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in, his expression distraught. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. How could you do it?”
    “Do what?”
    “Give Derek his knife back. You knew his record. You know what this means? Ruin.” He sank into a chair at the table, spooned some Brooker-Timla food out of the bowl into a small dish and began to eat. “Ruin. After a lifetime of endeavour.”
    “I hope it’s not as bad as that.” He explained that he had not given Winterbottom the knife, and learnt that the boy had not slept in his bed.
    “We should never have taken him.” The rosebud mouth pouted. “I was against it, but Janine said we had a duty.”
    “Have you telephoned the police?”
    “Oh, yes, yes.”
    “What do you want to do about classes today?”
    “Whatever you think. Use your own judgement.” All Pont’s rosy elasticity had gone. He looked simply a bewildered old man as he got up and wandered away.
    After Pont there was young Deverell, who said that he was feeling rather lost. After Deverell came Hedda, wearing this morning a bright green jumper with a roll neck, and tight black jeans.
    “Hallo. What a clever thing you did when you took that knife away from Derek. What did you do afterwards, give it back and demonstrate the best place to stick it in? Poor Derek.”
    “What makes you think he did it?”
    She stared. “Otherwise why did he run away?”
    “That might be just because he didn’t like it here.” How much should he tell her? “You remember what I told you about my conversation with Montague last night.”
    “Oh, that. I shouldn’t tell the police about that if I were you. They might think you were inventing. Let bad enough alone.”
    An hour or two later Applegate took her advice. He told a polite but critical Inspector with a large drooping ginger moustache that he had no idea when the knife had been taken out of his pocket. As far as he knew Winterbottom had nothing against Montague.
    The Inspector, whose name was Murray, pulled his moustache. “He might have had something against you, Mr Applegate, eh? You took the knife away from him. He showed no sign that he knew this Montague? Ah, well, the lad had a bad record. But what would he have been doing in Montague’s room now, eh, any idea of that? No? Well, we shall find out. Your room was opposite. You heard no sound, nothing that disturbed you?”
    “No.” That was pretty well the end of the interview. Applegate said nothing about Montague’s visit to him, nor about the letters that were burning a hole in his pocket.
    Little work was done during the day. Only four girls and two boys came to the Plastic Arts lesson, and although there were a few more for the Citizenship class their principal object was to extract information from Applegate.
    “Will they hang Derek when they catch him?” asked the squinting Arthur Hope-Hurry.
    “No. He’s too young. And, anyway, there would be a trial. That’s if they arrested him.”
    “They don’t hang you until you’re eighteen,” Maureen Gardner said. “I’m against capital punishment. And against imprisonment too.”
    “You shut up, Maureen. If you hadn’t pinched Derek’s knife it would never have happened.”
    “I don’t see why he didn’t kill you first,” Maureen Gardner said to Applegate. “He had a lust for blood. He once pinched my arm so hard it bled.”
    “That was for initiation into the order of Bramley Apples,” said another boy named Levett. “Only you funked it.”
    “Maureen has a point though,” said the brown-faced Deverell. “Why didn’t he attack you, sir? Do you think he mistook the rooms?”
    “We don’t know what did happen and there’s no point in guessing,” Applegate said shortly.
    “It’s interesting, though,” said Maureen Gardner. “It’s the most interesting thing since Janine walked down the corridor with no clothes on.”
    “She was tight,” another girl added.
    “Citizenship,” Applegate said rather hopelessly. “There is an ideal of