And the letter — four pages, a hundred per cent of which is about his motives, in which he confesses to a manipulation in detail, names the mechanism, apologizes, and tells me where to go to understand him — does not contain the word hospital.

It does not mention the eighth of November.

It does not mention the twenty-seventh of December, which happened while he was writing it.

Four pages of a dying man being unsparing about himself, and the largest single thing he handed me is not in it anywhere.

I read those pages perhaps two hundred times between February and October, looking for it.

I held them up to a window once, which is a thing I did at about one in the morning and which tells you where I was.