The team heads home for sleep, planning to meet at the Monument at noon.

Before that, there’s a visit to the bookshop; Miss Allen has little information about the events in Great Queen Street, though it’s been suggested to her that Special Branch have been told to find some anarchists and make sure they get the blame. She will ask Miss Marsden whether she experienced anything unusual on either night.

The Monument is “closed for cleaning”.

The group goes to Kennedy-Cox’s flat and waits in shifts; the valet leaves around seven o’clock, and Bessie and Gertrude go in for a quick search. There’s very little to find; some personal correspondence and some bound volumes of plays, but it seems that his life was really at the Settlements. There’s no sign of anything occult or magical, or Masonic.

Around 9pm at the Monument, there’s no guard. Shine is seeping up through the ground, as well as reflecting off the flame at the top. With the gate jammed shut behind them rather than relocked, the team heads into the basement, which is bare brick; the coffin is in the middle of the room, surrounded by mirrors which seem to be positioned to reflect the shine upwards. On closer inspection, they’re solid silver, hallmarked (all the same), and look at least a few years old.

Gertrude and Milly touch the coffin, and get a strong sensory impression of having very hot fire breathed on them (and a fainter impression of a scaly snout at the other end of the fire).

Bessie and Lin Tan go to the top of the monument to inspect the flame, while the others wait below. The shine seems to be directed onto the flame itself, rather than into the open air, and while it’s radiating a bit it’s clearly absorbing some too.

A van pulls up, and five men get out; one of them is in his twenties and wearing a fine suit, Milly reckons from the same tailor as the man in Kensington, and the other four are clearly used to heavy physical labour. She, Gertrude and Audrey greet them, and the leader tells the others to wait in the van. He seems more willing to talk than his counterpart, though he’s clearly not giving away everything he knows (and neither is the team); he works for a crown organisation that’s centuries old, and when the ladies mention being able to perceive the shine, he comments that he’s sure this won’t require far-reaching institutional changes at all. When they mention things having been more active in the last year or so, he says it’s more like the last decade; describing the exorcism of Aubrey brings a distinct twitch. As for Harold Peters and his experiments, “one does not waste resources but sometimes one wishes one could”; with regard to the affair in Great Queen Street, he mutters something about people trying to gain power, when they already have plenty, though whether he’s referring to magical or temporal power isn’t clear. Those Masons are part of the same organisation as him, technically.

He confirms that the body is indeed Kennedy-Cox’s, the cause of its current state is certainly being breathed on by a dragon but why is still a mystery, and… well, his organisation would really not be interested in co-operation, but he’s more open to sharing information informally.

The mirrors are to reduce the effects of magical leakage, and he’s here not to get power from the body (a slight shudder) but to seal it away in a safe place. He gives his card: he’s Thomas Ramsey, apparently a statistician at the General Register Office for England and Wales, currently part of the Ministry of Health.

The three women leave, and his pall-bearers come in and get the coffin and the mirrors. He locks up, and once the van has left Bessie and Lin Tan descend and break out again.