“Me, sir?”

“Yes, sir. You, sir,” Mr Tulley snapped. “Get yourself to the Headmaster’s study quam celerrime. Do you remember enough of your Latin to know what that means?”

“It means “straight away”, sir.”

“Then move yourself.”

Sherlock cast a glance at the school gate. “But sir — I’m waiting for my father to pick me up.”

“I’m sure he won’t leave without you, boy.”

Sherlock made one last, defiant attempt. “My luggage...”

Mr Tulley glanced disparagingly at Sherlock’s battered wooden trunk — a hand-me-down from his father’s military travels, stained with old dirt and scuffed by the passing years. “I can’t see anyone wanting to steal it,” he said, “except perhaps for its historical value. I’ll get a prefect to watch it for you. Now cut along.”

Reluctantly, Sherlock abandoned his belongings — the spare shirts and underclothes, the books of poetry and the notebooks in which he had taken to jotting down ideas, thoughts, speculations and the occasional tune that came into his head — and walked off towards the columned portico at the front of the school building, pushing through the crowd of pupils, parents and siblings while still keeping an eye on the gateway, where a scrum of horses and carriages were all trying to get in and out of the narrow gate at the same time.

The main entrance hall was lined with oak panelling and encircled by marble busts of previous headmasters and patrons, each on its own separate plinth. Shafts of sunlight crossed diagonally from the high windows to the black and white tiled floor, picked out by swirling motes of chalk dust. It smelt of the carbolic that the maids used to clean the tiles every morning. The press of bodies in the hall made it likely that at least one of the busts would be toppled over before long. Some of them already had large cracks marring their pure marble, suggesting that every term saw at least one of them smashed on the floor and subsequently repaired.