I’d been so sure of his guilt. So certain he’d betrayed me. So certain that I’d almost played right into Johnny Harrington’s hands. I felt a sudden stirring of hope, mingled with a sense of shame.

“Mr. Winter, I’m sorry,” I said. “I was so sure. I should have known.”

I explained about La Buckfast and her ultimatum. Winter listened in silence, occasionally sipping his drink.

At last, he said: “I don’t understand. Don’t you want to retire, sir? Travel a bit, see the world? With the money they’re offering—you could go anywhere you liked. You could visit Rome, Pompeii—”

“Hawaii, perhaps?” I said, and smiled. “I think I’m too old for hula girls.”

“But you could get away, sir. See something more than this little town. Get a different perspective. Have adventures—”

I drained my glass. I knew he wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain it all. And it isn’t that I don’t want to see Rome, or Venice, or Naples, or Carthage. But this is my world. It may be small, and yet I could live a hundred years and never come close to exhausting its infinite variety. Maybe I do lack perspective. But a Master of St. Oswald’s sees more than any tourist could. At St. Oswald’s, all of Life can be found in microcosm; Tragedy and Comedy pursue each other down the halls; great friendships are forged and forgotten; impossible dreams pursued; tears shed. These may not be the happiest days of our lives, but they are surely the keenest; days when everything cuts like a knife; days when the future seems infinite. Who would want to leave all this for the sake of a different perspective?

I must have said some of this aloud, because when I came to myself again, Winter was watching me curiously.

“To each his own, Mr. Straitley,” he said. “But if someone showed me the door to the cage, I’d be out of it like a shot.” He reached into his pocket and came out with an envelope. “This was in the paper,” he said. “I was going to show it to you then. But then things started to happen, and . . . Well. Perhaps you should just read it for now.”

It was a sheet of newspaper, dated from three weeks ago. One item was circled in red; just a few lines, barely a squib, between a row of lonely hearts and an advertisement for a carpet warehouse.

YORKSHIRE MAN DROWNS IN CANAL

A man was found dead under a bridge over the canal in Malbry town center in the early hours of Sunday morning. The unemployed man, Charles Wenceslas Nutter, 38, was thought to have been suffering from depression. Police say the death is not thought to be suspicious.