The morning the body was dredged from the Thames, an impenetrable fog had rolled over London. The body was that of a man, quite evidently dead by the time he was hauled up limply, first onto a passing barge and then onto the damp wood boards overhanging the river at the dreary Limehouse docks. The initial assumption that he had fallen victim to a misstep on the riverbank, not an uncommon occurrence in such weather, quickly faded in the face of the obvious: He had been murdered. Before long, the police were summoned.

But as the same white fog swirled across her bedroom window that morning, Catriona Winters was not thinking of the murdered man. She did not yet know he was dead. She was thinking only of a letter and was putting off asking whether it had arrived.

Her house was unsettlingly quiet, her bedroom cast in the dim glow of a gas wall sconce and what meagre light had made its way through the parted curtains. Catriona usually took breakfast with her papa, but when she had gone down to the dining room just after six that morning, he had already departed.

She had asked her maid after him only to be rebuffed with the vague reply that he had left early on personal business. Sturdy, competent, and exceedingly practical, Emily was not one to speculate about exactly what sort of business this may have been. Her discretion was a quality for which Catriona had been grateful on several occasions, but today she gathered the maid had observed a little more than she was letting on, and the realisation annoyed her.

“Then I must catch him up at the office,” Catriona conceded, staring absently out the window, which overlooked Thurloe Square and the surrounding houses. “He may even wish to print my story on the lecture of last night.”

If she had expected Emily to enquire about the lecture or the meeting at which it had been delivered, she was to be disappointed. The maid simply stepped back, her fingers not having missed a beat with the hairpins, and surveyed her handiwork as she waited to be dismissed.

Catriona at last looked away from the window to the mirror above her dressing table. Her hair was piled atop her head in loose black curls, and her day dress, grey-blue with lace at the neck, complemented her colouring. In certain respects, she believed she took after her papa, but in her dark eyes and complexion, she undeniably resembled her mother.

“That will be all, thank you,” Catriona finally said. However, as the maid turned to leave, she could not stop herself. The words flew out: “Did a letter arrive for me this morning?”

“I do not believe so,” Emily replied. Instead of departing immediately as Catriona thought she would, she ventured, “A letter from Mr Hampstead?”

The anticipation had been broken, replaced by embarrassment.

“Emily, really,” Catriona said, a wave of heat suffusing her face. But she said it with little feeling, knowing it would sound like an admission, and Emily slipped out, satisfied, without another word.

Mr Sidney Hampstead, an acquaintance of several years, had set off by steamer back to Boston, his home city, three months earlier. Despite their casual flirtation, the occasional unchaperoned walk, shared glances of amusement across crowded rooms, Catriona thought of him only as a comfortable friend. In his letters, which arrived like clockwork every ten days, he regaled her with the intrigues of life in an American city, and she clung to his adventures vicariously, because in London the season was over, and with it had gone her splendid fetes and leisurely afternoons strolling the green. Society had descended into a dull autumn, grasping for a scandal. Each day blurred into the next.

But the letter she awaited was not one from Sidney.

Having caught the train to Charing Cross, Catriona walked the familiar route to Covent Garden, to the offices of the Messenger. The staff had grown used to her comings and goings, and she believed they tolerated her presence, even indulged her occasionally, as when she wished to try to operate a Remington typewriter or observe the mechanics of the printing press on the lower floor. In reality, she knew they had no choice but to put up with her. Her papa owned the paper and she had decided to make herself useful there, given his decline in health as the cold set in, so nothing further was to be said on the matter.

Sir Frederick Winters was of that singular class of man who had made his own way in the world. Knight commander by merit of his military accomplishments, he had returned to England from his final posting in the West Indies with a daughter in tow and a small fortune on which to capitalise. In the twelve years since, he had set his sights on the Messenger, then little better than a scandal sheet, and transformed it into a reputable institution of investigative journalism. From the Tichborne case to the recent Afghan campaign, the Messenger had covered it all.

As Catriona ascended to the third storey of the building, where his private office overlooked a bullpen of reporters, she did not expect her papa to have arrived yet, still occupied with whatever business had waylaid him. In fact, she expected none of the staff to be in quite yet, as they so often spent the better part of the morning following up on leads. So the sight of two men deep in conversation caught her by surprise. One, instantly recognisable by his steely hair and aquiline features, was Sir Frederick, still wearing his coat, as if he had just come in.

The other was David Turner, Viscount Ashford, his old friend and military colleague. Lord Ashford and her papa had fought side by side in the Crimea in their youth, and it had been he who awaited them in London years later when they arrived from the West Indies. His own children, Bethany and Nathaniel, had welcomed her into their circle at once from their home across the square, and the families had been entwined ever since.

