My own mother lasted three more years after the death of my father. That’s three years of multiple overcoats, of random, tearful profanity. Of cups of fishy-tasting tea while Crown Court or Celebrity Squares played silently in the background, and the other old folk (some of them lucid, others as lost as she was) would slowly settle around me like a flock of baffled pigeons, drawn, perhaps, by my relative youth and by the biscuits I always brought. By then, my mother, never a big eater, would hardly eat anything but biscuits. This caused me some concern, I’ll admit—the food at the Meadowbank home, though bland, was far from inedible. In fact, it was rather better than the St. Oswald’s refectory, and I worried that she was starving herself, perhaps as a plea for attention. But when I gave her biscuits with a cup of much-sweetened tea, she always seemed perfectly happy, which meant that, for the sake of her health, I had to go and visit her more often than I wanted to.

I know it sounds callous. The fact is, those visits were a torture. My mother seldom recognized me; and when she did, it was not as her son, but as the man who brought biscuits. Tiny, birdlike, confused, indestructible under those layers of overcoats, she stayed alive for three more years, as the lights went off, one by one, in the haunted building.

I said: “You shouldn’t blame yourself.” By then, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was talking to Winter or to some previous version of Straitley. In any case, I sounded unsure. I poured another brandy. “I’ve had a lot on my mind,” I said. “I shouldn’t have come to your house. Your mother—your relationship with her—those things have nothing to do with me.”

I thought Winter looked relieved.

“But let me get this right,” I said. “Are you telling me you didn’t report our theft of the Honours Boards to Ms. Buckfast?”

“Of course not. That’s why I left,” he said. “Apparently, they have surveillance cameras, linked to Dr. Strange’s computer. They caught the whole thing on camera, but you were off the premises. They said that if I’d incriminate you, they’d overlook the incident. They were very persistent.” He sighed. “That was when I decided to leave.”

“But—won’t the School involve the police?”

Winter gave a tiny smile. “They might, except that something—­perhaps a virus—got into Strange’s computer. Somehow, it managed to corrupt a lot of those digital images. Including the ones of me putting the Honours Boards into my car.”

For a moment I stared at him. “You did that?”

Winter gave a little shrug.

“Oh.”