In retrospect, we were all to blame. It was all so ridiculous. Harry’s arrest; his suspension from School; then, ten months later, a trial that none of us expected to see. And even when the trial began, we were still complacent. In all St. Oswald’s history, no one had ever struck out as hard against the body of the School. No one expected Harry to lose. No one believed that a jury, faced with so little evidence, would reach a guilty verdict.

We were wrong. History has a habit of awarding the victories to small boys armed with slingshots. St. Oswald’s was the giant: powerful, untouchable. The boys were Spikely and Harrington—and the ghost of Lee Bagshot, of course. Gilded by Time and circumstance, the gawky little rat-faced boy with the outdated mullet, grinning at the camera as if he has all the time in the world, had become an icon of everything that was tragic and doomed. Belatedly, the clay pits were marked for urban renewal; flowers were left at the scene of the crime; money was sent to the family. The tragedy had become something else; the symbol of a class war. And the jury—all from Sunnybank Park, Pog Hill, Abbeydale, and the surrounding developments; consisting of the unemployed; housewives; old-age pensioners—were ready to believe the worst; as easily swayed by Mrs. Bagshot’s tears as by Spikely’s tale of suffering.

And so Harry was sent to serve his time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. We corresponded for a while, but I soon ran out of things to say. Eric had left St. Oswald’s to work at King Henry’s, our rival school; the Old Head had retired at last; and I had a department to run. Time just got away from me. I know how terrible that sounds; but St. Oswald’s is a heartless old frigate. If a man falls overboard, the ship cannot afford to wait. The sailor sinks or swims alone.

• • •

I tried to explain this to Winter as I worked methodically through his blue file. It was getting late by then. The fire had died down to a glow. The bottle of brandy I’d opened looked dangerously close to the dregs. Well, I’d needed something to give myself the courage to speak. Winter was still on his first glass, looking polite and attentive. Gloria, with the Spanish eyes, had raised an excellent listener.

The last item in the folder was printed on pink paper. It took me a moment to recognize it—the font was slightly different, the paper more expensive, but the text was almost identical to that little pamphlet—HOMOSEXUAL, HELLBOUND—printed and distributed by the Church of the Omega Rose.

“Where did you get this?” I asked him.