“Work were scarce that year—I know that much. So when I heard they were looking for a housemaid, I didn’t think twice about it. I went up in the spring, and I was happy. It was a warm spring and so pretty up there—blue sky and meadow flowers. It was a decent house at that time. Mrs. Bradshaw was a good woman from a good family, and she’d made that draughty old house a comfortable and elegant home, at least as best as she could. You could see how Bradshaw wanted to please her—he wanted to make her happy, and that were nice to see.”

Emily and Anne exchanged a glance; it seemed impossible to marry that portrait of Clifton Bradshaw with the man they had recently encountered. Could the death of his wife really have altered him so very much, or had something else—something darker and more sinister—influenced him that summer?

“Bess directed my work,” Agnes went on, “cooking, cleaning, setting fires, laundry—I liked the routine of it. You could let your mind wander elsewhere without any great trouble. Liston were a young boy who loved his mother, but he loved Bess and me too—so sweet he was, so good-tempered and helpful. Every morning he’d sit with the mistress and learn his letters and numbers, and in the afternoon he’d work with his father. I was content enough until . . .”

“Until?” Emily pressed her, taking a seat on a small three-legged stool that sat in the corner.

“I don’t know how any of this can help,” Agnes said unhappily. “How can dredging up memories of that summer produce a name for a child I never set eyes upon?”

“It may not,” Anne said, “but you are the only other person still in the area who was at Top Withens at the time, apart from Bess, who is not clear in her own mind anymore.”

“Well,” Agnes sighed, “two instances I do remember, though I wish I didn’t.”

“Tell us,” Emily urged.

“There was one afternoon—couldn’t have been more than a day or two after Mrs. Bradshaw passed—that Liston . . . well, he went into a rage the like of which I never seen. I expect that he was mad with grief, lost and confused, but even so . . . what he did was . . .” Agnes looked up at them, her eyes triangles of worry. “It was awful.”

“What did Liston do?” Anne asked.