Timeline and Summary

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• From the confines of a prison cell (though we don't know that little detail at first), Bradley Pearson pens a foreword to the memoir/novel that he has recently finished writing—a juicy little narrative entitled "The Black Prince."
• "The Black Prince" itself kicks off on a May morning as Bradley gets ready to leave London and head to a northern seaside cottage.
• Before Bradley can get out the door, his estranged brother-in-law, Francis Marloe, arrives to tell Bradley that his estranged ex-wife, Christian Evandale, is back in town.
• Bradley barely has time to process the news before his closest friend, Arnold Baffin, calls to ask him to come over. According to Arnold, he may have just killed his wife.
• Bradley rushes to the Baffin home and finds both Arnold and his wife, Rachel, in terrible states. Thankfully, Rachel's injury isn't serious, and after talking to both husband and wife, Bradley leaves.
• On the way back to his apartment, Bradley runs into Julian Baffin, the twenty-year-old daughter of Arnold and Rachel, and learns that she's back in town, too.
• The next day, Bradley writes a series of letters before getting ready (once again) to head toward that northern seaside cottage.
• Before he can get out the door, another unexpected visitor arrives and prevents him from leaving. This time, it's his sister, Priscilla Saxe, who tells him that she's just left her husband and needs a place to stay.
• Over the course of the next few days, Bradley is pulled back and forth between various friends, relatives, and non-friends in London, including his ex-wife.
• Eventually, Bradley finds himself in Bristol, where he's gone to retrieve some of Priscilla's things from the home that she recently shared with her husband.
• In Bristol, Bradley discovers that Priscilla's husband, Roger Saxe, has a long-term mistress whom he plans to marry as soon as he can.
• Feeling angry and browbeaten on his sister's behalf, Bradley gets drunk in Bristol and doesn't get on a train back to London until midnight.
• The next day, Bradley discovers that Priscilla has been moved to Christian's apartment. Although he tries to take her back to his own place, he fails.
• Rachel Baffin offers to make Bradley some lunch back at her house, so he goes with her. There, the two of them do a little bit of smooching and begin a vague—and, for Bradley, confusing—love affair.
• Over the course of the next few days, Bradley tries to keep his head as Rachel tries to take things further with him, as Priscilla continues to be devastated by grief, as Christian and Arnold and Francis all continue to interfere with his life in various ways, and as Julian Baffin insists that he give her tutorials in English literature.
• Soon, the kinda-sorta love affair with Rachel has fizzled out, and Bradley is determined once again to leave London and go to his northern seaside cottage to write.
• On the morning that Bradley intends to set out, Julian Baffin shows up to talk about Hamlet (Bradley had forgotten all about their plans), and something totally unexpected happens—Bradley realizes that he's fallen head-over-heels in love with Julian.
• At first, Bradley tells himself that he'll never reveal his love to Julian or to anyone else. It doesn't take long before that noble resolution goes out the window—soon, he tells Francis about his feelings for the young woman, and about a week after that, he reveals his feelings to Julian herself.
• Bradley is shocked and overjoyed when he learns that Julian returns his feelings, and the two of them experience a few hours of mutual bliss (not in a sexy way) before reality comes crashing down on them, in the form of Julian's parents.
• Arnold and Rachel Baffin do their best to talk both Bradley and Julian out of pursuing a relationship, and pretty soon, Julian runs away from home so that she and Bradley can flee together to the northern seaside cottage that Bradley rented for the summer.
• At the cottage, Bradley and Julian play house and have two not-altogether-successful sexual experiences before Bradley gets a telegram from Francis in London, asking him to telephone him right away.
• When Bradley calls from a phone booth in a nearby village, he learns that his sister, Priscilla, has killed herself.
• Rather than heading back to London immediately, Bradley is determined to make love to Julian properly at least once before the two of them return to the real world.
• When he gets back to the cottage, Bradley finds Julian waiting for him—dressed up as Hamlet—and he initiates some rough sex that leaves Julian upset and crying.
• Later on, the two "make love" again (in Bradley's words, at least), and still later, they have dinner together and talk about how each of them feels transformed.
• That night, Bradley and Julian wake up to the sound of Arnold Baffin trying to smash the front door down, and in the tense conversation that ensues, Julian learns some unsavory facts about her lover—specifically, that he didn't bother to tell her that his sister had just died, and that he lied about his age.
• Julian decides to spend the night at the cottage and head back to London with Bradley in the morning, but when Bradley wakes up the next morning, he finds her gone.
• Bradley's narrative jumps ahead by a few days now and takes us to the day of Priscilla's funeral.
• Julian still hasn't returned to Bradley or contacted him in any way, and he's convinced that Arnold is holding her hostage somewhere.
• After a few days, Rachel Baffin comes to Bradley's apartment, and she works him up into a frenzy by informing him that a) Julian knows all about the little love affair that Rachel and Bradley had before Bradley set his sights on Julian, and b) Bradley's affair with Julian really is over for good.
• Without really intending to (or so he tells us, anyway), Bradley reveals to Rachel that her husband is madly in love with Christian Evandale, and Rachel leaves the house in a rage.
• The next day, Bradley receives a letter from Julian and becomes convinced that her father is holding her hostage in Venice.
• As Bradley waits for Francis Marloe to make some travel arrangements (they intend to head to Venice immediately to "rescue" Julian), he gets a telephone call from Rachel, who asks him to come over right away.
• When Bradley arrives at the Baffin home, he discovers that Rachel has killed Arnold.
• After destroying a vital piece of evidence (a letter from Arnold revealing his love for Christian) and trying to clean the murder weapon, Bradley calls an ambulance and the police.
• When the police arrive, Bradley tells them to talk to Rachel about what happened.
• Soon, the police take Bradley to an interrogation room in a local station and demand to know why he killed Arnold Baffin.
• So ends "The Black Prince."
• In his postscript to his narrative, Bradley gives us a brief summary of the murder trial and his eventual conviction, then explains what happened to him after he was incarcerated in prison.
• There, Bradley tells us, he found his "dear friend" and editor, P. Loxias, and was introduced to the greatest and most significant friendship of his life.
• As P. Loxias tells us in his own postscript, Bradley died of cancer before the final preparations for the book had been completed, and before he could see his story go out into the world.