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And yet this arrogant little footman might have murdered Octavia Haslett in a fit of lust and male conceit. Monk could not afford to indulge his own conscience at the cost of letting him go.

“Did she change her mind?” he asked with all the old edge to his voice, a world of biting contempt. “Suddenly saw the ridiculous vulgarity of an amorous adventure with a footman?”

Percival called him something obscene under his breath, then his chin came up and his eyes blazed.

“Not at all,” he said cockily, his terror mastered at least on the surface. His voice shook, but his speech was perfectly clear. “If it was anything to do with me, it’d be Rose, the laundrymaid. She’s infatuated with me, and jealous as death. She might have gone upstairs in the night with a kitchen knife and killed Mrs. Haslett. She had reason to—I hadn’t.”

“You are a real gentleman.” Monk curled his lip with disgust, but it was a possibility he could not ignore, and Percival knew it. The sweat of relief was glistening on the footman’s brow.

“All right.” Monk dismissed him. “You can go for now.”

“Do you want me to send Rose in?” he asked at the door.

“No I don’t. And if you want to survive here, you’ll do well not to tell anyone of this conversation. Lovers who suggest their mistresses for murder are not well favored by other people.”

Percival made no reply, but he did not look guilty, just relieved—and careful.

Swine, Monk thought, but he could not blame him entirely. The man was cornered, and too many other hands were turning against him, not necessarily because they thought he was guilty, but someone was, and that person was afraid.

At the end of another day of interviews, all except that with Percival proving fruitless, Monk started off towards the police station to report to Runcorn, not that he had anything conclusive to say, simply that Runcorn had demanded it.

He was walking the last mile in the crisp late-autumn afternoon, trying to formulate in his mind what he would say, when he passed a funeral going very slowly north up Tottenham Court Road towards the Euston Road. The hearse was drawn by four black horses with black plumes, and through the glass he could see the coffin was covered with flowers. There must have been pounds and pounds worth. He could imagine the perfume of them, and the care that had gone into raising them in a hothouse at this time of the year.

Behind the hearse were three other carriages packed full with mourners, all in black, and again there was a sudden stab of familiarity. He knew why they were crammed elbow to elbow, and the harnesses so shiny, no crests on the carriage doors. It was a poor man’s funeral; the carriages were hired, but no expense had been spared. There would be black horses, no browns or bays would do. There would be flowers from everyone, even if there was nothing to eat for the rest of the week and they sat by cold hearths in the evening. Death must have its due, and the neighborhood must not be let down by a poor show, a hint of meanness. Poverty must be concealed at all costs. They would mourn properly as a last tribute.

He stood on the pavement with his hat off and watched them go past with a feeling close to tears, not for the unknown corpse, or even for those who were bereaved, but for everyone who cared so desperately what others thought of them, and for the shadows and flickers of his own past that he saw in it. Whatever his dreams, he was part of these people, not of those in Queen Anne Street or their like. He had fine clothes now, ate well enough and owned no house and had no family, but his roots were in close streets where everyone knew each other, weddings and funerals involved them all, they knew every birth or sickness, the hopes and the losses, there was no privacy and no loneliness.

Who was it whose face had come so clearly for an instant as he waited outside the club Piccadilly, and why had he wanted so intensely to emulate him, not only his intellect, but even his accent of speech and his manner of dress and gait in walking?

He looked