Intellectual flirting

Intellectual flirting is Barnaby Shaw’s explanation for the charged but nonsexual connection between Jessica Shaw and A.J. Rather than consummating their attraction, the pair channel it into games and shared amusements. Peter Diamond is initially doubtful of Barnaby’s account, but later treats the distinction as central to understanding both the relationship and the crimes surrounding it: the courtship stops short of sex, yet its appetite for cleverness and escalation has deadly consequences.

Definition and Form

Barnaby describes intellectual flirting as a way for two bright people to redirect the energy of attraction. If sexual energy is present, he suggests, it may find an outlet through other means, such as music or food. The examples matter less as a fixed list than as evidence of a broader principle: intimacy can be expressed through chosen activities that provide pleasure and a sense of connection without becoming sexual acts.

When Diamond asks whether the activity might consist of lunchtime walks, Barnaby does not settle on that specific example. Instead, he broadens the idea into a ritual or game devised for amusement and fulfillment. His account makes intelligence part of the courtship’s mechanism. The participants are described as exceptionally bright, and their shared game gives that intelligence a private, relational purpose. What might look like ordinary conversation or recreation can therefore carry an additional charge for those taking part.

The concept depends on a distinction between attraction and consummation. Barnaby does not deny that attraction exists; he argues that it is channeled elsewhere. Later, Diamond sharpens the formulation: the relationship is nonsexual, its participants get their kicks in other ways, and the courtship display stops short of the act itself. The idea is not that desire is absent, but that the pair treat play itself as its expression.

Jessica Shaw and A.J.

Barnaby presents the concept as a way to understand Jessica Shaw and A.J.’s relationship. In his account, their intelligence makes them suited to an elaborate, mutually engaging game. Diamond asks whether such an arrangement would be enough for Jessica, and Barnaby says it would. The answer is Barnaby’s assessment, not a direct explanation from Jessica; the distinction keeps the theory grounded in the person who offers it rather than turning it into an independently confirmed account of her private feelings.

Diamond does not immediately accept the explanation. The sophistication of the arrangement is unfamiliar to him, and he remains unconvinced that Barnaby has fully explained himself. He even considers whether Barnaby may be trying to persuade himself. That hesitation gives the concept a degree of uncertainty: it is an interpretation of a relationship, not a simple label that makes every question disappear.

Later, however, Diamond tells John Wigfull that Barnaby convinced him. He rejects the assumption that A.J. was Jessica’s lover and explains that Barnaby called their bond intellectual flirting. In the same conversation, Diamond describes the pair as games players whose excitement came from the game and whose courtship display ended before sex. The repeated explanation makes the nonsexual boundary decisive to Diamond’s account of why Barnaby did not object to A.J.’s involvement with Jessica.

From Courtship to Criminal Games

The concept also supplies a motive for A.J.’s actions. Diamond connects the crimes to A.J.’s need to impress Jessica: A.J. had given her most of the money taken from Miss Chilmark, yet that was not enough, and he planned a spectacular stunt. In this reading, the criminal acts are not separate from the courtship game. They are its dangerous enlargement, an attempt to demonstrate cleverness on a scale that could impress its intended audience.

The Penny Black theft and its appearance at the Bloodhounds’ meeting form part of that display. Diamond calls the stunt spectacular and identifies the riddles and the padlock business as further demonstrations of ingenuity. Their appeal lies in the challenge: the crimes are arranged as puzzles that invite others to recognize how smart their author is. What begins, in Barnaby’s account, as a fulfilling intellectual ritual thus becomes an exercise in public proof and risk.

That game fails when Sid Towers becomes involved. Fascinated by the locked-room puzzle, Sid drives out to inspect the narrowboat and approaches along the towpath while A.J. is replacing the padlock. Diamond believes A.J. hears him, hides in the cabin, and takes a windlass as a weapon. A.J. strikes Sid over the head; Diamond thinks the blow may have been intended only to incapacitate him, but it kills him. Diamond then characterizes everything that follows as concealment. The sequence marks the point at which play becomes lethal: the ingenuity meant to impress Jessica produces an unforeseen encounter, panic, and a death.

Interpretive Significance

Intellectual flirting functions both as a theory of intimacy and as a key to the case’s chain of motive. It distinguishes Jessica and A.J.’s bond from the conventional assumption that attraction must lead to a sexual affair, while giving their shared games real emotional importance in Barnaby’s and Diamond’s explanations. The distinction also clarifies why the games matter to A.J.: impressing Jessica is presented as a reason for making them more audacious.

The concept carries an irony that the plot makes concrete. A game can be fulfilling precisely because it tests intelligence, but the more spectacular A.J.’s challenge becomes, the less it remains safely bounded as play. The padlock and the narrowboat puzzle draw Sid into the situation; the windlass becomes a weapon; and the attempt to maintain the illusion of clever control is followed by efforts to cover up the killing. Diamond’s description of the relationship as a grown-up version of truth, kiss, or dare captures that movement toward destruction, while his account of the fatal blow shows the cost of treating escalating risk as part of the game. Intellectual flirting therefore names a nonsexual courtship, but in the case it also exposes how a shared appetite for play can be entangled with performance, criminal ambition, and irreversible harm.