It was his intended destination anyway as he had decided to keep a close eye on Sarah after witnessing her episode of pain. Something about it troubled him despite Sarah’s insistence that all was well.

‘I thought long after your last visit,’ Martha said. ‘About you saying I ought to be afraid of Mary. Though right now I am increasingly afraid for her.’

Raven knew she would not be bringing up his warning if it had not struck home. She had come to talk, but she would still need to be delicately coaxed.

‘I cannot help Mary unless I am in possession of all knowledge that might be relevant, and that particularly includes matters you might consider unsavoury. In all truth, Martha, is there anything about your sister that has ever given you pause?’

Martha frowned, her head bowed against the rain.

‘She could be coarse. That always set her at odds with my parents. Mother said she was wanton. I don’t know about that, but she was certainly defiant. She seemed to court my mother’s ire, which troubled me because I always endeavoured to avoid precisely that.’

As she said this, it struck Raven that Martha was the opposite of all he admired in Sarah. Though it was an uncharitable thought, he wondered if her late fiancé would have run a mile had he been presented instead with a woman who challenged everything.

‘And over your whole lives together, is that the sum of it?’ he asked, trying to keep the frustration from his voice.

Martha hugged herself and briefly bit her lip.

‘Well, there is something. I’ve never said this to anyone, though. It seems disloyal. Shameful, in fact, even to have thought it.’

She shook her head and Raven feared she was about to clam up again.

‘There is nothing disloyal about it if it helps us find her. Tell me, Martha.’

‘All our animals kept dying. The dogs and the cats. Our pets. And God forgive me for thinking it, but I sometimes wondered if Mary had something to do with it.’

‘Why?’

‘Whenever Mary was punished by my mother – and by punished, I mean beaten – sometime later, one of the animals would die. Not immediately, but it would happen. I might be wrong, though, or misremembering. Pets die all the time, don’t they?’

There was a look of uncertainty on her face. She had been wary of him but now she needed someone to trust, and perhaps the knowledge that someone trusted her. This would be the time to tell her what they had discovered, and what they suspected about Martha’s own family. He had to get her in out of the rain, though: put her at ease in Sarah’s parlour with a warm fire and a cup of tea. He could see her front door up ahead.