The librarian’s body, lying on the slab, is smaller than I’d expected. If she were a book and not a woman, you’d say she was quite foxed. She’s been read in the bath a few times in her life, and the steam has done her dust jacket no kind of good at all. Many of her pages have been folded down and up again, and you couldn’t call her a recent printing by any means, but even so she’s a handsome edition, bound in dark brown with an elegant design. Mr. Shand would approve.