The affair began during his careful illustration of Erynnis tages tages, which he had pinned with meticulous care to a block of cork, wings spread wide to show the intricate patterns that appeared a mere muddled grey-brown from any distance. From his perspective, hunched over the stricken insect, eyes flicking back and forth between paper and butterfly, its patterns were dense and deep, and in this peaceful meditative study he felt as if he were flying over an exotic landscape of complex illuminations as far removed from his true reality as the surface of any distant planet.
The pins that held the butterfly open to his inspection were long and thin, particular to the lepidopterist’s practice, and an item he took some pride in. They were the only purchase he had allowed himself that was unique to this and only this pursuit, the only item not merely borrowed from the normal daily life at the manor house. He kept them in a small tin box where, he thought, they would not be mistaken by Mrs. Burnside for ordinary pins. On the few occasions on which he had found the shiny precision instruments holding up the hem of the drapes or suturing closed some new wound on the sleeve of his collecting jacket, he had retrieved from Mrs Burnside’s sewing basket several ordinary pins and had carefully replaced each of the mis-used scientific pins in situ, and had then put his own pins back in their tin box. He felt that with time, Mrs. Burnside would become cognizant of the distinction and he would no longer feel compelled to keep the pins in a variety of seldom used desk or cupboard drawers, pushed to the very back and if possible discretely covered in an old paper or two.