- We start off with another epigraph—this one from Randolph Henry Ash's epic poem Ragnarök.
- Here, images of dankness, dirt, and dim lighting serve to foreshadow the setting we're about to encounter as Roland heads over to the British Museum, where his supervisor, James Blackadder, spends his days.
- Before Roland sets out to visit Blackadder, he takes another step forward with his own sleuthing. He starts by photocopying Randolph Henry Ash's stolen letters, then heads over to Dr. Williams's Library to follow up on a possible lead.
- R. H. Ash's stolen letters make it clear that Ash met his mystery lady at a breakfast party hosted by Crabb Robinson. Roland figures that by skimming Crabb Robinson's personal diaries—which are held at Dr. Williams's Library—he may be able to discover who else attended breakfast that day.
- It doesn't take Roland very long to hit the jackpot: pretty soon, he knows that Ash met a certain Miss LaMotte at Crabb Robinson's breakfast table. The name isn't familiar to Roland, but he feels like he's hot on the trail.
- With his morning's sleuthing over and done with, Roland heads over to the British Museum to visit Blackadder.
- Blackadder works in an office that sits "in the bowels" of the building—a hot, sulphurous place that "reeks of tomcat" and is noisy with the stray cats' shrieks and wails (3.13).
- Roland doesn't tell Blackadder about the stolen letters, but he does tell him everything else about the previously undisturbed copy of Ash's Scienza Nuova.
- As Blackadder gets ready to head over to the London Library and take a look for himself, Roland asks him casually if he knows "anything about a writer called LaMotte" (3.37).
- Blackadder doesn't disappoint. He tells Roland what little he knows about two LaMottes: Isidore LaMotte, a scholar of Breton folktales, and his daughter, "a Miss LaMotte," who "wrote religious poems," "children's stories," and "[a] gloomy little booklet called Last Things" (3.40).
- When Blackadder's assistant, Paola Fonseca, chimes in to add that feminist scholars seem to be interested in "Miss LaMotte," Blackadder indulges in a mini-rant about the failings of feminist scholarship. Then, after venting his spleen, he heads off to the London Library.
- Roland decides to hang around the British Museum, hoping to find some coffee and then search for "Miss LaMotte" in the catalogue.
- Before he finds any coffee, though, Roland runs into Fergus Wolff—his handsome, charming, academic rival.
- As the two men walk together in search of coffee, Roland asks Fergus if he knows anything about "Miss LaMotte." Surprisingly, Fergus does, and he tells Roland all about her.
- Fergus also tells Roland why he knows so much about Miss LaMotte—whose first name, we now know, was Christabel.
- As it turns out, Fergus had "a brief affair" with one of the only two people in the world "who know all there is to know about" her—a feminist scholar named Maud Bailey, who manages the Women's Resource Centre at Lincoln University (3.55).
- Fergus tells Roland that he should get in touch with Dr. Bailey if he wants to learn more about Christabel LaMotte, but he sends Roland off with a warning.
- According to Fergus, Dr. Bailey "thicks men's blood with cold" (3.59).