Like her father, Ashford had also had an illustrious military career. But most recently, as a personal favour to the previous home secretary, he had taken the helm as director of the newly formed Criminal Investigation Department within the Metropolitan Police. Beleaguered by scandals following a corruption trial involving several detectives, Scotland Yard was in need of a firm hand to guide it into modernity, and Ashford, the home secretary had argued, was just the man for the job.

In the dim, quiet office, Catriona could just barely hear their conversation.

“Of course, Ashford,” her papa was saying. “More than happy to. I’ve been on the hunt for a skilled photographer for some time.”

“I ought to thank you before you have the sense to change your mind,” Ashford said, holding his top hat in his hands. “That son of mine brings me grief to no end.”

The conversation stilled her in place. They had not heard her come in, and she did not know whether to announce herself, sensing she was overhearing something not meant for her.

That past midsummer, Nathaniel Turner, though only recently returned from his studies at Cambridge, had abruptly left London for the Ashford estate in Kent. It was no secret that there had been some strife between father and son in the weeks before his departure. She remembered how Nate had been—constantly drunk, shameless, a risk to his own reputation. The situation had been untenable, and it had been agreed, as Bethany later explained to her, her tone purposely light, that he would spend some time away from the negative influences of the city.

Yes, Catriona remembered how Nate had been.

Feeling suddenly breathless, she took hold of the edge of a nearby desk to steady herself, but her hand found a stack of reference books instead, which toppled neatly to the floor. The conversation ceased abruptly, and Ashford turned and, having spotted her, bestowed her a magnanimous smile.

“Darling, are you quite all right?” he called out.

“Yes, simply clumsy,” Catriona replied, bending at once to collect the books. “Good morning to you both. I have not interrupted you, I hope?”

“Ashford was just about to head out, my dear,” her papa said. “Some business down in Limehouse, you were saying?”

“Yes, a dreadful affair,” Ashford said. “A man’s been found dead, drifting off the docks.”

“An accident?” Catriona said, joining them.

“I daresay not,” Ashford replied. “The Yard is looking into it.”

He hesitated before saying anything more, and Catriona thought he must be deliberating how much to share. Knowing Sir Frederick was a bloodhound for a good lead, he was no doubt choosing his words carefully.

“A murder, then?” Sir Frederick prompted. “How unfortunate.”

“Quite,” Ashford finally replied. Having apparently decided to share no more, he said, “I must be off. I have matters to discuss with the detective inspector at the scene—on secondment from Birmingham, handpicked by yours truly.”

Sir Frederick, conceding their conversation had come to its natural end, began finally to undo the buttons of his coat. “Will I see you at our club tonight?”

“Would I miss it?” Ashford said, then turned to Catriona, who allowed him to press an affectionate kiss to her cheek before he swept from the room, strode through the bullpen, and descended the stairs to the street.

“There must be a report on the incident, of course,” Sir Frederick said as soon as his friend had gone. He paused in undoing his coat buttons. “How typical of Ashford to hint at a good lead and then run off! A shame none of the staff are in yet. I shall head out myself.”

“Papa, remember your heart!” Catriona said, reflexively backing towards the open doorway of his office as though to stop him by force if necessary. “The cold and damp would be injurious to your recovery.”

The opportunity to present him with her story on the previous evening was quickly slipping away, but she was not as sorry as she might have been. Although Catriona was not politically inclined, the lecture she had attended, delivered by Miss Frances Cobbe on the topic of women as citizens, had been of particular interest to her. The appeal had lain not in the ideas themselves but rather in the feeling they had created within her, an electric and almost frightening sense that there existed a vast world outside her own experience.

Her story had not conveyed this feeling; it had been a factual summary of the lecture, and its publication now seemed quite unimportant—when a man lay dead and there was no one to report on it.

She said without thinking, “Perhaps I could go.”

“My dear!” Sir Frederick exclaimed with such uncharacteristic vehemence that she knew at once what his answer would be. “That is out of the question. No daughter of mine shall be permitted to go skulking about Limehouse.”

“Papa, please reconsider,” she said, feeling like a child, a feeling she resented. “Lord Ashford said the police are at the scene. Surely one might rely on their protection.”

Sir Frederick looked out over the empty bullpen. As was always the case following a display of emotion, he had mastered himself quickly. “You ask because you think I cannot say no to you,” he said.

Catriona waited in silence, suspecting that if she pressed his decision, she might encourage a refusal. Her papa had never limited her, never restricted her freedoms beyond what was demanded by society. In some ways, Catriona felt he was progressive, even avant-garde. She only hoped it might be that side of him, or the side that valued a good headline, which would win out now.

