And we were. Just a fraction, anyways. The line shuffled forward. I looked round. Everyone was far too busy looking ahead to notice what I might get up to. So I stepped to one side and quickly tried the door marked ‘Strictly No Entry’. It was locked, of course. I reached into my skirts and took out the soft black wallet I had concealed there. In a moment, I rolled it open on my knee. The thin metal objects inside gleamed in the gas light – skeleton keys!

Abigail looked down and gasped, knowing a nefarious scheme when she saw one. ‘What you doin’?’

‘Do us a favour. Cause a distraction.’

‘What?’

‘Swoon. Have a funny turn. Fit of the vapours!’

‘Are you crackers?’

‘Go on!’ I hissed, holding up a coin. ‘There’s a guinea in it for you.’

‘Done!’ cried the gal and grabbed the blunt from my hand in the wink of an eye. Then she started moaning and gasping and span on her heel like a top, eventually keeling over in the middle of the crowd so that people stood back. A few Christian souls bent down to aid her and, in the confusion, I had my skeleton keys into the lock, fiddled with it – click! – and was inside the forbidden area.

I shut the door quickly behind me, my heart banging in my ribs. Then I turned round.

The Mill was enormous with metal beams rising high into the ceiling and a lift in the corner. The sound of industry was utterly deafening. I don’t know quite what I expected to see. Rows of these fearsome machines you see in etchings, maybe, chomping and grinding and dipping.

But what I saw instead was that the noise was coming from great big brass things like gramophone horns, dozens of them, set into the stone floor!

Other than that – the Mill was completely empty!

Chapter the Sixth

‘Sweets to the Sweet’

Narrative of Jonas Thursday, Esq.

I returned to the streets of Bradford with heavy heart, conscious of the pall my brother’s death had thrown over my own existence. The narrow, filthy streets seemed of a piece with my mood as I threaded my way past soot-blackened washing that was strung across the low alleyways like sagging catgut. Eyes gleamed at me from darkened doorways. The eyes of children, though what was flesh and what rag was impossible to tell, so emaciated were they.

At length, I found myself outside a lodging house – of low and disreputable character, its paint and plaster as cracked and peeling as the face of a Tudor slattern. It was with some surprise, then, that I found the creaking door was opened by a butler.