Though his primary trade was as a silversmith, he would often do some gunsmithing on the side. He specialized in pistols. Sometimes, for no particular reason he could think of. he would find himself making drawings of a most peculiar-looking pistol, resembling nothing he had ever seen before, but the drawings never looked practical and something about them always filled him with a strange feeling of foreboding, so that he would crumple the drawings up and burn them, afraid that anyone should see them without really knowing why. He had one other slight idiosyncrasy in what was otherwise a perfectly normal and ordinary life. He had an unusual pet name for his wife, an eccentricity which Anne found both strange and somehow charming. He called her Andre.