“That is exactly why, Anne,” Emily explained. “We can be certain that she will lie to save her neck and then continue to deceive if she thinks she might profit from it. And I am certain that if she accompanied us, she would do everything in her power to frustrate and interfere. In short, I believe the most useful and interesting person we can talk to here is this Mr. Markham, for he may have known the Top Withens child himself.”

The further they ventured into the building, the colder it became. Indeed, it rather seemed that Mrs. Poole kept only her own quarters properly heated, and somehow it felt colder in this neglected former home than it had outside.

“I am reminded of Cowan Bridge,” Charlotte said, shuddering. “The cold and heartless régime seems always to follow me wherever I go. Even worse, we appear to have happened upon an establishment just like it: cruelty cast as charity.”

They paused outside the schoolroom, peering in through the open door of a large, high-ceilinged room with long windows that must once have been very grand and fine. There were perhaps fifty boys in the class, ranging from the older boys at the back, who looked as though they wouldn’t be kept on at the orphanage for much longer, to little children at the front, whose faces retained the soft malleability of babyhood, their serious and solemn expressions pulling at Anne’s heart. Surely all such little children needed was kindness and play, yet there they sat at their slates, huddling together on the benches for warmth, as this Mr. Markham talked over their heads. The once magnificent fireplace remained unlit, though whether through prudence or design Anne could not be sure. Charlotte was right: a place like this afforded much greater opportunity than a life on the street, or even within a poor family in which poverty and hard work would wear a body to dust before it reached the age of ten. Even so, if she could, Anne would rip it all down and begin again—build a world that was equal and fair where a human soul was prized above profit—but in this modern age of machinery and progress, it seemed an impossible fantasy, stranger and more exotic than the childhood worlds she used to build with Emily.

Anne knocked briefly before entering to the sound of benches scraped backwards as all the boys stood.

“Please be seated,” she told them kindly, before addressing Mr. Markham, who observed her and her party with quite some astonishment.

“Please do accept my apologies, Mr. Markham,” Anne told the fair, slender young man who was nervous and earnest in his demeanour, “but the matter is urgent. Indeed it is one of life and death.” She nodded towards the hall. “May we have a moment of your time?”

“You have me at a disadvantage, Madam . . . ?”