Author’s Note: This is my first attempt at writing a little mystery. It was pretty darned fun. Here is the first of several parts.

Emma’s doctoral dissertation was in only four months. She still had one more chapter, a vital chapter, to do on her thesis, Occult Feminine Full Moon Rituals and desperately needed to research one book to finalize it. But only three copies existed in the whole world that she knew of, two in private collections and the other was in the little known Library of the Occult in London. 

Desperate, she hit up her father yet one more time for the airfare and  lodging for a trip to London. She was now twenty-seven years old and had been working on her higher education for nine years, seven of which were for her PhD at Harvard. His patience and support for her education was growing thin, but he still, not without her incessant pleading, consented. Her flight was now in final approach into Heathrow.

Early next morning, after a jet lagged sleep in a less than stellar hotel she found the library after a walk through a once elegant neighborhood of now old run down mansions turned into dingy apartment houses with any number of not yet opened pubs, tattoo parlors, and sad looking shops along the way. The library was a small, old dark, dreary, tired looking three story, probably one time manor for some nouveau riche from past times.

She walked up some decaying moss covered concrete steps to a large wooden front door, then into a musty dark foyer, hesitating for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She approached a desk behind which sat a middle aged woman dressed in a high collared long sleeved black dress looking like something from the 1900s, held court. Her gray hair was tied in a severe bun as severe as the look she gave Emma.

To be Continued . . .