Eric sighed. “I’m sorry, Straits. It’s just that I’m tired of hearing Harry wouldn’t do that. Harry was a decent man. Even decent men make mistakes. Harry was no different.”

I looked at him. “Did he tell you that? Because, unless he told you—”

“What? You think you’re the only person Harry Clarke ever spoke to?” he said. “You think you’re the only person who got a little care package from beyond the grave? You got your gnome, the Chaplain got an orchid planter, or whatever the hell the Chaplain got, and I—” He broke off suddenly, turning away, and poured himself another drink. “Anyway, it’s over,” he said. “Finally, it’s over.”

I finished my Gauloise in silence. My heart was—not quite racing, but lurching in a peculiar way that made me feel a little sick. I suddenly remembered that I’d said I’d meet Winter after School. He had something to tell me, he’d said. Something about Charlie Nutter.

“Tell me, Eric,” I said at last. “What did Harry leave you?”

He said: “I never opened the box. Gloria must have put it away among all my mother’s boxes.”

“Gloria?”

“The carer. Used to come in every day, make Mother’s meals, and tidy the house. Used to be a cleaner at St. Oswald’s, years ago. Maybe that’s why Mother didn’t seem to mind her as much as she did the others. Maybe she remembered her from the old days.”

I told you I was never quick. Always the plodder, Straitley. But now I could feel the tumblers of something falling into place; a giant, complex mechanism, groaning as it moved and turned. Gloria, with the Spanish eyes. A cleaner at St. Oswald’s. And Gloria’s son, who wanted so badly to get away from Malbry. And Harry Clarke, who’d written to Eric just as he had written to me—

“But if Gloria put the box away among your mother’s boxes—” I said.

I looked at my watch. It was past eight o’clock. The lurching sensation had become the rolling of a big ship—or a mighty Juggernaut, crushing everything in its path.

“Eric. Tell me you didn’t,” I said, although I knew the answer. “Tell me it’s still in the house somewhere.”

Eric shrugged and turned away.

And now I could see it only too well. Eric, whose answer had always been to run away from an unpleasant reality, rather than look it in the eye, had (with my help) consigned Harry’s last words—words that might have revealed the truth—to the municipal bonfire.

“Why did you do it?” I said at last. “Eric, there might have been something in there that we could have used . . .”