Nancy Nettleton was not usually of a nervous disposition. You did not grow up, the only girl your age in a mining village, without learning to overcome nerves. Even when she was a girl Nancy had given short shrift to the boys who harangued her. She could skim stones and climb trees like the best of them. But running rings around a few miners’ sons was one thing. Waiting here in a back corridor of the Buckingham Hotel, moments away from meeting the woman who would be her mentor and supervisor for the next twelve months, was quite another.

One of the hotel pages had brought her here. Along the way, he hadn’t stopped nattering on in his lilting Irish brogue – and Nancy had barely been able to make out one word in ten. Now she waited in a hall lined with wainscot panelling, outside a door that read HOUSEKEEPING. Occasionally, she could hear footsteps echoing along the halls around her. One of the concierges strode past the apex of the corridor, peered down towards her, and then strode on, his heels clicking as he went.

Time seemed to have slowed to a halt. Her stomach grumbled and, with relief, she remembered the sandwich and Eccles cake she had wrapped in paper at the bottom of her clutch bag. She had been keeping them for the train – but perhaps it would settle her nerves, if only a little, to take a nibble from them now . . .

She was taking her first bite, her body grateful for the buttery, sugary goodness, when she heard footsteps again. A tall, thin reed of a man was marching purposefully towards her, his grey plaid suit rustling. He had a grave of a face: dark eyes set deep in their sockets, high, pronounced cheekbones and an angular jaw. His eyes, mean and serpentine, narrowed as he approached.

‘Young lady, have you no decorum?’

‘I’m . . . sorry,’ Nancy stuttered. A particularly truculent currant had worked its way into her teeth, gluing them together.

‘You might not see guests around you now, madam, but this is not a prohibited area. What if one of our patrons was to see you, flakes of pastry around your face and . . . Really, this is most unsatisfactory – unsatisfactory in the extreme! You’re—’

A voice echoed along the hallway, cutting him off. ‘I’ll take it from here, Mr Simenon.’

The man in grey spun on his heel, revealing a lady of not insignificant size bustling along the hall. As she approached, Nancy saw a doughy face framed in white curls. The lady approaching was wearing a house dress of navy blue, with its sleeves rolled up to reveal brawny forearms.

‘Mr Simenon,’ the newcomer called out, ‘to what do we owe the pleasure?’

‘This young lady is in breach of staff regulations—’