“Because I don’t ask questions,” he replied. “I don’t want to know where they’ve been or what they’ve done or where they are going. That means I can pay less and they work harder. Even so, some of them can’t work as hard as I need, and so I move them on until I find someone who can. That year, that was the last year that the farm was our main income. After that, it was the mill that made our fortunes.”

“Mr. Bradshaw, do you keep your keys on you always?” Anne asked, nodding at the key ring that Clifton returned to his belt.

“I do,” he said. “I am the only one who has them. If any door in this house is to be opened or locked, then it is to be by me.”

“And was it so in eighteen thirty-two?”

“It was after Mary’s passing,” he told her. “After her death that summer, it was always so.”

“And you never unlocked the room where the bones were discovered after your wife died?” Anne pressed on.

“No.” Clifton shook his head. “Not until the screaming drew us towards it, and I could delay it no longer. At least since you took the bones that infernal noise has ceased.”

Anne suspected that Bradshaw sought to distract her with his talk of supernatural occurrences, but she would not be diverted.

“Then can you suggest how someone might have concealed the body of a child within that room if it was not you?” Anne asked.

Clifton shifted in his seat and looked at Liston, who had been silent. Unable to meet his father’s gaze, Liston stood up abruptly and walked away from the table. Anne couldn’t help but notice that Molly followed him almost at once.

“The windowpane is broken in there,” Clifton said. “They must have forced their way in.”

“Climbed up, smashed through the glass of a small window, perhaps carrying a terrible load, then took apart the chimney breast and replaced it, all without the bark of a dog or the creak of a board? And yet you heard my sister and me as we talked in that room today. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it, Mr. Bradshaw?”

“Perhaps it does, but there it is,” Clifton said. “I suppose if I were in my cups, it’s possible one of the men who passed through here could have lifted the keys from me for a while. Check the ledgers. We had all sorts that year: Travellers, former convicts and Irish. Perhaps it was one of them. Can’t trust an Irishman.”

“I believe you know my papa is an Irishman,” Anne said coolly. “We do not stand such prejudice in our house.”