Lily’s eyes were drawn straight to the one girl who was not a Romanov. Anna’s full-busted figure made her royal friend appear willowy in contrast. A round face – pretty though rather chubby, Lily thought – was being turned away from the photographer in laughing protest but Lily sensed something more in the evasive game. Camera shy? No. The protective sweep of glossy dark hair being teasingly offered to the photographer suggested flirtation and Lily smiled to herself. After all these years, had she guessed Anna’s secret?

‘The French master? Was he attractive?’

The princess looked at her sharply. ‘Many thought so. The girls all adored him.’ She took the photograph from Lily and looked at it intently. ‘You must understand that, with her birth, wealth and royal connections, my niece was destined to make a good marriage. An English duke … a Pomeranian prince … something of that order.’ She sniffed. ‘But today, if you go looking for her, you might well find her working in a hotel kitchen. She is a law unto herself, my Anna. Never will listen to advice. One tries to help – she is one of us, after all, and may count on our loyalty and support to the death.’ She shrugged her shoulders to indicate that she had wasted her time. ‘Perhaps she will listen to you. If you go at once to her lodgings you will most probably find her there.’

She whispered an address into Lily’s ear before ringing for the butler. Her last words to her were murmured: ‘I fear she is something of a loose cannon whose movements are unpredictable and dangerous. Mind your toes, Miss Wentworth, should you find yourself treading the deck alongside Anna.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lily headed off to the north-east, guided by the stern bells of the Russian church in Moscow Court booming out on the far side of Hyde Park. They ceased on a dying peal, leaving an unnatural silence flooding down from the rooftops. This was a moment to enjoy – a moment of rare peace when the streets were empty of motor traffic and pedestrians. It would be short lived. Lily caught in the distance the notes of the military band playing for church parade in the middle of the park. Soon the huge crowds the ceremony attracted would be spilling back on to the streets again, spiritually refreshed and heading home or for the pub in search of bodily restoration.

‘It’s not far,’ the princess had said. ‘In the middle of that disgusting rookery off the Gloucester Road.’ She’d quivered with distaste. ‘They keep promising to knock it down and cleanse the area of riff-raff but what happens? Every year another street of houses is repaired and more ruffians move in. Do have a care, Miss Wentworth. Anna could do better for accommodation. Heaven knows, she’s not without influential contacts. It’s my opinion that she’s in the throes of some sort of self-imposed chatisement. Wallowing in degradation. I’ve offered help but all she will take from me is what I feel least able to give – references to her character when she seeks ever more demeaning posts. She remains in touch with Sasha, though they are no longer as close as they once were, I sense.’

Smells of roasting joints coming from kitchen quarters explained the deserted pavements. After lunch people would flock outside in their hundreds, dressed in their Sunday best. Visiting day in a sprawling capital. Families would be crossing London to see their friends and relations in distant suburbs. Lily wondered how Anna Petrovna – a mentally fragile and lonely Russian woman – was spending her Sabbath. Would she be back in her lair, lashing her tail in fury that her prey had got away? Planning her next assault on the English Establishment? Had Bacchus’s men dragged her off already for questioning? If so, Lily rather hoped their first question might be: ‘Why on earth are you trying to do harm to the country that offers you shelter?’ Or were they somewhere about the place, quietly watching the house?

Lily decided not to confront the woman, even if the opportunity arose. Sandilands wouldn’t thank her for muddying the waters. But there were other useful things she could do, if she could come and go unnoticed. She pulled her hat lower on her forehead.

She was entering a very mixed area. What her father would have called ‘Queen Anne in front, Mary-Anne behind’. Substantial Victorian facades progressed from family houses of some grandeur and single ownership to well-to-do business premises (Lily noted a firm of solicitors and a car dealer’s showroom) to apartment houses with ranks of front door bells and finally to lodging houses.

No vacancies. The signs were strong on the wing. As were English Gentlemen accommodated; No females; No foreigners; No travellers. Lily couldn’t think how a single migrating Russian girl had ever managed to find a toehold on this cliff face of forbidding respectability.

A left turn into Hogsmire Lane answered her question.

Hogsmire Lane didn’t live up to its bucolic name. It conjured up muddy fields and wild hedgerows a-froth with may blossom but here there was not a sign of foliage, flower or farm animal, though this must, at one time in the last hundred years, have defined the western outskirts of the city, its ragged line marking the place where the built-up town ran straight into the fields and hedges. Nor was it a ‘lane’, but a short and run-down street linking two grander ones, a left-over, left-behind, rotting backwater. It was not a thoroughfare in which the princess would ever have set foot and, modestly dressed though she was, Lily hesitated to walk down it herself. A narrow, heat-cracked road separated York stone flagged pavements that abutted the front walls of the narrow terraced houses. One or two of the houses were boarded up with plywood planks at door and window but, for the most part, panes of glass gleamed, a tribute to the elbow grease, newspaper and vinegar of the housewives. Front doorsteps, all nine inches of them, were recently donkey-stoned, proclaiming to whoever was passing that here resided a decent God- and neighbour-fearing family.

Lily thought she knew what to look out for. Bacchus’s men were too professional to be discovered loitering in the street re-tying their shoelaces or propped against a lamp post with their heads in the Racing Times. She decided to watch out for fit-looking men dressed a little too well for the area; encyclopedia salesmen with heavy briefcases; Jehovah’s witnesses in dark-suited pairs. She decided there was no sign of a Branch presence.

Lily crossed the road to avoid a swaggering youth being tugged along by a bulldog puppy on a chain and paused to get her bearings. Honeysett had reported that the address he had for Miss Peterson was ‘care of number 42’. And yet the princess had told Lily number 67. What was going on? A quick glance along the street told her that number 42, on her left, the one that would have come in for a certain amount of attention from the Branch, had a brown front door, recently painted and it was still on its hinges. The house had discreet net curtains at its ground-floor window. In front of it, on the pavement, was a group of children out at play. Lily was pleased to see them. In any street the behaviour of the children was the best indicator of unrest or aberration, and these children were playing normally.

They were already dressed for the day in their smartest clothes. Probably expecting a visit from Grandma or due any minute to set off with the family across town themselves. They’d clearly been got ready and sent out of the house with a warning to keep themselves clean and tidy. They had on white collars, pulled-up socks and shiny boots, Lily noted. One boy, the smallest, was even wearing a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, years old and passed down the family. He appeared ill at ease in it and was sitting cross-legged a few feet away, excluded from the game, Lily guessed, on account of having to keep his frills clean while his three brothers and one sister played hopscotch. They bobbed with subdued energy up and down the number grid chalked on the flagstones.