“But I can,” he said at last, “and I shall.”

“But, Papa—!”

“Do not argue with me, my dear.”

Knowing she was defeated, she decided she ought to leave quickly, but she could not help herself from making an attempt at her second objective. “Forgive me,” she said, and rose on her toes to grace him with a kiss on the cheek. “If I may, were you speaking about Nathaniel?”

Sir Frederick regarded her with a raised brow. “I suspected you had heard that,” he said. “Ashford wants to keep it hush-hush for now, but he is to return from the country within the week.”

“That is…oh, within the week?” An unwelcome heat flooded her cheeks. “Bethany must be thrilled.”

“I gather Ashford is slightly less so,” Sir Frederick said. “You know I care for Nathaniel as though he were my own son, but you and Bethany will have to endeavour to keep him on the straight and narrow upon his return. If only your Hampstead were still in London to set him a good example!” He removed his coat and draped it with a flourish over his wingback chair.

“Yes, quite,” Catriona said, willing her papa to drop the subject quickly now. Luckily, he turned to settle himself at his desk, and she took that as her cue to leave.

· · ·

Having taken the Underground to its last eastwards stop and failed to hail a hansom cab willing to go any farther at that early hour, Catriona had faced a long walk to Limehouse. Even as she asked her papa his permission, she had already decided she would go. That he had forbidden it seemed somehow a necessary hurdle, and ultimately immaterial. She would write her story on the murder and present it to him, at which point she felt sure she would have made up a good excuse as to how she had come across her information.

As she neared the river, she was met with a damp mist which seemed to creep under the skin. Missing were the sounds she had imagined, the shouts of sailors and dockworkers and the clacking of cargo carts over the cobblestones. Only the cries of gulls pierced the fog, and the buildings were so near one another that very little light penetrated their shadows.

A grim scene awaited at the docks. The police had halted all activity, and the barges in the basin were still laden with cargo, the skeletal masts of waiting ships rising from the Thames beyond the canal. Dockworkers milled about, squatting to smoke or throw dice in doorways. On the boards nearest the river, a tattered greyish sheet had been draped over the waterlogged corpse. She tried not to imagine it. Were his sightless eyes open? Did he still look like a person at all, or had the slithering creatures of the river got at him?

A small curious crowd had gathered near the scene, held back by a freckled young man in plain clothes, perhaps a detective constable. Pushing her way through somewhat indelicately, Catriona produced from her reticule a small diary in which she might make note of anything that stood out.

The first detail to strike her was a fine silk top hat lying some distance from the body, as if its owner had simply discarded it there. But the uniformed constables were taking care not to tread on it as they walked by, and she realised it must belong to the victim. The quality and workmanship were fine; it reminded her of the hats her papa wore but in a more modern continental style, the top a little shorter.

Nearest the dock, a patch of boardwalk was stained wine dark. Blood—it must be, and not an insignificant quantity. The victim had been stabbed or struck, perhaps even shot, before he found his way into the river. But if there had been violence at the docks, someone must have witnessed it. The place was surrounded by weather-beaten edifices, with crumbling shingles and warped leaded windows shuttered against the morning light.

She stepped towards the young constable managing the crowd and called out, “Excuse me! Catriona Winters, with the Messenger. I understand a man has been found dead. Any comment for the public?”

The constable shifted on the spot, hesitant if somewhat flattered at having been addressed as though he were an authority on the matter. The crowd had descended into quiet murmurs, and he cleared his throat before stating confidently: “I should say only that—”

“Whitby!” boomed a stern voice from across the docks.

Whitby started, falling silent, and Catriona turned to see whence the voice had come. Standing over the body, a man stared intensely their way. He was an inspector, she realised, perhaps the very same Ashford had mentioned that morning.

“Not a word, do you hear?” he called out.

“Yes, sir!” the constable shouted, and when he turned back to her with a sheepish, pained expression, Catriona knew she would get nothing from him.

The crowd milled around and in front of her, a blur of jostling shoulders, damp coats, and jutting shoes. These people knew the reality she had been forcing herself to ignore: that she was no reporter at all, that she was only playing at her own vague and perhaps misguided idea of what a reporter might be. She had only to turn, having been pushed already to the back of the crowd, and break free at the mouth of a dim laneway. She had been defeated too easily.

The laneway smelled of coal smoke, refuse and washing water, and the eternal Thames. She raised a gloved hand to cover her mouth and nose. From the windows overhead drifted scattered snippets of conversation: a man calling to his neighbour, a mother scolding a wailing child. Conditions in the district were squalid, marked by chronic poverty and want. Catriona saw why her papa had not wished her to go there. It was a side of London many preferred to pretend did not exist, and in peering into it, she felt disconcerted, as if she were not meant to have seen it at all.

