As I see the old churchman to the door, I catch a whiff of his breath. Atop the rotting smell of his dentures there sits another, cleaner smell, almost medicinal and carrying the sweetness of turpentine. My guess is that he never leaves his chambers without a sweet tucked into the pocket of his mouth. I wonder briefly how he justifies his consumption theologically. But then I realise that a man like Swinburne does not bother with justifications. Churchmen and teachers are allowed to use sweets. Other men are not.

For him, it is as simple as that.

ф

The girl is asleep when I enter the bedroom. There are some marks on the pillow and the bed-sheet, but they are light and grey, bad dreams become manifest. It would be churlish to call them sins. Slowly, not wishing to wake her, I lower myself onto the chair next to her, and tuck the duvet back up to her chin. She mutters something, and — still asleep — her little hand comes up to her chest and performs an odd, turning movement, as if she were placing her heart into a loosely formed fist and giving it a twist. It is a disturbing gesture, made by a mind that is disturbed. One can only guess at what the girl must have witnessed.

I did not enter Renfrew’s cottage until after he had been removed from the premises. Cruikshank had found him, he and the two stable hands he had roused in response to the girl’s warning. He’d armed them with stout clubs, he told me, and himself with an axe. They had found the door unlocked.

All three of the men had walked through Renfrew’s blood. That’s the first thing I saw coming to the cottage, bloody footprints leading away from the front door, growing fainter with every step until only their heels and bootnails showed pink upon the path from cottage to school. It had been snowing through much of the night. No other prints showed in the blanket of white.

In the squalid little hallway, the same three sets of footprints were visible on the floorboards, along with a fourth, wearing narrow riding boots and attended by a large-pawed dog. Near the door to the living room, one of the stable hands had dropped his club. He had not stooped to pick it up.