Once inside the town hall, Harriet stopped and took off her bonnet, smoothing her hair away from her face with gloved hands. She knew there were cells beneath the polished wood under her feet and that Silas was already, or soon would be, locked in one of them. The court rooms were upstairs. Perhaps he might appear in the very same room Harriet had observed the goings-on of the inquest at the end of March. It felt an age ago. How her life had changed in a few short months. But it wasn’t Silas she had come to find.

‘Hello, Miss Wragg!’

She was gratified to see the same clerk who had thanked her for her help with the claims walking towards her.

She put on her most charming smile. ‘How lovely to see you again.’ She had forgotten his name. ‘And how fortuitous! I believe you are the very person who can help me today.’

The clerk led her into the chamber in which the inquest had been held, past the empty benches and to the back wall of the room. He rapped his knuckles on the wood panelling and turned to wink at Harriet. She raised her eyebrows, playing along; she had already spotted the vertical crack that indicated a hidden door. There was a muttered ‘Yes, yes, enter’ from behind the wall which, when the clerk pushed on it, swung open to reveal a cell-like room dominated by a mahogany table and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. A small window framed a view of the grandly appointed Royal Hotel on the opposite corner of the boulevard, the first port of call for many of those who disembarked at Victoria Station. Her brother had stayed there on his most recent visit from London and she and Walter had taken tea with him in the ground floor cafe.

Partly obscuring this view was a man sitting on the windowsill, using a magnifying glass to examine the small print in a book he was holding. When he looked up Harriet recognised him as the judge who had presided over the inquest.

‘I see Frank has shown you my hidey-hole,’ he said to her, smiling.

‘This is Miss Harriet Wragg. She’s begged a few minutes of your time, sir.’ The clerk nodded encouragingly to her and left the room.

‘A few minutes is all I have, Miss Wragg.’

How should she begin? ‘I wonder if you can help me, sir…’ She stopped, frustrated with herself. She was here now. She must not waste the few minutes granted her.

‘If Frank brought you to my den then I am sure you must be deserving of help.’ He shut the book with a snap. ‘You might think this room is a sign of the overcrowding that results when you try to pour a quart of civic business into a pint-pot of a town hall, but it is my very favourite space in the whole building. John Webster, at your service.’

Chapter 34

A bucket was suspended by a rope from a gantry. Gunson watched it swing, empty, in the breeze. Beneath it stretched the temporary railway laid to carry supplies to the site, depressingly deserted. No navvies leaned on shovels, complaining about the mud in the tunnels, the ache in their back, the imperviousness of the ground in the basin that would become Agden reservoir if only work could be resumed.