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Neither of us referred to this conversation again. It was possible that Dansey believed, or affected to believe, that I had been on the edge of slumber during the latter part of it, and had not heard all he said, or comprehended the general drift of his remarks. So we lived and worked together on our old amicable footing. Yet something had changed. After that evening, I rarely sat with him late into the night beside the dying warmth of the schoolroom fire, or strolled smoking with him across the frosty lawn after the boys had gone to bed.

Nevertheless, I found my thoughts recurring to his remarks upon the subject of love on more than one occasion. If it were true that the tender passion could be divided into three categories, which category embraced what I felt for Sophia Frant – or, indeed, for Flora Carswall? I saw with peculiar vividness in my mind’s eye the picture of Dansey’s pig at his trough.

I could not say that I was looking forward to the end of term, to the six weeks of the school’s Christmas holiday. Though a few boys would remain, the establishment would be considerably reduced, and Dansey and I would inevitably be thrown much together. I had agreed to eat my Christmas dinner with the Rowsells, but I had no other engagements or diversions in hand.

About a week before Christmas, I met young Edgar Allan on the stairs and he said to me, in that hurried and peculiarly breathless way that small boys have: “Sir, please, sir, but Frant begs me to give you his compliments and hopes you may be able to accept.”

I stopped. “Accept what, Allan? His compliments?”

“You have not heard, sir?”

“Unless I know what I am supposed to have heard, I cannot tell, can I?”

Something in the logic of this must have appealed to him, for the boy burst out laughing. When his mirth had subsided, he said: “Frant wrote me to say that his mama is inviting me to stay at Mr Carswall’s during the Christmas holiday. And Mr Carswall is to write to my ma and pa, and to Mr Bransby, requesting that you should be allowed to accompany me, though I should be perfectly safe in the care of the coachman, but Charlie says that women always fuss and sometimes it is wise to let them have their head.”

“I have as yet heard nothing of this projected expedition,” I said. “I am not convinced that it will be perfectly convenient.” I watched Allan’s face change, as though a cloud had passed over his good humour. “However, we shall have to see what Mr Bransby has to say about it.”

The boy took this as a form of agreement. He bounded happily away, leaving me to wonder whether his information was accurate, and, if it were, whether Mr Bransby would permit me to go, and whether it would be wise for me to do so or not. Wise or not, I knew what I wanted. Lofty thoughts about the taxonomy of love in general, and about pigs and troughs in particular, were all very well in the abstract but I no longer had any desire to pursue them.

The following afternoon, Mr Bransby relayed Mrs Frant’s invitation.

“There is some uncertainty as to when you will return,” Mr Bransby went on. “Mr Carswall does not feel that young Frant has been minding his book with sufficient attention since he left us. He may desire you to remain longer with them, to coach the boys and perhaps to escort Edgar Allan back to school at the beginning of term – Charles Frant, of course, will not be rejoining us. You are not expected elsewhere, I suppose, on Christmas Day?”

“As a matter of fact, I was, sir. But it is of no importance.”

That evening, I sat down by the fire in the schoolroom to write to Mr Rowsell, regretting that I would not be able to eat my Christmas dinner with them after all. I had hardly begun when Dansey came in.

“Mr Bransby tells me you are taking young Allan down to the country,” he said abruptly. “Is it true you will remain there the entire vacation?”

“It’s possible. Mr Carswall will decide.”

Dansey flung himself into a chair. “Are you sure this is wise, Tom?”

“Why ever not?” I spoke with more heat than I had intended. “A change of scene will be beneficial.”

“And a change of company, no doubt.”

I murmured that I was perfectly happy in my present situation.

“I beg your pardon,” Dansey continued after a moment. “I have no right to advise you. You will go with young Allan, I collect?”

“I wonder that Mr Allan has permitted him to go. It is only a month since Mr Frant’s death.”

“I imagine he did it to oblige Mr Carswall. Wealth is a passport to esteem. Forgive me; I do not mean to pry – but are you altogether easy in your mind about this?”

“Why should I not be?”

Dansey hesitated. “I am a rational man, as you know. But sometimes I have an intuition when all is not well. I daresay I am being fanciful.”

He stood there for a moment, his lopsided mouth working in his Janus face as though he wanted to say something else but could not persuade his lips to mouth the words. He turned on his heel and slipped out of the room. I stared down at the sheet of paper, the few words on it flickering and shifting in the candlelight. It was another freezing evening, and I shivered.

Dansey had an intuition, but it occurred to me that I had more substantial grounds for caution: the manner in which first Mr Frant and now Mr Carswall had entangled me in their affairs; the codicil that had cost Mrs Frant an inheritance; the mutilated cadaver at Wellington-terrace; and the severed finger I had discovered in David Poe’s satchel.