Pearl shifts uncomfortably. She thought seeing Agnes again would be a cause for joy, but there’s something funny about her, like her attention’s fixed on a tune no one else can hear. Why’s she talking about her papa, now? It’s Pearl’s father who needs help.

‘Is that who you want to talk to? Your papa?’

Agnes reaches into her reticule and produces something shiny. It’s gold: a ring.

‘No,’ she says. ‘There’s someone else I need to speak with, one last time.’

CHAPTER 26

They have barely seated themselves on the dirty floorboards upstairs before Agnes starts to see hints of the celestial about Pearl. Undoubtedly, the girl’s power is growing stronger.

Agnes has not yet mentioned how Montague died, but already the child has taken on a yellowish tinge that reaches to the whites of her eyes.

His spirit is surfacing beneath.

Will he be as the others were, caught in the moment of his death? He had his faults, but it is too cruel to imagine him suffering the sweats of yellow fever throughout eternity.

‘Tell me about him,’ Pearl says.

Agnes places her engagement ring on the floor between them. ‘His name was Montague. John Augustus Montague. Captain of a ship called the Raptor. This ring was … was a gift he gave, once.’

Pearl picks up the ring and inspects it. She is frowning, as if she has heard these names somewhere before.

Even as Agnes gazes at her hungrily, waiting for something to emerge, she’s conscious of nerves. She has dreamt of Montague, fixated upon him for so many years now. She ought to have prepared what she was going to say to him.

One thing she does know: ‘Knocks on wood will not suffice for this séance. Montague must be able to answer me.’

Pearl turns the ring over. Her pupils fatten in the darkness. ‘But I don’t want him to possess me. I hate the spirits using my mouth.’

Once again Agnes sees the wisps of them, teasing at the girl’s edges. She plays the only card she has. ‘For your father, Pearl. Think of his mouth.’

Pearl screws up her face. When she breathes, it comes out like mist. ‘A ghost called Florence King used to speak to Myrtle inside her head. Then she’d tell me what Florence had said. Would something like that do for you?’

A flush creeps into Agnes’s cheeks. There is bound to be some mortifying content to this conversation; she would prefer if Pearl was possessed, absent, and heard nothing of it. She takes the ring back. ‘I could go to other spirit mediums,’ she bluffs.

Pearl’s too sharp to fall for it. ‘Not for free, you can’t.’

Agnes sighs. What a pass she has come to when she is the lesser power, the weaker link, even when pitted against a child.