Rain lashes the pavements. A couple of young ladies without an umbrella shriek and run for the cover of the nearest awning. Morpheus stops on the doorstep, takes one look at the drops bouncing off the puddles and turns tail back inside.

‘A wise choice, I think,’ says Simon, closing the door on his dog. He erects their umbrella – one of the old sort, with cane ribs.

Agnes lifts her skirts from the damp. Cedric must be out here, somewhere. Is he sheltered and dry? She worries that her stitches in his coat might not hold, and if he gets wet, he will not be able to change his shoes and hose before a fire. He could catch pneumonia like she did.

She searches for his face under every dripping hat and in every saturated alley.

They walk slowly beneath their shared dome, the patter of rain upon oiled silk making up all their conversation. Simon takes the side of the pavement nearest the road and moves heavily, a man burdened with other people’s secrets, while dray carts swish down Broad Street and splatter his leg with mud. Still, it is better to take this longer, more crowded route than brave the slippery hill.

The damp resurrects Agnes’s old aches and pains. She will not, she must not think of the Accident. She squeezes Simon’s arm – the same arm that lifted her from the river, all those years ago.

As they round St Michael’s church and turn into Walcot Street, the fresh, moist smell of the rain takes its last breath. Here, the odour of hops rules the air.

Commerce does not stop for the weather. A determined organ grinder turns his crank, playing the shanty ‘Little Billie’. Agnes pulls Simon towards a chemist’s shop. The windows have steamed and the prices chalked on the slate board outside are washing away.

‘It may be prudent to wait for the sister to leave the house,’ she advises him, although she does not relish the prospect of waiting in the rain.

‘How do you know she has not gone already?’

Agnes gestures to the waistcoat pocket in which Simon keeps his fob watch. He produces it, shows her the time. She shakes her head. She has observed this house, knows its routines.

‘It needs some ten minutes more,’ she decides.

Simon peers through the misty windows at the array of glass bottles the chemist has on offer. ‘Perhaps I will call inside. If this man is as bad as you say, he will need something to alleviate his pain.’

Resisting his entreaties to join him, Agnes takes charge of the umbrella and keeps surveillance on the house.