The Shape of the Skull

Anoushka Havinden

This story pains me to tell. I beg the forgiveness of your compassionate understanding, reader, as I suffer the recently refreshed regret of long-buried weakness.

Some might say that the need to unburden myself is a purely selfish act. But as I heard the reports from Europe of the final fall of that man whose name has haunted me, the memories floated up unbidden. There is always the hope that this may stand as a cautionary tale to those callow enough to be at risk of repeating the many mistakes that I made. And so, let me begin:

As a newly appointed tutor, freshly wax-whiskered and thrilled with the task charged to me – that of educating the privileged boys of the High School Of ****** [Editor: Name redacted to protect the reputation of this august institution], I had not an inkling of the potential of the human mind. I’d a head stuffed brimful of theories that I found very pleasing, yet I could not have conceived of either the depths of the mind’s depravity or the heights of its genius. Needless to say, Moriarty was to teach me plenty on both accounts.

My first glimpse of the child may have been the true beginning of my own education. He stood at the head of the steps, on the first day of term, as his father’s carriage drove away. Around us were scenes of the most heart-rending misery – boys fighting tears, mothers with pink spots high on their cheeks, nurses badtempered and blustery, cases and bags all in disarray while everyone got on with the grim task of separating charges from guardians with the minimum amount of emotional drama.

I was there at the conclusion that my earnest, if naive, philosophy had brought me to: that I should use my own gifts to further the well-being of others. I believed, with all my righteous scholar’s heart, that I could and should be the helpmeet and adviser of these unformed charges, as troubled or as slow or undeveloped as they may be. To shape young minds! To pass on the knowledge of the ages!

As you can tell, I was inexperienced. In any case, I was struck immediately by the singular appearance of this one. Moriarty, his high forehead smooth and domed, stood with eyes fixed on the gate. It seemed he’d been deposited by a faceless driver, who left without ceremony or farewell. The boy’s appearance was, from the first, unsettling. His soft hair was a shade of mud that has settled at the bottom of a pond. His bone structure was as fine as a bird’s, his cheekbones sharp and proud, his eyes deep set and also startlingly pale. He had the face of an old man, as yet unlined. That high forehead suggested, to one with an interest in the art of phrenology, a mind that was practically outgrowing the skull’s cavity – I itched at once to consult the china head in my study, to measure and compare it with that of the child in front of me. Which areas were so enlarged, and what effect would it have on the character?

And it seemed to me, though I could not have known, that what was rushing through his head was not the usual piteous ache of longing for his family or the trepidation of the rest of the boys, little snarling and hollow-eyed wretches as they were. I felt, as he turned to survey his new situation, more a rapid and shrewd calculation, as if he were counting many things at once. His eyes seemed to take in everything with the same flickering dark stare, as small and slippery as the beads of an abacus. The fine, carved whinstone of the building, its gargoyles, the slight deterioration of the window fixtures, the good cloth of the drapes, the quality of the carriages leaving through the gate. Looking around, as he was, I saw as if through a camera lens, the boys and women broiling on the steps, each a tiny storm of hungers and sorrows and fears. And, at the top of the steps, the head, like a walrus in his grey coat with his impressive whiskers, as immovable as a rock amidst the storming sea.

Moriarty seemed to catalogue all of this, somehow, with his quick and narrow gaze. A pencil, the end sharpened to an arrow’s point, twitched in his fingers, and I noted the book protruding from his pocket. Was he truly taking notes? My eyes widened in surprise, and it was then his met mine.

I am ashamed to admit that I could not hold that gaze. I was, it was to be supposed, his superior, in age, social station and position. Yet I felt as if I were myself counted, and found lacking. As though he were noting and ticking through my secret weaknesses: my own unease at this, my first job, my uncertainty of how to inspire fear and respect, as it seemed the housemaster wished that we should. Deep down, could he divine the uncomfortable struggles between my desperate Romantic’s heart and my brain’s suspicion that the clockwork universe did not perhaps share my beloved morals? And then, he showed me his teeth. It was not a smile. The points of his incisors shewed, as if a warning.

