Ralph, too, has been mentioned by name. Unlike some newspapers, the Express favours putting news on the front cover, rather than cluttering it with advertisements. Ralph’s name is prominent and visible from every newsstand. ‘The golden boy with feet of clay’, they have christened him. Everyone knows that mud, like clay, sticks. His name will always be associated with the scandal. With criminality and prostitution. There are others – Charles Haversham and Alexander Somers among them. Haversham is the one who controls the operations, who organises from the shadows, but it is Ralph Christie, the rising star, the bright hope of the party, whose name stands out to the public. Other newspapers are following the lead and making their own inquiries.

Isabel retired to bed yesterday, after she’d seen what the Express had published, and has not yet emerged from her room. Harriet’s father has spent most of the last twenty-four hours at his club, speaking with associates, members of the party, friends in the police.

There was mention of women in the newspaper – unnamed girls working from the Angel nightclub. Ruby had not been specifically identified. But she might have been arrested.

Harriet shoves her hands deep into her coat pockets and trudges, head down, along the street. She needs to leave the house. Be somewhere else.

She heads to the offices of the Kensington Gazette. She has not been very often in recent days, but no one here will associate her with Ralph Christie. No one but Jimmy knows that she is – or was – engaged to him.

And she wants to find Jimmy. Wants to know how it is that the Daily Express has published the story he was investigating.

As luck would have it, he is leaving the building just as she arrives, carrying his typewriter, with his satchel over his shoulder.

‘Harriet, hello.’

‘Your story. The Express… How…?’ She cannot now form the questions she wants to ask.

‘I sold it to them.’ He hitches the typewriter in his arms. ‘I thought the story needed a newspaper with a larger circulation. They offered me a job on the strength of it – which is a good thing because Pickford has just fired me. Said I should have taken the story to him first.’

‘Oh.’

‘Look, I’m sorry, Harriet. I didn’t know about you – about you and Ralph Christie – until the other day. It was too late by then. I’d already spoken with Blumenfeld, the editor at the Express. He wanted to run the story.’

The day they had both arrived late. Wednesday. He had been with Mr Blumenfeld that morning, had given him the story and taken a new job. Blumenfeld’s regular reporters had worked on Jimmy’s investigations, speedily made their own enquiries, and the story had gone to print on Friday.