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Prologue

It was just before dawn on a summer’s weekend in 1911, and London was full of shadows.

The theatres were closed, the clubs were shut, and the bars had all called time. The last omnibus had parked, the last train had left, and the last fight had ended. The city was silent. Seven million people, and twenty thousand horses, were fast asleep.

But there was another London, one that came alive at night: a city of cabbies and barrow-boys and navvies and sewer-men who kept it running for those who slept. They drove water-carts, hosing the streets clean of manure and old newspapers; they unloaded the boats and stacked the warehouse wagons bound for early-morning markets; in Fleet Street, they filled the air with the thunder of printing presses and the smell of ink until dawn.

If you were to let your eyes adjust to the darkness, you’d see more than that. You’d see the sleeping homeless hunched in doorways, stretched along benches, huddled in public parks. Sometimes, too, you’d find them in the alleyways which ran beside the townhouses and the mansions, separated from the richest and the wealthiest by a single wall.

Before long, dawn will come, and the shadow city will vanish. The workers will head home, the all-night corner coffee stalls will close their shutters, and the homeless will creep from their hiding places to yawn in the morning sun and wash themselves in public fountains. In houses all across the city, cooks and cleaners and maids and footmen will rise from their beds and start stoking fires and polishing boots and beating dust mats, and a new day will finally begin.

But, for now, for just a moment longer, the shadow city held sway. A city which existed right alongside the other, and yet which seven million people barely knew existed.

That’s the thing with living in a city. You never really know who’s around you. In Bethnal Green, a jeweller slept directly above the shop room that was being burgled by his own brother. In Belsize Park, a vicar fitfully tossed and turned in his bed, unaware that his blackmailer was the sweet old lady who lived next door. In Bermondsey, a grandmother of twelve slept two doors down from the son she’d given up for adoption fifty years ago and had been looking for ever since.

And in a road in West London named Kensington Gore, a murder was being planned.

SATURDAY, 17 JUNE 1911

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Saturday, 17 June, 6.01 a.m.

People often say, ‘Stephen, what’s it like working for a famous detective?’ Or ‘Mr Pike, is it true that you’re the assistant to the legendary Miss Decima Stockingham?’ Or ‘Christ, you work for the mad old cow in Number 89c – what’s that like?’

But usually the first thing people want to ask me about is the Kensington Gore Murder. So I might as well save us both time and tell you about that now.

The day started just like it always did. My alarm clock went off. I got up and made my bed straight away because it doesn’t cost anything to be neat, does it; then I opened the curtains and let daylight into my quarters. Warm wood panelling, butter-soft carpet on the floor, my own electric lamp … I could have spent all morning looking at this room, reminding myself I wasn’t dreaming and that this was where I lived now: 89 Kensington Gore Mansions.

But I didn’t have time for that. It might have been early, but there’s a whole lot to do first thing when you’re a servant, especially when you’re the only servant and your employer is someone like Miss Decima. I fixed my buttons, polished my shoes, ironed my livery until it was crisp, picked a thread from the cuff that was fraying at the edge, and was finally ready to begin the day.

But there was one last thing I had to do before I started my duties. Something I did every morning. One of my habitudes, if you will.

There was a little silver frame on my windowsill. It wasn’t much: a faded old photograph of a bright-eyed lady in a hat, a little tatty and torn at one corner, but the frame was – if I say so myself – flipping spotless. That’s because I polished it every morning, with a special cloth and a little tin of cream which I’d bought out of my wages. I buffed the frame until it gleamed, then put it back on the windowsill so the lady in the picture could see all the comings and goings outside.

‘There you are, Nan,’ I said, giving the frame a final polish. ‘Best seat in the house.’

It was the very least I could do: Nan had always taken care of me, so now I took care of her. She would never have believed that, one day, we’d both end up here, living in one of the finest roads in the finest part of the city. Three years ago, I was waking up in the Borstal reformatory to damp sheets, a bucket of cold water, and the boy in the next bunk whispering that he’d had another dream about me, even though I’d paid him to stop telling me about them.

That was all long behind me now. I was Stephen Pike, footman to a lady of standing – a famous lady detective, no less – with the running of her household his sole responsibility.

It was an apartment, really, but there aren’t many apartments like the ones at 89 Kensington Gore Mansions. It had belonged to Miss Decima’s nephew, a viscount no less, and every last detail was elegant and refined: bejewelled, even. As I left my bedroom I swept past a marble washroom – my own washroom – and continued down a winding staircase of polished oak to a wide, carpeted corridor lined with rich cream brocade wallpaper. The front door was at one end, and the doors to Miss Decima’s study and bedroom were at the other. In between was a set of French glass double doors which led into the parlour.

If you ask me, ‘parlour’ doesn’t do it justice – it was flipping palatial. An ornate fireplace made of Carrara marble, and huge mirrors decorated with golden nymphs, furniture that was Queen Anne or Louis the Sixteenth or Eighteenth or something – I couldn’t remember the exact Louis – and tons of those little wooden tables that don’t do anything useful. The windows were huge, too, those proper long ones stretching up to a corniced ceiling, hung with thick green velvet drapes handmade in Venice. I loved opening those curtains. I’d stand holding one in each hand, feeling the great weight of them, then throw them apart with a big swoosh. I could have done that all day. Sometimes I did it twice, for fun.

It was a cracking view. We lived – that is to say, Miss Decima lived – opposite the splendour of Kensington Gardens. You couldn’t find a posher park if you tried. The early-morning riders were already out exercising their horses, and omnibuses and paperboys were starting to trickle along the pavements below. You could tell, with one look, that it was going to be a belter of a summer’s morning. Everything was as still and calm as a mountain lake. Sanctified, you might say. I took a moment to appreciate it.

‘STEPHEN!’

Things are never calm for long when you work for Miss Decima. That’s why you have to appreciate them.

‘EGG!’

I cursed. She was up already. I raced to the kitchen as fast as I could, scrambling for an apron while shoving a pan of water on to boil, grabbing tea leaves and butter and bread. I was the only servant, and had a whole apartment to manage by myself – coal boy and cook and footman and parlour maid all in one. It made absolutely no sense, but then lots of things about Miss Decima didn’t make any sense. When we moved to this mansion block last year, and she told me that I was going to be her cook, I nearly choked. I pointed out that I couldn’t cook, except for boiling an egg. I thought that would shut her up. I was wrong.

‘EGG!’

I ran to the front door – the newspaper was on the doormat, thank goodness – and raced back to the kitchen to frantically butter the bread, trying to work out what stage Miss Decima had reached in her tantrum. When she started hitting her desk with her walking stick, the eggs would be soft-boiled; by the time she started throwing books, they’d be hard-boiled and she’d refuse to eat them. I stepped into her study with a rattling breakfast tray just as she was taking aim with a volume of Middlemarch.