Chigwell's attempt to burn his medical notebooks

Curtis Chigwell’s attempt to burn his medical notebooks turns a private act of concealment into a consequential discovery: Florence Chigwell intervenes to preserve the records, and V. I. Warshawski recognizes that her investigation into Xerxes has helped intensify the pressure on him.

Discovery in the Study

The previous Monday evening, Florence entered Curtis’s study after smelling fire. She found him trying to burn his notebooks in a leather waste can. The can itself began to burn, making the attempt both destructive and difficult to conceal. Florence understood that the records were connected to whatever was troubling Curtis, but judged that destroying them would mean backing away from the facts.

The Notebooks Hidden

Florence took the notebooks and hid them behind her boating books. The hiding place was a poor one: boating had always been her great love, and she knew it was the first place Curtis would think to look. Yet she believed he was so humiliated by being caught, or so frightened that he could not get rid of his guilty secret, that he did not search there. Her intervention kept the records from being destroyed, even as Curtis’s attempt revealed how urgently he wanted them gone.

Consequences and Significance

The next afternoon, Curtis attempted suicide. Florence connected the attempt to his humiliation and fear, while V. I. Warshawski considered her own part in the pressure building around him. She recognized that stirring up the Xerxes investigation may have left Curtis feeling that he had no options, and that realization made her feel ill at ease. The episode therefore links the attempted destruction of evidence to the human cost of uncovering what the records might establish: preserving the facts mattered, but the investigation’s pressure had consequences beyond the documents themselves.