Imogen Robertson - Anatomy of Murder

“I got my first letter from Fitzraven this spring when I was singing again in Milan,” Isabella said. “There was a picture of me in a newspaper in Paris, and it got sold in London too, as I’ve been talked about here a bit. Morgan almost cried when she saw it, said it was so like my mother she couldn’t credit it. He saw it too, worked out his dates, and wrote care of the opera house, knowing they’d find me.”

Crowther thought of the exclamation point under the portrait in Fitzraven’s notebook. He must have thought the gods were dropping honey on him when he saw it.

“Morgan advised me not to answer, not to admit I was his daughter. She told me to remember he’d got my mother into trouble then left her with nothing but a nod, but I couldn’t help myself. Especially when he said he worked for the opera house. I thought, Oh, so that’s why it felt like home, that’s where all the music has come from. He talked about me coming here, and I remembered that night I first saw an opera was at His Majesty’s.” She turned toward Harriet and Crowther. The glow on her face was no trick of the firelight in the gathering dusk. The woman was shining from within. “So you see what last night meant to me? How many people get to have a dream become real in such a way? It frightens me a little. And it was just as I hoped it might be, and with that duet. The rest of the opera is pleasant enough, but the ‘Yellow Rose Duet’. .” She looked back into the flames. “When I first heard the tune it was as if someone had found the gold in me and made it really shine. Can you understand me? I felt it was written for me alone.”

Harriet struggled for a phrase. She felt she could discuss many subjects with authority, but not music. “Mademoiselle, your talent is remarkable and the tune very beautiful,” she said, and Isabella seemed satisfied.

“And to sing it with Manzerotti! Whatever I have been through, what he has had to suffer for the sake of music, what heights he has reached. . I may spend the rest of my life trying to find such a moment again. Yet I have had it. A Golden Hour. I shall always have that.”

“So Fitzraven came to see you in Milan, to hire you for His Majesty’s. Did you like him?” Harriet said. “We have heard. . differing reports.”

Isabella looked a little pained and it was Morgan who, once again, answered for her.

“We did not like him. Issy tried to. For all the fight in her, she still had her sentimental ideas of what a father is. Gave him money too.” She frowned. “Mr. Harwood has been a far straighter man to deal with. And Fitzraven knew he had a hold on us. If it came out in the papers now that the beautiful Parisian songbird Mademoiselle Isabella Marin was just plain old Issy Baker from Southwark, we’d be laughed at all round town. He never did anything about it. Just, you know, suggested we should all keep the secret together. I could tell his game. I’m glad he’s dead. Bet there are others that feel the same.” Morgan looked at them fiercely.

Harriet though was observing Isabella, who was pulling on the folds of her dress. The stuff of it was so soft it seemed to flow over her hands like liquid, like mercury.

“Do you feel the same, Miss Marin?” Harriet asked.

“It’s a bitter thing to say, Mrs. Westerman, but perhaps I do. I wanted to love him, I wanted to show him I was his daughter and he had wronged my mother. I had an idea he’d beg forgiveness, that we’d visit Dead Man’s Place together and think of her. But he didn’t care about my mother. I don’t think he even cared about music. When he started talking about the opera to me, I could see he didn’t feel about it as I did. To him, it was all about the fuss and gossip. I wanted to be unhappy when Morgan told me he was dead, but I wasn’t, in truth.”

“Morgan told you he had died?” Crowther said, looking up from his hands and with an eyebrow raised. “I thought it was Mr. Harwood who informed you after the performance.”

The old lady crossed her arms and sniffed. “I was about that morning. Watching a body brought in from the river is not the opera perhaps, but it’s always of interest.”

Crowther’s mouth twitched into a smile. “It was you that named him on the street.”

“Just sort of blurted it out like bad wind when his head lolled back as they carried him up the steps. Told Issy. My first thinking was, Good, he can’t go blabbing tales about my Issy now.”

Harriet looked between Morgan and Isabella. “But it was not just Fitzraven who knew the secret of your origins. What of your music teacher? You must have written from France, and visited him since you returned to London, this man who did so much for you.”

The two women were silent for a moment before Isabella replied, “We cannot find him. He began to answer our letters less and less. Nothing would come for months then twenty pages all written very close-strange rambling things they were, deeply earnest one page then light and airy and gossip-filled on another.” She swallowed. “Then they stopped all at once. I would love to sing to him again, show him what he made me. Remember, I was a thing of the gutter when he first found me. Morgan tried to see his old landlady as soon as we arrived. She said he had been taken off to a madhouse by his family over a year ago, but we have no further information. We have struggled. . I have asked Mr. Bywater to look for him on my behalf.” Crowther thought he detected the beginnings of a faint blush as she mentioned the composer’s name. “I would not trust Fitzraven to do so, but Mr. Bywater has had no success as yet and we have all been greatly occupied.”

Harriet cleared her throat. Even before she began to speak she could feel the color spreading up her neck and across her cheeks. “Mademoiselle, my husband was recently injured. An accident on the ship he commanded. He is in health now, physically, but his understanding has been impaired. He is currently in a private asylum on the outskirts of London. I tell you this because, if your teacher had been prone to worsening fits of melancholia, perhaps he too could have ended up in such a place. I am sure Dr. Trevelyan knows most of them. May I make enquiries on your behalf?”

Isabella’s voice was soft in reply. “I am sorry your husband is unwell, Mrs. Westerman, and I would appreciate anything you could do on my behalf in this matter.”

Harriet managed a small smile. “Just give me his name, Mademoiselle. I will make what enquiries I can.”

“His name is Leacroft. Mr. Theophilius Leacroft.”

Before they left Great Swallow Street Harriet and Crowther had also taken the time to knock up the other lodgers present and found that even with the thin walls and close quarters of the building, no one had heard or seen anything out of the ordinary on Thursday. Various people had heard footsteps on the stairs, but no one had noticed any altercation, nor had seen someone leaving with a body wrapped in a hearth rug over their shoulder in the early hours. Crowther was not surprised, saying simply that if they had done, it was likely they would have mentioned it before now. The lodger they had most wished to speak to, however, had not answered their knock. This was the gentleman who had his lodgings at the rear of the first floor, directly under those of Fitzraven. He was away from home, though Mrs. Girdle was sure he had been present on Thursday afternoon. The young man was apparently living on an allowance from his parents, and attempting to find some position in London from his base in Great Swallow Street. His name was given to them as Tobias Tompkins, so Crowther and Harriet wrote a note asking him to call on them in Berkeley Square in the evening, and hoped that the impressive address might tempt him into making their acquaintance.