consult with Dr Porhoët on a possible solution. Several weeks later, Arthur joins them in Paris and reveals that he visited Margaret at Haddo's home and that she suggested her life was threatened by her new husband. She implies that Haddo is only waiting for the right time to perform a magical ritual, which will involve the sacrifice of her life. Arthur travels to Paris to ask for Porhoët's advice. A week later, Arthur has an overwhelming feeling that Margaret's life is in danger, and all three rush back to England. When they arrive at Skene, Haddo's ancestral home in the village of Venning, they are told by the local innkeeper that Margaret has died of a heart attack. Believing that Haddo has murdered her, Arthur confronts first the local doctor and then Haddo himself with his suspicions. Searching for proof of foul play, Arthur persuades Porhoët to raise Margaret's ghost from the dead, which proves to them that she was murdered. Eventually, Haddo uses his magic to appear in their room at the local inn, where Arthur kills him. However, when the light is turned on Haddo's body has disappeared. The trio visit Haddo's abandoned home to find that he has used his magic to create life – hideous creatures living in tubes – and that this is the purpose for which he sacrificed Margaret's life. After finding the magician's dead body in his attic, Arthur sets fire to the manor to destroy all evidence of Haddo's occult experiments. Maugham's comments In 1956, nearly fifty years after the publication of The Magician, Maugham commented on the book in A Fragment of Autobiography. He writes that by then he had almost completely forgotten the book, and, on rereading it, found the writing "lush and turgid", using more adverbs and adjectives than he would at that later date, and notes that he must have been trying to emulate the "écriture artiste" (artistic writing) of the French writers of the time. The plot bears some resemblance to George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby. Maugham also comments that he must have spent days and days reading in the library of the British Museum in order to come by all the material on the black arts. Crowley's allegations of plagiarism In the magazine Vanity Fair, Aleister Crowley wrote, under the pen name Oliver Haddo, "How to Write a Novel! (After W. S. Maugham)", a