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Mr Pennyfeather’s pace faltered when he was so loudly and abruptly addressed, he stood stock still for a long second or two, and then he turned to face his accuser.

A space opened up around him as people unconsciously pulled away.

No doubt they were eager to witness this unscheduled piece of entertainment, but equally keen not to be too closely involved in it.

He was the very picture in stance and gesture of a frightened young woman, shrinking from public attention.

Rosanna was quite close to him now, but she did not lower her voice.

‘Take off your hood and mask and reveal yourself,’ she said in ringing accents, ‘or I will do it for you, and I promise you that you shall not like it!’

Amelia was watching Lavinia intently as the red-robed figure raised shaking hands and let down the hood, then ripped off the mask with incredible quickness.

The woman’s triumph changed to puzzlement and then to horror; it was plain that she recognised the Runner, and equally clear that her quick brain realised that more was wrong here than a simple mistake.

Rosanna was smiling broadly, and nobody could think that she had made an error in identification.

‘I am an officer in the employ of the Bow Street Magistrates, here about my lawful business,’ said Mr Pennyfeather loudly, his whole bearing and mien changed in an instant in a remarkable fashion.

A fascinated murmur ran through the crowd.

Now that the attention was off her and fully on her former quarry, Rosanna began making her way slowly and carefully back through the crowd to Amelia’s side.

Nobody paid the least attention to her now; the Runner held them all in the palm of his hand as he spoke.

‘I am come to make an arrest for blackmail, attempted murder – and, most heinous of crimes, murder itself! I arrest you, Lavinia Thornfalcon, and I suggest you come quietly, or it will be the worse for you.’

There was a great outcry from the assembled people, and the orchestra, which had just started up again, broke off in a discordant scraping of fiddles as they became aware of the disturbance.

Everyone in the body of the theatre was staring and pointing, and those in boxes leaned forward shamelessly for a better view, as did the fascinated musicians.

Mr Pennyfeather made a sort of quick dart through the crowd and seized Lavinia by the arm, and a pair of stout individuals who could only have been fellow Runners materialised out of the throng at either side of him and converged relentlessly on his prey.

One of them pulled back her hood, and her lovely, silver-gilt hair was revealed.

The more impressionable members of the audience gasped to see her, so beautiful as she was and so obviously a lady of high rank.

‘That mask needs to come off too,’ Pennyfeather said sternly.

‘I have to be certain sure I’ve got the right woman in such a serious matter.

’ Rough hands tugged at the strings for a second and she was exposed to public view, her enormous eyes wild and her face set in lines of anger and disbelief.

‘This is nonsense!’ she cried angrily. She didn’t seem to be afraid, only furious.

‘Complete nonsense, and I will make sure you pay for it! You will wish you had never set eyes on me before you are done. You will be the one rotting in prison, you insolent nobody – my father is a powerful man and will make sure of it. I am quite innocent of everything you accuse me of! I do not know why you are persecuting me so, but you will be sorry for it soon enough!’

‘I don’t think I will, my lady. I have a witness whom I shall not name who will swear that you blackmailed her into pushing an innocent young woman down a flight of steps, which could easily have killed her,’ said Mr Pennyfeather inexorably, not in the least cowed by her defiance.

He seemed quite glad, Amelia thought, to have this opportunity to share Lavinia’s crimes with all the world.

No doubt it was more usual to hurry arrested persons away without such a public recitation of their misdeeds, but she had chosen to take the Runner on and it seemed she must take her medicine now.

‘Scared for her own life, she was, poor silly creature, when you threatened her, as you were so wild and menacing that she did not know which way to turn. And as for murder…’

The group of former Friends who had surrounded their idol had shrunk as far away as they could well go, pulling back even their garments as though contact with her would sully them.

Amelia thought that if any one of them should be charged with knowing Lavinia, still less with having come here to support her and help her engineer another woman’s humiliation, they would play St Peter’s part and deny her with great emphasis, as many times as proved necessary.

‘It is preposterous to accuse me of murder!’ Lady Thornfalcon said, putting out her hands wide in a highly theatrical gesture and looking about her for confirmation, as if to say, I am beautiful, so very beautiful, and therefore, I must be innocent!