Pulling her overcoat tighter against the damp cold, Catriona turned the corner—and immediately withdrew into a doorway, having spotted a shock of white hair emerging from the fog ahead. Lord Ashford stood under a stone archway at the mouth of a small courtyard. He spoke with an unfamiliar woman, Chinese and of middle age, dignified in appearance despite her surroundings. The mist hanging listlessly in the lane muffled their conversation, and within a moment, the two had passed through the archway and out of sight.

Catriona waited a minute before emerging. The laneway in which she stood was now deserted. Through the archway, at the far end of the courtyard beyond, was a boarding house of the type frequented by foreign sailors, its signpost painted in English and Chinese letters. No one else had come or gone. Had that woman or one of the boarders seen something relevant to the murder, and was Ashford making his enquiries inside?

A footstep sounded behind her. “Hardly the area in which a lady ought to walk alone.”

She whirled, and the tingling shock ricocheted through her and dissipated. It was only the inspector from the docks.

“But by all means,” he said, gesturing towards the courtyard, “do continue your attempt to intrude upon a crime scene.”

The feeling of having been caught struck her intensely. She blamed him for it and disliked him immediately. From his manner of speech, characteristic of the Midlands, she gathered he was indeed the inspector from Birmingham of whom Ashford had spoken. His hair was dark under his hat, and in the morning light, his eyes were a peculiar shade of grey. He regarded her with an inscrutable expression that she perceived as arrogance or presumptuousness.

“Intrude?” she said. “A man has been murdered, and I only enquire on behalf of the public. Catriona Winters, with the Messenger. And you?”

“Inspector Thomas Marlowe, Scotland Yard,” he replied, and at last gave a small bow, nothing more than the slightest incline of his head. “At your service.”

“Then, Inspector, perhaps you wish to comment. Has the murdered man been identified?”

His mouth twitched. “Did you imagine I might be at liberty to divulge that information to a journalist?”

Catriona felt as though she had stumbled over another hurdle and barely righted herself before hitting the ground. It was not often that a man refused her anything—but in doing so, had he not referred to her as a journalist? She should have been embarrassed to cling to that so tightly. She grasped for her memory of the scene, for the picture of a fine silk top hat lying sodden on the boardwalk. “Is it not odd for a gentleman of means to have been here on a Monday morning?” she said.

“Are you sure he was killed this morning?”

“You suggest he was not?”

He glanced over her shoulder and down the laneway before surveying her again. His eyes were keenly intelligent, even perceptive, though looking into them felt like looking into deep water. “Miss Winters,” he said, “morning or night, you might be surprised at why gentlemen find themselves in places like this.”

Could he be trying to shock her? She had read accounts of the East End, sensationalist articles whose authors would have one believe every street corner played host to a brothel or an opium den. Had the murdered man been engaged in something illicit, something that had ended with his death in the river?

“Might I be?” she said finally, and left it at that. “You agree the death was not accidental, so was he killed on the dock or did he drown?”

“The body has yet to be brought to the police surgeon, as you well have seen,” he said. “Or would you have me speculate as to the cause of death?”

“Speculation is unnecessary if there were witnesses,” she said.

He gave a quick exhale, but whether aggravated or amused, she could not tell. “The inquiry has only just commenced,” he said. “If you wish to follow up at an appropriate time, see me at my office at the Yard.” He extended a plain card towards her.

The conversation had ended, she knew. She had coaxed nothing from him, and he was only patronising her now. A better reporter might have known what else to say, how to press him, but she simply took his card and tucked it into her diary.

He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “If there’s nothing else, madam, I suggest you not linger,” he said, already half turned from her. “I hear Limehouse is not known for its hospitality.”

And with that, he retreated down the laneway towards the docks. Catriona breathed deeply, long enough to quell the strange hot feeling that had crept up her neck. It was annoyance, annoyance at him and disappointment in herself for having been brushed aside. She hoped very much that she should never have cause to speak with Inspector Marlowe again.

Some distance away, a door slammed. A drunkard had stumbled out into the street, cursing and tripping over his own ragged shoes. He glanced at her, and behind the mean desperation in his eyes was something like blame. A wave of alarm overcame her, but as she turned and fled down the laneway, she quickly realised the drunk man had not followed her. Perhaps he had not seen her there at all, and she had imagined the mean look on his face. Her alarm turned into pity and disgust, for him and herself.

She had intruded into a world not meant for her, but had she not found what she sought after all? She had everything she needed to craft a story for the evening issue: a wealthy gentleman, a sudden bloody act of violence, and the cold, murky finality of the Thames.