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The doorbell rang. I left Miss Decima to her brooding and opened the door, starting as I saw what was waiting for me. It was an enormous bunch of roses, on legs.

‘Another bouquet for Miss Decima!’ came the delivery boy’s muffled voice from behind the stems. A hand emerged, clutching a bunch of stained letters. ‘These, too. Hurry up, these thorns are killing me.’

I took the flowers and the letters. We’d been receiving a bagload of them everyday, all arriving directly to our door now that Mr Benson had been sacked. Miss Decima’s reputation had gone through the roof after the big case. I was about to slam the door on the delivery boy when I had an idea. ‘Did you pass a man on the stairs? Fifties, grey hair, muttering with rage?’

He shrugged enigmatically. ‘I see lots of things, me.’

At first I thought he was winking at me, but it just turned out that one of his eyes was slightly infected. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Rodney.’

I dug into my pocket and handed over a coin. It was high time I got my own Ivys. ‘Rodney – I want you to follow that man. Follow him for the rest of the day, then come back here this evening and tell me what he got up to. Do that, and there’ll be another penny in it for you.’

Rodney took the coin. ‘Can I just make something up?’

I frowned. ‘No.’

‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Guess you wouldn’t know if I did, though.’

‘Yes, I would,’ I insisted.

‘How?’

‘I’d … find out.’

‘If you could find out by yourself, you probably wouldn’t need to give me a penny to –’

I slammed the door on Rodney with the distinct feeling that I’d just lost another penny. Even so, it felt good to be the boss of something; I was starting to understand why Miss Decima liked it so much. ‘More letters for you, Miss Decima. And another bouquet.’

She groaned as I carried them through. ‘Goodness. Green, white and purple – how imaginative.’ She took the letters and waved a hand witheringly. ‘Might as well put them with the others.’

That was easier said than done – you could barely move without knocking over a bouquet sent by grateful suffragettes all over the world. They did a splendid job of covering up the damage to the apartment. I found space for the latest bouquet in the vase that had arrived yesterday, from a tearfully grateful Theodora Gussett.

‘This one’s from Mrs Pankhurst,’ I said, reading the card that came with the bouquet. Dearest Miss Stockingham, I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for our cause, for our followers and for myself personally. The WSPU is forever in your debt. Please accept this as a small gesture of the fidelity that shall evermore exist between us, Mrs Pankhurst. I pulled the little card from inside the envelope. ‘She’s given you a membership card, Miss Decima!’

She snatched it off me with indignation. ‘The nerve of the woman! She has a very high opinion of herself indeed, if she imagines allegiance to herself is a reward. There’s only one place for this, and that’s the bin!’

I smiled. That’s the thing about teaching someone how to notice details. It meant I saw her slip the WSPU pledge card into her purse when she thought I wasn’t looking, rather than into the bin. There was a big difference, I knew, between what Miss Decima said and what she did. ‘How about the letters? Are they all from suffragettes?’

‘Mostly, yes,’ she sighed, shuffling through them. ‘Plus a number of enquiries for my services, and several more of the usual death threats. And this one’s for you.’

I was shocked. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d had a letter. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, unless I’ve changed my name to Mr Stephen Pike and started a correspondence with overly perfumed young ladies.’

She was right – the letter smelt dead good. I read it, trying my hardest not to blush. ‘It’s from Flora, Miss Decima. Thanking us for all our help with Lavinia and inviting us to her viola recital next week.’

‘How charming of her to send it to you, not me,’ said Miss Decima drily. ‘You might as well go by yourself, Stephen, a night spent watching some ham-fisted tarts butcher Brahms sounds like my idea of hell. Perhaps by then your ears will have returned to a normal colour and you’ll be able hear it properly. Now! Go lay out one of my best gowns, please. We have a lot to do today.’

I made a mental note to cut my ears off later, before I realized what she’d just said. ‘It’s my day off, Miss Decima.’

She glanced at me. ‘What do you mean?’

‘For my birthday,’ I said. ‘Remember? I asked to have a half-day off last year for my twentieth. And you said no, because you needed me to hide in the bushes in Regent’s Park for eighteen straight hours to tail that pervert butler. But you gave me your assurances that this year you’d let me have a full day as recompense.’

‘I have no memory of –’

‘Which is why I had the foresight to make you put it in writing,’ I said, handing over the document, which had also been countersigned by two witnesses.