Cook shuddered. In her hand she held a statement that was far more damaging to Justice Crowther than any statement the authorities had in their possession. It was not to do with the abduction of children or the battering of a woman – though they were obscene enough crimes. No! This letter accused him of other things. Things beyond the imagination of normal, civilized beings. Things that made a body’s blood run cold.

The letter pointed this ‘respectable eminent man’ out as the same creature who possibly murdered both of Emma Grady’s parents! Her mother, following a secret affair with Caleb Crowther, and her father, when it seemed he might change his will to remove power over Emma from that evil man.

‘What to do…? Burn the blessed thing, or show it to the world?’ Cook murmured, her breath fanning the candle-light and sending the shadows scurrying about; the ensuing gyrating shapes on the wall held her mesmerized for a moment. They look like him, she thought – dark and furtive, shifting this way and that.

Only a few months before, Cook would have suffered no dilemma where the letter was concerned. It had always been her ‘insurance’ against poverty and homelessness in her old age. She had kept the letter hidden away, and would not have hesitated to use it for blackmail against the Justice if he had ever carried out his threat to put her ‘on the streets’. Fortunately she had not been made to resort to such shameful means, mainly because of kindly intervention by Agnes Crowther herself. Only recently that same lady had confided to Cook, ‘I may shortly be leaving this house and taking up residence in a smaller property of my own. I would very much like to retain you, in my new home.’ Of course, Cook had been both eager and delighted at the suggestion, especially as there was a ‘possibility’ that Amy also might be ‘taken care of’.

Her thoughts driven to the past, Cook was made to think on the young, innocent girl that was Miss Emma. How unspeakably cruel Justice Crowther had been in deliberately keeping father and daughter apart and how devastated she had been at the death of her father. Soon after, he had married Miss Emma off to an unsuitable man. Then, when she was accused of murder, he had turned his back on her, afterwards ransacking her inheritance and building his own prosperity on it.

‘But your sins have come home to roost, ain’t they, m’lud,’ Cook said now, looking accusingly towards the stairs that led from the kitchen to the upper hall. On her homecoming from Australia, Emma had put into motion a series of events to right the injustice towards her. These events were now set to culminate in a trial that would have the whole of Lancashire agog. There was no doubt in everyone’s mind that the outcome of that trial would serve as the Justice Crowther’s downfall. And there wasn’t a single person – with perhaps the exception of his daughter Martha and his grandson Edward – who would wish it to be otherwise.