He hadn’t seen her. Instead, he was making a beeline for a man standing near the fireplace who was concentrating on pushing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. They had their backs to her, and Harriet paused as she reached them, unsure whether she should interrupt what appeared to be an intimate conversation.

‘The issue I have is that the share price has dropped through the floor,’ Boothby was saying. ‘I’m offloading mine, for tuppence if that’s what it takes. I want no share in the responsibility for this whole debacle.’

‘Oh, I understand you,’ said the other gentleman, nodding sagely.

‘We have to ask ourselves,’ Mr Boothby hissed, ‘will the company be able to meet its liability or does it face ruin and ignominy?’

He leaned closer to the other man, but his words were painfully clear to Harriet. ‘I know something of the claims being made and I can tell you this. It’ll end up close to half a million pounds. The poor of the town towards whom we are meant to show such sympathy? Well, they are scroungers, the whole bloody lot of them.’

Harriet’s hand flew to her mouth. She backed away from Mr Boothby and his companion, still unseen, and without thinking ran up the staircase she had never before ascended and through an open doorway with a wooden pediment dominated by the insignia of the Crown. She found herself in a large wood-panelled room that was packed with people, all buzzing like bees. It was standing room only, and she took up position next to a woman, a wizened old thing, the lace on her white cap grey with age. Her mind was windmilling around the truth she did not want to face, that Mr Boothby had used her to unearth the size of the claims being made, and, worse, did not care about the plight of the destitute, and never had. The old woman beside her must have noticed her burning face. She nudged Harriet.

‘Anyone can watch, tha knows. It’s summat to do, gets thee out o’ the cold, an’ its free entertainment.’

There were very few female spectators in the room. Harriet looked up at the men leaning over the public gallery and then glanced down, self-consciously, at the red wool carpet she stood on. What was she doing here? The knocking of a hammer on wood silenced the room and a voice announced the resumption of the inquest. Harriet followed the progress of a handsome man in a brilliant blue waistcoat as he made his way to the witness box. Nobody had challenged her presence. She would remain here for a little while, to give Mr Boothby time to finish his conversation, to try, and fail, to locate her – it would never occur to him to look in the courtroom – and go about his business.

Raised voices caught her attention. The handsome man was asserting that the embankment was flawed, settled unequally, that pressure on the pipe joints had resulted in a blowout. Another man with a shock of white hair was remonstrating with him. At the end of the room, on a raised plinth, the judge, at least she assumed he was the judge, held up his hand to silence them. When he spoke, he held the room in the palm of his hand. Even Harriet, now.