Hilary Tamar Mysteries

"Julias unhappy relationship with the Inland Revenue was due to her omission, during four years of modestly successful practice at the Bar, to pay any income tax. The truth is, I think, that she did not, in her heart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which she had studied for examinations and on which she had thereafter advised a number of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances, that it had anything to do with real life."

"Anyway, I promised Id stick to Gabrielle like a postage stamp for the rest of the weekend, which actually sounded like rather a jolly scheme, and if any sinister chaps in false beards started leaping out of the undergrowth, Id be on hand to biff them."

"On my first day in London I made an early start. Reaching the Public Record Office not much after ten, I soon secured the papers I needed for my research and settled in my place. I became, as is the way of the scholar, so deeply absorbed as to lose all consciousness of my surroundings or of the passage of time. When at last I came to myself, it was almost eleven and I was quite exhausted: I knew I could not prudently continue without refreshment."

"You will be interested to hear, Hilary, that it had a most remarkable effect—even on Selena after a very modest quantity. She cast off all conventional restraints and devoted herself without shame to the pleasure of the moment. She took from her handbag a paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice and sat on the sofa reading it, declining all offers of conversation."