The spinning stopped and Lottie looked up with a smile. ‘I do. Wilful lass, but I always liked the ones with a bit of fight in them. Any news of her?’
‘She tells fortunes in London, and is well.’
‘I’m glad. She was wise to go.’
Crowther set his tankard on the ground and felt his weariness rise through him. ‘She made mention of my father having hired some extra footmen — burly types — in his last months. Is that true? Do you know why he did such a thing?’
Lottie shifted her hands to knead the raw fleece while she spoke. ‘Good for the joints, raw wool. I reckon spinning has saved me from rheumatism.’ She reminded Crowther of the housekeeper’s cat in Caveley, pulsing its claws on the kitchen stool. ‘Master Charles, some say grief can make a man do odd things. Lord Keswick shut the doors on Silverside a while after the mistress died, then they came to keep it shut. All business to be done by letter and they let anyone know who came to call that the Master was not receiving.’
‘You think that was a symptom of grief, Lottie?’
She lifted a finger. ‘Some might say that, Master Charles. I think it was the letter.’
‘What letter?’
She shook her head. ‘“What letter?” he says, as if I read my lord’s papers through of an evening. What letter indeed? All I know is with the letters of condolence came one that shook him up. I put it into his hand and saw him freeze solid as he read it. An hour later I saw him stow away something like it in that little hidden safe in the office, and the same day I was told to find two or three more men for the house, men who looked like they could land or take a blow, he said. And I was to arrange to send your sister away for schooling. There was no mention of her leaving Silverside till that day.’
‘I knew nothing of such a safe.’
‘It wasn’t often used, nothing of value in it by then,’ she said vaguely. ‘Nasty brutes those men were, and he paid handsomely for their company. Much good they did. I suppose they did not think to protect him from his own son. I sent them on their way quick.’
Crowther looked up at her. Her eyes were clouded, looking out at the view, seeing something else.
‘You do believe it was my brother who murdered Lord Keswick then?’
The pedal started up again, briskly. ‘Course I do. I found him, didn’t I? In his room, his hands all bloody, weeping and cursing himself. Though he didn’t mean to cut me, Master Charles. Not sure if he meant to cut himself either, just the knife was in his hands and he was so wild. I should not have got so close, but we’d just found Lord Keswick and all of us were a little mad. Poor stupid boy. The coachman got the knife off him, we turned the key and he was still raving when the vicar and the magistrate arrived. But you know that. Told you myself.’ She stopped spinning again, but this time did not look up. ‘He apologised to me, you know. That I didn’t tell you. Yelled it out while they were taking him off to Carlisle — said he was sorry and it wasn’t his fault.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing was ever his fault though, was it? Wheedling little bully since the day he was born, but I never thought he’d kill the master. I am only glad your mother was dead. Died younger than she merited, but at least it saved her from dying of grief.’
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 c
annot.’
‘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.’
Harriet said nothing, but continued to stroke the girl’s back, just as she did to calm her son when he was ill.
‘When my father came in, I thought he looked so handsome. He had me stand up and make my curtsey, then walked around me as if I were a horse for sale. He spoke to me in French, then English, and nodded and smiled at me. I was so glad. I thought I had done well for him. Then he opened the doors to the other room. They were great doors that fold back between rooms, to make two rooms into one. .’
Harriet nodded. ‘I know the sort you mean, my dear.’
‘It was darker in that room. There were men there, sat round a card table. Bottles everywhere and cards. Their waistcoats were all undone and the floor was filthy where they had dropped their meat. The pisspot was standing on the side. They must have been at play all night.’
She sighed. ‘I did not like the way they looked at me. They whistled and clapped as if I was at the theatre. My father pushed me forward and one of them tried to put his hand on me. I stepped away, and they all laughed. I looked at my father. He was laughing too.’ Harriet closed her eyes, while the voice continued, rather flat, like a child reciting a lesson learned. ‘They said, “Lucky Christoph! You have a Jungfrau for a daughter”.’
‘Virgin,’ said Harriet automatically.
‘They said, “A pretty virgin. You will get a thousand Florins for her”. I ran away then. I did not understand, but I knew it frightened me.’
‘My dear girl. .’
Sophia looked up into her face with her clear dark eyes. ‘You must not ask questions, if you do not like the answers, Mrs Westerman.’ Harriet looked away. ‘My father kept me in my room. Every evening I was brought down and made to stand in the doorway and they would stare at me and talk as if I was stupid and could understand nothing. Then, ten days after I arrived, my father came into my room and told me I need not come down that night. That instead I was to wait in my room, and a friend of his would come and see me, and I must be nice to this man and do whatever he said.’ The voice seemed remorseless now. Harriet could feel it pressing into her skull, leaving some trace there. ‘I fought. I bit him. He went away shouting.’
‘And your father?’
