Once Betsy was in bed she forced herself to begin what she intended to do although the thought of it made her skin crawl. First, she moved everything of hers from the bedroom to the living room, and then carried all the contents of Arthur’s room into what had been her bedroom so it appeared as though that was where the miller slept. She tried to ignore the body but it was hard. Already big bluebottles were beginning to buzz around, no doubt attracted by the blood.

Once she was satisfied that the room looked as it should, she fetched the whisky bottle – now only a third full – and placed it open on the little table by the bed with the glass in which she poured a little whisky. Then, her stomach turning over, she directed her attention to the miller himself. He was still obscenely unbuttoned, his penis, now a small shrunken thing, lying in its nest of pubic hair. Nerving herself, she pulled his trousers down to his ankles to make it look as though, in his inebriated state, he had fallen while attempting to undress himself.

She had to leave the room at this point and, running down to the kitchen, brought up the contents of her stomach in the stone sink.

It was another ten minutes before she could go upstairs again, and after checking both what had been Arthur’s room and then her own, she closed the door on the body, satisfied she had done all within her power to make the death look like an accident. Which it had been, she told herself once she was back in the kitchen and shaking so violently that she had to sit down. That was what she had to remember. This wasn’t her fault. He had attacked her and she had only been trying to defend herself, although whether a court of law would see it that way she didn’t know and she certainly wasn’t going to take the risk of finding out.

The next thing she had to do was harder. She had already checked the contents of Arthur’s cash box in the house and as she had expected it was practically empty, holding a couple of shillings and a few pennies. By her reckoning over the last eighteen months he had only paid her half of what he owed her, and that meant she was due at least five pounds that she had worked for. And she had worked, she told herself fiercely, especially in the first few months getting the house in order. The place was a palace compared to what it had been, and its owner had been looked after like a king in every regard but one. He’d employed her as his housekeeper and as such she had worked her fingers to the bone, but prostituting herself had never been part of the bargain, at least as far as she was concerned.