‘Of course you don’t,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Because no-one takes snuff any more. Well, no-one decent. It’s a snuffbox. A Victorian snuffbox. You’d carry your tobacco around in it and, from time to time, put a pinch of it up your nose.’ He reached into the gaping mouth with his thumb and finger and mimed the act, delicately sniffing his invisible snuff. ‘And then, presumably, you’d let out an awful sneeze and wonder what on earth you were doing snorting tobacco up there, when the world is simply full of perfectly good cigarettes.’

I closed the jaw carefully, fearing I might break it, tested the weight of the skull in my hand one more time, and took a final look at the face. The nostrils and some of the teeth were worn almost smooth, and there was a patch of a rough darker metal on the chin.

As I handed it back, I asked him if it was coated with something, and he said, ‘Well spotted. I suspect it’s silver plate or silver leaf on the outside, but mostly pewter. So, pewter inside and in some spots outside where the silver’s rubbed or flaked off.’ He placed it back in the cabinet. ‘It doesn’t really have a monetary value, but few of these things do. Most of them would be worth no more than a tenner. They’re just . . . curiosities. Old forgotten things that I quite like to keep.’

He set the skull back in its place and, from the bottom shelf, he lifted the largest object in the cabinet, a violet-coloured box. He held it out to me with both hands and, when I took it, he opened the lid, so that I could see inside. It was lined with black satin, but otherwise empty.

‘Went to Vienna on leave at the end of the war,’ he said. ‘Saw all the sights. Heard a Jerry orchestra playing the hits. No Wagner though. Bit too Hitler. Bought this from a local who needed the cash. Have a look at the lid.’

Inlaid into the lacquered wood, in silver or some other metal, was a musical symbol, the curly symbol that begins a written line of music. I couldn’t remember its name.

‘So, there’s a musical connection.’ I ran my finger along the swirl in the middle of the symbol, but the name still didn’t come to me.

‘Well, that does suggest one, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Which makes this all the more interesting, because the box isn’t primarily musical at all. It’s a phrenology box, for a human skull. A human skull that’s to be studied for its lumps and bumps. Skulls of evil-doers and geniuses were particularly prized for what they might reveal. Morbid business but, for a time, given all the credit of a science. So, who’s this then?’ He tapped the silver symbol on the lid. ‘An eighteenth-or nineteenth-century musician with a connection to Vienna? That’s almost all of them. Did they rob poor Mozart’s grave? I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’d rather there was a skull in there or not. Grizzly prospect.’