016-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter II

1

Naturally I had not forgotten the death of the German student, Ludwig Mackenrode. I made certain enquiries in 1921, and I found out all that could be known about him.

It was not, on the face of it, particularly interesting. The parents of this unfortunate lad were respectable people in Hamburg, tradesfolk who had never been prosperous but had lost their money in the year preceding the War. Ludwig was evidently intelligent and ambitious. His father wanted to put him in a shipping office, where he had influence, but the boy came to London, hoping to obtain work as the correspondent of a leading Hamburg newspaper. At the time of his death—evidently suicide—he was almost literally starving. I did not succeed in finding out how he knew Eric, or why he should have written to him. And so, at any rate for the present, my enquiries came to an end.

2

During the following years (from 1921 to 1926) I worked hard at my profession, and I was called to the Bar in 1925. I retained my excellent quarters in Upper Cheyne Row, and I had also chambers in the Temple.

From time to time I saw the Reisbys. Whenever they came to London I visited them at their hotel and I entertained them in my Chelsea rooms. Our relations were those of a tranquil, sustained friendship. Between Hilda Reisby and myself there was, in addition, a relation of peculiar confidence—I can give it no other term—which I found of immense value. We wrote long letters to each other, and I often acted on her advice in settling the minor problems of my career. I think it pleased her to share those problems, to hear about my progress, and, in time, to follow my cases.

Professor Reisby, though not entirely free from them, was becoming less liable to his alarming fits of depression. He looked as robust as ever. The first volumes of the huge work on burials had been published, and had received a great deal of attention from learned men in every part of Europe. Generally the work was admitted to be of supreme importance. But Reisby was attacked venomously by Zarakoff in Budapest, by Henkelberger of Dresden, and by Sir Thomas Bunting-Wragge of Cambridge.

These attacks (now forgotten) were brilliantly refuted by Ellingham, who wrote a sensational article on the tumuli of the Troad in the Antiquarian Register. I well remember the tremendous excitement which was aroused by this article, and how fiercely it was discussed in the clubs and drawing-rooms of London. There was, in fact, a very painful scene at Lady Wimble’s when Sir Henry Tighe-Wilkins denounced with extraordinary bitterness the whole structure of Altendorff’s Mycenean chronology.

Let us not revive those disturbing memories—for who can say what is Mycenean and what is not? Let me only observe that Ellingham’s defence of Reisby not only secured the gratitude and the admiration of that distinguished Professor, but enlisted on the side of Ellingham all those redoubtable men who presently overthrew Bunting-Wragge’s theory of double cremation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.