‘No wisdom teeth, I assume?’

She smiled. ‘Not one. The inquest opened this morning, and the remains have been formally identified as those of Edwin Antrobus. Of course his widow is now in no position to contest the will.’

Dr Goodwin signed the conversation to Isaac, who replied.

‘Isaac says you are the cleverest lady in all Bayswater,’ Goodwin translated. ‘You will also be pleased to hear that he has recently had a very affectionate interview with his mother. Poor lady, she has suffered much, and he has been a great comfort to her.’

‘I was hoping,’ ventured Frances, ‘although this will make no difference now, if you could enlighten me on a number of things. In particular your dealings with Mrs Antrobus.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he said thoughtfully and refreshed his teacup.

‘If you are in any doubt about how much to tell me, my advice is – everything.’

Isaac tapped his father on the shoulder and signed anxiously. Goodwin made a reply. ‘My son hopes that you will not accuse me of anything,’ he told Frances. ‘I have reassured him that I have nothing with which to reproach myself.’

‘I am quite certain that you do not.’

Goodwin sipped his tea thoughtfully and put the cup down in a calm and deliberate fashion. ‘I will conceal nothing from you Miss Doughty, a vain exercise, as so many others have found to their cost. On my last professional visit to Mrs Antrobus, she appealed to me to make her husband understand that her illness was of the ears and not the mind. As she requested, I spoke to him again, but he adamantly refused to believe it. His grounds were that she had always attributed the illness to the noise of a firework display, but he was certain that this was untrue. He said that she had imagined noises to be loud before then, and he had persuaded her to attend the display with him to prove that it was all in her mind, but soon after it began she said that the noise was too much and retired indoors. There was one firework that exploded close to the ground, but she was not present at the time and he had told her about it afterwards.

‘I suggested to Mr Antrobus that even if the fireworks were not the cause of her hyperacusis it could have been another event that she had not realised was harmful at the time. I described the kinds of noises that have resulted in ear pain for my other patients and he denied she had ever been subjected to any of them except one. The sound of a gunshot.

‘As I said it a look passed across his face, like that of a man who had seen a ghost and was struck with horror. I thought that he must have taken her shooting and had discharged a gun close by and suddenly saw that her affliction was his own fault. I asked if he went shooting, and he said no but his late uncle had. I tried to question him further but he was obviously distressed and would tell me no more.

‘The next day I received a letter from Mrs Antrobus asking if I might meet her at Kensal Green. I did so and we discussed my conversation with her husband. She mentioned the death of Mr Henderson and admitted to me that she had been in the room when he had shot himself. She said she had been so frightened that she had rushed out of the study and hidden in the bathroom. Her husband, she said, was now accusing her of having shot Mr Henderson in order that he might inherit his fortune. She told me that her husband treated her cruelly and she almost wished that he would suffer some accident and expire but providence had not granted her wish. She said that all she wanted was to be happy and share her fortune with a man who would be kind to her. She wept a great deal, but I have seen her weep many times before, and I believe she may do it at will, without emotion. I have encountered people before who have this singular ability.’

‘What did you say to her?’

‘I was naturally confused. It was as if she was asking me to commit some violence on her husband. She reached out and tried to take my hand but I could not allow it, not after what she had said. I replied that she could not possibly mean what her words seemed to suggest. She gave that little smile of hers. I think you know the one. I told her that it would be best if we never met again, and that as long as she promised to forget the terrible things she had said then I would be prepared to forget them also.’

‘That would have been very shortly before Mr Barfield approached her.’

‘Yes, and when he confronted me he used the same words she had spoken, the same sentiments she had expressed. I knew that he had seen her, and I believed she had made him her creature, but of course I had no proof. I only saw her once more, after her husband was missing. I suppose I was curious to find out if she had had anything to do with it. She denied any knowledge of his fate and also claimed that I had not recalled our last conversation correctly. I thought it best not to seek her society again.’

Goodwin turned to Isaac and signed. The boy nodded, his large hands wrapped around his teacup making it look like something out of a doll’s house.

‘I have told him,’ explained Goodwin, ‘that there was a cruel lady who had done some bad things but because of the clever Miss Doughty she is now in a place where she can do no more harm.’

Father and son looked at each other with an expression of warmth that could only give pleasure to anyone seeing it. Frances knew that she could destroy that happiness, or at least cast a terrible shadow on the future lives of Dr Goodwin, Isaac and his mother, but she could not bring herself to do so.

‘When Mr Barfield attempted to blackmail Dr Goodwin he made a singular error,’ said Frances to Sarah later that day. ‘He thought that because the children could not hear they could not understand what he was saying. Today Dr Goodwin and his son made the same error. They thought that because I can hear that I cannot understand a conversation in signs, but our study of them in the last weeks has been most illuminating. Isaac was extremely anxious in case I had discovered his secret, and I was for a moment tempted to sign to him that I knew it. But I did not. If I made an allegation I doubt that I could prove it, in any case, and I do not wish to be seen as a threat to a youth who I now know to be both capable of and willing to break a man’s neck with his bare hands.’

Lionel Antrobus had been busy with all the duties attendant on him as executor of his brother’s will, so it was not until a week after the inquest that he came to finally settle his account with Frances for the work she had commissioned with Tom on his behalf.

He examined the invoice without a change in expression and handed her an envelope. She expected him to take his leave as soon as the business was done, but he did not.

‘A few days ago,’ he announced, ‘I had a conversation with Dr Goodwin.’

‘What, the Don Juan of Bayswater?’ said Frances teasingly.

He gave her a cold stare. ‘You taunt me, Miss Doughty.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she retorted, staring back at him unflinchingly. ‘But tell me, has Dr Goodwin finally succeeded in convincing you that Mrs Antrobus has an affliction of the ears?’

‘It is clear to me now that something occurred from the sound of the gunshot with which she killed Mr Henderson which has affected her hearing. I already knew that persons can become deaf from such insults, and Dr Goodwin assures me that the opposite may also be the case.’

Frances had been pondering something. ‘At our first conversation when I said I believed Mrs Antrobus to be genuine you disagreed very strongly, saying that you knew her better than I did. I now see that you were, in a sense, right, but it was for the wrong reasons. You knew, you somehow felt from the start of your acquaintance with her, that she was not to be trusted. It was this that made you believe that her hearing condition was a mental affliction.’