“I don’t like to talk about what I saw there, but I was mightily glad that I met Mr. Barraclough up there that summer, bringing in a new clock. He told me he was seeking a housemaid, should I require a new situation. I had been uncertain, but that night I made my mind up. Even now, when I have been out of that place for thirteen years—and as a God-fearing woman I don’t like to talk about it—all I will say is that it were pagan, unnatural . . . devilish. If you were wise, you’d leave this all well alone. Sometimes the past can hear you, you know. It can hear you say its name, and it comes stalking after you to catch you up and drag you back.”

“Agnes,” Anne said, “is Mr. Barraclough a good man? Would you ever have reason to suspect him?”

“No.” The clock chimed five, and with it, Agnes’s lips were sealed. “No, I will say no more. You came to ask me if I remembered a child, and I do not. If you want to know what I saw that night, then you can go and look for yourselves.”

“Look at what?” Emily asked her.

“When you come out of the front door of Top Withens, you will see about a half mile away a small, tight copse of trees,” Agnes said. “Dead Man’s Copse, they call it. You won’t see what I saw that night, pray God, but there may be some trace of it remaining there. You go there and see what you may. I will tell you one thing more, and one thing only. What I saw there that night, it returns sometimes in my nightmares, and it still wakes me in a cold sweat until this very day.”

“What’s this?” Zerubabbel Barraclough came in through the door, stopping dead to take in the scene. “Misses Brontë, we meet again—twice in one day. Have you come to see me?”

“We—” Anne began.

“We did,” Emily cut across her. “Papa is afraid that our clock is running slow and wondered if you might service it.”

“Your sister told me only this morning that it was running perfectly.”

“And it was,” Emily said. “And then it went quite mad this afternoon. Agnes was just taking our message to relay to you.”

Emily met the gaze of Widow Barraclough, who had appeared from the other room as she completed her story, and her heart sank as she realised how very quickly it would unravel under further questioning. And yet Widow Barraclough said nothing. Perhaps she too sensed the worry that came off Agnes in waves, as if it were she who had just been caught in a lie and not Emily. In any event it seemed that Zerubabbel’s mother did not wish to concern her son with the true nature of their business either.