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wardrobe. A porcelain basin on a stand completed the room’s furnishings. His cases and trunk were set against the wall beneath the window.
    ‘The bathroom is down one flight of stairs,’ Mrs McCrery said. ‘You need to know that there can be a bit of a queue in the mornings when the students have lectures to get to. I
understand from Mr Dodgson that you will be attending his rooms for lessons, rather than the college, so you might want to wait until everyone has finished.’
    ‘I’ll do that,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m up really early and get in there before anyone else.’
    ‘Don’t leave a dirt ring around the bath if you use it,’ she continued, ‘and don’t leave whiskers in the sink if you shave. Apart from that, I don’t really
have any rules, except for general ones about tolerance, quietness, sobriety and no women in the house under any circumstances.’
    A sudden and bittersweet memory of Virginia Crowe flashed across Sherlock’s mind. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that will be a problem.’
    ‘Dinner tonight, and every night, will be at seven o’clock. Breakfast every morning will be at seven o’clock as well. Apart from that, you are free to make your own
arrangements.’ She paused, thinking. ‘Although I don’t allow food in the bedrooms.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Neither do I allow food in the bathroom. I only mention that because one undergraduate, a few years ago, used to smuggle pies in and eat them in the bath, knowing that they weren’t
allowed in his bedroom. That’s undergraduates for you – always trying to find a way around the rules – bending them without actually breaking them.’
    Sherlock thought back to all the times he had obeyed the letter of a rule while disobeying its spirit. That was the curse of a logical mind – you could usually see a way around
something.
    ‘No food in the bathroom,’ he promised.
    Mrs McCrery nodded. ‘Haddock tonight,’ she said brightly, ‘and I made some special sauce myself!’
    ‘Lovely!’
    As she left the room, Sherlock crossed to the window and looked out. His room was at the back of the house, and he could see the gardens of this and the neighbouring houses below. Further away
were the gardens of the houses in the next road, and then the houses themselves: their backs looking less well maintained than their fronts that he remembered passing earlier. It was, he thought,
human nature to clean those things that everyone could see and ignore those things that were usually unobserved.
    Beyond the roofs of the houses in the next road he could see the needle-like spires of one of the college chapels, thrusting up against the blue sky. He thought, from the position relative to
the house, that it was Christ Church College chapel. Tomorrow he would head to the college and introduce himself to Charles Dodgson. He wondered what the man would be like. Based on the fact that
he wrote children’s books, and based also on the way he had written the letter to Mycroft, Sherlock pictured him as a free spirit, a man who always wanted to be – or perhaps always
had
to be – amusing and unusual, whatever the circumstances, but how did that square with the fact that he was a lecturer in logic at one of the world’s greatest
universities?
    Tomorrow, he thought, was going to be interesting.
    Thoughts of his brother reminded him that he ought to write to Mycroft, reassuring his brother that he had arrived safely in Oxford. He did so, then sealed the letter up and left it, intending
to post it on the morrow. Checking his watch he found that he still had several hours before dinner. He didn’t feel like going out again, so he got on to the bed and closed his eyes,
intending to rest. He drifted for a while on the edge of sleep, kept from falling deeper by the noises from outside, but eventually he did sleep, and found himself dreaming of a dinner table where
all the other guests – boys of his own age – were stuffed and varnished. He