In looks he was tall, thin, and gray, with bifocals that forced him at all times to lean slightly forward. These made him particularly unpleasant to talk to at parties, where one felt inspected and analyzed at every conversational turn. The excellent free education at his school in Norfolk had paved his way to Oxford, and from there he went straight to London, full of ambition and a belief in hard work that had quickly been borne out by his career’s trajectory. The Daily News was a liberal, if not radical, paper, in line with the views of its founder-Charles Dickens. Pierce had molded himself to the paper’s beliefs, rather than the other way around. He was a powerful man now.

Unlike Carruthers, he was not writing on that Christmas evening but reading. The Bible was in his hands. Pierce was, unusually, a Roman Catholic. Even on Christmas he would probably have preferred the office to his home, but he had instead endured a long supper with his wife, who was full of her father’s stories. After she had gone to bed he had come into his study restless. He took no wine and felt clearheaded.

Just as he turned to the first page of the Book of Matthew, Simon heard a soft knock at the front door of the house. The servants were asleep, and with a weary sigh he rose to his feet and made his way along the corridor between his office and the door. It was a sign of disrespect, he felt, that there was no scurry of foot audible below stairs. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why the visitor had knocked, which was sure to raise the notice only of someone nearby, rather than rung the bell, which would have sounded directly in the servants’ quarters. Simon Pierce rarely felt entirely comfortable anywhere other than the office or church, and it was with anxiety that he approached the front hall.