‘God spare me from fools and amateurs,’ said Lesley under her breath, then louder. ‘What’s this?’

‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, and this time I felt it carry out to the audience. I got a ripple of vestigia back, not from the people but from the fabric of the auditorium. The theatre remembered Jack Ketch, executioner for Charles II, a man famed for being so unrepentantly crap at his job that he once published a pamphlet in which he blamed his victim, Lord Russell, for failing to stay still when he swung the axe. For a century afterwards, Ketch was a synonym for the hangman, the murderer and the Devil himself: if ever there was a name to conjure him with, then it would be Jack Ketch. Which explained his role in the Punch and Judy show, and why this was my best chance to get close enough to Lesley to use the syrette.

‘Thank you very much, Mr Ketch, but I am quite comfortable here,’ said Lesley.

I hadn’t bothered to learn the script by heart, but I knew enough to improvise. ‘But you must come out,’ I said. ‘Come out and be hanged.’

‘You would not be so cruel,’ said Lesley.

I know for a fact that there was supposed to be a load more banter here, but since I couldn’t remember the words I cut to the action. ‘Then I must fetch you,’ I said, and advanced up the stairs to the poop deck. It was hard to make myself look at the ruin of Lesley’s face, but I couldn’t risk any surprise moves. Her Punch face twisted with irritation, presumably because I was skipping lines, but she went on with the show – just as I’d been hoping she would. This was the part where Jack Ketch seizes Punch and drags him to the noose, at which point the wily wife-murderer tricks Jack Ketch into sticking his own head through the loop and thus hanging himself. No sir, they don’t make role models for children like that any more.

I readied the syrette.

Lesley cowered as I approached. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she squeaked. ‘I’ll never do so again.’

‘That much is certain,’ I said, but before I could inject her she whirled and thrust Nightingale’s cane in my face. The muscles in my back and shoulders locked and it was all I could do to keep my balance.

‘Do you know what this is?’ asked Lesley, waving the cane from side to side.

I tried to say ‘it’s a stick’, but my jaw muscles were locked along with everything else.