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Victoria’s unquestioned authority in this matter raised other, even more dangerous questions about the sort of justice Lang Jin Hai might receive.
    A new thought came to Mary: what if the Prince was mistaken about what he had seen? What if he’d seen a struggle and a death, but leapt to conclusions about the causes? He’d been slightly injured, of course – perhaps breathless and frightened and nursing his bruises when Beaulieu-Buckworth confronted the Lascar. What if Lang – as she must cal him, whether he was her father or not – had attacked Prince Albert Edward first in an opium-induced haze without recognizing him at al ? Lang may even have acted in self-defence, protecting himself from what he saw as a pair of aggressive, drunken toffs. Why, Beaulieu-Buckworth might even have picked up the knife and been the first to wield it!
    She sat up suddenly, fingertips tingling. She’d been blind – a fool – as bad as the Queen herself, in failing to address facts. No, she’d been worse. She, of al people, ought to know that appearances could deceive, that things weren’t always as they seemed.
    How could she have assumed, like al those narrow-minded children of privilege, that Lang was guilty?
    Across the room the lump that was Amy stirred and mumbled something. Mary sprang out of bed.
    She would have to investigate. Uncover the truth.
    And, possibly, fight to save an innocent man.
    A man who might be her father.

    Five
    Sunday afternoon
    Acacia Road, St John’s Wood
    Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls looked much like every other house in Acacia Road: a large, redbrick vil a with a high, wrought-iron fence about the perimeter. It was a girls’ school in the usual sense, with teachers and pupils and lessons and meals. Slightly less usual was its approach. It selected girls careful y, charging no fees for their education. And its philosophy was, in many senses, revolutionary. It taught that women were more than domestic angels and helpmeets, and prepared its pupils for lives of independence and dignified, skil ed work.
    But it was the attic at Miss Scrimshaw’s that held its most incendiary secret: an al -female intel igence agency that used the stereotype of the harmless, weak-minded woman to its advantage. The Agency placed spies in settings unthinkable for men –
    kitchen scul eries, ladies’ boudoirs, positions as governesses. Its successes were formidable.
    Eighteen months after being admitted to its ranks, Mary was stil amazed by her good fortune.
    Today, however, she let herself in at the gate with a sense of unease. The visit she real y needed to pay lay in a different direction. Scotland Yard were holding Lang Jin Hai at the Tower of London – a location that fil ed Mary with superstitious dread. It was a legendary gaol, the sort of place one associated with traitors of the highest order. It even had an access gate into the Thames known as the Traitors’ Gate, for al those who had passed through it. She hadn’t the faintest idea how one went about visiting prisoners in gaol, let alone at the Tower. And even if she had, she was far from ready to face this man who might be her father. Almost anything –
    even diving into the Thames – seemed easier.
    A more appealing, if cowardly, prospect was trying to help him from afar. Yet here was another fine mess. She’d only just been recal ed from the assignment (complete with that strange proviso “no danger”), only to find that she desperately needed to stay. How else could she monitor the case against Lang Jin Hai and the royal family’s role in it?
    Remaining on the case was her only chance of overhearing further discussions between the Queen and Scotland Yard. Yet Anne and Felicity did nothing lightly. They would require a great deal of persuasion to let her stay on, even in this puzzling absence of danger.
    Mary stopped, drew a steadying breath, and resolved to do only what was necessary on this case without letting her emotions overtake her. To