Every inch of her skin crawls. It was bad enough with the smoking vomit; now they’re in her evacuations, too. Spirits and ghosts are tucked into her every nook and crevice, seeping through every pore. She’s never felt so dirty.

She looks down at her slender trunk and wonders just how much of herself is left under the skin.

She twitches the curtain aside and raises the window sash, not even cringing from the daylight. She’s so full of pain, her body simply won’t absorb any more of it. Her waste sloshes out of the chamber pot onto the pavement outside and she shuts the window quickly, before the fumes can get back in.

Drained, Pearl staggers back to her bed and lies down. Even with her eyes shut the world is spinning. Dimly, she hears Myrtle cleaning up crockery and padding softly to Father’s room for another session of Mesmerism. Another waste of time, she adds mentally, before a bolt of pain erases the thought.

The fact of the matter is, she doesn’t know who to believe. Myrtle says doctors are useless butchers; Agnes says Mesmerism won’t help the sick – they can’t both be right. The only sure way to save Father is to play both sides.

Everything depends on Pearl now. She must keep doing her regular séances so Myrtle doesn’t suspect anything’s afoot, and she must put in extra work for Agnes in secret so that the doctor will come and help Father.

But all that means she’ll be giving herself over to the misty hands of the dead more and more each day, and her body’s telling her, louder than the spirits ever speak, that it’s too much.

If she keeps pushing herself, she can save Father’s life. Maybe she’ll save lots of lives, by catching the killer. But she has to be brave and accept the truth: that all this hard work might just claim her own.

CHAPTER 22

The police station waxes various shades of brown. Drab beige plaster coats the top of the walls; below the dado rail it darkens to umber. Someone has tacked up handbills announcing rewards, items lost and found, but these too have become parched, curled up like decaying leaves.

Behind a walnut structure that resembles the bar of a public house, a policeman stands, avoiding everyone’s eyes, looking only to his vast, leather-bound book. A brass lamp shines on him; he has a brass bell at his side too, as if he might call for assistance, or tea.

Agnes thinks she may scream.

Some people do. They are all here: the dregs of Bath. Men with black eyes and cuts; guilty-looking, flea-ridden youths; women wrapped tight in their shawls, rocking back and forth. The din would be unbearable, if it were not in tune with Agnes’s inner wail.