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His new interests didn’t stop at literature. More than once he visited the Royal Academy – he seems to have had no difficulty charming the Academians, nor in gaining their immediate trust – where he was particularly taken by a painting that had recently arrived there, Fuseli’s The Nightmare.

It’s hard to explain the impact of The Nightmare on the world of art. A haunting, murderous vision of a painting, even the conservative Sir Joshua Reynolds acknowledged it as like nothing he’d seen before. A woman lies on a bed, prone and sprawling. Velvet drapes hang like shadows around her; a creature, part goblin and part simian, squats on her chest like a predator while eyeing up the audience in search of further victims. It had a massive influence on the fantasy literature of later centuries, and like Wessel’s Anno 7603 opened up whole new realms of artistic thought. Significantly, it also became the first known painting to inspire a cartoon parody: in 1784, the Covent Garden Nightmare would be published in the popular press, depicting the Duchess of Devonshire as the prone woman with Charles Fox as the bloated demon on her chest. Appropriate, then, that it should have been painted in the same year as the Doctor’s arrival.

From the Doctor’s point of view, it was a portrait of an intrusion from another world. He’s known to have stood for over an hour in front of the Nightmare, and at one stage he even conversed with a gentleman of the Academy (it may have been Joshua Reynolds himself, Reynolds being a notorious patron and painter of courtesans) without taking his eyes off the canvas. The Doctor, it’s said, asked if he could have a print of the painting for the House. When told that this would be impossible, the Doctor noted that this would be a piece much sought after by the public. History proved him right: The Nightmare became one of the first prints to be mass-produced, starting in 1783.

There was one other thing the Doctor is thought to have said, as he stood next to his fellow Academician before the Fuseli. His words are recorded to have been: ‘Painting. Yes. That’s where I should go next.’

Evidently, he was well aware of his limitations as a writer. But then, the Doctor’s new hobbies could have been a result of him having little else to do. Because in the weeks following the meeting with Sabbath, the House began to split apart. By the second week of the month, both Scarlette and Lisa-Beth were in Paris, staying in a bright and sunlit room overlooking the open streets near the Place de Grève.

At the end of June another of the women left, heading for a more successful bordello to the north of London. Business dropped still further, to the Doctor’s quiet relief but at the expense of the House. Gentlemen were avoiding Henrietta Street, seeing the House (ironically, given its link to the lunar cycle) as ‘cursed’. The watchmen who patrolled Covent Garden were starting to circle like sharks. They could frequently be seen, lamps in their hands, eyeing up the windows as if wondering how long it’d be until they felt safe enough to pounce.

During his meeting with Sabbath, the Doctor had learned the truth of it. Sabbath, like the Service itself, had indeed been using his resources to make things hard for Scarlette’s operation. He’d supplied small amounts of money to Scarlette’s rivals, spread stories among the watch and the Bow Street Runners, encouraged his contacts in high society to think that these ‘witches’ carried diseases spawned by the Devil himself. He’d explained his reasons, but only in vague terms:

SABBATH: It’s a question of control, I think.

DOCTOR: You mean, you want more of it?

SABBATH: Not at all. I mean, you don’t possess any of it. Do you know the consequences of what you’re doing, Doctor? Does Scarlette?

DOCTOR: Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m a professional. So’s Scarlette, I suppose.

SABBATH: You were a professional. Your company has… so to speak… gone bankrupt.

Sabbath had admitted that he’d tried to shut the House down, as he’d felt it to be an ‘unacceptable risk’. Following