Winter rubbed his chin. ‘No. In that scenario Price would have given Diall up in a heartbeat. Don’t forget that Price said that Diall didn’t want to be incriminated if the HR files were looked at too closely. There must be details in there that prove that Diall used his position to get incompetents promoted beyond their station. The only way to avoid scrutiny of the files would have been for Price to give himself up. It wasn’t the plan at the start, though. Price also said that Diall had promised to help him when he went to him the first time.’

I snapped my fingers. ‘Because Diall thought he had the inside track on you. You wanted to investigate Diall, you told me that yourself. He must have known you were onto him and was already taking measures against you. He was afraid you were going after him. When Price went to him the first time, he’d already sent Bell End and Alice on their mission against Eve. They weren’t there because of Volume 9, they were there because Diall was worried about you and what you were up to. But when Bell End and Alice didn’t come back…’

Winter jumped in, warming to my theory. ‘He must have known something was wrong. He didn’t know about you but that didn’t matter. He thought the gig was up. His only saving grace was that there was no sign of either Bellham or Fairclough so he couldn’t know for sure what had happened to them. Maybe he thought he could blame Price for everything. If Price was charged with stealing Volume 9, anything could be laid at his door and the world would probably believe it. In any case, Diall would have wanted as much deniability as possible so he was prepared to walk away from Price and whatever deal they’d made. With his only ally abandoning him, Price would have been desperate. We know that he used the HR files to find Oscar Marsh. He was being set up and, unable to see any other way out, he set up someone else in the process.’

‘But,’ I pointed out, ‘Price was being set up for stealing the Cypher Manuscript. If Diall didn’t take Volume 9 and Price didn’t take Volume 9, then who did?’

‘Someone with a grudge against Price.’ He paused. ‘I spoke to Maidmont. He doesn’t think that the Manuscript has been touched apart from the single page that was burnt. Maybe we’ve been going about this wrong way. We focused first on the idea that it had to be a higher-level witch who was the culprit and then that it was someone related to Diall who was tired of being used by him. But what if it’s the opposite? What if it’s someone lower down the scale who wanted to see a witch like Price get his comeuppance for being given a position they didn’t deserve?’

I thought about it. ‘Does it matter?’ I asked. ‘Whoever took it didn’t kill anyone. They wouldn’t have had time to read any of the spells before they planted it in Price’s desk. No wonder his desk was the only thing that Price bothered to ward. He must have put the spell in place after he found the Manuscript there.’