Jasper and Rosa, enervated from their evening bout, lay drowsing together in the armchair, half-dressed, half-asleep but with one eye on the clock, ready to leap up the stairs should the Crisparkles curtail their dinner plans.

Cradling Rosa's sleepy blonde head in his arm, Jasper felt waves of the day's events wash over him, blending into confusing montages. Grewgious' parchments blowing away in the skittish wind, Neville's dark eyes merging with Helena's, always accusing. Their voices mixed together and then he heard his own and he was saying something, a word, that seemed mystifyingly significant.

He jerked wide-awake, the word on his lips. "Unintelligible."

Rosa, cat-like, opened one eye and yawned.

"Mmm?"

He stared at her, holding his breath. No, it was too remote a possibility. All the same…

"I have to go out," he said, reaching down for his trousers and braces.

"Out?" Both Rosa's eyes flew open now and she sat up straight. "Now? Whatever for?"

"He said her words weren't intelligible. But what if it wasn't gin? What if it was opium?"

"What if what was opium?"

"And she was in Cloisterham that day. I saw her."

"Who was? Jasper! Stop this and talk to me."

Rosa sounded much as she did when she scolded one of her little pupils, not that she was given to cross words, for most of the time she was gentle and sunny in the schoolroom.

He fastened his braces and drew a breath, looking down at her. He should not keep secrets from her, but the habit of secrecy had been a hard and fast part of his nature for many years and undoing it was not the work of a moment.

All the same, he decided to let her in on his investigations.

"I went to see Neville Landless earlier."

"You…Jasper! What on earth are you playing at? First you drive Grewgious into a frenzy of anxiety and then you go and visit Neville Landless! You are like some vengeful spectre haunting every adversary you ever had."

"Vengeance was not on my mind. Not with Landless, at any rate. Though, do you know, he keeps sketches of you in his lodgings and moons over them night and day?"

Rosa blushed. "No, of course I didn't know that."

"I suppose you have offered him no encouragement?"

"Jasper!"

"He has nursed hopes for years."

"That means nothing. So did you! Did I encourage your hopes in that direction?"

Jasper conceded the point, the burden of miserable years weighing down his mind for a moment.

"No."

"You have an excessively jealous nature, Jasper. I wish you would curb it. I love you very much, but I do not love being falsely accused."

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I fear your loss, even now."

"Well, you needn't. But you do need to tell me what you meant by visiting Neville Landless."

"Merely to discuss the last hours of my nephew's life. He was the last person to see him alive, as far as we can establish. I have never had the opportunity to interview him on the subject."

Rosa was silent for a few moments.

"I see," she said, without enthusiasm.

"You do not want to know what happened to him?"

"I do not see how it can help. He is dead. We have grieved. We have, some of us, spent years crippled by guilt and self-hatred. Let him lie, my love. He is at peace."

"But I am not."

She stood and took his hand. "Oh, Jasper, when will you let yourself rest?"

"I do not need to rest. I am not dead yet, unlike Ned. Rosebud, I need an answer. I need to close this case, or it will chip at me ceaselessly. I owe it to him."

Rosa kissed his hand and placed it on her cheek.

"I understand," she said. "So, what did Neville say, that has spurred you into action now?"

"He said there was a derelict woman on the cathedral steps when he left. He thought she was drunk – he said her words were 'unintelligible'. But opium also renders speech unintelligible, for the most part. I know from hearing the senseless babble of my fellow addicts."

"Oh, don't, I hate to think of it."

"But it's important, Rosa. I know that a certain woman, the proprietress of an opium den in Limehouse, had been that day in Cloisterham. The woman on the steps might have been her. She might have seen Ned leave, might even have followed him."

"It's a very remote possibility," said Rosa dubiously.

"But it is a possibility. And therefore I must go out and find her."

"Jasper, can it not wait?"

"Wait? It has waited nearly six years. She may be dead. She may die tonight. I must know."

Rosa dropped his hand and stooped for her petticoats.

"Then I shall come with you," she said stoutly.

"Oh, no, I think not."

"But I want to."

"I won't have you walking the mean streets at night, Rosa. And besides, who shall let the Crisparkles in on their return?"

This question was swiftly answered by a knock at the door.

"Oh heavens," fretted Rosa, picking up her dress and running from the room and up the stairs. "Tell them I have gone to bed."

Jasper smiled after her fleeing figure and went to answer the door, still in his shirtsleeves, but he imagined the Crisparkles would excuse him.

"I am afraid Rosa has retired for the night," he said, admitting the couple. "She apologises."

"Oh, it is of no moment, we are perfectly exhausted ourselves," said Helena. "I have no idea how people live in London; it is the most wearying of cities."

"Cloisterham life hardly prepares one," agreed Jasper. "And now, if you will excuse me, I must go out."

"So late?" said Crisparkle, bemused, but Jasper merely put on his coat, hat, scarf and gloves and sailed out of the front door without another word.

