As she stares at him, something seems to shift and lighten. Pearl tilts her head. There. Behind him. It looks like an aureole of light. A glow disturbingly familiar …

Spirit matter.

Spirit matter teasing at his edges, seeking to claim him.

With a muffled sob she turns and runs from the room, leaving the glass and funnel behind.

Myrtle was right; she’s always right in the end, no matter how harsh she seems. Time is running out. Father’s mortal life will end if they don’t find a way to treat him.

She leans against the wall and slumps into it, letting her head rest on the faded paper. Help me. Help me, Mother. Tell me what to do. She closes her eyes, wills and strains with all her might.

But Mother keeps her silence. The only image that fills Pearl’s mind is colourless, shifting water.

CHAPTER 5

‘Agnes! Agnes!’

Her stockinged feet slide across the floorboards. Dread clamps her chest in place of the corset she has left off fastening to hurry to her mother’s aid.

But although Mrs Darken’s wail suggested fire or murder, the lady herself sits composed in the wing chair, a newspaper spread over her lap.

‘What is it, Mamma? Are you ill?’

Mamma turns her face up to the firelight. Dropsy has made it rotund and ruddy-skinned, rather like the characters in the Gillray prints Papa used to collect. ‘They’ve put your advertisement in the paper, dear.’

Agnes pants, out of breath from her dash. ‘I do not understand you. What advertisement?’ Now that she stops to consider, Mamma should not have a Gazette in her grasp at all. Only last Wednesday, she told the boy to end their subscriptions because she could not pay the bill. ‘Where did you get that from? We cannot afford …’

Her voice disappears. As she draws closer, the print becomes less blurred. Murder in Gravel Walk.

‘If you can pay for an advertisement, you cannot begrudge me my papers,’ Mamma huffs.

Agnes snatches the newspaper so fast that a corner rips off in Mamma’s fingertips.

She holds it close to her face. It is just as she feared. Those insidious journalists have crept in like so many lice.

The victim, last seen alive at Darken’s Silhouette Parlour, Orange Grove, was ostensibly killed by an incision at the throat, although he endured multiple injuries after death.

What need had they to mention her premises? As if her little business were not struggling enough! It is as though they are trying to take away the one employment that gives her satisfaction.

‘Did you read this, Mamma?’

Mamma fidgets her shoulders. ‘You did not give me the chance. I only saw our name and thought you would like to know …’

While Mamma subsides into grumbles, Agnes tears the paper up, tossing the shreds onto the fire, where they twist and writhe.