Her only companions are a troubled nephew, a mysterious physician and brother-in-law, Simon, who prescribes her nightly opiate, and a dog named Morpheus.
Purcell is adept at capturing a city (Bath, England) in the process of transformation, drawing on contemporary accounts and an 1852 street directory – "The Bath of Agnes's childhood was a city of palaces … the fashionable paraded in the Pump Room by day and danced in the Assembly Rooms by night. There was always a play or a concert in some white stone mansion. Now carbon deposits have stained the buildings, giving them a funeral aspect. Dirt bleeds into the river, into the sky."
When a Sergeant visits to inform Agnes of the death of a recent client, Purcell's plot kicks into action. Agnes immediately recalls the victim, not because he was memorable in any way, but because he was her first customer for months.
When she fishes out the silhouette of him she had been working on she's horrified to discover that "it looks exactly as if it has been hit with a mallet".
As the number of victims mounts, Agnes turns to a child spirit medium in order to get some explanation but they soon realise they may have opened the door on to forces beyond their control.
Or is the killer closer to home?
