She sat up, groaning as her stiff neck and joints protested, and then sat in a daze of tiredness. It wasn’t yet light but she needed to go to the privy. Reluctantly she swung her feet to the floor and walked through to the kitchen and then into the yard beyond. It was here that there came over her a strange feeling, a host of butterflies suddenly fluttering in her stomach as she looked across the yard to the wash house. The brick-built structure held a copper boiler with a fire underneath, two deep galvanized tubs with a dolly to agitate the clothes and a box mangle, and the tin bath she’d used the night before. She only ever took a bath on market day when she was sure Arthur wasn’t around, and to her knowledge he had never used it – he barely even washed at all – and yet more than once she had caught him coming out of the small building with what she could only describe as a furtive expression on his face. Had her subconscious been trying to tell her something as she’d slept?

Her heart racing, she went back indoors and lit the oil lamp that normally sat in the middle of the kitchen table. She had to search now, before Betsy woke up and the day properly began.

When she opened the door of the wash house she stood for a moment or two in the doorway, holding up the lamp. The ceiling and walls were whitewashed and the floor was stone-flagged. Where could someone hide something in here? It had no nooks and crevices like the house and the mill but then that meant that no thieves would be interested in looking here, which was just the way the miller would think.

She checked round the boiler first and then the tubs, even moving them to see if the slab beneath was disturbed. That only left the box mangle, a long brute of a thing that she had a fight with every wash day. The box was filled with stones and travelled backwards and forwards over the rollers around which the clothes were wound. At the end of its progress in each direction it tipped to allow the rollers to be removed. Turning the wheel was hard work because the box was so heavy. There was nothing wedged under the mangle itself – she could see through the slotted wood – but to search thoroughly she needed to drag it aside, which was easier said than done, and she was sweating before she had finished.