''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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that lead to it, he is singularly obtuse. This begins
in Rechnoy's flat. What should Mr Rechnoy hold in his
hand when he admits V but a black chess knight, which
furthermore serves him to point to an open door and
whose head comes off and has to be screwed on again.
Here is no subtle and ingenious clue to please the
detective story addict and to test and strain V's
perceptiveness and intelligence, but a solid broad
hint, crying out for attention, not to be missed, one
. should think. But V does miss it. And a good deal more
escapes him. Otherwise, how could he possibly listen
to Mme Lecerf ostensibly describing her friend, Helene
von Graun, and not state more than "a slight family
likeness" (152) between that woman and Nina Rechnoy?
How could he repeatedly sit face to face with the
woman he has been looking for, whose very name he
once claimed he would recognize on a list of names
(115), and not realize who she is, cold, capricious,
insensitive, with all the attributes of a woman out
of a "cheap novel" (137), as Rechnoy described her,
including rare illnesses: "all flowers except pinks
and daffodils withered if I touched them" (cp. pp. 137,
155), including also a "frog-faced, wheezing, black
bulldog" (144): Sebastian also had a black bulldog
when he was still living with Clare.
V not only lacks all the typical qualities of a
good detective, he lacks even intuition, and nothing
short of another coincidence and another solid clue
can at last open his eyes-t. o what is indeed so obvious:
in the garden which makes him think of a murder and