"I remember that one," Helen said, "It ended with practically everyone in the court murdered."
"That's the one," Comstock nodded.
"Y'know," Grundy said. "I wonder if that was really a report on actual criminals."
"Must have been," Comstock argued, "no fiction writer would have had the prince dilly dally the way that one did, never able to make up his mind what to do. Only in real life do people bumble along that way."
"Mmm...." Grundy disagreed, "I think a fine writer might have done just that in order to make the character seem real."
"Prince Hamlet must have been real," Comstock said, "He could not have been imagined. No, I'm sure that is fact. But this book I'm reading now, what nonsense!"
He held up Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
"What an imagination! Fantastic!" Shaking his head he went on with his reading.
It was a day or two later when he was reading what he considered another criminal report, the story of a Moor and jealousy, that the idea occurred to him.