'I did not recommend someone like that to Lady Ravenscliff,' he said evenly, 'so don't get resentful. I imagine she is paying you a fortune and you will gain inestimably from the experience as well. On top of that, there was something strange about Ravenscliff's death, and I want to know what. You were the best person I could think of to discover it.'

'I thought he fell out of a window.'

'So he did. Open window of his study on the second floor. He was working alone and his wife was out. Pacing up and down, tripped on a carpet.'

'So?'

'He hated heights. He was terrified of them, and deeply embarrassed by the fact. He never went near an open window if it was anywhere but on the ground floor, and used to insist that all windows were tightly shut.'

'And does Lady Ravenscliff share your worries? She never mentioned anything to me.'

He gave me a sidelong look, and I realised what he meant.

'You think . . . ?'

'All I know, Braddock, is that this is a matter of the utmost importance.'

He said it with such intensity that I didn't quite grasp his meaning. 'Why?'

'Because,' he said quietly, 'Ravenscliff owned the Chronicle. And I don't want it falling into the wrong hands. Find out for me, please, what his will said, where his assets go. Who is our new master.'

I walked back to my lodgings, something I often did when I needed to think. It was more than six miles, from the City to Chelsea, and it took me well over an hour even though I walked at a fast pace all the way. The sight of the black-painted front door gave me none of the pleasure that the prospect of home should give a man. It was all that separated me from the boiled cabbage and wax polish, the smells that gather in an over-occupied house whose windows have not been opened for a quarter century. It was a dingy house, in a dingy street, in a dingy part of town. Nearly every second house, I believed, was occupied by widows who let out rooms to people like me. Opposite was one that functioned as a school for young ladies, turning them into operators of the typewriter, so they could push men out of their jobs as copyists and clerks. A few houses were owned by shopkeepers or clerks desperately clinging to respectability by their fingertips. All of human life, from a particular stratum of society, could be found in Paradise Walk, behind the grubby windows and cracking stucco. Paradise Walk! Never was a street more badly misnamed. I can only assume that the speculative builder who threw up the ill-built, utterly anonymous houses some half-century previously had possessed a strange sense of humour.

Even worse was that my window, second floor at the back, looked over the grand gardens and opulence of bohemian London. Successful artists had congregated in Tite Street, parallel to my own, but lived in a very different fashion. One garden in particular I could see, and used to gaze at the two children – a boy and a girl, dressed in white as they played in the sunshine – the lovely woman who was their mother, the portly father who was a member of the Academy. And dream of such an idyllic existence, so unlike my own childhood, which had contained no sunlight at all.

Not all journalists are editors, not all artists are members of the Academy. John Praxiteles Brock, my fellow lodger, was not then a success; his torment at having to look out every morning at the proof of unattainable glory in the next street was balanced by his desire to rub shoulders with the famous, who might assist him in his career. He would come home occasionally bubbling with excitement and pride: 'I said good morning to Sargent this morning!' or 'Henry MacAlpine was buying a pint of milk in front of me today!' Alas, it was rare that either said good morning in return. Perhaps his desperation frightened them; perhaps the fact that his father was a sculptor (hence his unfortunate middle name) of retrograde opinions and unpleasant temper put them off; perhaps they felt that youth has to fight on its own. Now he is more successful, Brock gives little encouragement to others, either.

I awoke the next morning with a formidable hunger, as I had eaten little, and walked much, the previous evening. So I dressed swiftly and went down to the eating room, where Mrs Morrison prepared breakfast for her boys every morning. She was the only reason I stayed in the house and I believe it was the same for the others who lodged with her. As a housekeeper she verged on the hopeless, as a cook she was very much worse. Her breakfasts tended towards the obscene, and she boiled her vegetables in the evening with such vigour that we were lucky if they were merely yellow when poured onto the plate in a pool of steaming water, there to mix with the grey, tough meat that she cooked in a fashion so personal that no one could ever really figure out how, exactly, she had reduced a once-living animal to such a sorry wreck. Philip Mulready, a man who wished to win fame through poetry (he later settled for a wealthy heiress instead) used on occasion to declaim verses in honour of the poor animal sacrificed on Mrs Morrison's altar. 'There thou liest, unhappy pig, so grey, so pale and wan . . .;' although, sensitive to our landlady's feelings, he made sure that she was in the kitchen when Calliope touched his forehead with inspiration.

She might well have missed the irony in any case. Mrs Morrison was a good woman, a widow doing her best to survive in a hard world, and if the food was vile and the mantelpiece thick with dust, she created a jolly, warm atmosphere. Not only that, she was prepared to mend our clothes, do our washing and leave us alone. All she required in return was a moderate rent and a little company now and again. A pound a week and some chat was little enough to pay.

Though a journalist (now, I remembered, a former journalist) I was not much of a gossip, alas; unlike Brock, who delighted in any excuse that kept him away from work. Mulready was also a conversationalist, although he liked to amuse himself by talking in a way so convoluted, and on subjects so obscure, that the poor woman rarely understood what he was going on about. Harry Franklin was her favourite; he worked in the City in some lowly capacity, but it was obvious he would not remain in servitude for long. He was a serious man, the sort any respectable mother would like to call her own. Every evening he retired to his room to study the mysteries of money; he intended to learn his business so thoroughly that no one could deny him the promotion he craved. He often returned late, working for his employers without charge and all alone, so that he could be on top of his job at all times.

He was an admirable fellow but (dare I say it) a little dull. He was easily shocked by Brock and Mulready, went to church every Sunday and spoke rarely at dinner. He missed little, though, and there was more to him than was obvious. I could occasionally see a faint shine in his eye as he listened to the exuberance of his fellow lodgers; sometimes see the effort that lay behind all that mortification of the soul and discipline of the body. And he lived with us, in Chelsea, not in Holloway or Hackney, where most of his sort congregated. Franklin considered himself a man apart; different, superior perhaps to his colleagues, and was desperate to match reality with his dreams.

It was not for me to decry his ambition; not for me to say that being the general manager of a provincial bank (presumably the sort of thing he aimed at – I seriously underestimated his ambition there) was a poor sort of thing to dream of at night, when those in the rooms above and below saw themselves as Michelangelo or Milton. His dream was as powerful as theirs and he pursued it with more determination and ability.

'I need your help,' I told him as he prepared to leave for work. He paused as he put on his bicycle clips. It was typical of his general approach to life that he pedalled right across London twice a day, because he would not pay the twopence for the omnibus. Besides, an omnibus meant depending on others and risking being late. Franklin did not like being dependent on others.