“What on earth . . . !” Anne gasped, twisting in her seat to stare into the shadows. They all froze as they heard the locked schoolhouse door rattle insistently, as if some poor spirit were desperate to escape.

“Could it be . . . ?” Charlotte did not complete her whispered sentence, which remained for a moment misting in the cold air.

“Whatever it is, it wants to be free.” Emily took up a lamp, and Anne hastened to join her as she swept what little light they had away to investigate, opening the door into the school hall.

“Lift the lamp a little higher,” Charlotte murmured to Emily. The room appeared empty, the neat rows of benches and slates left ready for the morrow. Anne was just about to let out a sigh of relief when she heard a movement in the far corner, and the shadowy figure of—of a child darted towards the door.

“Oh dear God!” Anne cried out as the poor creature vainly clawed at the locked door. “We must set the poor spirit free!”

Without another thought, Anne progressed at speed to the door, fumbling for the key that she had tucked into her sleeve, until Emily took three steps closer and the lamplight fell upon the supernatural child.

And they could see at once that it was no ghost at all, but rather the scrawny and sleep-crumpled personage of one Master Joseph Earnshaw, a boy from the village who often ran their more discreet detecting errands for them.

“Joseph Earnshaw! What is the meaning of this escapade?” Anne grabbed the boy by his ear and dragged him into the pool of light, where the three sisters encircled him. The boy looked terrified. “What are you doing out of your bed in the middle of the night? I am sure if your mother and father found you’d gone, they’d be beside themselves with worry!”

“I only meant to be a minute, miss,” Joseph said. “I made myself stay up till I thought the whole village would be asleep. It’s just . . . well, I wanted to see the bones, miss. And I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I came in through the back window, but when I thought I was discovered, I took fright and tried the front door, which turned out to be locked.”

“Well, you’ve learnt a grave lesson tonight,” Emily told the quivering boy sternly. “When you are escaping the scene of the crime, you never exit through the front door.”

“Come to see the bones, Joseph?” Anne admonished him, horrified. “What a little ghoul you are. Are you not familiar enough with death, Joseph? Haven’t you lost your own sister and brother before they could walk? What on earth could you want to see such an awful thing for?”

“You were looking at them, miss,” Joseph defended himself robustly. “And you are drawing them and writing about them. I saw you all from my hiding place, peering at the body.”