Would that I had heeded it, reader!

Instead, alas, I felt the lurch of righteous pity. I divined that I was in the presence of a child perhaps disturbed, but surely in want of sustenance – emotional and literary, moral and intellectual salvation! What hunger he must have for a loving guide! What enormous need of help! Inevitably, this sparked the fire of my foolhardy ambition. The resolve to nourish this woeful-looking brat was born in me in that moment, and I believe he saw it happen. Certainly, he took full advantage of the weakness he seemed to have registered within me. In any case, our fates were joined that day – me, the redeemer, he the enfant terrible in need of generous and charitable guidance.

The first term was enough to prove my initial suspicions of his disturbed nature accurate. In order to achieve the position he apparently desired – that of ruler of the school, albeit in a manner both invisible and free of responsibility – Moriarty had presumably calculated that his first task was to sow fear, disruption and discord among children, staff and tutors alike. At the time, no one would have credited a child his age with such a depth and detail of vision. But now, looking back at the dark catalogue of his adult life, I can only concur with that learned Austrian who has asserted that the damaged child will unfailingly become the malevolent man, and exorcise his demons in ever worsening manner.

In the first few weeks of September, the school was beset with problems that had not – I was assured, by various white-faced and weeping serving maids – ever darkened the building before in its long and glorious history. The cook, an able and godly woman, left in a cloud of hysteria after the entire sixth form were poisoned by rice pudding. The head’s secretary, a loyal servant of excellent standing, lost his wits entirely after mysteriously failing in duties he’d carried out for twenty years. After an unpleasant scene in the common room, he was sent swiftly and discreetly to a retirement home and never returned. The boys, meanwhile, fought relentlessly. Money was stolen, personal treasures disappeared, accusations blizzarded through dormitories, only for the various items to reappear, insolently, on the nightstand of some rival boy. Gossip proliferated. Gangs formed and battled, on the stairs, in the gymnasium at midnight, on the sports field.

A detached observer might have perhaps noticed that throughout all of this, Moriarty remained unaffected, an island of preternatural calm. Perhaps the merest curl of a smile was caught in that thin mouth of his, like the hook at the end of a fishing line. He was, somehow, nobody’s fag. The butt of nobody’s cruel jokes – although the boys that year seemed close to a pack of frightened feral dogs, and blood drawn, punches thrown, almost nightly. This, in a beloved palace of learning, dedicated to the highest arts of humanity! I had planned to study the Greek plays that first term, but decided immediately to concentrate on less inflammatory works.

Anyway, Moriarty. He spent much of his time in his room. How he came to have his own ‘room’ is itself unexplained. The boys, especially the first years, were confined to the coldest, most miserable barracks on the upper floors. Yet Moriarty, due to vague murmurs about his health and a queer determination on the part of the housekeeper who oversaw the dormitories, found himself installed in a quite comfortable little cabin on the first floor. It overlooked the stairs, being in truth a glorified closet, and, from there, he could survey the comings and goings of almost everyone in the school.

He had soon taken his measure of the staff and established a network of allies and lackeys who fed him steadily with information, gossip and any other useful thing that he decided he required.

There were never any overt signs to identify Moriarty as the artist behind all the chaos, although a thoughtful observer might have considered the utter absence of involvement telling in itself. Thus, the head found himself in a most untenable position – tortured by suspicions he could not voice without making accus ation, bound by a moral and financial debt to the boy’s family, and caught between his own wish to suppress any burgeoning trouble and the need to root out the demon at the heart of the multifarious plots and schemes.

‘This school,’ he said one night, while clutching a glass of whisky that I expect was not his first of the evening, and peering hard at the dying embers in the fireplace, ‘has been my life. The damn thing may be the end of me, too.’

As Christmas approached, it certainly seemed the institution was in jeopardy. Three boys left, after some hysterical scenes involving parents, newspapers and, if I recall, a nest of rats. A small fire broke out in the library, after which Moriarty was – rather than being implicated and interviewed – somehow excused from his English lessons.

