After I’d done it, I couldn’t stay in the little room. I covered it over with my pallet and went downstairs, onto the basement steps, tried gulping at fresh air to calm myself, to go back up and face her. I was still there with my head against the railings when Benham sent Charles to tell me he wanted to see me, in his library.

‘I’ve been upstairs,’ he said, ‘taking an opportunity to remind my wife of her obligations for this evening. Quite a voyage of discovery. Her bed looked like it had been the scene of some fresh carnage.’

The sheets. I had left the sheets. My stomach clutched.

‘Perfect timing, of course.’

The thought stretched, curled. Struck me still as a stopped clock. He was going to send me away again. Then he said it: ‘I have no further use for you.’

‘You needed me when you were trying to spoon what I knew out of me, and when you wanted me to take her child ‒’

‘What else could have been done with it?’ He snorted. ‘Only man in all of London she had to steer clear of had to be the one she fucked.’

I’d stayed quiet about what I knew. But now my anger rose to meet his. Like strangers being introduced. ‘You only know where I’ve been because they know you there. They know you bought girls. Fresh off the stage-coaches. Didn’t you wonder if I’d find out? You keep apartments in Marylebone, or Sir Percy does . . . You’re both members of that club. What do you call yourselves? The Devilish Gentlemen?’

He hissed, drew back as if I’d slapped him. But with anger, not surprise. As if he might have been expecting it. ‘Those girls were prostitutes, and sold themselves.’

‘What did they sell? Their bruises? Their split skin? You kept them months against their will. One of those Devilish Gentlemen crippled a girl. But I’m sure you know that. ’Cause the talk is that it was you who did it.’

His mouth twitched but every other part of him stayed still. ‘That girl has been looked after ‒’

‘Even now you try to excuse yourself.’ I closed my eyes, felt the pop of anger. Though I didn’t know it then, it was the only thing I had left. ‘The finest mind in England? But it’s not always the mind that makes the man, is it? In some parts, they know the man.’

Then his hands started flying, fast as cards out of a deck. He shouted. Called me a thief, a savage. Said this was blackmail, added to the tally of my other crimes. How could I think I had any power over him? But he was wavering. Unsure now where I could do the most damage with what I knew about him ‒ there, or on the streets. Which is why he said I was to stay until he’d decided what was to be done, already pulling his papers towards him. But the whole time he kept his eyes on me.