He caught from the corner of one eye a glimpse of Rosa at her window, and heard her tapping on the glass, but he put her determinedly from his mind as set off in a south easterly direction, across the City and down towards the river, bound for Limehouse.

On the banks of the Thames, remnants of yesterday's fog lingered, stubbornly refusing to let the blustery wind dislodge it. The buildings creaked with each new gust and shadows loomed up with alarming suddenness, usually proving to be sailors staggering from tavern to whorehouse to opium den.

"Have a care," snapped Jasper at one such, who almost brought him down on to the slimy cobbles, but he appeared not to understand and, indeed, was unlikely to be an Englishman.

In his days of frequenting opium dens, Jasper had shared his vice principally with travellers from the far East, Chinese or Malay, although the drug's popularity with a more local clientele appeared to have grown exponentially over the years. A remarkable cross-section of society could sometimes be found at Princess Puffer's palace of iniquities, from jaded young lordlings looking to slum it for thrills down to broken paupers, willing to sell anything and everything for their daily pipe. As far as he recalled, though, he had been the only one 'respectably' employed.

At the doorway of the dilapidated building whose threshold he had so often crossed before he paused and looked upward. A peculiar kind of horror had settled on him at first scent of the sweet, thick, smoky smell wafting down the stairs. Oh, how that smell had quickened his eager step in days gone by. It seemed almost beyond belief now, that he had traded his future for poppy seeds. Why would any man do such a thing?

Oblivion had been his aim, he remembered. That first time, he had sought nothing more than forgetting. But instead of helping him to forget his passionate jealousy and impotent rage against his nephew, it had transformed it into something else: the dream of Edwin's murder, and of Rosa's consequent possession. Had it made him evil, or was he already so? He was still unable to separate these strands in his mind.

To think too much of it was dangerous. If he allowed the full consciousness of his lowest time to flood back into him, he would lose all the brightness of his present and future. The danger of reverting to that repressed, self-loathing, miserable creature still existed, and he might as well throw himself into the river before succumbing to it.

The thought of Rosa cleared his head, saving him from unwelcome introspection. For her sake, he was a better man. For her sake, he would strive to remain so.

His step on the rotting stair was determined, and he made an effort to shut out that alluring fragrance from his olfactory nerves.

Pushing open the door, he had to put his hand to his lower face to avoid choking. The air was not air, but smoke, clinging to every surface and owning the spaces between. To breathe it was to give oneself to opium.

The Princess was popular tonight. Every bunk was occupied with dead-eyed muttering souls while the presiding grace herself sat on a wrecked divan, surrounded by customers who watched her prepare her compound as avidly as if she performed ritual magic.

Nobody paid any heed to the newcomer.

Not until he loomed over the poor wretches did anybody register his presence. Princess Puffer looked blank at first, then she prepared her welcoming face, then she dropped her spoon into the flame, to the consternation of her clientele and took a sharp breath, ending in a hideous racking cough.

The men surrounding her glared at Jasper with frank and somewhat murderous dislike. He had interrupted the ritual, and payment must be exacted. One of them leapt to his feet and, although he was of diminutive stature, he seemed capable of serious damage.

Princess Puffer put a hand on the aggressor's forearm and shook her head at him. When she gestured to him to sit back down, he subsided without a murmur.

"He don't speak a word of English but he understands his Princess," she said to Jasper. "He'll do anything for her, won't you, lovey? As long as she's got what he wants. I remember another like him, though he was well-spoken and an Englishman. What happened to him?"

"I am free of opium," said Jasper.

"Well, fancy," she said, with a bitter edge, taking up her dropped spoon and holding it again, low down to the flame, while the contents melted and mixed. "Come here to spread the good news, have you?"

"No."

"Thought not. Here's one for you, ducky." She filled the bowl of the pipe and handed it to the pugilistic Lascar before looking back up at Jasper. "Well, sit down, why don't you? Smoke a pipe with us."

"I shall never touch that stuff again."

"Sorry, lovey, rules of the house. Nobody leaves without smoking a pipe."

"I'll pay you for one instead."

"Them's reasonable terms," she said with a shrug. "But you was a five pipe a night man at one time. I miss the lucre, I won't deny."

He sighed, reached into his pocket and extracted a handful of silver.

"Oh lor', no, you don't know what the market's like nowadays, my dear, so long you've been lost to us. Just a thimbleful will cost you three and six. What you've got there would scarcely pay for two little pipes."

He sighed again and replaced the silver with a golden guinea piece.

At that, Princess Puffer's face lit up and she reached out, kissed the coin and promptly dropped it in her bosom.

"More like it," she nodded. "So if you don't want me to render the usual service, why are you here?"

He looked with distaste at the other customers.

"Don't mind them, sweetheart, it's all double dutch to them."

"Nonetheless, I would prefer to speak with you alone."

"I don't know as it's quite safe to be alone with you," she said, with sudden coldness.

