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‘I – I just don’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘Lavinia’s the sunniest sort there is. There’s no way that she could have done it. Do you know, last year I was practising for the exams, absolute beast of a scale, and one of my fingers started bleeding. And if Lavinia didn’t faint dead away at the sight of it!’ She shook her head. ‘She couldn’t kill someone, not like that. And a police officer! I tell you, someone took that knife from her room and some of that ribbon, too, and now they’re trying to place the blame on poor, sweet Lavinia!’

It sounded like a stretch, if I’m honest. All the evidence pointed to Lavinia murdering Watts with her own knife. But then, if Miss Decima was to be believed, that was the whole point of this murder: something complicated disguised as something simple. I glanced back at the cello case. ‘Is there a reason why she had so much ribbon?’

Flora snorted. ‘Please! It’s suffragette ribbon. Lavinia was mad about the suffragettes! She became an awful bore about it, if I’m honest. Spent months trying recruit the other girls, handing out ribbons to anyone who’d take them. The premade ones cost a fortune, so Lavinia bought a bulk load in different colours to save money. She even tried to recruit me a few times, but Uncle Egg would have had a fit if he’d found out I was lobbing bricks for Pankhurst. It’s only thanks to his money that I’m here in the first place!’

I squeezed the bridge of my nose. I was struggling to keep a clear head, and it didn’t help that she kept mentioning an uncle named Egg.

‘She should have been more careful,’ said Flora sadly. ‘After all, she didn’t want her parents to know what she was doing, and that’s to say nothing of Mrs Ripley.’ She shuddered. ‘That woman’s an absolute dragon. Jack the Ripley, she’s called round here. She made it very clear what would happen to any girls who so much as thought of attending that march on Saturday! But of course Lavinia didn’t give a hoot. Nothing was going to stop her from taking part.’

‘Did you see when she left on Saturday?’

Flora shook her head. ‘I was laid out with a most dismal cold, stayed in my room all day. Lavinia popped her head in and said cheerio, but that was it. I suppose it would have been around six.’

I thought about what I’d seen from the smoking gallery. Three women, working closely together. ‘Did she mention meeting anyone?’

Flora shook her head. ‘No, but I’m sure she would have done. She has tons of friends in the suffragettes.’

‘Do you know any of their names?’

Flora’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes! I met one of them once – lovely woman, a dear old thing. She was much older, in her sixties, I’d say. They spent lots of time together – Lavinia used to go to tea with her once a week. Oh, what was her name … Gussett! That was it. Theodora Gussett.’

The older woman at the statue – I had a name. This more than made up for all my gaffes so far. ‘How long had they known each other?’

Flora was quiet for a moment. ‘Six months or so. They met at a demonstration last year. In November.’

Something about the change in her voice – in her face, too – told me that she was holding something back. ‘Did something happen?’

Flora shifted position on her chair. She was clearly uncomfortable. ‘Yes. Lavinia told me a little about it afterwards but never very much. I found out more from the papers, if I’m honest. They called it Black Friday. Did you hear of it?’

I shook my head. Flora’s face fell as she realized that she was going to have to explain. She carried on, but her voice had lost its bounce now. It came out thin as paper.

‘It was supposed to be a normal protest. Placards outside Parliament, that kind of thing. Only it went wrong. Lavinia came back here in the most dire state, her face all bruised and her clothes filthy, in floods of tears. We had to sneak her past the porter so Ripley didn’t find out. She said that the policemen were absolute brutes – laying into the women and knocking them to the ground, throwing them into the crowds where there were all these men shouting the most despicable things, and …’

She stopped talking for a second. Her face burned bright red.

‘Grabbing them,’ she said quickly. ‘The police, too. She said it went on like that for hours. Hours and hours.’ She picked at her dress. ‘I heard from someone afterwards that they saw women being dragged into alleyways.’

I felt sick. I didn’t want to hear another word of it, truth be told.

‘Lavinia was never quite the same afterwards,’ she said, tugging at her knuckles. ‘But she never talked about it. Why would you? I wouldn’t dream of talking about a thing like that, if it happened to me. I wouldn’t tell a single soul.’ She wiped her lip. ‘It was Theodora who brought her back here. She was in a state, too – hadn’t come out of it much better – but she was terribly, terribly kind to Lavinia. They spent a lot of time together after that. I suppose dreadful things have a way of doing that to people, don’t they?’

I felt badly for making Flora talk about it – she looked miserable. It was time to change the subject. ‘Were there any other suffragettes that she spent time with?’

Something clouded Flora’s face, just for a moment.

‘Yes. There was another. Lavinia mentioned her name a few times but I can’t for the life of me remember it – some sort of Irish thing.’ She shifted in her chair. ‘I think I even saw her once, a few weeks ago. Lavinia said she was going to meet a friend and I remember it so clearly, because … well, because Lavinia seemed so afraid. And I remember thinking, what sort of friend are they likely to be, then? I know I’m not afraid of any of my friends. I glanced out of the window after she left, in case it was a man and she’d got herself into trouble or something, and I saw her talking to a woman beside the statue out in the quad. I couldn’t make out her face – she was too far away – but it wasn’t Theodora, that was obvious. She was my age, maybe a little older. Dressed all in black.’

I felt my blood chill. The veiled suffragette – she’d been all in black, too. ‘Did you ever see her again?’

Flora’s eyes widened. ‘No, I didn’t, but that’s the strangest part about this whole thing!’

She’d lost me. ‘What is?’

Flora leant forwards, excited all over again. ‘The last few weeks, the girls have been talking about a woman they keep seeing on the Gore. A woman in black, they say, just standing on the street. Someone said that she was there again last night, under one of the street lamps. And I thought – that couldn’t be her, could it? The woman that Lavinia met by the statue?’

I was starting to get a very funny feeling about this. In fact, I was starting to have a lot of funny feelings in an awful lot of places. My head was swimming and my face was getting sweaty. I had to get back downstairs and tell Miss Decima everything I’d learnt, and then I needed to get back home very, very quickly before –

‘Oi!’