Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

     I was impressed with the research that the Jackal did in London. When the criminal genius of The Day of the Jackal had need of an English identity, he moved efficiently through the death records of Somerset House and even was aided by an inscription on a London gravestone. It was therefore only human for me to suppose that when my researches for a historical article required me to establish the date and circumstances of the death of a composer in seventeenth-century London, I could follow in the Jackal's footsteps.
     I thought that the logical place to begin my detective work was the Reading Room of the British Museum. I obtained a letter of recommendation from a college professor and wrote to the British Museum Library requesting admission to the Reading Room during my trip to London planned for a few months off. It was gratifying to receive very promptly a response from the library enclosing an official form granting my request, which could be exchanged at the museum for an admission ticket at any time during the next six months. The beginning was promising. The Jackal himself could not have done better.
     When I arrived in London I waited for the jet lag to recede slightly, then rushed to the British Museum. At a police barrier that had been set up on the front steps, I dutifully presented my briefcase for inspection. Once inside the door, I made straight for the guards at the entrance to the Reading Room. Flashing my official permission, I explained that I had been granted by mail the right to obtain a reader's ticket.
     "That seems rather obvious," said one of the guards, glancing contemptuously at my correspondence and dismissing me with a wave in the direction of the Ticket Room. I wasn't sure that my reception had been friendly, but at least my credentials appeared to be in order.
     At the Ticket Room, I was duly registered and given two tickets -- one to the Reading Room and one to the Manuscript Division -- plus a brochure containing closely printed instructions on use of the library. The instructions somewhat exceeded in length the United Nations Charter, and in sections would have benefited by the charter's multilingual versions.
     I advanced to the Reading Room, where I digested the library regulations. I was a bit concerned by the warning that books took at least an hour and a half to be delivered, but a quick survey of the shelves of general reference material in the vast Reading Room Rotunda comforted me with the assurance that I would keep busy.

     Murmuring the principal library regulations in a rhythmical cadence in the hope of committing them to memory, I set out to hunt for the card index so that I could order my first books. I found that there was no card index. Instead there were circular shelves of bound index volumes, which also served as a protective wall for the library staff. Courageously slipping through one of the gaps in the wall, which had been left unattended, and trying not to listen to the intimate library gossip, I located my index volume.
     Inside, along the left margin of each page, in alphabetical order, were pasted printed book descriptions, of the sort that in humbler climes appear on index cards. Bound index volumes do have certain obvious advantages. You have the literary pleasure, from the very moment you start your library work, of hugging a book to your bosom (in all but the most dramatic cases, the book would be much larger than the bosom). Also, you may move the book wherever you like along the circumference of the hedge of shelves, for solitary perusal, and do not have to hover communally over index drawers in the company of all sorts of scholars you don't care to meet. That, I assume, must be the English view of things.
     Of course, there are disadvantages. For example, some author may have the lack of foresight to bear a name or choose a title for which there simply will be no space in the alphabetical sequence of the left-hand index column. But for this problem the canny English have a solution. There is sometimes room along the right margin for supplemental insertions of new titles (say, those since 1850), and if these concessions to modernity cannot be made in strict alphabetical order, the new insertions generally will have the same first letter as the left-hand entries and will be sure to whet the appetite for rapid page-turning. Nevertheless, I think that if I were an aspiring English author, I would first hunt for gaps in the alphabetical listings of the British Museum and then select a pseudonym accordingly. I would also keep my titles short.
     After assembling data from the index volume, I confidently ordered my first books. When close to three hours went by without a delivery, I thought I would borrow a technique from the obstetricians and attempt to "induce" delivery. I approached the order desk and engaged the attention of the order clerk, a girl apparently on the verge of attaining her twelfth birthday. She told me that the delivery time tended to lengthen out around the lunch hour, which had just passed, but that since three hours had gone by, my orders should be traced. I thanked her, and asked her how long it would take her to trace the books. She told me with a shocked expression that the Order Department did not trace orders, but that I must address myself to the Inquiries Desk.