But once he had the place running to his liking, things seemed to settle. Although, in retrospect, it was the uneasy tension of a prison with malcontent inhabitants awaiting the next disaster, rather than the true peace of a contented community of fellows dedicated to self-improvement.

Over the next few terms, he and the head came to a place of watchful, antagonistic stalemate. Moriarty showed no interest in the arts, and, privately, I was relieved, although curiosity occasionally tormented me – what damage had been done to the boy’s soul to have him act this way? Was it possession by a demonic force? Blood circulation, a disease of the brain? If he were feeble-minded, we were past the days of beating or bleeding the idiocy out of him. Besides, he seemed unnaturally intelligent. On occasion, after reading on the Phenomena of Soul and Mind, I mused on the causes of cruelty within one so young.

But, for the most part, I merely gave my lessons. They utterly lacked the fervour of my initial resolve, for I had learned the safety of sinking into the shadows. The boys adapted, as children do, and apart from one or two who were removed or begged to leave, carried on with their education as best they could.

Inevitably, Moriarty grew bored. Though he wanted for nothing – keeping a store of fine port, sugared almonds and cigars in his little closet, and a small army of boys to do his bidding, shine his shoes, write his letters home, and read the paper to him – he found himself outgrowing his role as secret oligarch soon enough. It was then that he took to mathematics, with an astonishing ease – apparently the one discipline for which he would not prefer to enlist another child to carry out the curriculum on his behalf. Within a month, his mathematics tutor was petitioning the head to have him apply to a school on the Continent known for its mathematical prowess. Whether that was out of a genuine belief in the boy’s ability, or whether the poor man, who had developed various nervous tics and smelled frequently of sour alcohol, merely wished to relieve himself of the boy’s presence, I cannot say. In any case, Moriarty refused to consider moving.

Now, he was the ex officio maths genius of the school, and still waging a half-secret war against order and institution. When he at last pushed his luck to the limit and beyond, calling his maths tutor ‘a buffoon’, mocking him openly in class and questioning his reasoning, qualifications and ability, the head had no choice – in the face of threatened resignation of the tutor – but to suspend the boy from all maths classes. This would likely not have bothered a boy like Moriarty, who truth be told was far ahead of any teaching on the subject that could have been offered him in our school. Unfortunately for all of us, though, his suspension coincided with another event. The combination resulted in a most calamitous series of events.

It happened that the school was bequeathed by a wealthy and grateful benefactor – an alumnus who had gone on to great things within the service of science – a rare treasure of incredible preciousness and value. A ceremony was planned with all the pomp and fanfare that the head could muster. Perhaps in an effort to turn around the flagging reputation of the school, which had lately started to suffer a drop in applications, he determined to make a great fuss of the occasion. The entire body of staff and pupils, as well as some local dignitaries, including the mayor and a few learned professors from the university, were invited to an announcement, whereby the treasure would be presented to the school and a prize competition launched.

The day was to be held in the school’s grand but chilly ballroom. Situated at the heart of the school, it was a windowless hall with ornate plasterwork and grandiose Corinthian pillars lining the walls. A small stage stood at one end, and the room was kept locked due to the presence of a glass cabinet of trophies. The gift was to be displayed in the centre – a new velvet-lined plinth having been made especially for it.

What was the priceless object? No one knew, but the alumnus had insisted on stringent security. Nobody was to be admitted to the hall alone. Cleaners would attend in pairs, overseen by a tutor. The entire preparation was shrouded in secrecy, and a new and impressive cast-iron lock was fitted to the door; guaranteed pick proof, we were assured. The night watchman-cumcaretaker borrowed a fearsome dog, named somewhat unimaginatively Cerberus, which slavered and growled appropriately and was installed at the man’s office by the front door to ward off thieves – though whether these were shadowy criminals from outside, or inhabitants of the school itself was not quite spelled out.

