Page 67

She handed me a cup, but I didn’t take it. I was too busy staring at what remained of the parlour.

It was trashed. Every cushion had been ripped open, every piece of furniture dismantled, every curtain pulled down. This was nothing like the mess I’d made in the study yesterday – this was devastation. I stared in shock at the fine furnishings that I lovingly dusted every day, at the carpet that I brushed once a week to retain the weft and warp, now reduced to ruin.

‘I had the Ivys go over the place,’ Miss Decima explained. ‘I’m amazed you slept through it! I thought it best to err on the side of caution. You will be pleased to know that we found no Detectiphones whatsoever.’

‘Oh,’ I said quietly, gazing at the shattered remains of the antique armoire which I polished twice a week – Wednesdays and Sundays – with a special salve of walnuts and beeswax that I made myself.

‘Now! Listen up, ladies,’ Miss Decima announced to the room. ‘This is a moment of critical importance. We have barely twenty-four hours until the emergency meeting of Parliament, and all our lines of enquiry have led to naught.’ She raised a handful of documents. ‘Thus! We shall start at the very beginning, and shift our attentions to the murder of Sir William Crace. I have scoured his police file and discovered a number of intriguing irregularities which I believe may be worth investigating further. Perhaps one of them will provide us with the missing piece of the puzzle.’ She thrust out a sheet of paper. ‘Ivy Flatfoot! You will make your way to Hampstead, please, and tell me what you find at the address written here. And be quick about it. We have our work cut out for us, if we wish to exonerate our three suffragettes in time.’

And that was it. Something flared up in me, like a damp firework catching light from a stray spark. ‘Exonerate them?’ I cried.

Everyone turned. I could hardly speak for a moment.

‘Have you lost your mind?’ I said, my voice coming out hoarse. ‘I saw what was in that bedroom. Maps! Floorplans! A carpet bag packed with dynamite and hatpins! What more evidence do you need to see that those three women did it?’

I’d never lost my temper with her quite like this. Maybe it was the sight of the parlour that did it. Maybe it was the pain in my body and the throbbing in my head. Maybe it was those hatpins, packed in the bag for no reason other than to hurt as many people as possible. Maybe it was the knowledge that two innocent men now lay dead. But, whatever it was, I was absolutely – beg pardon – hopping mad, and there was no stopping me once I’d started.

‘You always accuse people of letting preconceptions cloud their judgement,’ I said, ‘but that’s exactly what you’ve done here, Miss Decima. You’ve been so keen for a big case that you … you’ve indulged yourself. All this guesswork about blood spatters and insisting that everything will be answered by this missing piece of the puzzle … What happened to science? What happened to logic and rational deduction? What happened to letting evidence speak for itself?’

I could see her eyes hardening from across the room. She didn’t like people arguing with her – least of all me – and the atmosphere was turning sour. The Ivys stayed right where they were, glancing nervously between us. Of course they stayed – they were being paid by the minute.

‘The answer’s right in front of you, clear as day,’ I said. ‘Those women were going to blow up the statue, and when Watts tried to stop them, they killed him for it! And you don’t want to accept it, Miss Decima, because that would mean having to accept that they did it all for a vote. For a vote!’ I was on a roll now. ‘How can you defend it? I can’t vote, but that doesn’t give me the right to go around building bombs! And, if I did, Miss Decima, you of all people would be the first to condemn me!’

‘The two are not interchangeable, Stephen,’ she replied thinly, ‘as convenient as it would be for you to treat them as such. I would advise you to hold your tongue on matters which you do not understand.’

‘What I don’t understand?!’ I pointed to my swollen purple eyes, the ugly bruises. ‘Look at what they did to me. Look at my face! If you’d been arrested, Miss Decima, this wouldn’t have happened. You’d have been treated with politeness and courtesy, and that’s got nothing to do with me being a man or you being a woman. That’s got to do with the fact that you own this apartment, and I work in it!’

Miss Decima laughed, but it wasn’t a true laugh. There was a bitterness to it.

‘Congratulations, Stephen. You have deduced that a rich woman has more power than a poor man. But you seem to be rather conveniently forgetting that I spent several decades trapped inside my family’s estate, as a prisoner of rich men who – you will be amazed to hear – I did not have power over.’ She folded her hands. ‘Tell me about Éimhear Ó Ceallaigh, force-fed by prison officers and paid half the wage of the men she worked alongside: did she have more power than you? Or Theodora Gussett, legally unable to divorce the man who routinely beat and humiliated her – what about her? Or Lavinia Welford, whose family wealth made not one solitary bit of difference when she was in a crowd of men who wished to see her reduced. A rich woman might win over a poor man, Stephen, so long as the circumstances are right. But a rich man will always win over a rich woman, and a poor woman will always lose to a poor man. That is the bind that every other person in this room lives with, except you.’ She gestured to the women around me. ‘So, please, spare me your thoughts on justice.’

I felt like my head was splitting apart. ‘It’s terrible, Miss Decima, what happened to those three women. It makes me sick to think about it. But you can’t use evil to justify committing more evil. You’re blinding yourself to wickedness to suit your own ends. You’re the most brilliant person I’ve ever known, but even you have blind spots!’

That riled her up, that did. ‘I do not have blind spots …’ she growled.

I listed them on my fingers. ‘You argue for the fun of it. You hate horses for no reason whatsoever. You hate the Swiss even more. You always suspect poor people before you suspect rich people. The rest of the time, you barely notice poor people exist!’ I had to keep going now. ‘What about Cath? You could afford the surety for her bail a thousand times over, but I’ll bet you haven’t even thought about her since she’s been arrested. For pity’s sake, you can’t even be bothered to learn the Ivys’ real names!’ I pointed to them in turn. ‘That’s Eunice! That’s Hettie! That’s Mabel! That’s Doreen! That’s …’ I paused. ‘Er …’

‘My name actually is Ivy,’ said Ivy Forgettable.

Miss Decima finally exploded, which is what always happened when someone pointed out something she didn’t like. ‘Of course I can’t remember their fucking names – I am trying to run a fucking detective agency! You cannot expect me to remember every single fucking name and every single fucking face of every single fucking person who walks into this fucking building and –’

She stopped mid-sentence, like a sudden pause in a volley of foul-mouthed cannon fire. Everyone braced, waiting for the smoke to clear and for her to start shouting again. But she didn’t.

‘Well, I never,’ she muttered. ‘The missing piece. There it is.’

She gazed dreamily into the middle distance. Then – very, very slowly – she removed her dentures.

‘Stephen?’

‘Yes, Miss Decima?’

‘Fetch me my shouting teeth.’

49

Thursday, 22 June, 8.44 a.m.

I knocked on the door. ‘Open up, Mr Benson. We need a word.’