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My heart quickened. ‘Saturday morning. Down the road, opposite the Hall.’

Her face fell. ‘That can’t be. My Joe’s not been seen for months. He would’ve come found me, if he was back here. You sure it was my Joe? Did you see his teeth? Lovely teeth, my Joe had. Had them all his life.’

I blinked. ‘Not really.’

Maggie wasn’t listening to me any more. Her eyes were leaking. ‘People said he run off on me, but he wouldn’t never have done that – not my Joe. He’d’ve told me if he was going off someplace, and he always came back to me after.’ Her face darkened. ‘They took him, that’s what happened.’

I frowned. ‘They?’

She leant forwards. Even from here, her breath reeked of rubbing alcohol. ‘You fancy folk don’t know anything about that, do you? It’s a dark place out here, on the street. You see the best and worst in people. They come get you in the middle of the night, when everyone else is sleeping, and they’ll do whatever they want to you and dump you in the river after. My poor Joe. I should have been more careful. I left him sleeping in the park, dead drunk and snoring fit to burst …’ She suddenly grabbed my sleeve. ‘You’ll tell him, won’t you, if you see him again? You’ll tell him Maggie’s been looking for him?’

I felt awful, like I’d tricked her. It couldn’t have been the same man; nothing she said made sense. But I couldn’t hurt her any more than she’d already been hurt. ‘Of course. I’ll tell him right away.’

She almost cried. ‘Bless you, sir! You bring my Joe back home to me!’

I turned from the alley and left her, my head reeling as I retraced my footsteps and came back to the main road. After hours of searching, I still had no idea where my missing beggar was. Had he really been snatched off the streets, like Maggie had said? No one could be that wicked. But was that really so unbelievable, given everything else that I’d heard today?

‘STEPHEN!’

I froze. It’s incredible how far a voice can travel down a busy street. I gazed ahead, to where a small crowd of people were gathering outside our building. There was no telling how long Miss Decima had been shouting for me, but I could see that half her library was now scattered across the pavement. For a woman of eighty, she had a spectacular overarm.

‘GET BACK HERE, RIGHT NOW!’

28

Monday, 19 June, 4.56 p.m.

I marched upstairs, stormed into my bedroom, then made my way into the study, where Miss Decima was waiting for me. Before she could open her mouth to shout again, I handed her another silver bell.

‘You bought a spare,’ she said witheringly. ‘How predictable.’

I had a whole box of them in my room. ‘What do you want, Miss Decima?’

She was in a foul mood – a real blaster. ‘What I want, Stephen, is Theodora Gussett’s fucking pledge card! I sent Ivy Unreliable to Berkeley Square almost four hours ago, but there’s been nothing since. Nothing!’

She flung her walking stick at the wall, denting the wood panelling. I sighed. I was used to her tantrums by now. ‘Be patient, Miss Decima. Mrs Pankhurst won’t be able to get those cards easily without revealing where she is –’

‘Well, she could fucking well try!’ she snapped. ‘This is intolerable, absolutely intolerable. I am attempting to solve the mystery of the century, Stephen. How can I be expected to work under such conditions?’

I knew what she was like – she’d be bilious for the rest of the day if I didn’t find a way to distract her. ‘Perhaps you should do something to take your mind off the case, Miss Decima. I could read to you, if you’d like.’

She gave me a look that could have baked an apple.

‘Or something else,’ I added quickly. ‘You could do some paperwork, perhaps. Or work on one of your other cases.’

She opened her mouth to shout, then stopped herself. There it was again – the sense of a sudden thought passing beneath the surface of her face. ‘Hmm. As a matter of fact, that’s not a bad idea.’ She reached into a desk drawer and handed me a set of keys. ‘Head to my trunk room in the basement, please. Find the largest trunk and bring it back here.’

My heart sank. ‘What’s inside it?’

‘None of your fu—’

‘Yes, Miss Decima.’

I took the keys and left before she could retrieve her walking stick and use it to start denting the panelling of my head instead.

The basement of 89 Kensington Gore Mansions was plainer than the rest of the building. The stairs led down to a simple corridor: the staff entrance and trunk rooms lay at one end, and the staff bedrooms lay at the other. I never liked coming down here. It was all corners, dark and shadowed and cramped. I always felt like someone was going to jump out at me.

I turned left at the bottom of the stairs, heading for the trunk rooms, and stopped. One of the doors was swinging open. All the contents had been removed and stacked in the corridor outside it. I glanced at the label hanging off the nearest trunk: sure enough, it said LORD CONRAD STOCKINGHAM-WELT. Miss Decima’s nephew. Someone had taken all Miss Decima’s things out of her trunk room and piled them up against the wall.