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‘You wanna be more careful, love.’

I glanced up, heart racing. There was a homeless woman in rags sitting by the road, cleaning her feet with a handful of old newspaper.

‘You need to look where you’re going,’ she said. ‘It’s dangerous out here.’

I didn’t reply. Because I’d just realized something that I’d managed to completely forget about, in the chaos of the last twenty-four hours.

The beggar. The one that I’d spoken to yesterday. The one who’d seen a veiled suffragette, dressed in black, walking into our street that morning.

I ran like the clappers all the way back to Kensington Gore. I wasn’t worried about being seen now. I had to find that beggar right away. There were a hundred reasons why a veiled woman might have headed into our road and not come out again, but now one was screaming to be proved or disproved: that she’d hidden in the shadows in order to kill Watts and fled afterwards. I’d paid the beggar a penny to follow her if he saw her again. If he wanted more money, he’d have stuck around, and I knew right where to find him.

But when I reached the park railings on the main road, my heart sank. The spot where I’d last seen the beggar was empty. I searched the pavement, as if I might find a helpful message scribbled there in chalk – SOLVED MURDER, FIND ME UNDER ALBERT BRIDGE, BEST WISHES XXX – but of course there was nothing. Maybe he’d followed the veiled suffragette, like I asked; maybe the police had moved him on. Maybe he’d just run off with my penny.

Or …

I glanced at the park railings. I hoisted myself up and peered over the other side. There, nestled in the bushes, was an old tartan blanket.

And on the ground beside it: a penny.

I stared at that penny for a good long while. A blanket, you might hide for safekeeping so you could come back to it later. But no one leaves a penny lying around. The beggar hadn’t put it there for safekeeping. He’d dumped it in a panic. It was the kind of thing you did just before you ran for your life.

Or the kind of thing that someone else did with your belongings, right before they dragged you away.

16

Sunday, 18 June, 2.14 p.m.

‘Anything interesting?’

The voice came from close behind and I slid off the railings in surprise. ‘No!’

The man behind me jumped back, looking even more startled than I did. ‘Christ! Calm down, mate. You can climb railings if you want to, it’s a free country.’

It took a moment for my heart to steady, and to work out who was talking to me. It was Peter – Chief Constable Cartwright’s footman. The one who’d spoken up for me last night and cleared my name. He seemed to recognize me at the same time that I recognized him. ‘Hey – it’s you! The one they were trying to pin it on yesterday!’

I nodded shakily. ‘Y-yeah. Thanks for that. If you hadn’t been there …’

His face darkened. ‘Disgusting, that was – accusing a working man, with no evidence to speak of, no opportunity for his own defence. We have to support one another, right?’ He held out a hand. ‘Peter.’

‘Stephen,’ I said, shaking it.

‘Glad to have you on the Gore, Stephen!’ he said, sounding genuinely pleased. ‘Not many of us East End lads around here. You been here long?’

‘Er … a year, give or take.’ I considered adding that my last job had been on a tidal island in Cornwall where four people had died, and that I’d been in Borstal for two years before that, but I decided against it. It was the first friendly conversation I’d had with someone who wasn’t Miss Decima in weeks.

‘Well! We’d better make up for lost time,’ he said. ‘What are you up to tonight?’

I felt my heart lift. I’d made a friend. A mate, even. We could play snooker – we could banter. ‘It’s my evening off –’

‘Great! In that case I’ll get right to the point, Stephen. Are you aware of the national census they conducted in April?’

It wasn’t the banter I’d been expecting. ‘Er …’

‘Course you are,’ said Peter. ‘Every British citizen was recorded with their name, address and occupation. And do you know what those results said, Stephen? They said that there are one point two seven million domestic servants working in this country. That’s almost three per cent of the population. And how many unions do we have representing the rights and interests of those one point two seven million workers?’

I had a sudden feeling that I was being drawn into something. ‘Er …’

‘None!’ he said, his voice hardening. ‘Not one. The miners have got one, the signalmen have got one, even the bleeding boilermakers have one, but not the men and women who keep the houses of this country running for the benefit of the few. If we all stopped working at the same time, what do you think would happen? London would be brought to its knees! The number of servants they have working in some of these houses … I saw twenty-seven maids going into one of those flats the other day!’