‘I’m not. Not now. I feel unnatural. I feel the whole pregnancy was a dream and my marriage as well. I sometimes wake up and think I’m back in Belgrave Square with you. Then I realize I’m not and I cry.’

‘I’m sure we are both suffering from shock.’

‘Maybe. I had another visitor this morning. Bernie King. He works for the captain. He brought me some nice trashy books to read.’ Daisy giggled. ‘Lady Polly took one away with her.’

‘And what is this Bernie King like?’

‘Ever so amusing. He comes from Whitechapel, same as me. Oh, Rose, what am I to do? I want a divorce.’

Rose looked alarmed. ‘Daisy, once you are out of here and established, you will feel better. Besides, we are moving to the country soon and Mama has already said that you and Becket can come with us so that you may have some fresh air. So we will be together like the old times.’

‘Well, that’s at least something,’ sighed Daisy. ‘But the old times will never come back now.’

Harry and Kerridge had been told that Thomson was now conscious and they went to the prison hospital, where she was chained to the bed.

Her eyes glittered with fury as she looked at them. ‘How could you behave so wickedly?’ asked Kerridge.

‘What would you know about it?’ she spat out. ‘You, the bourgeois and you, the slumming aristocrat, playing at being a detective. Do you know what it’s like to be brought up in poverty? Then have to work one’s way up through the ranks of servants to become a lady’s maid? Always having to smile and crawl and watch people stuffing themselves with mountains of food while there are people starving in this country? Pah. Jeffrey was an easy tool. He kept calling for money and she would only give him a little at a time. He grew discontented. Then this Dolores said she did not want him coming around any more. She was getting threatening letters and she did not want anyone to know of her previous existence down the East End.

‘Then Jeffrey told me that she had left a will leaving everything to him. I worked on him. I persuaded him that if I could get his sister out of the way, then he would inherit everything and he could pay me half for my trouble.

‘He hummed and hawed until the last day, when he tried to talk to her and she screamed she never wanted to see him again. I gave him some of her jewels and told him to leave it to me.

‘I thought Lady Rose would be accused and we would be free from suspicion, but of course I should have known an aristocrat is never under suspicion. It’s one law for the rich and one for the poor.’

‘It’s the same law for all,’ said Kerridge. ‘You will be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and good riddance.’