I stood to one side of the door and pushed it open with my foot before gingerly peering around the jamb to see who was there. It was Lesley, waiting for me on the chaise longue holding Nightingale’s cane across her knees and staring into space. She glanced over as I slipped in.

‘You killed me,’ she said.

‘Can’t you just go back to wherever it was you came from?’

‘Not without my friend,’ she said. ‘Not without Mr Punch. You’ve murdered me.’

I slumped down in the easy chair. ‘You’ve been dead for two hundred years, Henry,’ I said. ‘I’m fairly certain you can’t murder someone who’s already dead.’ If you could, I thought, the Met would have a form for it.

‘I beg to differ,’ said Lesley. ‘Though it must be said that I have proved a failure on both sides of the veil.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You had me fooled.’

Lesley turned and looked at me. ‘I did, didn’t I,’ she said.

I could see the thin pale lines of stretch marks around the bridge of Lesley’s nose, the fine tracery of broken blood vessels that started around her mouth and climbed like a winter vine to her cheeks. Even the way she spoke was different, the words slurred by broken teeth and Henry Pyke’s need to keep the mouth closed to hide the damage. I had to suppress the anger that seemed to boil up through my chest because this was a hostage situation, and the first rule of the hostage negotiator is never get emotionally involved. Or perhaps it was ‘don’t kill the kidnapper until the hostages are released’ – it was bound to be one or the other.

‘Looking back,’ I said, ‘it seems the more remarkable to me that you never slipped up once.’

‘You never suspected?’ asked Lesley, happily.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You were utterly convincing.’

‘A female role is always a challenge,’ said Lesley. ‘And a modern woman doubly so.’

‘It’s too bad she has to die,’ I said.

‘I want you to know that nobody was more surprised than I to find myself occupying this vessel,’ said Lesley. ‘I blame it on the Italian, Piccini, a passionate race. They have to incorporate lust into all their endeavours – even their religious works.’

I nodded and looked interested. Despite being plugged in, the TV and DVD standby lights were dark. Lesley had been sitting there long enough to drain all my electronics, and if they were gone then surely Lesley’s brain was going to be next. I had to get the last remains of Henry Pyke out of her head.

‘That’s how it is with a play,’ said Lesley. ‘The scenes and acts being so much more ordered than in the humdrum world. Unless one takes care, one can be swept away by the genius of the character. Thus Pulcinella made fools of us both.’