But then one, and one of the apparently least promising, of my hits of research bore spectacular results.

It began, one Monday, with a very long shot, the assumption that Conchis had lived in St. John’s Wood as a boy and that there had indeed been an original Lily Montgomery. I went to Marylebone Central Library and asked to look at the street directories for 1912 to 1914. Of course the name Conchis would not appear; I looked for Montgomery. Acacia Road, Prince Albert Road, Henstridge Place, Queen’s Grove… with an A to Z of London by my side I worked through all the likely streets on the east of Wellington Road. Suddenly, with a shock of excitement, my eyes jumped a page. Montgomery, Fredk, 20 Allitsen Road.

The neighbors’ names were given as Smith and Manningham, although by 1914 the latter had moved and the name Huckstepp appeared. I wrote down the address, and then went on searching. Almost at once, on the other side of the main artery, I came across another Montgomery; this time in Elm Tree Road. But I no sooner caught sight of it than I was disappointed, because the full name was given as Sir Charles Penn Montgomery; an eminent surgeon, by the look of the trail of initials after his name; and obviously not the man Conchis described. The neighbors’ names there were HamiltonDukes and Charlesworth. There was another title among the Elm Tree Road residents; a “desirable” address.

I searched on, double-checking everything, but without finding any other Montgomery.

I then followed up in later directories the two I had found. The Allitsen Road Montgomery disappeared in 1920. Annoyingly the Elm Tree Road Montgomery went on much longer, though Sir Charles must have died in 1922; after that the owner’s name appeared as Lady Florence Montgomery, and continued so right up to 1938.

After lunch I drove up to Allitsen Road. As I swung into it, I knew it was no good. The houses were small terrace houses, nothing like the “mansions” Conchis had described.

Five minutes later I was in Elm Tree Road. At least it looked more the part: a pretty circumflex of mixed largish houses and early Victorian mews and cottages. It also looked encouragingly unaltered. No. 46 turned out to be one of the largest houses in the road. I parked my car and walked up a drive between banks of dead hydrangeas to a neo-Georgian front door; rang a bell.

But it sounded in an empty house, and sounded so all through August. Whoever lived there was on holiday. I found out his name in that year’s directory—a Mr. Simon Marks. I also found out from an old Who’s Who that the illustrious Sir Charles Penn Montgomery had had three daughters. I could probably have found out their names, but I had by then become anxious to drag my investigations out, as a child his last few sweets. It was almost a disappointment when, one day early in September, I saw a car parked in the driveway, and knew that another faint hope was about to be extinguished.

The bell was answered by an Italian in a white housecoat.

“I wonder if I could speak to the owner? Or his wife.”

“You have appointment?”

“No.”

“You sell something?”

I was rescued by a sharp voice.

“Who is it, Ercole?”

She appeared, a woman of sixty, a Jewess, expensively dressed, intelligent-looking.

“Oh, I’m engaged on some research and I’m trying to trace a family called Montgomery.”

“Sir Charles Penn? The surgeon?”

“I believed he lived here.”

“Yes, he lived here.” The houseboy waited, and she waved him away in a grande-dame manner; part of the wave came my way.

“In fact… this is rather difficult to explain… I’m really looking for a Miss Lily Montgomery.”

“Yes. I know her.” She was evidently not amused by the astonished smile that broke over my face. “You wish to see her?”

“I’m writing a monograph on a famous Greek writer—famous in Greece, that is, and I believe Miss Montgomery knew him well many years ago when he lived in England.”

“What is his name?”

“Maurice Conchis.” She had clearly never heard of him.

The lure of the search overcame a little of her distrust, and she said, “I will find you the address. Come in.”

I waited in the splendid hall. An ostentation of marble and ormolu; pier glasses; what looked like a Fragonard. Petrified opulence, tense excitement. In a minute she reappeared with a card. On it I read: Mrs. Lily de Seitas, Dinsford House, Much Hadham, Herts.

“I haven’t seen her for several years,” said the lady.

“Thank you very much.” I began backing towards the door.

“Would you like tea? A drink?”

There was something glistening, obscurely rapacious, about her eyes, as if while she had been away she’d decided that there might be a pleasure to suck from me. A mantis woman; starved in her luxury. I was glad to escape.

Before I drove off I looked once more at the substantial houses on either side of No. 46. In one of them Conchis must have spent his youth. Behind No. 46 was what looked like a factory, though I had discovered from the A to Z that it was the back of the stands of Lord’s cricket ground. The gardens were hidden because of the high walls, but the “little orchard” must now be dwarfed by the stands overhead, though very probably they had not been built before the First War.

The next morning at eleven I was in Much Hadham. It was a very fine day, cloudless September blue; a day to compare with a Greek day. Dinsford House lay some way out of the village, and although it was not quite so grand as it sounded, it was no hovel; a five-bay period house, posed graciously and gracefully, brick-red and white, in an acre or so of well-kept grounds. This time the door was opened by a Scandinavian au pair girl. Yes, Mrs. de Seitas was in—she was down at the stables, if I’d go round the side.

I walked over the gravel and under a brick arch. There were two garages, and a little further down I could see and smell stables. A small boy appeared from a door holding a bucket. He saw me and called, “Mummy! There’s a man.” A slim woman in jodhpurs, a red headscarf and a red tartan shirt came out of the same door. She seemed to be in her early forties; a still pretty, erect woman with an open-air complexion.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m actually looking for Mrs. de Seitas.”

“I am Mrs. de Seitas.”

I had it so fixed in my mind that she would be gray-haired, Conchis’s age. Closer to her, I could see crowsfeet and a slight but telltale flabbiness round the neck; the still brown hair was probably dyed. She might be nearer fifty than forty; but that made her still ten years too young.

“Mrs. Lily de Seitas?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got your address from Mrs. Simon Marks.” A minute change in her expression told me that I had not recommended myself. “I’ve come to ask you if you would help on a matter of literary research.”

“Me!”

“If you were once Miss Lily Montgomery.”

“But my father—”

“It’s not about your father.” A pony whinnied inside the stable. The little boy stared at me hostilely; his mother urged him away, to go and fill his bucket. I put on all my Oxford charm. “If it’s terribly inconvenient, of course I’ll come back another time.”

“We’re only mucking out.” She leant the besom she was carrying against the wall. “But who?”

“I’m writing a study of—Maurice Conchis?”

I watched her like a hawk; but I was over a bare field.

“Maurice who?”

“Conchis.” I spelt it. “He’s a famous Greek writer. He lived in this country when he was young.”

She brushed back a strand of hair rather gauchely with her gloved hand; she was, I could see, one of those country Englishwomen who are abysmally innocent about everything except horses, homes and children. “Honestly, I’m awfully sorry, but there must be some mistake.”