The Scroll

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The early winter evening was drawing in. In the antiquarian bookshop well away from the High Street in Cambridge, Monty Danforth sat in his room at the back, working on unpacking and cataloguing the books and papers from the last crate of the Greville Estate. Most of it was exactly what he would have expected: the entire works of Dickens and Thackeray, Walter Scott and Jane Austin, all in leather-bound editions; many of the Russian novelists, similarly bound; Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People. There were also the usual reference books and encyclopaedias, and some rather more interesting and unusual memoirs and books on travel, especially around the Mediterranean. He did not think much of it would re-sell easily, and it would take rather a lot of space to store it.

The owner of the shop, Roger Williams, was not well and staying at his house further north east, towards the wide, flat fen country. He might decide to auction the whole shipment off in one job lot.

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