Some weeks before the ceremony, I was handed a note written in Moriarty’s cramped, but precise handwriting. It begged for my intercession, for he had lately felt he had some concerns related to sinfulness, and believed I was understanding in these matters. Every hair on the nape of my neck stood on end, reader, and I felt a dryness in my mouth. Nobody was associated with the boy without a measure of unease or, in the case of smaller boys, outright fear.

I attended his room as requested, feeling that if there was the smallest chance this was really a boy in need, as implied in the short but apparently sincere note, it was my godly duty to attend. I admit, also, that one small part was curious to speak with this little demon alone and gauge for myself if he was, as his chemistry tutor claimed, truly evil.

He had made his cubbyhole into a miniature office. Spartan, but furnished, I noticed, with a decanter, two glasses, and a shelf of books whose spines looked to have been well worn. Wearing a smoking jacket and a slightly shabby pair of shoes, he stood at the makeshift desk and met me with an expression I will not forget. As ever, he seemed to count and calculate as he briefly looked me up and down. Those eyes! At twelve years old, they retained a child’s clarity, but twisted with the brooding and bitterness you might see in an old man’s. How bizarre, to see such an expression on such a young face.

‘I appreciate your coming, sir,’ he said, his voice thin and high as a reed. ‘I had feared I would be left alone again—’ he nodded at the corner of his room, where I noticed a boxed-in section of wall ‘—to listen to the music of the pipes.’ I frowned. Was he truly turned lunatic? ‘They call all night,’ he continued, ‘bringing me noises I could swear were human.’

‘I regret you are not making sense,’ I said, shortly, for my patience was wearing thin. There was a high-pitched, insistent buzz weaving around my head. Before I could pinpoint the source, Moriarty stepped forward, snapped his fingers, and held them in front of me, with a flourish. I looked down, somewhat taken aback to see the lifeless body of a housefly pinched between his thumb and fingers.

‘My apologies. I am not making myself clear?’ he said, and quirked a thin, snakish brow. ‘Would it be more understandable if I were to specify that the sounds I hear on a Thursday night were not so much speech as the calls produced most usually when a young woman is—’ he frowned, pursed his lips ‘—how should I put it? Entertaining a friend?’ He dropped the body of the fly upon the floor and casually ground it into the boards with the tip of his shoe.

Now he locked his eyes on mine, and I felt the poison of his intent shoot through my veins. For, as this is a full confession, reader, I am bound to admit that I had recently made the close acquaintance of one of the chambermaids, finding myself quite smitten with her, and we occasionally enjoyed each other’s company in the confines of her attic room. Most often on a Thursday night.

Moriarty reached out and removed a small section of timber from a panel in the wall, behind which were revealed around half a dozen pipes. He tapped one with a fingernail and I heard it ring and echo. ‘These pipes—’ he smiled ‘—with the aid of a small listening glass, are my great entertainment.

‘Oh!’ cried Moriarty, rolling his eyes. I swear he mimicked the exact pitch of Esther’s voice. It was repulsive to me, to hear her voice in his mouth. He closed his eyes and took on a pained expression. Now his voice was deeper and more guttural.

‘Oh, sweet love of God,’ and I heard my own silly, feverish words echoed back at me, spilling from this precocious, vindictive ventriloquist.

I felt myself blush, to my fury, and despite my peaceable nature could have easily wrung the wretch’s scrawny neck. But, of course, I restrained myself, and stood in his room and allowed him to lay out his terms.

I was to find out every possible detail of the prize, including, crucially, its dimensions. I was to note security arrangements and timings. I was to report back to him with everything I could find, on pain of his revealing my sorry dalliance with Esther and ruining both my own career and her reputation.

