Here's an amusing passage from Conan Doyle's "Adventure V.--The Five Orange Pips":

The year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or lesser interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under this one twelve months, I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case.

Who could resist a tale of the Amateur Mendicant Society, not to mention those "singular adventures" on Uffa? It is unfortunate the record remains blank.

Regarding yesterday's spontaneous literary quiz, you're right: the mystery author was Virginia Woolf, although the book cited was not The Years. It was A Room of One's Own, a work that simultaneously interests and bores me so I tend to re-dip into it rather than actually reread it.

One of these days I might expound on yet another VW strangeness: our accidental doppelganger relationship. Or perhaps I will let the noses do the talking. That will probably work just as well.