Papa once spoke of the French revolutionaries dancing ‘La Carmagnole’. The way the shadows caper is like that: savage, with the inherent threat of violence.

A log bursts, spitting sparks.

‘Pearl, stop!’

The girl opens her colourless eyes. The flames reflect in her pupils.

Round and round goes the clock; the fire burns higher and higher. Agnes yearns to run from the room, but she is held fast.

Where is Simon? Why hasn’t he come?

Pearl’s breath catches. Steam issues from between her lips; she is out of control. The entire séance is beyond her command.

Shadows close in around them like hungry wolves. Agnes gasps, tries again to yank her hands out of Pearl’s slick hold, but it is impossible; it is as though the girl is focusing every last atom of her strength on this circle.

The grandfather clock chimes. Agnes’s eyes flick towards it and she freezes.

There’s something there. Unfolding in the corner.

The shadow of a woman rises to her feet. She is tall and slender in profile. Familiar.

Pearl’s back is turned to the grandfather clock, she can have no conception of how the shadow raises its hands and stretches long, long fingers towards her.

Agnes tries to make a noise, but nothing comes out.

The hands are like twigs on a tree. The branches reach out, grow larger, longer. One of them touches the tip of Pearl’s chin.

‘Look!’ Pearl exhales and her expression is beatific. ‘Agnes! I … I see her!’

With one final wrench, Agnes tears her hands away.

Pearl seems to come with them. She pitches forward, face first, onto the floor. The fire snaps out, the grandfather clock wheezes its last.

‘Pearl? Pearl!’

Shakily, Agnes endeavours to prop her up again, but the girl’s head lolls. It cannot be, it should not be …

She touches a hand to the clammy flesh at her neck. Nothing pulses beneath.

Her translucent eyes are fixed open, staring at the image they so earnestly sought, and poor little Pearl is dead.

CHAPTER 33

The police call it the Dead Room. Agnes knows, because she has been there before: a space of cold white tiles and metal instruments. It is no place for a child.

Naturally, she is not allowed inside with Simon and the other doctors while they probe and examine. Instead she sits waiting outside on a bench, with a sympathetic clergyman keeping watch over her.

Occasionally Sergeant Redmayne checks up on them and offers cups of tea. All the previous suspicion has fled from his demeanour. Agnes does not think to ask why. She cannot think of much at all. She feels trapped inside a bell jar, the air stale and all sound muffled.