The rest of the day was difficult, fraught as it was with potential for war. Eric is still avoiding me, following our recent fracas. Miss Malone—aka the Foghorn—was absent, which meant that I had to cover for her. According to Kitty Teague, she suffers from depression. I sympathize, of course—but St. Oswald’s is not for the sensitive, and I suspect that the Foghorn may commandeer many more of my free afternoons, now that the honeymoon is over.

Meanwhile, Bob Strange has teamed up with Ms. Buckfast on a plan to improve security. Henceforth, all visitors to the School will have to wear a name tag, and sign a special register. There is also talk of police checks for all ancillary staff, with the likelihood that staff members too will be subject to the same scrutiny. Bob Strange has been dreaming of this ever since he became Third Master, and his adoration of Ms. Buckfast has now reached such a level of sycophancy that he leaves a trail of slime behind him whenever he is with her.

As if that wasn’t enough, Devine has discovered that there are mice in the Bell Tower. Contrary to my live-and-let-live approach, which has served me well over thirty-odd years, he has therefore decided—on Health and Safety grounds, of course—to purge the whole Upper Corridor of its rodent population. A sensible man would understand the limits of his authority, but Devine is not a sensible man, especially when he is competing with a promising upstart like Markowicz.

Markowicz has a rodent-free room, so Devine must have one too, regardless of the fact that Devine’s room is in a part of the building dating back to the eighteenth century and filled with eccentric conduits, blocked-up chimneys, and hollow walls, which make infestation by rats, mice, cockroaches, and other assorted vermin not only probable, but downright inevitable.

“You see, Roy, this is the reason we don’t eat in our form rooms,” he said as he delivered the news to me this lunchtime in room 59, his sensitive nose twitching with ill-concealed complacency. Of course, with impeccable timing, he’d caught me in the act of dispatching a furtive ham-and-cheese sandwich between Registration and afternoon school, and the look on his face suggested that he considered this kind of depravity to be the source of all our ills.

“One sandwich,” I said, brushing the crumbs into the inkwell on my desk.

“Food attracts vermin,” said Dr. Devine. “We’ll have to put down poison bait.”