It all added up to a remarkable frenzy of excitement and localised notoriety, then went quiet when the book, read by various people in various times and places, failed to end the onward march of time or drive anyone mad. In other words, the Inspector is inclined to believe, Hunter was a purveyor of educated and ultimately meaningless literary flimflam who got bored of the joke and retired. Since then, her only contribution to the body of English literature has been a series of rambling and condemnatory letters to the local paper. If she was, in fact, a dangerous terrorist, her cover was as fully realised and performed as any in the long and unglamorous history of subversion. More likely she was the lonely algorithmic victim of a perfect storm—and yet despite its improbability, the notion that she may somehow have been more than she appeared is ineradicable.