Edmund Pembrook

Edmund Pembrook among his books, looking up from page nine

Edmund appears to be in his late thirties. Age has sharpened him more than softened him, and he has the permanently skeptical expression of a man who has heard far too many people begin sentences with, "Technically, I didn't break the law..." He is lean and narrow-faced, with a long straight nose, deep-set eyes, and one eyebrow that always seems to sit a little higher than the other. His dark hair is combed straight back and kept short at the sides, with gray at the temples. He wears rectangular spectacles in thin gold-and-tortoiseshell frames, a narrow mustache waxed into neat points, and a small tuft of beard beneath his lower lip. He dresses darkly and precisely: a charcoal shirt buttoned to the collar, a black tie, and a waistcoat of deep purple brocade worked with violet scrollwork, which is the only extravagance he allows himself. He is seldom seen without a book, usually an old one, and usually open. He looks, in short, like a man who does not really know how to have fun, and he does not.

Edmund is composed, articulate, meticulous, and possessed of an exceptionally dry sense of humor. He has an unnerving habit of remembering the exact wording people used months earlier, and of quoting it back to them at the worst possible moment. He enjoys books far more than parties. He is not humorless, however, and he privately takes great pleasure in watching someone confidently quote a law incorrectly before he produces the relevant statute. When he is about to do it, the higher eyebrow goes up a little further.