Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

Harriet found Fraulein Hurst in the upper parlour. She was in the windowseat, and so lost in her reading that she did not hear Harriet enter. Mrs Westerman took the opportunity to study her for a moment. She seemed very calm. Harriet found it difficult to stay still even now; at Miss Hurst’s age she would have been out of doors at all hours. Had she herself ever looked so young? She could not believe it. The lines around her eyes had become so familiar in the mirror she could not imagine they had once not been there at all. She sighed, and the Fraulein turned quickly. Harriet thought she saw in her face hope — happiness, even — then it fell away into disappointment. As she set down her book she seemed suddenly more distressed than at the moment she had heard of her father’s death.

‘Mrs Westerman?’ Harriet crossed to a sofa in the centre of the room and took a seat, patting the fabric next to her. Sophia obediently crossed to join her and placed her hands together in her lap, her eyes lowered. ‘Mr Scales has so many fine books. I have not had the chance to read very much since I left the convent.’

‘Forgive me for interrupting you, Fraulein Hurst.’

She flinched as her name was spoken. ‘Please, call me Sophia, madam.’

Harriet watched the soft profile. ‘Sophia then. I asked to speak to you alone for a few moments. I hope you do not mind.’ A slight shake of the head. ‘Sophia, my dear, I wish to find out why your father was murdered.’

The girl looked up quickly, then back to her folded hands. ‘You are certain he was murdered, then? How was he killed?’

Harriet wondered how to respond; then, thinking of all the times she had heard facts frustratingly glossed over with half-truths and euphemism, said simply, ‘It appears that he was stabbed from behind, in the neck.’ Sophia accepted the information calmly. Harriet watched her face with a frown. ‘The blow went up into the brain. There was very little blood. He would have died on the instant.’

Sophia asked nothing further.

‘Did anyone want to harm your father, Sophia? Did he have enemies here?’ The girl shook her head, but it was not clear if she was refusing to answer, or answering in the negative. A tear ran down her cheek. Harriet wished she had learned the trick of weeping so neatly. Whenever she cried for James, she snuffled and sobbed and bit her pillow, leaving her face blotched and her eyes red as demons.

‘Can you tell me something of him, of your father?’

Sophia swallowed and produced a handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped her face and blew her nose in a businesslike fashion.

‘I have little to say of him, Mrs Westerman.’ Harriet did not normally enjoy the sound of an Austrian accent, but in this young woman’s voice it gave her words a frost-like clarity. ‘I only met him six months ago. I was a boarder at a convent school from the time my mother died. That was when I was four years old, and her relatives paid to have me educated. They did not approve of her marriage, but they felt they had a duty not to see me starve. The nuns taught me to write to my father twice every year. I never had any reply. Then, just after my seventeenth birthday, a letter arrived from Vienna. My father wanted me to live with him in his house there. Within a week I had left the only home I had ever had.’

‘And what did you find in Vienna?’

Sophia stood up and went to the window, looking out at the view across the gardens to the lake and the hills beyond. ‘Why do you ask me these questions?’

Harriet watched her with her head on one side. ‘Mr Sturgess thinks it was Casper Grace who killed your father and will track him down and have him hanged if he can. I think he is being rash.’

‘Casper? What reason would Casper have?’

‘That is my question. I have just learned that your father had some kind of dealings in Cockermouth.’

The young woman shrugged her shoulders. ‘I know nothing of Cockermouth.’

‘I am sorry if you find my questions discourteous, but I would find out what I can to make sure the wrong man is not punished.’

‘I do not know this word “discourteous”.’

Harriet extended one arm along the back of the sofa. ‘Rude.’

Sophia gave a short laugh. ‘You are not as discourteous as meine gnadige Frau von Bolsenheim.’

Harriet lifted her arm from the sofa and examined her fingernails. Good Lord, I am becoming Crowther, she thought, and let the arm drop again. ‘I thought you handled that lady rather well.’

Sophia turned away with a toss of the head. ‘I understand she called you a whore,’ Harriet continued. Sophia crossed the room and picked up a romantic little porcelain model of a shepherd and shepherdess from the mantelpiece.

‘Why must you ask questions?’ She said crossly. ‘Why not this Mr Sturgess or the vicar? He does not ask questions, only offers to pray with me for my father. I find I cannot.’

‘There are longer answers, but I shall give you the shorter one. I ask questions because I wish to know the truth. Mr Sturgess does not. The vicar is busy enough with the truths of his parish. Do you not sometimes wish to do what you want to, Sophia?’

The girl’s grip tightened on the figurine. ‘I wish to smash this ugly, lying thing. I wish to dance on its splinters.’ Her breathing slowed and she placed the model back in its place. ‘But I shall not. First because it belongs to Miss Scales and she might be fond of it. Secondly because a good young lady does not do such things. Does not do what she wishes. A whore would smash it.’

Harriet watched her straight spine. She was too thin. Harriet could count the vertebrae of her bare neck and thought of the space on her father’s neck where the blow had been struck.

‘It is my understanding that whores are often expected to do what they are told to, Sophia.’ Sophia turned round and stared at her. ‘My dear, I mean only to say that sometimes, we ladies are not so distant from those poor creatures as we like to think.’

Harriet was not sure what reaction to expect at this, but she did not think the girl would collapse to her knees. She stood very quickly and crossed to her. Sophia was crying again, but more after Harriet’s fashion than the single poetic tear she had shed for her father. Harriet crouched down beside her, her skirts blooming about her, and gathered the dark head onto her shoulder.

‘My dear! Do tell me what has happened. I am so sorry. All will be well, I promise you.’ It was such an easy promise to make. She had made it to her sister years ago, she had made it to her husband and to her son a thousand times. Sometimes it had been a false promise, she knew that. So they sat for a few moments while the birds sang about their business outside and Harriet’s dress developed creases for the maids to despair over.

When Sophia had begun to calm herself and made use of the handkerchief again, she spoke.

‘I was happy to be summoned to my father. I had seen so little in my life. When the carriage entered the city I could not help laughing. All those people. All those fine clothes.’ Harriet stroked her shoulder and was suddenly very glad she was no longer young. ‘The house where the carriage stopped looked so fine, and there was a footman to help me with my trunk. I was afraid, but happy. I wanted my father to love me. He showed me into the parlour. It was pretty. Yellow paint on the walls, and the furniture all new. I was so pleased to arrive at such a house.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘He did not own any of it. It was all hired by the week. When he is in funds the house looks like that, then a few days later men would come to the door and hammer away, then take all of it. There was a little desk in my room. He told me it was mine, but it was a lie. They took that too.’