     At the Inquiries Desk, one of the supervisors listened apathetically and held up a card containing perhaps fifty multi-digit code numbers.
     "Do you remember whether your call numbers are on this list?" he asked. "If so, you're in for a long wait because your books are in another building."
     Confessing the lack of a photographic memory, I shrugged at the card and resigned myself to calling again the next day. And I did, and many days after that. Finally one of my books arrived and I read it with the sharpened interest that comes from a long quest. None of my other books turned up, but in each case I received instead a Message.
     Message One said: "Book is at bindery. Inquire at Inquiries Desk." At the desk my supervisor with the call-number flash card explained: "A book can be recalled from the bindery in about a week in case of emergency. Is it an emergency?" It was hard to think that the death of a composer, if it was ever an emergency, could continue to be so for three hundred years. I retired ingloriously.
     It was about this time that I was beginning to wonder how my fellow scholars in the Reading Room would ever complete their studies. As I looked around the rotunda, many of the researchers appeared quite young. But I considered the possibility that the library held some Shangri-la charm, and that when, after arduous periods of waiting and hoping, the readers went out into Great Russell Street, they would age by centuries and crumble into dust.
     Message Eight was the most hopeful: "Your book is posted on the Green Board."
     I rushed enthusiastically to the Inquiries Desk. Breathlessly I murmured, "Take me to the Green Board. My book is posted there."
     My old antagonist, the inquiry supervisor, shook his head as he looked over my message slip, and said, "You don't understand. Your book has been lost. The Green Board is the place where we list officially lost books."
     It was shortly afterward that I decided to give up the Reading Room and to surrender my tickets, a formality required of departing students, which I suppose is the scholarly equivalent of broken sword or torn epaulet. As I went down the steps of the museum, no longer feeling the equal of the Jackal, I noticed the police barrier again and the continuing search of briefcases. The police were obviously looking for bombs, but I was not sure now whether they were concerned about the IRA or hostile scholars.
     In view of the heavy intellectual matter that has preceded, I shall pause for an entr'acte in which I will discourse on the problems that scholars (as well as residents, for that matter) are presented by duplication of English street names.

     Having had enough of libraries for a while, I decided to visit a London bookshop that I thought might have some books of interest to me in connection with my researches. A book dealers' directory told me it was on James Street. Unfortunately, there is more than one James Street in London (not to mention St. James streets). By process of elimination, I determined that my James Street must be in Covent Garden, but at the street number listed in the directory I found no bookstore, but instead a fruit warehouse. Having gained in tenacity by dint of my British Museum experiences, I called the dealer's telephone number from a nearby kiosk, and learned that I had indeed found the right place and that the dealer was located in the warehouse building four floors above the apples. The book dealer was surprised that I had not seen his sign.
     I made an appointment and returned to the warehouse at the hour fixed. The dealer was right. His name did appear on the door. The "sign" was a one-inch-by-two-inch calling card, which was pasted on the doorframe. I rang the bell, with no response, but a girl leaned out a high window and told me that the proprietor was probably on his way back from the pub. This proved to be the first completely accurate piece of information I had received in the course of my researches, and the book dealer soon appeared to lead me through a low metal door built to accommodate Snow White's friends, past hundreds of cartons of apples giving off a powerful perfume, and up into the literary heaven on the fourth floor. I know that it is an illusion, but the odor of apples still seems to cling to my research files.
     Confusing English street names can not only stymie a scholar, but can further a murder scheme. On January 20, 1931, William Herbert Wallace, a Liverpool insurance agent, left his home to call upon a prospective client, named R.M. Qualtrough, who had made the appointment by telephone the evening before. Qualtrough had given his address as 25 Menlove Gardens East. Mr. Wallace searched without success for Menlove Gardens East, though he discovered Menlove Gardens North, South and West. He then returned home to find that in his absence his wife had been brutally murdered. That was Wallace's story, but the police and the trial jury thought that Wallace had murdered his wife before he left home and had invented both Mr. Qualtrough and the elusive address.
     My experiences with confusing street names are, of course, pale by comparison with Mr. Wallace's. But on another occasion, I was drenched to the skin while trying to distinguish among Kensington Gardens, Kensington Terrace, Kensington Gate and Kensington Mews. If you are not more expert on London streets than I, I would suggest you bring an umbrella.

