The first any of us knew of it was when the police turned up at School, demanding to search his classroom. Harry hadn’t come in that morning, which was already unusual. In all his years at St. Oswald’s, I don’t think he’d ever been absent more than a couple of days. The officers—one senior, one not—were another version of Stackhouse and Noakes, the pair who had come to see me at home when Charlie Nutter disappeared.

“Excuse me, what is this about?” I asked, when I saw them leaving his room with an armful of cardboard boxes.

The Stackhouse prototype shrugged. “Just following up an inquiry,” he said.

“What kind of an inquiry?” I said.

Behind me, the boys of 3S craned their necks to see the show. Harry’s class had vacated the room, under the supervision of the young Pat Bishop—not yet Second Master, but already a jolly good Head of Year. He’d lined them up in the corridor, underneath the Honours Boards, and they watched the proceedings round-eyed, some looking uncomfortable (as boys often do when faced with the possibility of trouble); some grinning and whispering behind their grubby schoolboy palms.

“What kind of an inquiry?” I repeated, louder this time. “Has there been a break-in?”

Along the Upper Corridor, I could see Devine watching me through the glass door of his classroom. Eric too was watching, his round face bland with anxiety. The younger officer walked past me without answering the question; I looked into the box in his arms and saw books, records, photographs—as well as the fabled garden gnome, which had migrated to Harry’s desk, to be brought out on the special occasions when Dr. Devine was teaching there.

“Those things belong to Harry Clarke,” I said, with increasing discomfort.

Bishop gave me a warning look, as if to say: Not now, Roy. And although it took till that afternoon for the grapevine to bring us the story, I knew right then what had happened. Instinct, maybe; or maybe the fear of something rising from the depths. The rumour mill had been working ever since the police arrived; but it was only the next day that the Head gave us the news: that Harry Clarke was under arrest following a complaint from a boy.

“What boy?” I demanded.

“Not a current pupil,” he said. After which he closed his office door and warned us not to disturb him; while outside, in the Common Room, the rumours flew like swarming wasps.

None of us believed it at first. Not a current pupil? What did that mean anyway? It had to be some kind of mistake. Harry was devoted to his pupils. I said as much to Eric, indignantly, over tea from the Common Room urn.