‘The police will have to be notified.’

‘As yet, then, you and I are the only ones who know the full truth?’

‘And Jack himself.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Sir Titus stroked his beard. I could hear the muffled noise of the mill and feel the vibrations of the power looms shaking the office. It was a warm day, and despite the open window the room was stuffy. I felt the sweat gather on my brow and upper lip. I gazed out of the window and saw the weir, where Richard Ellerby had met his death. ‘This is not good,’ Sir Titus said finally. ‘Not good at all.’

‘Sir?’

He gestured with his arm to take in the whole of Saltaire. ‘What I mean, Dr Oulton, is that this could be very bad for the village. Very bad. Do you have faith in the experiment?’

‘The experiment, sir?’

‘The moral experiment that is Saltaire.’

‘I have never doubted your motive in wanting to do good, sir.’

Sir Titus managed a thin smile. ‘A very revealing answer.’ Another long silence followed. He got up and started pacing again. ‘If a man visits a public house and becomes so intoxicated that he falls in a river and drowns, then that is an exemplary tale for all of us, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I would, sir.’

‘And if a man, after visiting a public house, is followed by a group of ruffians who attack him, rob him and throw him in a river to drown, then again we have an exemplary – nay, a cautionary - tale, do we not?’

‘We do, sir. But Richard Ellerby wasn’t robbed.’

He waved his hand impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, of course. I know that. I’m merely thinking out loud. Please forgive an old man his indulgence. This place – Saltaire – means the world to me, Dr Oulton. Can you understand that? The world.’

‘I think I can, sir.’

‘It’s not just a matter of profits, though I’ll not deny it’s profitable enough. But I think I have created something unique. I call it my “experiment”, of course, yet for others it is a home, a way of life. At least I hope it is. It was my aim to make Saltaire everything Bradford was not. It was designed to nurture self-improvement, decency, orderly behaviour and good health among my workers. I wanted to prove that making my own fortune was not incompatible with the material and spiritual wellbeing of the working classes. I saw it as my duty, my God-given duty. If the Lord looks so favourably upon me, then I take that as an obligation to look favourably upon my workers. Do you follow me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And now this. Murder. Manslaughter. Call it what you will. It disrupts the fabric of things. It could destroy any trust that might have built up in the community. No doubt you remember the troubles we had over anthrax some years ago?’

‘I do, sir.’ In 1868 a man called Sutcliffe Rhodes had garnered much support from the village in his campaign against anthrax, and Sir Titus had been seriously embarrassed by the whole matter. ‘But surely you can’t expect me to ignore what I know, sir?’ I said. ‘To lie.’

Sir Titus smiled grimly. ‘I could never ask a man to go against his beliefs, Doctor. All I ask is that you follow the dictates of your own conscience, but that you please bear in mind the consequences. If this issue surfaces again, especially in this way, then we’re done for. Nobody will believe in the goodness of Saltaire any more, and I meant it to be a good place, a place where there would never be any reason for murder to occur.’

He shook his head in sadness and let the silence stretch again. Above the noise of the mill I suddenly heard men shouting. Someone hammered on the door and dashed into the office without ceremony. I couldn’t be certain, but my first impression was that it was the same shadowy figure I had seen in the ‘spy’ tower.

‘Sir Titus,’ the interloper said, after a quick bow, ‘my apologies for barging in like this, but you must come. There’s a man on the mill roof.’

Sir Titus and I frowned at one another, then we followed him outside. I walked slowly, in deference to Sir Titus’s age, and it took us several minutes to get around to the allotment gardens, from where we had a clear view.

The man stood atop the mill roof, full six storeys up, between its two decorative lanterns. I could also make out another figure inside one of the lanterns, perhaps talking to him. But the man on the roof didn’t appear to be listening. He stood right at the edge and, even as we watched, he spread out his arms as if attempting to fly, then he sprang off the roof and seemed to hover in the air for a moment before falling with a thud to the forecourt.

It was a curious sensation. Though I knew in my heart and mind that I was witnessing the death of a fellow human being, there was a distant quality about the event. The figure was dwarfed by the mill, for a start, and just in front of us, a dog scratched at the dirt, as if digging for its bone, and it didn’t cease during the man’s entire fall to earth.

A mill hand came running up and told us that the man who had jumped was Jack Liversedge. Again it was an eerie feeling, but I suppose, in a way, I already knew that.

‘An accident and a suicide,’ muttered Sir Titus, fixing me with his deep-set eyes. ‘It’s bad enough, but we can weather it, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?’ There was hope in his voice.

My jaw tensed. I was tempted to tell him to go to hell, that his vision, his experiment, wasn’t worth lying for. But I saw in front of me a sick old man who had at least tried to do something for the people who made him rich. Whether it was enough or not was not for me to say. Saltaire wasn’t perfect – perfection is a state we will never find on this earth – but it was better than most mill towns.

Swallowing my bile, I gave Sir Titus a curt nod and set off back up Victoria Road to the hospital.

In the days and weeks that followed, I tried to continue with my work – after all, the people of Saltaire still needed a hospital and a doctor – but after Jack Liversedge’s pointless death, my heart just didn’t seem to be in it any more. Jack’s dramatic suicide lowered the morale of the town for a short while – there were long faces everywhere and some mutterings of dissent – but eventually it was forgotten, and the townspeople threw themselves back into their work: weaving fine cloths of alpaca and mohair for those wealthy enough to be able to afford them.

Still, no matter how much I tried to convince myself to put the matter behind me and carry on, I felt there was something missing from the community; something more than a mere man had died the day Jack killed himself.

One day, after I had spent a wearying few hours tending to one of the wool sorters dying of anthrax, I made my decision to leave. A month later, after sorting out my affairs and helping my replacement settle in, I left Saltaire for South Africa, where I eventually met the woman who was to become my wife. We raised our three children, and I practised my profession in Cape Town for thirty years. After my retirement, we decided to move back to England, where we settled comfortably in a small Cornish fishing village. Now, my children are grown up, married and gone away, my wife is dead and I am an old man who spends his days wandering the cliffs above the sea watching the birds soar and dip.

And sometimes the sound of the waves reminds me of the roar of the Saltaire weir.

More than forty years have now passed since that night by the weir, when Jack Liversedge told me he had killed Richard Ellerby; more than forty years have passed since Sir Titus and I stood by the allotments and saw Jack’s body fall and break on the forecourt of the mill.

Forty years. Long enough to keep a secret.

Besides, the world has changed so much since then that what happened that day long ago in Saltaire seems of little consequence now. Sir Titus died three years after Jack’s fall, and his dream died with him. Fashions changed, and the ladies no longer wanted the bright, radiant fabrics that Sir Titus had produced. His son, Titus junior, struggled with the business until he, too, died in 1887, and the mill was taken over by a consortium of Bradford businessmen. Today, Saltaire is no longer a moral experiment or a mill workers’ Utopia; it is merely another business.