The Tiger in the Well
First edition
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| Author | Philip Pullman |
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| Cover artist | Beatrice Haley |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Sally Lockhart series |
| Genre | Suspense/Adventure |
| Publisher | Knopf |
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Publication date
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1990 |
| Pages | 448 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 53394122 |
| Preceded by | The Shadow in the North |
| Followed by | The Tin Princess |
The Tiger in the Well (1990) is a book by the English author Philip Pullman.
This book takes place in the autumn of 1881. Sally Lockhart has a daughter named Harriet, a nurse named Sarah-Jane and a cook named Ellie. Her friends Webster, Jim and Charles are in South America taking pictures. One day a divorce affidavit arrives at the house. Sally, who has never been married, is confused that a commission agent named Arthur Parrish claims he is her husband and Harriet's father. The affidavit says that Harriet's “father” wants custody of her. She takes it to her lawyer and gets no sympathy from him; she is only a woman after all and has no power, with the lawyer preferring to focus on the charges Parrish has used to try and claim custody of Harriet rather than whether or not Sally was actually married to him in the first place.
The scene shifts to Russian Jews getting off a boat entering England. A German Socialist journalist named Jacob Liebermann goes to the League of the Democratic Socialist Association. He meets Dan Goldberg, another Socialist journalist like himself, and Jacob tells Dan about a paralysed man called the Tzaddik who is manipulating things so the Jewish people are hurt economically and physically. He also mentions the name Parrish, which Dan recognises, as being involved.
The next day, Sally tells her friend and employee Margaret Haddow everything that has happened. Margaret goes to Parrish's office and tries to spy on him, but he realises that she is an employee of Sally's and tells her so. Sally goes to the church where she supposedly married Parrish and finds an intact record of their wedding. She also finds that the priest that supposedly married them is now retired under a cloud of suspicion. Sally decides to write to Harriet's aunt Rosa, who is married to a clergyman, so she can find out more about the priest. Meanwhile, Dan Goldberg has arranged for an employee of Parrish to be robbed. Dan looks at a notebook that was stolen from that employee and learns about the case against Sally. The next day, Sally has an argument with her lawyer on how much he is contributing to her case. After that, Sally goes out and buys a revolver. That night, someone comes into her house and takes Harriet's teddy bear.
Soon, Sally goes to ask Parrish's neighbours about him but they shut their doors to her. She finds out that the same priest that “married” the pair of them also recommended Parrish to the vicar of where he lives now. Sally goes home, bewildered, to find Rosa there waiting for her. They discuss the case and realise that Parrish wants Harriet and that Parrish has forged everything so he can have her. Parrish and Sally have meetings with their lawyers, leaving the former satisfied and the latter angry. On Sally's way home, one of Goldberg's employees tries to talk to her but she thinks that he is one of Parrish's men and threatens to shoot him. Over the weekend, she goes to Rosa's house and she and her husband Nicholas Bedwell promise to do all they can. Sally goes to a meeting with her barrister and he is very rude to her and tells her that there is no chance of winning, having not even read the papers in sufficient depth to determine that the child involved is a girl. In the courtroom, the case is over before it is begun because Sally does not show up. Custody of Harriet and all of Sally's money shifts over to Arthur Parrish. Sally plans to hide and fight back. She and Harriet change from their first boarding house in a day because of a disagreement with the landlady. Mr. Parrish steals all of Sally's money from her bank account without her knowledge and then hires an inquiry agent to find Sally. The inquiry agent goes to Sally's office and discovers a letter sent by Sally from her current boarding house. Margaret realises that he knows and sends a message for Sally to leave. Sally has to find another place for shelter but she can't find one right away. She has to sell her father's watch for only a few extra coins. Sally finally takes refuge on a park bench but a man named Morris Katz tells her to come with him to somewhere safe.
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