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She nodded.

‘She died that year, in childbirth. Her words stayed with me, as all true things do. So I did just as she asked and set myself to using my powers of reason for the best possible ends. I would love nothing more than to smash windows in the face of injustice, Stephen. I would love to violently rail against a society which chooses to ignore the interests of half the population without justification. But I can’t. Because I am doing what Isabella would have asked me to do, were she still alive to do so.’

It was always strange, hearing Miss Decima talk about Isabella. It was the closest she ever came to humility. She knelt to nothing in life, but she knelt to the memory of the person that she had loved the most. I understood that, more than I understood anything.

‘I’ve been thinking about Nan a lot these last few days,’ I said. ‘About what she’d have made of all this. She would have hated the suffragettes. I mean, hated them. She’d have thought it was disgraceful, women behaving like that. She’d have said they were a load of posh women wasting everyone’s time. They don’t speak for me, she’d have said.’ I fussed at my trousers. ‘She was a paragon, Nan was. Hard-working and decent to a fault. But none of it mattered, really, in the end. She didn’t get much of a say in any of her life. My dad beat us and drank himself to oblivion, but he still had more of a voice than she ever did. The same goes for my mum. I don’t have much good to say about her, but I know that her life would have been different, if she hadn’t been stuck to a man like my dad.’ I cleared my throat. ‘What I’m trying to say, Miss Decima, is that it’s noble, what you’ve done. I think it would have made a difference to them both – Nan and Mum – if there had been women like you to speak for them. Posh or not.’

We were silent for a while, enjoying the moment. After a few days of murder, I figured we’d earnt it.

‘I’ll leave you to it, Miss Decima,’ I said, standing up. ‘Just bellow if you need anything.’

I made it to the door when another sound stopped me.

Ding-a-ling.

When I turned around, Miss Decima was holding up the tiny silver bell.

‘You will find, Stephen, that I have left a small sum of money in your bedroom,’ she said. ‘An advance on your next pay packet, plus a little extra. I think it only fitting, given how hard you have been working recently.’

If I’d been close to tears before, I was now in dire straits. ‘Thank you, Miss Decima.’

‘You are welcome, Stephen. Sweet dreams, if that is at all possible.’

30

Three days and fourteen hours until the announcement of the emergency public safety measures in Parliament.

Stephen passed out face down in his clothes for the second night in a row.

Alone in her study, Miss Decima turned to the trunk beside her and took a moment to steel herself. Then she removed a stack of letters and started reading through them, one by one.

None of the three chief suspects were sleeping either.

In his quarters at Number 88, Peter lay on his single bed and stared at the ceiling in silence, his face completely still.

On the other side of the Gore, Flora Gifford paused her viola practice to part the curtains. She glanced down at the statue, where she had seen the woman in black talking to Lavinia. The quad was empty now. Even so, she shuddered as she turned back, and closed her curtains a little more tightly.

In her office, Mrs Ripley stoked the fireplace until it burned high and bright. Then she stepped to the wall behind her desk – where the vase that Stephen had been sick into had stood earlier – and slid aside a section of wood panelling, revealing the door of a dark metal safe hidden behind it. In a few moments, she had unlocked it; a few moments more, and she had pulled out a handful of papers; then it was simply a matter of feeding them into the flames with a trembling hand, sheet by sheet, until there was nothing left.

And somewhere out there in the shadow city, the three fugitive women were drawing straws.

TUESDAY, 20 JUNE 1911

The Wireless World and Radio Review

31

Tuesday, 20 June, 5.03 a.m.

To say that I woke up the next day feeling better would be an understatement. I could have woken up in a pigsty with two broken legs, and I still would have felt better.

Early-morning sunshine was slanting across the bedsheets, golden with dust. I’d been that tired, I hadn’t closed the curtains the night before. I sat up groggily and gazed out of the window. You never got much light on this side of the apartment, which overlooked the back road, so I always made sure to enjoy it when it was here. Take the calm when it comes, Nan always said. It don’t stick around long, believe me.

Kensington Gore was still and quiet. There was the crime scene below me, unchanged, except that now there was just one officer on duty. The only sound was the clopping of a passing horse below; it was the milk-cart, driven by a weary-looking milkman. I frowned. I recognized him – was it his clothes? His moustache? Then he glanced up, and I saw his massive black eye, and I realized that I’d no doubt given it to him at the football match. I backed away from the window before he could see me, then washed my shirt in the sink and hung it out to dry. I’d sweated so much that it felt like I’d found it on a beach.

I made my way out of my bedroom an hour later with a mostly dry shirt and a new sense of determination. First, I was going to fix Miss Decima’s tea and egg before she had the chance to start shouting, and then I was going to head straight to Ponting’s. I hadn’t seen my hat since Saturday – for all I knew, somebody else had already bought it. I was calculating how quickly I could get there before the shop opened, when I realized that I could hear voices in the parlour.

I paused at the doors. I’d closed the blinds over the glass of the French doors before I went to bed last night, so I couldn’t peek inside. One of the voices belonged to Miss Decima; the second belonged to a woman, but I could tell straight off it wasn’t one of the Ivys. I was baffled – why was Miss Decima having visitors so early? How had she let them into the apartment by herself? And who were they?