While he laid out his instructions – quietly, fluently and without hesitation – I fixed my eyes on his desk and read the titles of the leather-bound books stacked there. I was surprised to see some science books, including Notes on the inhalation of sulphuric ether and The Jubilee of Anaesthetic Midwifery. A curious choice, for a young man, I thought. Clearly he read my mind, for he paused in his monologue to say: ‘My sainted mother, sir, left the world as I entered it. I have since kept a fascination for the reason of these things.’ I was surprised again, for I’d thought him incapable of any sort of filial feeling. Perhaps this was the root of his problems?

‘Do not pity me,’ he said sharply. ‘Rather, listen closely to my request. And do not think to hold back anything,’ came his child’s fluting voice. ‘Remember, sir, the walls bring me news of your every word and action.’ With that, he produced a laugh so twisted and strange it thoroughly turned my stomach, and if I never heard it again it would be too soon. Still, it echoes in my ears and makes me shudder.

I was wracked with guilt and fear of being uncovered. Nevertheless, I set to acting as his spy. I revealed, through gradual and careful interrogation of the head’s assistant, liberally bribed with a bottle of good French brandy, that a tournament would be held, and the prize was no less than a pallasite meteorite – a chunk from the 1783 Great Meteor! These stony-iron lumps were so rare that their worth was several hundreds of pounds – a fine prize indeed. A beautiful heart-shaped rock, the size of a small hen’s egg, studded with olivine crystals, by all accounts.

‘Best of all, though, the meteorite is accompanied by a bursary for Oxford University!’ said the head’s new assistant, in a stammering stage-whisper.

‘And all can enter?’ I asked, refilling the man’s glass. We sat in the staff common room, hunched over our drinks and our furtive conversation.

‘Any boy with a perfect attendance record in Mathematics is eligible,’ he recited. I watched the bob of his Adam’s apple as the secretary swallowed, and I turned the news over in my head.

It was clear that Moriarty had heard rumours to this effect, hence his sudden intense curiosity. His family, while of reputable standing, were hardly equipped to pay for a top-class degree from the best university. To realise a chance like this would surely be his greatest, most wildly ambitious dream. Yet, I realised, with a jolt, he was disqualified. Since the mathematics tutor had blankly refused to tutor him – privately, the other tutors murmured that the boy had outshone him already and he was humiliated – claiming that the boy disrupted his class and refused to show proper respect for his betters, he could not have any hope of entering the maths tournament or of winning this un imaginably generous prize.

With a sensation like cold water slowly spiralling into my gut, I realised that this situation was unlikely to have a happy outcome. I went on to quiz the secretary, as casually as I could, as to the story about Moriarty’s mother. He confirmed that yes, she had died in childbirth. Now, my dread swirled with the most intense pity. For no matter how sinful, he was undeniably also half an orphan, who had lacked the tender ministrations of a woman’s soft heart. No doubt this loss had torn through his developing emotional brain, leaving an insatiable hunger for power and gain in its wake. I imagined, picturing my own sweet mother’s face, the lack of her, and ached for the piteous child.

I resolved to give Moriarty solace and comfort, and perhaps provide guidance in how he might make reparation with the head to allow his entry into the competition. But, on visiting him, he betrayed no hint of emotion, and I was dismissed with a curt nod.

‘This must be sorely disappointing news,’ I said, hanging back at the door.

He eyed me curiously. ‘Disappointing?’ He smiled that eerie grin. ‘I am hardly surprised to hear the Head create such a condition. It merely confirms how he is disposed to me.’

‘To you?’

‘Clearly he wishes to crush me. It makes things interesting, at least.’

I left with a cold sense of dread puddling in my guts.

On the day, Moriarty was far prompter than usual. The crowd of boys that filled the body of the ballroom parted mutely for him, and he strode to the front as if he were one of the visiting luminaries, rather than a slightly shabby, unprepossessing pubescent with greasy hair and a stooped posture. Behind him scuttled a small, runny-nosed child who had attached himself to Moriarty and acted as his tiny butler, carrying out errands and attending to his schoolmate’s minor requirements.

I watched Moriarty during the ceremony. His gaze never wavered from the meteorite – as it was revealed by the alumnus’s manservant, to general awed murmurs, as the Head addressed it and detailed its origin, and as it was placed reverently within the glass case that stood at the head of the ballroom.

