Myrtle soothes them. ‘Ladies, please, speak softly. There’s no cause for quarrel. The language of the spirits is no more under our control than another mortal’s voice. Why, you might be in the same room as a person, but you can’t force them to talk to you. And if they do, you can’t compel them to tell the truth. The spirits keep their own secrets.’

‘Do not doubt, Harriet,’ the older lady chides her companion. ‘How can you question it? Look at the Sylph, how she glows!’

‘It’s the ectoplasm,’ Myrtle says wisely. ‘Spirit matter.’

‘A miracle. Truly a miracle.’

Softly, the door shuts.

Coins chink. Pearl hears the farewells; hears Mrs Boyle and Mrs Parker speaking through the window when they gain Walcot Street.

‘She could have looked up the marriage,’ Mrs Parker insists from the pavement. ‘And the murder was in the papers.’

‘I know you do not believe, Harriet, but it gives me comfort. I felt him, I am sure I did. Please do not pooh-pooh it.’

‘All I am saying is that she could not solve the crime, could she? Is that not rather convenient? Papa would not omit to tell us who killed him. He would be calling out for justice.’

The footsteps peter out.

Only one word remains with Pearl. Murder.

Her mouth is dry. It feels sullied, unclean, like it’s been used without her consent.

Myrtle returns and lowers the lamps back to a comfortable level. ‘All right, then. Bit of supper?’ The genteel accent assumed for customers slides away as easily as a cloak shrugged aside. ‘Got to keep your strength up, you know. Them spirits take it out of you.’

A tumbler of whisky and water is thrust before her, followed by a slice of bread coated in blackcurrant jam. The objects flicker, double. Pearl blinks.

‘Thanks,’ she manages. ‘What … what happened?’

Myrtle sits down and plucks at a lily in its vase. ‘You did it. Told you so. Genuine medium. Channelled the spirit of one Mr Boyle.’

Pearl’s stomach cramps. ‘He was here? He spoke through me?’

‘Of course he did.’

It would be less disturbing if she remembered this Mr Boyle, if she felt like she’d met him. But now she’s left with the sensation that something appalling has happened, and she’s the only person who didn’t see it.

‘D’you think it’s true, what the ladies were saying, Myrtle? That the man who spoke through me was murdered?’

‘I know it’s true. Read it in the paper.’

‘But you didn’t tell me that!’

Myrtle shrugs. ‘Didn’t think I needed to. The dead talk to you, don’t they?’

‘Through me,’ Pearl mutters. ‘Not to me. I never heard a sound.’

‘You will. Now you’ve started to bleed each month, the power will grow. You’ll harness it.’

Pearl takes a steadying breath. Her ears tingle, the only parts of her left untouched.