The Ledger Below

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The papers gathered here were found in the upper chamber of a disused lighthouse on the Yorkshire coast, in a desk otherwise notable only for a locked lower drawer which the finders did not force, and which the present editor has elected not to describe further than to say it was not empty. No trace of the lighthouse’s last tenant was discovered, then or since. The local parish records him as keeper, unofficial, character unknown, and note his residence there for a period exceeding twenty years, though no earlier record of his arrival has yet been located. His dog, an elderly black retriever, was found alive and would permit no one to remove the desk until it had been carried out of the tower entire, drawer and all. What follows are those of his notebooks judged legible and complete enough to print, arranged as near as can be determined in the order he kept them, though the reader should not assume the cases themselves occurred in any tidy sequence. Thorne’s own entries suggest he iii

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