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‘I’ve seen three dead pigeons on our road in the last few days,’ I carried on, undeterred. ‘You never normally see a dead pigeon, do you? You might see one squashed on the road or torn to bits by a cat, but never just lying there on the pavement, dead. That’s strange.’

‘It certainly is,’ said Miss Decima. ‘What is even more strange is that you’ve talked to me about Mrs Ripley and Flora and Clarence Gussett and three dead pigeons, but you have yet to tell me the secret that you successfully extracted from Peter.’

I winced. Miss Decima glared at me. ‘Stephen, you left this apartment seven hours ago. What the fuck were you doing in all that time?!’

I was absolutely stuffed. If Miss Decima worked out that I’d gone out to buy a hat, and then went to the pub with Temperance, and that I knew all about her secret investigation, I’d be in no end of trouble. I needed a distraction, and fast.

Luckily for me, at that exact moment there was a horrific, blood-curdling scream outside.

Miss Decima and I stared at each other. Then I spun on my heel and raced out of the apartment.

‘Take me with you, you twat!’ she bellowed.

I scrambled back, grabbed the bath chair and frantically wheeled her to the lift. By the time it reached the ground floor and I had pushed her outside, there was already a crowd gathering on the pavement.

It was chaos. A stretcher was being carried out of the house next door, covered with a blanket; four officers were trying to clear a path to a police ambulance. But something had gone wrong. The stretcher had been dropped and a woman at the front of the crowd, dressed as Ophelia, had fainted. The party-goers around the Hall had come to see what the commotion was about and Kensington Gore was now filled with people in gowns, costumes and masks.

I saw a face I recognized in all the carnage – Mr Benson, peering between the curtains of his basement window in the sunken area beside us. His face was like a ghost’s. He caught sight of me, pulled the curtains shut and vanished.

‘Get him away from here!’

The voice cut through the chaos like a siren. I looked back up. Chief Constable Cartwright was forcing his way out of his own front door, waving his arms.

‘For God’s sake, cover him up!’

There was a sudden gap in the crowd, and I could finally see what had happened. A body had slipped from beneath the blanket on the dropped stretcher and was sprawled on the cobbles.

It was Peter. He was dead, and he had not died easy either. His eyes were rolled back in his head. His teeth were clenched so hard his entire jaw had shifted to one side.

‘Get him out!’ Cartwright roared.

Miss Decima and I watched in silent shock as Peter – our main suspect, the man who held the secret to the entire mystery – was hoisted back on to the stretcher, lifted into the ambulance and then driven through a churning crowd of dukes and princes before disappearing into the shadows of the city.

40

Two days and twelve hours until the announcement of the emergency public safety measures in Parliament.

The Shakespeare Memorial Ball went ahead that night, despite the unpleasantness.

They could hardly cancel the party now. It had been postponed once already, because of the death of the last king; now, thanks to the coronation, royalty from all over the world were in attendance. The main road was jammed with sparkling carriages; inside, the domed auditorium was filled with four thousand guests from all levels of society, dressed as court ladies and Calibans, fairies and Amazons. They sipped champagne on a floor transformed into a grass lawn and shared gossip beneath a ceiling adorned with a ton of flowers. The world outside might as well have been a million miles away.

But in a stable-yard on the other side of the city, the final bomb was being loaded into place.

WEDNESDAY, 21 JUNE 1911

41

Wednesday, 21 June, 10.22 a.m.

Long nights, eh?

I’ve had plenty. Back when I was a kid – when I was still living in Bow, before Nan took me away – I couldn’t tell you how many nights I spent wandering the streets, looking for my mum and dad. They went on forever, those nights. Or the one I spent crouched in the corner of a public cell, remembering the look on Nan’s face when the police had arrested me … That was a bad one. The one last year where I almost got murdered twice wasn’t great either.

You get used to it, is what I’m trying to say. So staying up all night with Miss Decima after Peter died … I’m not saying it was easy. But it felt familiar, at least.

What made it strange was that Miss Decima barely said a word. She made me take her back to the apartment and then sent me out to find Ivy Closest. But, when I brought her back, she just wordlessly gave her a letter and sent her off again. A few hours later, another Ivy turned up – she got the exact same treatment. A letter, a nod, no words.

The whole night was like that: Ivy after Ivy appeared and they were then sent on their way, while Miss Decima sat gazing out of the window with her teeth on the desk beside her, working her gums and piecing together Lord only knows what in her head. I’d learnt when to hold my tongue with her, so I spent the night cleaning the apartment from top to bottom, trying to forget the look on Peter’s face as he lay dead in the gutter.