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the floor. Digby felt the heat gathering in his cheeks. Eventually one of the younger men in the group stepped forwards and took control. ‘Thank you, Mr Digby,’ he said. ‘You have discharged your duty.’
    Digby looked him up and down suspiciously. It was beneath his dignity to be dismissed by someone just out of the nursery, but he wasn’t prepared to do battle over it. He nodded, and backed into the shadows, to continue watching.
    ‘Mr Digby may well be right,’ said the young man, with careful ambiguity. ‘And the watch will be advertised for, of course; but has anyone enquired as to why Mr Renard was in the vicinity of Berkeley Square at such a late hour? And what his business was there? Could he have been meeting somebody?’
    Taylor glared at him and gave a little shake of his head.
    ‘No?’ continued the man. ‘Perhaps enquiries should be made. Perhaps Mrs Renard—’
    ‘This is no place for a lady,’ said Taylor. Digby saw a little tremor of irritation move across the other man’s face at being cut off.
    ‘I agree with you there, Taylor,’ said Maynard, a smile briefly flickering across his face as he spoke up. ‘And if one were to look for a motive, you would be forced to cast your eye over the hopeless entanglements of Mr Renard’s life. I do not doubt there were many. He was ever where he had no business to be; and last night was obviously no exception. I understand the constable has no notion of who could have done this other than a thief; and if Mrs Renard were to be put to the expense of an investigation, those she hired would hardly know where to begin.’
    ‘Berkeley Square is but a stone’s throw from where Pierre lived,’ cried Taylor, his voice reaching an uncomfortably high pitch, as though it was being drawn painfully through his tight throat. ‘We have no way of knowing why he was there but no reason to taint his reputation by suspecting that he was involved in some kind of scandal or bad business – if that is what you are implying, sir; and I see from the look on your face that it is.’
    ‘I am implying nothing,’ said Maynard.
    ‘Now, gentlemen,’ said another of the men. ‘It is a cold evening, and the case seems clear enough to me. Mr Renard was murdered by some unknown person.’
    There were nods and muttered agreements. Digby saw Maynard look at Taylor, but the coroner did not want to meet the foreman’s gaze, and only nodded. ‘Then, sirs,’ Taylor said, ‘let us set our hands and seals to that.’
    In his pocket, Digby’s hand closed around the watch. It was a risk to carry it with him, but he couldn’t bear to be parted from it, and his landlady might find it if he left it in his rooms. It was the finest thing he had ever seen but, as he was discovering, it had a feel of its own too. His fingertips brushed over it: the chasing of clouds and cherubs, the smoothness of hardstone.

CHAPTER FOUR
    10th May, 1792
    After my liking period with my master, I was bound over as his apprentice; there were three others in the same workshop, and I was the most junior of them. These three were all sons of gentlemen, and they lived very well, almost as if nothing counted on their completing the work. They were more in Covent Garden than at home, leaving me in the kitchen to eat the stale bread and rancid butter which it pleased my mistress to feed me. I worked hard to ingratiate myself with my master and his wife, and learned ways of pleasing them. Before long, I shared in the food from their table. The way the other apprentices lived still sat badly with me, and though Mr Pelletier gave me a coin or two as an allowance, there was no way I could partake of the same pleasures as my fellows. Yet I was the hardest-working of all of them.
    I learned of the injustice of life early, you see. Now I will never take a gentleman’s son as an apprentice; and to me, a so-called born gentleman is worthless, except for the money he pays me. It is the self-made man that I respect, and