While the head described in detail how the boys should apply themselves for the chance to win both their name inscribed on the plinth below this prized lump of rock and the opportunity to fly to Oxford, I saw Moriarty burn as pale and furious as a whaleoil lamp. His eyes flickered with hatred and his mouth, reader, was as a line drawn and underscored with the blackest charcoal.

‘Of course,’ said the head, and I believe I saw the sheen of triumph in his eyes, ‘any boy who has not a perfect attendance record for the lessons of Mister ***** [Editor, name redacted, again, to protect the parties concerned] shall not be eligible to apply for the prize, or for the scholarship. Thus we shall be sure it will be awarded to a pupil both virtuous and steady in his diligent studentship.

‘Perhaps this will serve to teach a lesson greater than any other – that our highest purpose must be not to further our own interests but to serve the benefit of all. He who fails to learn this lesson should find himself awarded not a dunce’s cap, but a far worse fate. He shall be cast out, despised and undoubtedly, ultim ately, he shall fail both as a student and as a human being.’

The atmosphere in the room seemed to drop a couple of degrees. I knew Moriarty must be not only defeated, but humiliated.

As everyone filed out, his head turned away and I caught his eye. For once, I felt the chill of the bereft void of his heart. This was the look I was used to seeing on the faces of boys left abandoned, alone and scared. This was the expression that I had seen lacking on the day his father’s carriage had pulled away. Yet it was not his family he mourned for, but a life he could never have, that he’d seen paraded in front of him like a piece of glittering, unearthly mineral. I sensed again the unimaginable losses he’d suffered, and my heart ached.

I went to bed with a mixture of dread, sorrow and unspecified agitation that was only exacerbated by the lack of the company of Esther, the young chambermaid I’d recently averred not to see again. I tossed in my cold sheets that night, and yearned for her kinds words and soft touch.

That night, the security guard was posted outside the locked ballroom door. The dog was installed at the front office, certain to wake at the slightest twitch. We retired to bed, pretending that the foreboding hanging over the place was of our imagination only. Around dawn, I believe, I fell into a dark and dreamless sleep.

The next morning, the guard was sprawled on his back on the floor, apparently unconscious. He did not come round when slapped, or when shouted at, but only a half-hour later when cold water was thrown at his face. He remained groggy and could barely speak. The door, of course, was lying open, the treasure gone. The dog, while conscious, had not made a glimmer of noise and the front door remained locked and apparently untampered with.

The head immediately ordered the school to be locked and searched. While he did not say so explicitly, Moriarty’s room was bound to be subject to the most rigorous search of all. I was witness to it, for the head rounded up two of us younger tutors to do the dirty work under his supervision. On my knees, I hunted for loose boards, checked every possible cranny within that small room. We turned the mattress, pulled every book from the shelf, removed the panel to check behind the pipes. Throughout, Moriarty stood unmoving, a wry smile twisting his mouth, and at last the headmaster, shaking his head, ordered his case to be opened.

‘I doubt anyone would be so damn stupid as to put such a thing in their suitcase, but let us check to be sure we have done a thorough job.’

As the suitcase was pulled from under his bed, however, I saw in Moriarty’s hands the tiniest shake, as if he had stopped himself from moving forward. I watched with my breath held, both wanting and not wanting the irregular, curious brightly studded surface of the meteorite to appear.

Inside: folded clothes; a writing case; a bound Bible – and, lying atop all this, a large, wax-faced doll. The head lifted her with a mixed expression, part disgust, part suppressed hilarity. The doll had a wistful expression on her foxed, worn face, arched brows, a rosebud mouth and hair in ringlets. The forehead seemed curiously shaped, and I thought I saw in its protuberance an echo of Moriarty’s own strangely domed brow. The head, still apparently lost for words, lifted the doll’s skirts as if he im agined he might find the meteorite hidden beneath them.

