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she flung herself up a ladder, climbing with both hands and feet. At the top she bulled through a hanging flap of canvas and sprawled into the sudden brightness of an attic room. By its iron stove stood a tall, thin figure in his stockinged feet, wearing steel-blue uniform trousers and a seaman’s woollen jumper. He had not shaved. His right hand gripped a long-barrelled Navy pistol and his left – fingers shaking and skeletal – held an unlit cigarette. Miss Temple screamed.
    Doctor Svenson sank to his knees, setting the pistol to the floor and extending both pale hands, speaking gently.
    ‘Celeste … my goodness – O my dear girl –’
    At the final splintering of the panel below Svenson sharply pitched his voice to her pursuers: ‘Stay where you are! It is Celeste Temple! There is noconcern, I say – wait there!’ He nodded to her, his blue eyes bright. ‘Celeste, how have you come here?’
    Miss Temple’s voice was harsh, her throat choked equally with surprise and rage.
    ‘How have
I
come here?
I
? How are you
alive
? How – without a single
word
– without –’ She jabbed her pistol at his own. ‘We might have shot one another! I
ought
to have shot you!’ Her eyes brimmed hot. ‘And just imagine how I would have wept to find you dead
again
!’
    Mr Phelps had given her cocoa in a metal mug, but Miss Temple did not intend to drink it. She sat on a wooden chair next to the stove, Svenson – having put on his boots – near her with his own mug. The abashed Mr Brine perched on what was obviously the Doctor’s bed, the frame sagging with his weight. On either side of Brine stood Mr Phelps – balding, his watery eyes haunted, yet no longer so openly ill-looking – and a sallow-eyed man introduced as Mr Cunsher, whose voluminous brown coat had been hung on a hook. Without it Cunsher looked like a trim woodland creature, with a woollen waistcoat and patched trousers, all – in contrast to the Doctor – scrupulously clean.
    ‘Celeste,’ offered Svenson, after yet another full minute of silence, ‘you must believe I wanted nothing more than to speak with you.’
    ‘The Doctor’s wounds should have killed him,’ explained Phelps. ‘He was confined to bed for weeks –’
    ‘I was fortunate in that the sabre cut across the ribs without passing beneath,’ said Svenson. ‘A prodigious amount of blood lost, but what is blood? Mr Phelps saved my life. He has seen the error of his ways, and we have thrown in together.’
    ‘So I see.’
    Svenson sighed hopelessly. ‘My dear –’
    ‘If they were followed, we must leave,’ muttered Cunsher. He spoke with an accent Miss Temple could not place.
    ‘We were not followed,’ Brine protested gruffly.
    ‘Cunsher has been our eyes,’ said Phelps.
    Miss Temple sniffed. ‘He went to Parchfeldt.’
    ‘And he has watched your hotel. Your movements have been observed by our enemies. And your fellows –’
    ‘Have been taken,’ said Miss Temple. ‘When they went to Harschmort, I know.’
    ‘Celeste,’ Svenson’s voice was too gentle, ‘you have been very brave –’
    Miss Temple resisted the urge to fling the cocoa in his face. ‘Chang is dead. Elöise is dead. You tell me I am watched, that my efforts have been undermined. If I could find you, are
your
efforts any better? I should not be surprised if the Contessa herself has taken the house next door just to laugh at your useless sneakery.’
    No one spoke. Miss Temple saw doubt on Cunsher’s face, and disdain on Phelps’s. Mr Brine looked at the floor. Doctor Svenson reached towards her, gently pulled away the mug and set it on the floor. Then he took Miss Temple’s hands in his own, the fingers long and cold.
    ‘I say you are brave, Celeste, because you
are
– far braver than I. Despair gives a hero’s strength to anyone. To be a heroine in
life
is altogether different.’
    Miss Temple grudgingly tossed one shoulder. Doctor Svenson looked to the others.
    ‘And I expect she is correct.