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of a lasting thaw. Everywhere windows were sparkling with a steel-blue frost that she hoped would disperse as the temperature struggled to rise during the day. Walking was difficult, even for someone with Frances’ long stride. The snow that had once lain inches deep had been churned by carriage wheels into dirty brown ridges speckled with soot and tiny ice jewels of yesterday’s refrozen sleet. She was grateful to secure a cab, which crunched its way over the brittle surface. Her destination, Garway Road, ran south from Westbourne Grove, and its houses were neat and plain with two storeys and a basement – the homes of senior clerks, company secretaries and comfortable though not wealthy annuitants.
    As Frances had anticipated, Mr Sweetman’s earlier visits had helped prepare the ground for her arrival and the name on her card, which was fast becoming notorious in Bayswater, was enough to ensure her admission to the homes she wished to enter and agreement to interviews.
    Frances also carried with her the shocking news of Mrs Sweetman’s murder and the fact that the police were questioning her husband, which was enough to arouse anyone’s interest. She discovered that Mr Sweetman had been painfully honest in revealing the full circumstances of his absence from home for so many years, albeit with earnest assurances that he was an innocent man. In all cases he had been seen by the gentlemen of the house, none of whom had wanted to submit their wives, sisters or servants to the presence of a convicted criminal, however respectful his manners.
    The family currently living in the Sweetmans’ old home had been there for eight years and had never met them, neither did they know anyone who might have lived in Garway Road in 1866. Sweetman had spoken to a Mr Willis, a youthful solicitor still making his way up in the world, and his wife now informed Frances that while naturally suspicious of their visitor’s motives, her husband had told him nothing because he had nothing to tell. Frances asked about the previous occupier, but Mrs Willis said that when they had first rented the house – the owner being a gentleman who lived abroad and acted through an agent – it had been empty. The property agent was long since retired.
    The neighbours on either side were similarly unhelpful, and none could give any information about the current address of the persons who had previously occupied their properties. Frances, thankful to find that the rain had stopped and detecting a watery glisten on the surface of the melting snow, was just descending the steps of the third house she had visited, and wondering if she might have to call on every one of them in the street, when a figure in a heavy dark servant’s gown, her head and shoulders wound about with shawls, ran down the steps of the Willis house.
    ‘Miss Doughty! Might I have a word?’
    ‘Certainly,’ said Frances, pausing to allow the woman to approach.
    Close up, it could be seen that the figure was a person of middle years. Her mittened hands smelt as if they had been rubbed with lemon and her cheeks were lined and reddened by frequent closeness to fire.
    ‘I’m Mr Willis’ cook,’ said the woman, breathlessly, ‘and the maid just told me you were asking after the Sweetmans. I’d been wondering if I ought to write to Mr Sweetman after he came asking questions last time, and then I thought better of it in case – well – I just now heard that Mrs Sweetman is dead and he is suspected so it looks like I was right not to.’
    ‘That remains to be seen,’ said Frances. ‘Were you living here in 1866?’
    ‘No, but my father used to deliver fish all round these parts. He’s old now, and his head isn’t what it was, but he might remember something.’ She handed Frances a scrap of wrapping paper with an address. ‘Say that Eliza sent you. My sister Nora looks after him, but he doesn’t get many visitors now, and I’m sure he’d like to talk to you.’
    Frances thanked