Perhaps this was all just the final act in Manning’s long rise to power, and Knox was simply a bit player, done with after strutting and fretting his hour on the stage. It was a sobering thought. But Knox wasn’t ready to completely write himself out of the narrative just yet. He was still the hero of his own story, and if Manning wasn’t his nemesis then someone else had to be.

Chapter 56

Chapter 56

At the same time Knox was lying on his back in Leconfield House trying to weave a new thread that would connect all the events of the last week and lead him to the person behind it all, Bennett was sitting in the front seat of a car that wasn’t hers desperately trying to stay awake.

After Knox had left 66 Portland Place flanked by Watchers, Manning and Finney had returned to the reception, leaving Bennett alone in the exhibition gallery.

She spent five minutes processing the magnitude of what had just happened, and just how badly wrong things had gone. She decided there was no point returning to Grosvenor Square. In fact, she figured that chances were her security clearance had already been revoked. Instead, she left the RIBA building and walked up Portland Place to Regent’s Park tube station. She briefly thought about returning to Brompton Cemetery, to pay one final visit to Pankhurst’s grave, but decided against it. She’d come to London to prove she was just as smart and capable as any man in the CIA. Now she would be leaving in disgrace, written off as rash, emotional, a liability—a prime example of why women shouldn’t have ideas above their station. She wasn’t sure Pankhurst’s ghost would forgive her.

The boarding house Bennett called home was on Neville Street, ten minutes’ walk from South Kensington tube station. The house, number nine, was three storeys tall, the first covered in white stucco and the second two exposed brick. Unlike the other houses in the street, which were in immaculate condition, the stucco and bricks of number nine were both crumbling. The black and white mosaic steps that led up to the front door were cracked, and the door itself hadn’t been painted in a long time. The owner, Bennett learned shortly after moving in, had bought the house a long time ago, lived somewhere in the country, and rarely came into the city.

Bennett’s room was on the first floor, facing onto the street, and it was cavernous. Once upon a time it had been a grand reception room. Bennett’s single bed, wardrobe, and small table and chairs looked out of place pushed up next to its enormous, ornate fireplace. The room was draughty, but she didn’t care. It was bigger than anywhere else she’d ever lived, and it was all hers. She’d found it, she paid for it, and she didn’t have to share it.