At some point Russell had appeared behind her, and the distance between them had closed in an instant.
Charlotte's shoulders gave the faintest twitch.
For that one moment her body reacted before her mind did — a slight tightening, the line of her shoulders drawing in, like a small animal startled out of stillness.
But she didn't turn around, and she didn't step back. She simply stood there in front of the evidence board, motionless.
When had he come in?
She could always sense everything around her. She could reconstruct an entire event from the smallest sound.
And yet those few seconds just now — or had it been minutes?
She had sunk so completely into her own thoughts that the world outside them had stopped registering at all.
After a quick, brief calculation, Charlotte edged half a step back on instinct, restoring the space between them.
"How do you walk without making a single sound?"
She turned her head, arranging her face into displeasure, using it to paper over the lapse of a moment ago.
"You were too absorbed," Russell said with a shrug, his gaze resting on her face for a moment. "You don't seem quite yourself, somehow."
"Are you all right?" he asked, concerned.
"I'm fine." Charlotte's voice was level.
"Then what were you thinking about just now?" Russell asked.
"27 Clement Street," she said.
"27 Clement Street?" Russell frowned, as if reaching back through his memory. "Isn't that Hannigan's house?"
"Mm." Charlotte nodded.
"What's strange about the place?" Russell asked. "After Hannigan died it turned into a murder house. Everyone cleared out of the whole street. You can't seriously suspect Pilsen is living inside it."
The words fell, and silence settled over both of them.
Charlotte lifted her head and met Russell's eyes.
The sentence was like a key, and somewhere in her mind it turned with a soft click.
"It's possible," she said. "Why couldn't he be?"
She threw the question back at him, her voice bright with the excitement of sudden understanding.
Those eyes, hazy a moment ago with tangled thought, had caught light again.
"Why couldn't he be?" she repeated, then turned and faced the evidence board once more, her finger landing on the address.
"Pilsen. He could be living right here!"
"That—" Her sudden shift startled him. "Didn't you rule out the Southwark District from the very beginning?"
"At the time we'd both fallen into the same preconception." Charlotte was warming to it now, her old rhythm returning to her.
She stepped forward and pointed at the circled area on the map that marked out Southwark.
"We just said it ourselves: he's at the end of his rope, penniless, living off the pitiful little savings Emily Collins had. Correct?"
"That's right," Russell said with a nod.
The moment she asked it he had a vague sense that he'd caught the thread himself — but looking at how alive she was in that moment, he decided to play the dutiful straight man and feed her the lines.
As long as the child was happy. Let her have it.
"So what sort of place is the Southwark District?" Charlotte's finger drew a circle on the map.
"It's the most respectable stretch in the whole Southwark District. The rents are obscene and there are constables on every corner. Do you think Pilsen could find himself a safe hiding place there without disturbing a single soul?"
"No chance," Russell said, shaking his head.
"Exactly." The corners of Charlotte's mouth curved up. "And that's the error we walked into at the start."
She went on.
"If he hasn't the means to rent a new apartment, then why not move straight into one that's already standing empty — and perfectly safe?"
"You mean—"
"The most dangerous place is the safest place."
Charlotte didn't raise her voice, but in the quiet room it carried with perfect clarity, edged with the certainty of someone who has seen straight through to the bottom of a thing.
"Hannigan's house is a murder house now. After he died it was left empty. No master, no servants, and no neighbour who'd notice anyone coming or going, because every soul on that street would rather keep well clear of it.
"Even the officers from Scotland Yard, once they'd finished going over the scene, did nothing more than paste two flimsy seals across the front door and leave. It's an empty house now — an empty house that everyone is desperate to avoid."
The more she said, the more the excitement built, and the faster the words came.
"27 Clement Street. Three floors, with a cellar. It hardly matters that the front door is sealed — Emily Collins worked there long enough. Do you imagine she wouldn't know where the back door is?"
As she spoke her gaze came back to Russell's face, those grey-blue eyes glittering.
This was how she was meant to be.
This was what she was good at.
"Only once it's confirmed that there's no heir at all does a house pass formally to the Crown's property office. After that the government decides whether to auction it, let it, or put it to public use.
"That process takes weeks at the very least. Months, more likely. Which means that house gives him all the room and all the time he needs to hide.
"There are beds already made up. There's Hannigan's wine and his cigars. There's probably still a good deal of food left in the kitchen and the cellar stores to keep a man's belly full."
She paced across the carpet as she talked, arms folded.
"Pilsen can hole up there, and Emily Collins knows the place well enough to come and go as she pleases.
"On top of that, Lestrade's men are all off in Bermondsey and thereabouts. There's nothing in that district but the ordinary beat constables, and they've no particular reason to know anything about Emily Collins.
"She could even take a post at one of the neighbouring houses close by, and use the position to smuggle things across to Hannigan's place."
"So you're saying Pilsen is inside Hannigan's house right now?" Russell asked, following her line.
"Eighty percent," Charlotte said.
"And the other twenty?"
"The other twenty depends on whether he's still alive by the time we get there."
"Hold on. We get there?" Russell raised an eyebrow. "I rather assumed you'd hand this one to Lestrade."
"Once, perhaps I would have. Not now," Charlotte said.
"Why not?" Russell asked.
"Because right now I need something to do to steady myself."
"So…"
"So the two of us are going." Her tone brooked no argument.
"Time for a long-overdue trip into the field, Watson."
"Now?" Russell glanced out the window. The light had already gone out of the sky.
"What's the alternative? Wait for Lestrade to bring men round, by which time Pilsen has either died or run."
Charlotte shot him a look, then crossed to the coat stand and pulled on the heavy black coat without a moment's hesitation.
"Just so we're clear," Russell said, watching her impatient figure with resignation. "You do know I still have lectures tomorrow, don't you?"
"…"
"Don't you?"
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