John Brown waited patiently for her outside, and when she had completed her task, he locked the door behind them. Bidding Mr. Brown good night, she fixed her gaze on the window of the brightly lit dining room, where her sisters were waiting for her, and at once was pinioned by a near suffocating weight of premonition. Suddenly she somehow knew with terrible certainty that to continue further with the mystery of the bones would put all of them into great danger. It hardly made sense, yet she was filled with such dread as she had never previously known. Caught between that lonely lamplit schoolroom and her own dear little house, she felt trapped.

A choice had to be made, and she was not at all certain what it should be.

—

“I cannot see how this mystery can ever be resolved,” Charlotte said as she entered the dining room. Emily was reclining on the sofa, staring upwards, her stockinged feet resting on top of Keeper’s broad head; Anne busied herself picking dead leaves from the holly that garlanded the mantelpiece. “That the bones were concealed at some point during the last thirteen years is all we know for certain. There are no footprints in the mud to follow, no hidden hideaways to discover. Despite your assertions at Top Withens, Emily, I believe that we have done all we can here. Tomorrow the child will receive a Christian burial, and thereafter we should let the matter be closed.”

“I believe that you are incorrect,” Anne said rather quietly.

“I suspected you might,” Charlotte said wearily. The more Anne grew in confidence, the more troublesome and less compliant her opinionated sister became.

“Indeed, I believe that if any are able to find the root of this great wrongdoing, then it is we three. We learnt a great deal from the Elizabeth Chester business, and though our subsequent endeavours might not have been quite as stimulating, we have learnt a great deal more since. We are experienced detectors now who have divined the best way to coax information out of an individual. We excel at observation, paying attention to every detail lest one of them is the key to the matter. And we are clever—exceedingly so. Not even to try would vex us all, so instead of beginning with what we don’t know, which I own is a considerable amount, let us start with what we do.”