‘Moriarty?’ the head barked, shaking the limp cloth body of the wretched doll at his pupil’s face. Moriarty, meanwhile, looked for once almost on the verge of tears. Was this the real boy, underneath all his scheming and plots? Were we seeing him at last, stripped of his shell and as vulnerable as any frightened child? Two high spots on his cheeks echoed the pink of the doll’s own cheeks, though his colour was, against that pallor of his, unworldly, like that of a fever victim. I thought I saw in his eyes genuine turmoil at that moment.

‘I … I cannot sleep without her,’ he whispered at last, and I believe I have never felt so utterly wrong and terrible in my whole career since. ‘Please do not take her from me. Please.’ The boy looked close to tears, his pale blue eyes shining wretchedly. ‘She was … my mother’s.’

The head, meanwhile, was shaking his head, and examining the doll with utter bemusement.

‘Sir,’ I interrupted, blurting out the words before I’d had a chance to think, ‘I beg you to consider the difficulty a child faces in a strange house with the lack of a mother to send him comforting letters or keepsakes. The loneliness would be intolerable. He may well find some small measure of emotional solace in the figure of such a toy.’

The head looked at me curiously.

‘Even were a child in need of stern guidance, even were he in danger of growing from a delinquent boy into a sinful adult, surely a doll could do no harm? Is the offer of childish solace not more likely to appease a troubled youth’s mind than provoke it?’

The head glared at me. Then at Moriarty, who was breathing heavily. At last, he shrugged. I fancy he may have discovered that usually dormant part of himself that genuinely cared for the well-being of children, and wished them to be if not happy, then at least quietly stoic.

‘God have mercy on you,’ he muttered at last, and flung the doll back in the case, before nodding to us that our hunt was finished in this room.

I nodded as I passed Moriarty, and he stood chin fixed ahead, showing not the slightest sign of gratitude. I fancied there may have been, though, deep in his murky eyes, a flicker that may have been the burning of a tiny coal of human warmth.

The hunt continued – oh, we turned the place upside down. In the chemistry laboratory, beakers and bottles were left strewn on the benches, and the chemistry tutor subsequently deduced that bleach and acetone and a puddle of melted ice had been mixed and made into chloroform – the method of knocking the poor guard unconscious. The head spat and fumed and came as near to cursing as his Calvinist upbringing would allow. A vein pulsed on his head and I saw in wonder that it seemed to bulge, as if his very brain were swelled with fury.

But, other than that, there was no trace of a break-in, or of the prized rock.

Could I help Moriarty overcome the terrible darkness that threatened to overwhelm his heart? Would he lash out at anyone who tried to offer him a way to heal the wounds of his brain’s sickness? Had he taken the meteorite, and where was it?

We were never to find out. The next morning, Moriarty sent a message to his father and, within two days, the carriage came for him. He looked small, but almost dignified as he stood at the top of the steps, waiting out his last few moments. Alone among the staff and his fellow pupils, I joined him there, feeling it my duty not to let him leave without some sort of goodbye.

‘The world can be a lonely place,’ I said. ‘Especially for someone with gifts who does not yet know how to use them.’

‘Really?’ he said, adjusting his gloves. ‘Perhaps you have mistaken gifts for afflictions. Sir.’

‘Do you feel yourself afflicted?’

‘I have no need of your concern, sir.’

‘Then whose concern do you seek, Moriarty?’

He fixed me with his mud-dark eyes. ‘Concern, sir? I only seek freedom.’

‘From accusation?’

‘From the predictable,’ he said, ‘and from the tedious interferences of moral guardians whose own private lives do not bear close scrutiny.’ He smirked at me, as if mocking all I’d tried to do for him, and I felt my scalp prickle again with anger and shame.

Here was his carriage, coming through the gates with the same blank-faced driver whipping the horse dully. Moriarty descended the steps.

‘No matter how hard you try,’ were his parting words, tossed over his shoulder, ‘you can’t see inside people’s heads.’

