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Suddenly, I heard footsteps above me. Voices, too, and one of those voices belonged to none other than Chief Constable Cartwright.

‘… complete and utter disaster …’

I leapt to my feet. Cartwright was coming down to the basement, followed by two more sets of footsteps. The layout down here was identical to Number 89’s: a corridor with staff bedrooms at one end and trunk rooms at the other. Which meant I had mere seconds before Cartwright reached the bottom of the stairs and saw me.

There was only one way out for me now: the staff entrance. The one that led out on to the main road. The one beside the trunk rooms, at the other end of the corridor, on the other side of the staircase. I bolted past and made it just in time, thinking, finally some good luck, when I turned the handle to the staff entrance door and discovered it was locked.

‘Biscuits,’ I repeated.

I was absolutely cracking myself now. In less than two seconds, Cartwright would reach the bottom of the staircase and see me. I had to hide. I leapt to the door of the nearest trunk room – locked – then the next one – locked, too, oh God – then I reached for the handle of the trunk room in the corner, opened it and flung myself inside the moment Cartwright reached the bottom of the stairs.

I stood in the darkness, panting for breath. I had made it just in time. Cartwright hadn’t seen me: he was leading two people to Peter’s bedroom on the other side of the basement, growling like an old angry dog. I was safe in here, for the time being, at least.

I glanced around me. The trunk room was empty, which was probably why it wasn’t locked. Four concrete walls and a bulb. It was almost exactly like Miss Decima’s in the building next door, only the layout was slightly different: the door was off-centre, for a start, because this room was in the corner, rather than in the middle of the corridor.

I paused, looking at it all. There was something itching at the back of my brain, demanding that I notice it …

‘So this is where you found the body?’ asked a voice from the other end of the basement. ‘In his bedroom?’

‘No sign of a break-in?’ asked another.

I felt a cold blade of panic. I recognized the two voices – they were the officers who’d interrogated me on Saturday evening.

‘I didn’t even realize anything was wrong,’ I heard Cartwright reply. ‘I got home from the security briefing, and the maid said he hadn’t been seen all day and wasn’t answering his door. Had to get the porter to open it with a set of special keys – it was locked from the inside, you see. When we finally did, there he was, lying on his bed and looking like something had dragged him up from the seventh layer of hell.’

My ears pricked up – Peter’s bedroom had been locked from the inside. If that was true, there was no way that anyone could have walked into his room and killed him. They would have had to poison him earlier, before he locked himself inside. And Cartwright had been out all day.

I heard them unlock and open Peter’s bedroom door. ‘There,’ said Cartwright. ‘On the desk – that box of letters. Go through them all. Find any reference you can to someone named Eva.’

It took me a moment to place the name. Then I remembered where I had heard it. Peter had said it to me in the bleary light of the pub. That’s what I always said to Eva, not that she ever listened to anything I said.

‘Hang on,’ said one of the officers suddenly. ‘What’s that on the floor?’

‘Looks like a lock-pick,’ said the other officer. ‘Someone’s tried to break in, sir.’

I stood, frozen, trying to silence the blood roaring in my head like a hurricane. Any second now, Cartwright was going to demand a search of the premises. They would start with the basement; it was only a moment of time before the door to this room was flung open …

But instead I heard the clang of a lock-pick being flung against a wall, hard.

‘Jesus Christ!’ I heard Cartwright shout. ‘This just gets worse and worse! I’ve already had the Chief Commissioner screaming at me for two days straight, demanding to know why I haven’t found those three women, what extra security to put in place for the coronation, and then the news about that maid, and then my own manservant getting killed in my own house … Now someone’s been breaking into his room? Jesus!’

I tried to focus my thoughts. News about that maid – did that mean the police already knew about the third suffragette?

‘We don’t have time for this,’ he snapped. ‘Get through those letters, now. Search the whole lot. Eva O’Kelly – I want any mention of her name, anything she’s written. Eva spelt É-I-M-H-E-A-R. And O’Kelly, Ó C-E-A-L-L-A-I-G-H. The Irish way.’

It was like three lightning bolts going off in my head at once.

‘She used to work here,’ Cartwright explained. ‘Only she told me her name was Eva Kelly. I’d never have hired her if I’d known it was Éimhear Ó Ceallaigh. Little bitch covered up her accent and made up a load of fake household references, and all the while it turns out she’s got two brothers in the Irish Republican Brotherhood.’

I stood in the darkness, letting his words wash over me.

‘I sacked her last year and thought that was the end of it,’ he carried on, heading back up the stairs. ‘Now, good God, I’ve been sent an anonymous letter saying that she’s one of those three fugitive suffragettes. Hiding out in some lodging house in Bethnal Green. Myring’s Place – I’ve got officers heading there now. Both of you come with me and …’

His voice faded into silence. I stood alone in the empty trunk room, my hands and forehead pressed to the wood of the door.

But I wasn’t there, not really. I was back on the steps of the Albert Memorial, as Peter leant close and whispered his secret to me. The secret that he had tried to take back – the secret that he had died for.

The secret that I could now remember, word for word.