The difficulty will be securing her aid without Miss West noticing. The girl has no money of her own, and Agnes’s purse is decidedly light. But what about Montague’s ring? It must still be on the floor in the upstairs room at Walcot Street, where it fell during the séance. The pawnshop would pay for real gold – enough, she is sure, for Pearl to buy medicine in secret. After a brief internal struggle, Agnes decides. She will tell Pearl where to look for the ring and ask her to keep it as payment for her services. Yes, that is the right course of action. Montague would understand. At least this way his token can deliver some of the good it once promised.

Agnes leaves the house quietly and passes the note to her usual carrier: a boy who sits in the churchyard awaiting errands. Mamma is nowhere to be seen, but she is struck by the number of people who are walking abroad at dusk. Everyone seems to have forgotten about the murderer already. Some men even have their wives linked on their arm, as if there is nothing to fear.

Were those lost lives insignificant in the grand scheme of things? She does not like to believe so. But if Simon has found Cedric, and those notes really were just relics of Constance somehow unearthed, it throws doubt on whether Agnes was ever being targeted at all. Maybe it was just coincidence that three men and a woman died.

This is Simon’s way of thinking. She should have listened to Simon all along. It was folly to consult Pearl and bring the shadows of the past upon her home. What has she learnt, other than that ghosts do exist, and they are most of them frightened or in pain? That knowledge offers neither comfort nor earthly use.

She should have left well enough alone.

Now her elderly mother has wandered off, she has a phantom in the studio and a sickly child to nurse.

Gently, she unlocks the door and creeps back inside the house. She need not have taken such care. Pearl is awake and is standing in the doorway to the parlour, rubbing her eyes.

‘I had hoped you would sleep a little longer. How do you feel?’

‘Terrible,’ Pearl whispers.

‘Sit down again, dear. I will see if I can fetch you some refreshment—’

Pearl shakes her head vehemently.

‘Perhaps my smelling salts?’

‘That’s not why I’m here.’

There is a mutinous expression on her small face. A streak of blood has dried on her cheek; Agnes wants to wipe it away, but she is worried to bring it to her attention.

‘Then … what may I do for you, Pearl? Why are you here?’

‘I never got my séance.’

Agnes shoots a glance at the picture frames on the floor. ‘I am not sure it is wise to—’