And, with that, he disappeared into the dark chamber of his father’s coach and was gone. I looked up to see the head, watching through the common room window, his jaw working furiously as if he were chewing a tough piece of gristle.

At last he muttered, turned on his heel and marched back into his study. Thus I believe the head liked to think he had won the war, even if he’d lost every battle waged between them and had still to placate a furious patron.

The scandal was hastily buried and the school buckled down to a quieter – and perhaps a duller – routine. Having abruptly cut off my nascent relationship with Esther, I spent much of my time from then on in my room, reading, and considering wistfully the quality of a woman’s bare skin in the most hidden parts. I had not the courage to make reparation between us, to try to explain my sudden betrayal without revealing more than I thought I could bear, and so I lost her.

I heard reports now and then – Moriarty went to a smaller university, and at length went on to make his infamous reputation worldwide. I remained at the school for four years or so, before taking a post in a quieter provincial school, and am happy to say I never came across the likes of the boy again.

It was only last autumn, having heard of Moriarty’s fatal accident at the Reichenbach Falls, I found the memories of that dreadful time burst free as if from behind a dam. I called an old colleague, the chemistry tutor at the school, and from his enquiries discovered the whereabouts of the long-forgotten Esther and contacted her. She is now a ladies’ maid, not far from the school itself, and I paid her a visit.

Although I am now, of course, a man fairly on the brink of the winter of his own life, I found myself still trembling when I stood outside the house where she is engaged. She answered the door and my heart tripped just as it had when I’d first seen her, walking briskly and sweetly down the corridor outside the ballroom at the school.

Though her hair is paler and her skin has lost the shine and pink of a young woman, she is yet as beautiful, if not more so. We fell immediately into talk of the old place, the characters of the tutors and – inevitably – of the boy who had, even if indirectly, caused our separation.

‘Oh, it was an awful time,’ she said, her attention falling to the fire, which burned low and fitful in the grate. She prodded it distractedly, not meeting my gaze. ‘All that scandal, and – not seeing you. I just wanted to pack up and leave.’

‘I am most terribly sorry, Esther,’ I say, faltering over my words. I hold my hat in my lap and find I’m worrying the brim as if it were a string of rosary beads. ‘I felt that I could not—’

‘I know,’ she says, reaching out to lay a hand on mine. ‘It couldn’t be helped. We weren’t destined to be together. I cried myself to sleep for a month, you know,’ she said, a wry smile on her face.

‘Oh, Esther.’

‘Well, I was a girl, wasn’t I, Ernest? Just a daft lass, really. Worst of it was I’d lost my doll, even, imagine that!’

‘You’d what? I beg your pardon?’ The hair on my neck rose again, as if a cold breeze had swept into the room straight from the past.

‘I’d a dolly. I told you, I was just a girl. It was my mam’s, and she’d left it to me before she died. Violet, I called it. She had brown eyes and ringlets and little leather boots. I took her everywhere. Silly, probably, but I loved her. And then she disappeared, just at the time all the troubles broke out. And … What is it, Ernest? You’ve gone so still?’

‘Did you find it?’ I managed to grate the words out.

‘Yes, actually, I did. A week or so after I lost her. But she was beyond repair. She was lying face down out in the playing fields, just destroyed.’ Her voice was bitter, even now, as she described it. ‘All those beautiful ringlets, just muddy tails, and her head … Oh, it was like a gruesome thing, Ernest, I know it sounds ridiculous, but you know how one gets attached to things sometimes, and her head was all caved in … She was wax, you see, and it was like someone had dug a hole in the back of her head, it was all burst. Like the skull was bashed open with a poker or something. Just unnecessary. Those boys.’

She dug angrily at the fire, which spat sparks at her and refused to glow any brighter. I found myself unable to speak. I remembered Moriarty’s face, his wretched look as we searched his room. The infinitesimal glow in his eyes as I left him, like little fragments of crystal buried in his head, and the doll flung on the mattress, where the head had left her. And realised that I had, indeed, reader, been most gravely mistaken, after all.