‘The heat. My doctors recommend it. I’m afraid I’m rather thin-skinned, am I not, Jenny?’ I could see her lovely eyes swivel in my direction. I allowed myself a little smile in return.

‘Why have you come to see us?’ she asked.

Mr Thursday cleared his throat. ‘I was told you undertake certain … assignments.’

‘We like to help folks out, yeah,’ I said. ‘When they get into bother.’

‘People say you are the last court of appeal,’ said Thursday.

Madam smiled. ‘People flatter.’

‘My brother has lately passed on. He was Edmund Thursday, the newspaper man?’

Madam turned swiftly to the point. ‘I read of your brother’s death, Mr Thursday. In Yorkshire, was it not? Another victim of the “Crimson Horror”?’

‘So it is claimed,’ nodded our visitor. ‘He was working on a story about this Sweetville place.’

I frowned. I’d heard of it. ‘They make matches, don’t they?’

‘Apparently.’ Now it was Thursday’s turn to frown. Perhaps he wasn’t expecting to make conversation with the maid. ‘An ideal community for happy, prosperous workers.’ His face twisted a little in contempt.

‘You don’t think so?’ I said.

‘From what Edmund intimated, despite the Utopian claims of its founder, all is not quite as it seems.’

We was all aware, of course, of the Bryant and May scandal of ’88 and what fate lay in store for many a poor worker in the match factories.

‘He had been working there – with a young lady – under an assumed identity.’

Madam cocked her head. ‘And how do you think your brother met his death, Mr Thursday?’

He put down his lemonade glass and wiped his moustaches with a gloved hand. ‘Tell me, Madam, do you know what an Optogram is?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘A picture on a corpse’s eye. Very interested in photography, ain’t we, Ma’am?’

The Mistress laughed. ‘Very.’ She had a lovely laugh, like Christmas bells. ‘It’s a silly superstition, sir. The belief that the eye can retain an image of the last thing it sees.’

At this, Thursday reached into his frock coat and pulled out a large square of card. I could see at once that it was photographic paper. Looking over Madam’s shoulder, I realised it was the impression of an eye, seen very close to and that – impossibly – there was an image within it.

Some shadowy figure, arm outstretched.

Without thinking, Madam threw up her veil. ‘Good grief!’

Then she looked from the photograph to Mr Thursday who was gawping at her exposed features like a kiddie at a freak show.

Now I happen to think that my Mistress is a beauty, a rare and wonderful person with a surpassingly delightful phiz – but it has to be said that her green skin and pointed teeth are, perhaps an acquired taste.

Mr Thursday certainly seemed to think so as he pitched forward in a dead faint.

Madam Vastra sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Apes.’