I’d rehearsed it as the carriage driver had circled round Berkeley Square before coming to a stop outside Elvira’s house, nestled right in one corner. It hadn’t seemed so madcap then. Out with it, Zillah. She doesn’t seem like a woman who would baulk at it. I sat forward in my chair, my hands resting on the table.

‘Ever since that night in Crillick’s library, I’ve been looking for the Leopard Lady. I don’t know if you heard, but she spoke to me. Lucien told me that what she said meant “my son” in Zulu. From then on, I have been determined to track her down. I worried that it wasn’t just her they were exhibiting, but her child too.’

Elvira had been taking notes as soon as I started talking, but now she paused. ‘A child? They would do that to a child?’

‘I traced them to the West India Docks. Crillick was keeping them in a warehouse there. I think he must have put on at least one more show there like the one we saw. I found a stage, just as there had been in the library. There were drops of blood on the floor, too.’

‘Crillick talked about intimate shows. It must have been one of those,’ Elvira said.

‘I think so – there were about twelve chairs set out altogether – but she cannot have been there longer than a night or two. By the time I got there, he’d moved her and her son on, but that’s when I found out that the show he’d built around her was called the Odditorium.’

Elvira rang a small bell that Ethel had brought in with the tea things. When the maid came in, Elvira whispered in her ear and gestured to the sideboard, recognising that the matters we were discussing would require something stronger than tea. Ethel returned with glass tumblers and a decanter and served us both with stiff measures of brandy.

‘Stay, Ethel. You will want to hear what Zillah has learnt first-hand,’ Elvira said. ‘And take one for yourself.’

I’d already warmed to Elvira, and to see the way she treated her maid like an equal sealed it. She was exactly the sort of person I wanted in my corner.

‘That was last Wednesday,’ I said. ‘But it wasn’t until this afternoon that I learnt where the Odditorium was located.’

Elvira and Ethel leant in.

‘Crillick is hosting the show in the basement of his own house.’

‘At Northumberland Avenue? Are you quite sure?’ Elvira said.

‘I have not seen it for myself, but the man who told me was certain. It makes sense, in a way. Crillick has had carpenters in to build a set for him.’

Again, I heard the sawing and the banging. Those noises would haunt me now until the Leopard Lady was free.