a scientist deals with desamour

"Quick Crabtree, there’s not a moment to lose!" urged Sir Reginald.

"Bring me my iridium-tipped, gold-nibbed, hard rubber, reservoir-chamber free-flowing writing device!" he ordered, in reference to a "fountain pen" he had recently been awarded by the RGS for his ground-breaking work on the Egyptian Banded Solifugid (Galeodes granti).

The reading of Celia’s net had caused Sir Reginald to spend seven weeks in an uncharacteristic state of lugubriousness, out of which he had eventually snapped when the Basset finally crossed the invisible Tropic of Capricorn on its southward journey around the Cape. Upon fresh examination of the embroidered muslin, Sleeping’s moroseness gave way to perplexity.

Although his wife’s yearning for company was certainly quite a natural response to her long periods of solitude, it had seemed strange to Sir Reginald that she had not used one of his own mosquito nets for stationery purposes. Celia was quite aware they were kept in the expedition sundries room to which she could easily have gained access by asking Jenkins the butler for the key.

Upon careful inspection Sleeping observed that in one corner the initials P.S. had been somewhat slapdashly embroidered in navy blue. This he had not noticed when he had read the net the first time, probably because of the unfamiliar emotional territory that Celia’s message had led him to explore.

"P.S.?….,"P.S, … I wonder", murmured Sleeping.

He initially assumed that PS stood the word postscript and that Celia had forgotten to embroider one. Yet why would she have sewn the initials in the corner of the net and not under the main body of the stitching?

"You know Crabtree" Sleeping asserted Sherlock Holmesèdly, "I have a suspicion the letters P.S. must be the initials of the person to whom the net belongs..."

They could have been Sir Reginald Sleeping’s own badly-embroidered initials from which the oblique bottom right stroke of the "R" had been omitted. However, this was very unlikely. For centuries, the Sleepings had employed only quality embroiderers and anyway, his own nets were worked in the red and gold of the family heraldry.

"...and that can mean only one thing," continued Sir Reginald enigmatically.

Crabtree meanwhile rummaged to no avail in the top drawer of the cabin’s writing cabinet.