Sophia dropped her chin. ‘He beat me. Then he left me alone for a while. Then he came to tell me he was sorry for hurting me. When the bruises were healed he took me walking in the park. It was there I first met Herr von Bolsenheim. My father bought me a dress. These people we met outside were more polite. At night I was locked into my room.’
Harriet looked at her hands. Her own history seemed to her nothing but a series of lucky chances. A family that fed and cared for her, a husband who loved her and was lucky and talented enough to become rich, and now, even if some regarded her as an oddity, even if her actions raised the sculpted eyebrows of the haut ton from time to time, she was swaddled and shielded by the money he had earned.
Sophia suddenly put her hand on Harriet’s, and Harriet realised with shame that she was being comforted by the sufferer. ‘No one is unhappy all the time, Mrs Westerman,’ she said. ‘Though I was afraid. I thought maybe he was showing me off again, that before long there would be another “friend”. .’
‘But how came you from that life in Vienna to Keswick of all places?’ Harriet asked gently. ‘Did your father rethink his ways? Was this trip an attempt to atone?’
A look of disgust crossed Sophia’s face. She got up rather hurriedly and went towards the window, her long white hand resting on the frame. Harriet began to clamber to her feet and attempt to straighten her gown.
‘Who is that?’ Harriet saw that Sophia was standing very still and straight. She joined her at the window and looked out into the road. She recognised the figure just turning into the gateway of the vicarage.
‘That is Mr Sturgess, the magistrate whom we have mentioned,’ Harriet said, and pulled at her sleeves. ‘I am sorry, my dear, but he will most likely have questions for you, after all.’
Sophia turned to her. ‘I cannot answer anything else today. I am unwell. Tell him I shall not see him.’ She crossed towards the door very swiftly.
Harriet held out her hand. ‘Sophia, you have not yet told me. .’ the door closed behind the fleeing woman ‘. . how you came to be in Keswick,’ she finished to the empty room.
She sighed and thought of the party at Silverside, then pulled her watch into her hand. They had dined at five the day of their arrival, and it wanted only half an hour to that now. She had left poor Mrs Briggs with another corpse in her outhouse and only information of the servants to let her know what had passed. She would have to follow Miss Hurst’s story another time. The most pressing thing was to try and smooth over any offence she had caused at Silverside, and speak carefully to her son.
She met Mr Sturgess and Miss Scales in the hallway. On hearing that Fraulein Hurst wished to be left alone the rest of the day, Miss Scales was nothing but understanding. Mr Sturgess, however, seemed annoyed. His reply, though apparently polite, made it quite clear to Harriet that he was marking this inconvenience up as the first result of her meddling.
‘I am surprised you wish to speak to the girl, Mr Sturgess,’ Harriet said flatly. ‘You are so convinced that Casper is the guilty man. Have you taken him into custody?’ She heard Mi
ss Scales draw in her breath. Mr Sturgess smoothed a hand over his forehead.
‘Casper was no longer at the stone circle when I arrived. The Constable is conducting a search. He will be found. I came here because I wished to express my condolences.’
Miss Scales replied in slightly clipped tones, ‘I shall carry them this evening to Sophia with her supper tray, Mr Sturgess.’
He was forced to bow and depart unsatisfied at that. As soon as the hall was free of him, Miss Scales turned to Harriet. Her face was a little pink, which made her scars look all the more angry.
‘Casper kill a man? Nonsense!’
Harriet replied mildly, ‘Perhaps Casper believed that Hurst attacked him?’
Miss Scales looked as if she were in danger of stamping her foot. ‘Why on earth should he think such a thing? In any case, Casper has dealt with that business in his own way, as you may have heard. And I know for a fact that you would never allow Stephen to keep company with Casper unless you were absolutely certain he had no part in this.’
Harriet blushed a little. ‘Miss Scales, I did not know that Stephen had gone to Casper again after he delivered the body to us.’ There was a pause.
‘I see.’ Her voice had become suddenly colder.
‘I hope, for Stephen’s sake, you do not think Casper might be guilty,’ Harriet said.
‘I cannot think it. I pray he is not — for the sake of our town, as well as for your son. The people trust in him and his abilities; he is part of the fabric of this place. There are other cunning-men and women in the area, but few use their influence with the care that Casper does. We have been friends of a sort since I was a child.’ Miss Scales put her hand out to touch the wallflowers cut and arranged on the side-table of the hall, and Harriet caught a breath of their fragrance.
‘Miss Scales, this walk through town to the Druid circle. What did Casper mean to achieve?’
Miss Scales continued to examine the flower blossoms for a moment before she replied. ‘He is playing Hamlet, Mrs Westerman. As the Prince with the play, so Casper with his march to the stone circle. He will have watched the reactions of the village, and he will have frightened those who hurt him into thinking the fair-folk will be after them for insulting their friend. Such is the power of a cunning-man.’ She tapped her foot. ‘Those men must have had a powerful motive for doing so bold-faced a thing. Most of all, I am distressed by Mr Sturgess’s hypocrisy in this matter.’
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