1. A poor clerk in a Victorian London drug-house, he signed his name as R, thinking Reginald appeared too aspiring. Friends facetiously invented appropriate names for him. A popular one was Rumty, from a chorus: "rumty iddity, row dow dow..."
2. This gigantic knight supported Prince John, who had installed him in a castle near that of the proud Saxon, Cedric of Rotherwood. At the Ashby jousting tournament, the unpleasant knight's shield, white with a black bull's head, bore the arrogant motto: "Cave, adsum." At a later contest, he died of apoplexy.
3. This widowed former squadron leader talked endlessly of his days as a Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot. Until his wife's death he had relied on her as nanny, cook and housekeeper. Now another widower, a retired milkman, took charge of him.
4. This fleshly poet sang outside the castle and had 20 lovesick, lute-playing maidens wooing him Ñ in vain. He pondered that he must "convince 'em if you can, that the reign of good Queen Anne was Culture's palmiest day... then everyone will say Ñ why, what a very cultured kind of youth this kind of youth must be!"
5. Inheriting his father's estate, Andromeda Park, this young squire returned from Dublin to the decrepit pile. He hunted with disreputable cronies, failed to seduce women and allowed his servants and the cronies to milk him of what remained of his fortune. But at least his mother's jewellery hoard was safe.
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6. Attending Colonel and Mrs McKillop's garden party, he insulted his host and taught a young boy how to mix absinthe Ð in earshot of the boy's teetotal mother. He interrupted serious talk of the war in South Africa with a loud query: "What did the Caspian See?"
7. In the Irish town of Mellick, this self-pitying wreck was barred from marriage after treatment for syphilis. Dependent on his sister, he played Chopin and refused to think of his mother's imminent death. She prayed for a "miracle shield" for her son. Her prayer was answered.
8. The strangled body of Margaret Parsons, apparently a religious, respectable woman, was found by a woodman. This Reginald had the job of tracing her killer.