How could a woman with such a face commit any sort of crime?

‘There’s no denying you got away with it for a good long while,’ said the Runner complacently, ‘but I have been down in Somerset doing a bit of investigating, and I believe I can make a case for the deliberate and premeditated killing by poison… of your own husband.’

The sound that ran around the huge auditorium was an extraordinary one: a sort of sibilant whisper of shock and disgust. Amelia too was astonished, and looked at her stepmother in sharp enquiry.

Rosanna shrugged expansively and whispered, ‘I don’t know any of this part of it.

Zeke plays his cards very close to his chest, and always has.

But no wonder he didn’t want me getting mixed up with her.

Murder, he says! I’m as shocked as you are. ’

‘Now, I’m an officer of the law and not a canting parson,’ Pennyfeather went on loudly, clearly relishing his large, captive audience, ‘but when a moral lesson smacks you round the face, as you might say, it seems to me that others would do well to heed it. I dare say every married body here has had their moments of irritability with their life’s partner.

I’m sure Mrs P, woman in a million as she is, has had many such with me, not to speak of my own sentiments.

Little daily habits can grate on your nerves, as we all know.

Snoring and the like. Jiggling of the legs, loud slurping of beverages.

But as for murdering your loved one by putting something nasty in their tea, well, however much they slurp it, that’s a step too far, and is bound to get found out in the end.

Because once a person starts off a-murdering, they most often find they can’t stop.

If you’d called a halt at just one victim, my dear, it’s likely you’d have got away with it, because you’re a clever piece, as I’d be the first to acknowledge.

’ He gave his prisoner a friendly sort of a shake.

‘But you couldn’t stop, could you? They never can, ladies and gents!

They never can.’ And on that unanswerable remark, he and his colleagues led her away, with no more than a conspiratorial grin in the direction of Amelia and Rosanna.

This was no time or place for explanations.

‘Good God,’ Amelia said blankly as the door closed behind them and the room erupted into excited comment. ‘Can it be true?’

‘If Zeke says it is, I dare say it is. Not that she’ll hang for it like an ordinary woman would.

If I’d bumped your father off, for all his wickedness, I’d have been up swinging on the nubbing cheat for all to see within a bare fortnight.

What a scandal that would have been for the Wyvernes!

But this fancy bit won’t be paying that price, I’ll go bail. You wait and see if I’m right.’

‘I don’t know exactly what the nubbing cheat is, but I expect that doesn’t matter,’ Amelia said. ‘You didn’t murder my father, did you? I feel as though I ought to ask. He did die very suddenly, or so I understand.’

Rosanna laughed mirthlessly. ‘That I didn’t!

He had a paralytic seizure, just like they told you.

Whatever he was, and he was a proper bad lot, you know, a rakehell and a satyr and worse, I’d hardly kill the goose that laid the golden egg, now, would I?

I was dependent on him, remember, for all that came with being a marchioness.

All those fine things I thought I couldn’t live without.

Jewels and silks and servants and such. Yes,’ she added impatiently, seeing what her stepdaughter was about to say, ‘I get a jointure now he’s dead.

It’s very generous. But I couldn’t manage to live on it, and I’ve got into debt so deep, it’s hard to see how I can ever get out. ’

‘We should help you,’ Amelia said impulsively. ‘You’ve helped me, and you didn’t need to.’

‘I’d bleed you dry and you’d soon regret it,’ was the cheerful answer.

‘You’re talking to me now, but you know you can’t afford to be seen with me in public.

But I’m well blunted, just at the moment, because of what the murdering wench paid me, and I’ve a mind to go abroad and leave all my debts and my creditors behind.

I’ve had enough of England, and it seems like England has had enough of me.

You Wyvernes won’t be sorry to see the back of me either.

Perhaps your precious reputations will recover in the end if I make myself scarce. ’

‘I’m not sure it matters, really. Anything that can be destroyed so easily by baseless gossip can’t be worth much in the first place, it seems to me. But where will you go? We’re at war with practically everybody, and I should think that would make things rather difficult for you.’