“I thought you’d be able to find out. Now that you know what to look for, I mean. It wouldn’t have to come from me. You could find out by accident.”

“By accident?” I said. I suppose I still hoped for a confession. The whole “my friend has a problem” line was old when Noah was a boy. But something had changed, I realized. In that interval, brief as it was, Harrington had recovered his poise. Perhaps he’d seen someone through the glass; perhaps he’d simply got cold feet. But the look of vulnerability I’d thought I’d glimpsed in his face was gone; instead, the old aloofness was back, as bland and hateful as ever.

I gave it one last try. “Are you sure that’s all you can tell me?”

He nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ve got to be in Maths, sir.”

I sighed. “Adolescence is difficult. Boys can get angry and confused. That doesn’t mean they’re all possessed. It’s just— Well. Hormones. Teenage angst. What my colleague Dr. Devine undoubtedly refers to as Weltschmerz.”

Harrington picked up his briefcase. “Thank you. I feel better now. Sorry I took up so much of your time.”

I thought about what he’d said all day.

Possession? Demonic possession?

Of course I didn’t believe him. Perhaps he didn’t expect me to: Harrington was clever enough to choose his targets appropriately, and if he had really intended to sell someone an outlandish idea, he would have gone straight to Dr. Burke, or better still, to St. Oswald’s own version of the Witchfinder General, the Satanic Mr. Speight, whose interest in all things occult rivaled even the Chaplain’s.

No, I concluded; Harrington had come to me for a reason. Perhaps he even meant for me to disregard this farfetched hypothesis. Perhaps mine was to be the voice of good sense when everyone else was losing their head. Which made me wonder whether he really believed in the nonsense, or whether this was an oblique way of trying to warn me about something entirely different. In any case, Parents’ Evenings were imminent, and if Johnny Harrington—or one of his friends—was having emotional difficulties, now was the time to find out why.