"There is no need to leave this room as long as we are out of earshot," he said, hackles rising to absurd heights.

"Well. They've paid upfront and they know what they're about." She handed over her apparatus to one of the customers, who set to work straight away, and stood up, walking with Jasper over to a spot near the door, which she closed against further visitors.

"I don't much care to be interrupted when I'm working," she said. "You're losing me customers."

"I will be brief. You came to Cloisterham, one Christmas Eve, some years ago."

"Did I? I can't say as I remember. Me wits is awful addled these days."

"I can give you more money, if that will serve to straighten them."

"Well, it might well do, for all that, my dear."

The silver made its reappearance and she added it to the haul down the front of her chemise.

"What did you there?"

"Such a long time ago, goodness me. And you, my favourite customer back then, my lovely respectable young man. I looked forward so to your visits. And you had the most interesting dreams." She pushed her tongue through her broken front teeth in a horrible parody of coquettishness.

Jasper's cheek twitched, signalling his intense disquiet at this line of reminiscence.

"You will answer my question," he said.

"Cloisterham," she said, affecting an effort of memory. "Funny little place, ain't it? That great cathedral and castle, like you'd see in a proper city, but it's just a little winding street and not much more to it. Queer, I calls it. Now hold your tongue, for I can see your patience is wearing thin. I'll come to it, dearie, never fear."

"Come to it with more dispatch, I pray you."

"You must allow an old woman her ramblings, when she ain't got much else left to her. Lor', look at you, back to your health and strength again. I miss your handsome face, I do. You was wore down to a skeleton last time I saw you. I thought you must be dead."

"Death and I almost made acquaintance," he confessed with a tight nod of his head.

"Don't you talk beautiful too? Always liked that in you, I did. You can tell the class of a person by her customers, you know? All right, all right. Cloisterham. I went there on Christmas Eve because I had a mind to look up an old friend."

"Who but me do you know in Cloisterham?"

"Like I said, I've an old friend there, a lady. I paid her a call."

Jasper could not help but regard this story as somewhat dubious and he frowned at Princess Puffer accordingly.

"So you came there by train?"

"Yes, and I went to my friend's house and we shared a pipe together and I fear we slept through most of the afternoon."

"Your friend is also an opium smoker?"

"Yes, she is, of long standing, and it has been her downfall, I'm sorry to say."

"In that she is not alone."

"Well, you ain't wrong, I dare say."

"At what hour did you leave your friend?"

"I'd say it was late in the afternoon, the dark coming on, and the storm too. Remember that storm, do you?"

Jasper shivered. Yes, he remembered that storm.

"I realised too late that I had no money for my train, and I stood in the street trying to beg it."

"I saw you there."

"Did you now, dearie? Why didn't you come and say hello?"

Jasper made a droll grimace.

"Not good enough for the likes of Mr High-and-Mighty Choirmaster, eh? Well, never mind. The opium was still upon me and I had to go to the churchyard to sit down. I got my three and six there, from a very nice young man. I think you might have known him."

Jasper stiffened.

"Lovely looking boy, fair haired, quite the young gentleman."

"Tell me it was not…"

"He told me his name was Edwin, and do you know what I said?"

"Of course I don't," said Jasper impatiently, wanting to shake his whole body violently so that the creeping sensation of nausea might recede.

"I said he should be thankful his name weren't Ned."

"And…" Jasper, short of breath now, felt his stomach convulse. "And why? Why so?"

"A threatened name, I told him. A dangerous name. And you know why, don't you, dearie? You know perfectly well why."

"What did he say?"

"He didn't say anything much, just went on his merry way and me on mine."

"To the station?"

Princess Puffer looked down, and if she weren't wearing so much rouge, Jasper might have perceived a blush.

"Well, I'm afraid that three and six went into the apothecary's till, for I went there and bought myself a bottle of laudanum. It was so cold, you see, and me bones was aching."

"So you didn't get back to London that night?"

"I drank me laudanum and, I suppose I must have fallen asleep in the park where I took it… I woke up and the wind was powerful strong. I thought to go in the taverns and beg my train fare, but there was a branch fell on the line and the stationmaster said no more trains would run until the day after Boxing Day. So that weren't no good to me. So I took me begging money and bought more laudanum and went to the cathedral steps and drank it there. It was half in my mind that I might see you."

"You went to the cathedral to look for me?"

"I did. I knew what was in your mind, John Jasper."

"How did you know where I lived?"

She held up her hand and smiled.

"Oh, I know all about you, dearie. More than you know yourself."

Jasper tugged at his scarf, half-longing to wrap it around the provoking woman's throat. He was that man again, that murderous, raging man he had been on the night she described.

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded sharply.

Before she could reply there was a loud rapping at the door.

"I've a full house," called Princess Puffer. "Try Millikin's at number 56."

"I'm not here to take opium."

The voice belonged to Rosa.