Hypnotism. I read a couple of books on this. Conchis had evidently learnt the technique professionally. It was “virtually impossible” to get the person hypnotized to do acts that “run deeply counter to his moral beliefs.” But post-hypnotic suggestion, implanting commands that are carried out on a given signal after the subject has been woken from the hypnotic state and is in all other ways back to normal, was “perfectly feasible and frequently demonstrated.”

Raising both arms above the head. Conchis got this from ancient Egypt. It was the Ka sign, used by initiates “to gain possession of the cosmic forces of mystery.” In many tomb paintings. It meant: “I am master of the spells. Strength is mine. I impart strength.”

The wheel symbol. “The mandala, or wheel, is a universal symbol of existence.

The ribbon on my leg, the bare shoulder. From masonic ritual, but believed to descend from the Eleusinian mysteries. Associated with initiation.

Maria. Probably really was a peasant, though an intelligent one. She spoke only two or three words of French to me; sat silent all through the trial, rather conspicuously out of place. Unlike the others, she was what she first seemed.

Lily’s bank. I wrote another letter, and got back a reply from the manager of the real Barclay’s branch. His name was not P. J. Fearn; and the headed paper he wrote on was not like that I had received.

Her school. Julie Holmes—unknown.

Mitford. I wrote a card to the address in Northumberland I had had the year before and received a letter back from his mother. She said Alexander was now a courier, working in Spain. I got in touch with the travel firm he was working for, but they said he wouldn’t be back till September. I left a letter for him.

The paintings at Bourani. I started with the Bonnards. The first book of reproductions of his work I opened had the picture of the girl drying by the window. I turned to the attributions list at the back. It was in the Los Angeles County Museum. The book had been printed m 1950. Later I “found” the other Bonnard; at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Both had been copies. The Modigliani I never traced; but I suspect, remembering those curiously Conchis-like eyes, that it was not even a copy.

Evening Standard of January 8, 1952. No sign of a photo of Lily and Rose, in any edition.

L'Astrée. Did Conchis remember that I believed myself remotely connected with d'Urfé? The story of L'Astrée is: The shepherdess Astrée, hearing evil reports of the shepherd Celadon, banishes him from her presence. A war breaks out, and Astrée is taken prisoner. Celadon manages to rescue her, but she will not forgive him. He does not gain her hand until he has turned the lion and unicorns who devour unfaithful lovers into statues of stone.

Chaliapin. Was at Covent Garden in June, 1914, and in Prince Igor.

“You may be elect.” When he said that, at our first strange meeting, he meant simply, “I’ve decided to use you.” That was also the only sense in which, at the end, I could be elect. He meant, “We have used you.”

Lily and Rose. Two twin sisters, both very pretty, gifted (though I came to doubt Lily’s classical education), must, if they had been up at Oxford or Cambridge, have been the double Zuleika Dobsons of their years. I could not believe that they had been at Oxford—since our years must have overlapped—but on the principle that Lily never told me the truth if she could possibly mislead me, I tried it first. I concocted a story about my being a scout for an American film producer who needed a pair of fair-haired English twins and “had heard” of two at Oxford. It wasn’t a very good story and it involved me in some ludicrous improvising—which incidentally made me realize in retrospect how great had been Lily’s skill in that art. I tried the magazines, I tried the OUDS and the ETC, I even braved several of the women’s college bursaries; and got nowhere. I went to Cambridge and did the same thing; and got nowhere; least of all at Girton. Of course I realize that because they were twin sisters there was no reason why they should have gone to the same university. But at both Cambridge and Oxford I was shown stills from all the main undergraduate productions of the last few years—and no Lily-Rose face in any of them.

Armed with a slightly less implausible story—my rich American producer had become an eccentric rich American producer—I went round a few London theatrical agencies. Several of them had pairs of twins on their books, even blonde (or platinum blonde) twins; but not Lily or Rose.

The Tavistock Repertory: a total blank. No productions of Lysistrata. The agent’s name: unknown.

I tried RADA; with similar unsuccess.

One cunning device in the “Julie Holmes” invention: we tend to believe people who have had the same experiences as ourselves; who mirror us. So her naval commander father equaled my brigadier father; her Cambridge, my Oxford; her unhappy love affaire, mine; her year’s teaching, mine.

Her being “interfered with” was an irony, obviously; or perhaps an echo of Artemis’s mythical fear of the pains of childbirth. But perhaps she told me this to make it easier for me to confess in return. Looks she gave me: as if she was waiting for something. And if I had spoken… ?

Othello, Act I, Scene III.

She is abus’d, stol'n from me, and corrupted

By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;

For nature so preposterously to err,

Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,

Sans witchcraft could not.

And:

A maiden never bold;

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Blush’d at herself; and she, in spite of nature,

Of years, of country, credit, every thing,

To fall in love with what she fear’d to look on!

Polymus Films. I didn’t see the obvious, that one misplaced letter, until painfully late.

The famous whore Io. Lemprière: “In the ancient Gothic Io and Gio signified earth, as Isi or Isa signified 'ice' or water in its primordial state; and both were equally titles of the goddess, who represented the productive and nutritive power of the earth.” Indian Kali, Syrian Astarte (Ashtaroth), Egyptian Isis and Greek Io were considered one and the same goddess. She had three colors (on the walls in the trial): white, red, and black, the phases of the moon, and also the phases of woman: virgin, mother, and crone. Lily was evidently the goddess in her white, virgin phase; and perhaps in the black, as well. Rose would have stood for the red phase; but then Alison was given that role.

Tartarus. The more I read, the more I began to reidentify the whole situation at Bourani—or at any rate the final situation—with Tartarus. Tartarus was ruled by a king, Hades (or Conchis); a Queen, Persephone, bringer of destruction (Lily)—who remained “six months with Hades in the infernal regions and spent the rest of the year with her mother Demeter on earth.” There was also a supreme judge in Tartarus—Minos (the presiding “doctor” with a beard?); and of course there was Anubis-Cerberus, the black dog with three heads (three roles?). And Tartarus was where Eurydice went when Orpheus lost her.

I was aware that in all this I was acting the role I had decided not to act: that of detective, of hunter, and several times I abandoned the chase.