‘Your concerns are noted, Nancy. But what happens next is none of your concern. I asked you here this afternoon to make this very clear. What happened to Miss Edgerton was an accident, pure and simple. She fell. She caught a fever. She is now indisposed. Only a handful of souls know otherwise, and were it to become common knowledge in this hotel, why, I believe I would know where to look. Don’t you?’

Nancy stood, shivering. You silly girl, you shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. ‘Yes, sir,’ she whispered.

‘You will receive an extra week’s wages this month in return for good deeds rendered.’

As she left, Nancy stopped in the doorway. ‘I didn’t do it for reward, sir.’

‘Indeed not. But moments like this deserve recognition, do they not?’

*

After Nancy was gone, Maynard Charles gave a muted roar of fury, slamming his closed fist into his desk. ‘She’s right, of course,’ he said to Mr Simenon – who stepped again out of the shadows in the corner of the office. ‘Vivienne will do it over and again, until one day she isn’t fortunate enough to be found by some passing chambermaid. And then where are we? At her stepfather’s mercy, and all of us banished from the Buckingham. New Year is coming. Christmas is already here. That chambermaid speaks more sense than the rest of us combined.’

‘Mr Charles, don’t blame yourself. I—’

‘I’m not blaming myself,’ Maynard Charles snapped. ‘I’m blaming whoever’s helping her. A girl like Vivienne doesn’t have the wherewithal to do this herself. Somebody is supplying her. Someone’s trading for her in my hotel.’

Mr Simenon looked guiltily to the ground. ‘Mr Charles, surely nobody here would dare do such a thing? Lord Edgerton is the head of our board—’

‘When I find them, I’ll string them up. This hotel is my life’s work. I won’t have it ruined by one foolish girl and her weaknesses. The girl is to receive no more packages, Mr Simenon, not without you or I having intercepted them first. Find him for me, Mr Simenon. Whoever is corrupting her, whoever is helping her kill herself – and all for a few measly pounds – find them and bring them to me. I don’t care how Vivienne Edgerton wants to ruin her life – but she won’t do it at the cost of the rest of us. She won’t bring my Buckingham down.’

Mr Simenon let Maynard Charles’s words wash over him. Though Maynard Charles did not see it, his ordinarily pallid cheeks were suddenly flushed full of blood. Sweat beaded on his brow as he tried desperately to work through all the permutations of what might happen were Vivienne Edgerton to tell anyone where she really got her secret packages from. He worked a finger under his collar, trying hard not to betray his guilt.

Then, with a sinking feeling, he said, ‘I’ll find them, Mr Charles. Whoever’s doing this, we’ll stop it now . . . before it’s the ruin of us all.’