The great Skene mystery

FORTY-FIVE years ago, one February evening, the fog lay thick over Clapham suburb. Generated in the fat sink of Lambeth, it had come sweltering up by way of the Westminster Bridge and Kennington Roads; had poured, like smoke from a range, through the bars of the pike-gate by the church; had pressed on, rolling up the last levels of twilight in front of it, past the Swan, at Stockwell, and the Bedford Arms beyond-before each of which popular hostelries it had deployed, in order to post its pickets in a dozen of fuddled brains-and, thence shouldering its passage densely through the main channel of the High Street, had flowed out and camped itself sluggishly among the gorse bushes of the open common to the south.