Nathaniel felt the familiar disappointment grip him. Foolishly perhaps, he admitted, he’d imagined he’d find Rose without too much trouble after talking with Beattie Harper, and to that end he’d taken a couple of weeks off work with the excuse that he’d damaged his hand in an accident at home. He knew it would mean the sack if he was caught out but finding Rose was worth the risk. Besides, he was good at what he did and he’d comforted himself that if the worst happened another shipyard would take him on.

He had been to umpteen mills with no Rose, but then yesterday he’d happened across an old man close to the hamlet of Highfield who’d told him about a mill at Rowlands Gill. ‘Bin a mill there for donkey’s,’ the be-whiskered old fellow had told him, puffing on his clay pipe as he sat on the front doorstep of his small cottage at the edge of woodland. ‘Vickers, that’s the name, but if I remember rightly the son’s never wed so I daresay it’ll go out of the family when he pops his clogs.’

The sun had already been setting so Nathaniel had decided to spend the night at an inn he’d noticed a mile or two back, but now it was morning and he was standing outside the mill. The young lad who had come out of the building when he’d called had just informed him that the miller had died and there was no one in the house.

‘I’m just clearing up the last of the flour an’ stuff before the constable comes to secure the place,’ the youth explained.

‘When did he die? The miller?’

‘Three weeks or so ago now.’

‘So he lived here by himself? There were no elderly parents?’ That’s what Beattie Harper had told him, that Rose was going to work for a miller with elderly parents, so this looked like yet another dead end.

‘No, he lost his mam back end of 1902 and his da had gone before that but he didn’t live alone. He got himself a lass in shortly after his mam went, the old goat.’ He winked lewdly.

‘A lass? You mean a housekeeper?’

‘If you want to call it that,’ the lad said, grinning.

‘What would you call it?’

‘Well, I only saw her from a distance now and again but she was young and bonny an’ had a babby, so I reckon old Vickers knew a good thing when he saw it. Word is he picked her up in Gateshead, and you can’t tell me she was there just to keep house.’