It was well after dawn by the time they were ready to cage the gargoyle, but luckily the cloud-cover had thickened, so the new day was only making the creature's skin steam and fizzle, like a damp firework.

Sam had telegraphed the Faculty, telling Mrs Darwin that the place was closed until further notice, and she was to be on her guard. No-one was to be admitted except a police officer, not even Jack. Especially not Jack. And, if he was found hanging around outside the locked doors, he was to be told – preferably from an upper-storey window – to report to the police station immediately.

It had been an expensive telegram, and he was quite sure she would ignore it. But at least he had done his best.

He supervised the caging of the gargoyle himself, in the soupy-grey morning light. They positioned the cage on a barge right underneath Folly Bridge, and then loosened the chains on the balustrade and lowered the creature down.

It was extremely docile. It slipped, limp and leathery, from the bridge to the cage with barely more than a sigh. Its clawed feet touched the bottom of the cage first, but they didn't seem able to support its weight, because it slumped forwards into a heap, with those dark wings covering its back like a blanket.

They draped a tarpaulin over the cage to keep out the sunlight and then sailed the barge downriver, to a boathouse just outside the city-limits, where the boat was firmly moored and anchored, and a guard was set up – more to keep out curious onlookers than to supervise the limp, dejected gargoyle. Sam was starting to feel sorry for it. 

When the boathouse was secure, he checked his pocket-watch. He hadn't missed Mrs No-name. She would be pushing her perambulator down St Aldates in twenty minutes. He could nip back to his lodgings for a clean shirt, maybe smoke a cigarette on the corner of Speedwell Street, and then saunter round the corner into her path the way he did every morning.

Of course, it didn't go as smoothly as that. A clean shirt proved impossible to find, because his landlady had stopped doing all chores, and just sat in the middle of the kitchen, crossing herself, on account of the disappearance of Eve. And then he ran into a young Constable on Speedwell Street, who gave him a stammering account of the search for Jack, and asked for further orders.

All in all, he was panting rather than sauntering – with no nonchalant cigarette in his hand – when he rounded the corner onto St. Aldates.

She wasn't there.

Sam stared ahead of him, all the way up the hill to where the road joined seamlessly onto Cornmarket Street. He felt as though he could see beyond that, even – up St. Giles's to Woodstock Road, then Wolvercote. And beyond that, an endless succession of fields and roads and smoky cities, all of them devoid of Mrs No-name.

He almost fainted. Just in time, he lurched against the wall and used it to support himself. With shaking fingers, he tried to light up a cigarette, to give him an excuse to be lingering.

He hadn't slept in – how long? And there hadn't been any time for breakfast. This wasn't the end of the world, it was just the end of his spirits. Something would come back and give him the power to stand up on his own again, even if it was only anger.

She'd been delayed, that was all. The baby was sick – or she had heard about this business with Eve, and it had upset her. Was she a new-breed? He'd never thought about it. She was just there – that was all he'd ever needed her to be.

He stood with his back to the wall for ten minutes, waiting for these rational arguments to sink in. And even when they did, he found excuses to linger by the solid brickwork, half-hoping that she would walk by him, looking harried and late, and half-dreading that his knees would buckle if he tried to walk away.

***

Manda was waiting for him at the station – and, even through the veil, her gaze was ferocious

"Why didn't you stop him?" she shouted. "Why were you so busy chasing gargoyles? Where were your policemen when the church was burning down? Do you know there are fifteen mourners in the Radcliffe Infirmary? And three of them aren't even expected to live through the night! Where were you – where were you?" she said, hammering her little fists on his chest. "I hate you!"

Sam was fairly sure he didn't need to answer any of these questions. They stung, but they were just symptoms of her grief. He took her by the shoulders and gently pulled her off him.

"I couldn't have saved her," he said – though he wasn't completely sure of this. "And neither could you. Now, Constable Jones here is going to get you a cup of tea, and then we're going to ask you some questions. You think Jack killed her?

"Of course he did!" Manda snapped. "I told you he was going to. Madam Seacombe dreamed it!"

"I'm afraid Madam Seacombe's dreams are not admissible evidence."

"Where – where is she?" said Manda, with a wet, rattling sniff. "Is someone -" she winced – "is someone cutting her up?"

"Don't be morbid."

She laughed hysterically. "Morbid? She's dead! How un-morbid could I be?" 

She drew in a breath that sucked the veil into her mouth, and then her knees buckled. Sam caught her on the way down, but he almost wasn't in time. Half a second later, and she would have cracked her head on the side of his desk.

He had never seen her swoon before. She was not the type of girl to swoon. Panicking, he lifted up the black veil and examined her face. Her freckles stood out starkly against the pallor of her skin.

Sam eased her into a chair and crouched down in front of her, feeling wretched. He had already lost Mrs No-name. He couldn't lose Manda.

"Look," he said, with a sort of irritable despair, "I'll find out who killed her."

"I already told you who-"

"All right. I'll bring him to justice, then."

Manda gave a hollow laugh. It was so unlike her that he snapped at Jones to forget about the tea and bring some brandy.

"The Lieutenant-governor of Lucknow couldn't bring him to justice with a whole army," she said.

Sam thought of saying that the Lieutenant-governor of Lucknow had had a dubious claim to justice, but decided against it. He didn't want to argue.

Constable Jones arrived with the brandy and poured her some. She was strong enough to hold the cup on her own, and not out-of-sorts enough to refuse it. Sam began to feel a little better.

"It's not just him," said Manda, after her second gulp. "The whole city feels... bereft. I can hardly hear myself think with all their longing. You've got to find Eve."

Sam shifted awkwardly. He didn't want to encourage this kind of thinking. He only half-believed in Manda's ability to detect the emotions of the city's inhabitants – and, even if it were true, it certainly wasn't the sort of thing you could base an investigation on. But he didn't want to excite her, either, so it was probably best to just play along.

"Well, keep an eye out for me, will you?" he said, in a carefully neutral voice. "Or a heart – or whatever it is you use."