     Leaving the world of books, I plunged into London's burial registers, will indexes and court records. My path led me from the Guildhall Library to the County Hall and the Middlesex Record Office. The complexity of my search was partially explained by the stubborn refusal of the ancient City of London to merge its government or archives with those of the surrounding metropolis. But I was soon convinced that I had become the victim of the Londoner's innate joy in duplication and fragmentation for their own sake.
     My search finally narrowed to the records of the Royal Court of the King's Bench, which were maintained, I was told, in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane. At the archway to the Record Office, I was challenged by a uniformed guardian of his nation's statistics and told to apply upstairs for a temporary visitor's pass. When I returned with the pass, it became clear that I was only on the first leg of a documentary scavenger's hunt. I was directed by the guard to an entrance "under the clock" and up another staircase to the inquiry room. There, among a hopeless throng resembling the denizens of the waiting room of Menotti's Consul, I obtained application form and regulations for another in my growing collection of reader's tickets.
     "Great," I said to the receptionist who faced me across a table. "I'll fill out the form here."
     "I don't think that will be possible, sir," I was told. "Foreigners must present a letter of recommendation from an English lawyer."
     When I indicated a reluctance to disturb my legal colleagues in London, I was told that a letter from the American embassy would do. As I pondered the long journey to Grosvenor Square, the receptionist consoled me by advising that records could not be delivered to me that day anyway since the crepuscular hour of 3 P.M. had already arrived. He stretched a point by permitting me an illegal entry into the reading room, where I asked the curator for the call number for King's Bench court records.
     Full of the sense that I was drawing close to the quarry, I obtained a laconic note from a representative of the American ambassador and returned to the Public Record Office the next morning. At first, things went with a deceptive smoothness. Up the stairs; temporary visitor's permit; to the clock; up a second stairway; to the inquiry room; admission ticket at last.
     In the reading room I filled out my document order with a flourish, forearmed as I was with the call number. I handed it to the curator, reminding him in my best transoceanic manner of yesterday's conversation. However, he had distinctly cooled overnight.
     "Give the slip to the lady at the counter," he said.
     "There is no lady at the counter," was my factual reply.

     "Then put it in the slot," he said, pointing to a pigeonhole right before him.
     I complied, and the curator immediately withdrew the slip from the pigeonhole and read it.
     "You can't have the record today," he told me.
     "Why not?" I asked with sinking hopes.
     "It's kept at the assize office outside London. It will take a week to bring it here."
     Instead of asking why he hadn't given me this news the day before, I replied cheerfully, "That's all right; I will be in London one more week. I'll be back Monday."
     Then the curator played his trump. "No, you won't. Next week we're closed for inventory."
     I decided on the spot to conclude my London researches. When I compared my dismal fate with the Jackal's triumphant fact-finding, I began to feel that The Day of the Jackal was not a crime novel, as I had originally thought -- it was science fiction.
     My story, in one particular, has a happy ending. When I returned home, I found a copy of the Green Board book at the Cleveland Public Library, where it was delivered to me about five minutes after I ordered it.
     The lesson to be drawn from my experiences is clear. If you plan to do research in London, you should have one of two assets going for you: You should be either a saint or extremely long-lived. It would be preferable if you could be both.

* This article was previously published in 3 (3) Unicorn 80-82 (1976) and in Innocence and Arsenic 163-70.