Inside the drawing room, he was helping George to a seat. “You’ve ordered tea and refreshments?” he asked Violet.

She felt her face heat guiltily. Quickly she leaned out the door and told a footman what was wanted.

“Violet, what do you know?” George was looking at her fixedly. “Your letter said Harry was arrested but not why or how.”

“Well, they found a dead woman.” She sat and tried to order her thoughts. “On the heath. Mistress Piller or Poller or—”

“Pollard?”

“Yes.” Violet stared at her, startled. “How did you know?”

“I know her grandson.” George waved the interruption away. “Go on.”

“She was poisoned in the same manner as the sheep. They found those weeds by her, the ones that were by the dead sheep.”

Oscar frowned. “But a woman wouldn’t be so stupid as to eat poison weeds like a sheep.”

“There was a cup by her.” Violet shuddered. “With some kind of dregs in it. They think he—the poisoner— forced her to drink it.” She looked uneasily at her sister.

“When was this?” George asked. “Surely someone would have told us had they found her before we left.”

“Well, it appears they didn’t,” Violet replied. “The local people found her the day before you left, but I only heard the day after you’d gone. And there was a carving, an animal of some sort. They say that Mr. Pye made it, so he must have done it. Murdered her, that is.”

Oscar darted a glance at George. Violet hesitated, anticipating a reaction from her sister, but George merely raised her eyebrows.

So Violet soldiered on. “And the night you left they arrested Mr. Pye. Only no one will tell me much about his arrest, except that it took seven men to do it and two were very badly wounded. So,” she inhaled and said carefully, “he must have put up quite a fight.” She gazed expectantly at George.

Her sister stared off into space, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. “Mistress Pollard was killed the day before I left?”

“Well, no,” Violet said. “Actually, they’re saying it might’ve been three nights before.”

George suddenly focused on her.

Violet hurried on. “She was seen alive in West Dikey four nights before you left—some people at a tavern saw her—but the farmer swears she wasn’t there the morning after she’d been seen in West Dikey. He distinctly remembers moving his sheep to that pasture the next morning. It was several days before he went back again to the pasture where she was found. And they think, by the condition of the body, because of the . . . uh”—she wrinkled her nose in disgust—“the deterioration, that it had been on the heath more than three nights. Ugh!” She shuddered.