by Margaret Way
“For whatever reason, a lot of information was kept from my father,” Bruno said. “What I do know was that my father never gave up on the case. He had a good number of files on it. Instead of being given the full picture, it now appears important details were withheld by your family. The family wasn’t united. That’s very clear to us all these years later. Abigail Hartmann, your mother, was judged to have known nothing about Helena’s disappearance. She was never suspected of being involved, yet might she have taken pity on Helena and helped her get away?”
“You can’t go bothering my mother,” Stefan said with a vigorous shake of his head. “My mother is a woman of honour. She would have lost no time telling us she had helped Helena and why. The woman you should really be talking to is the one who claims to be your mother, Isabelle. I’m much struck by the fact that if the two of you hadn’t met, and there hadn’t been the McKendrick connection, we would have gone on mourning Helena behind closed doors.”
“Only Fate has stepped in. Once we have the DNA samples, we need to get a flight out of here.” Bruno fixed his eyes on Stefan. “I can arrange a private flight, but I’d like your permission to land here.”
“God help us, you don’t have to do that!” Stefan protested. “I can organise a private flight into Brisbane, where you can hook up with a flight to Sydney. Would that suit? I’d take you myself only there’s too much work to do.”
“I can help you, Dad,” Kurt jumped in.
His father put a warm hand on his shoulder. “Fine, son. Tomorrow morning, say eight o’clock?” he asked Bruno. “The sooner we deal with this, the better.”
Chapter Eight
They didn’t have to go in search of Mrs. Saunders. She found them. They were in the Turkish Room, systematically searching through the piles and piles of books.
“Who knows if we won’t find a revealing letter inside?” Isabelle said hopefully. “It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened. I leave lots of stuff inside books. I once put a couple of hundred dollars inside a textbook for safety’s sake. It took months before I remembered which one.” She turned her head. “Hello, who’s that?”
“I shudder to think.” When Bruno opened the door in response to the firm knock, he found the housekeeper—or the soon-to-be ex-housekeeper—standing outside.
She didn’t beat about the bush. “You’ll be wanting my DNA.” She wore a bitter smile on her striking face. Today, she had thrown open her wardrobe. She wasn’t wearing her house uniform. She was dressed in riding clothes that showed off her trim figure. Her raven, silver-winged hair was drawn back into a heavy knot. She wore makeup, lightly but perfectly applied. The real woman, not the shadow, would turn heads.
“Come in, Mrs. Saunders,” Bruno invited smoothly. “I’m going to be straight with you,” he said, as he closed the door. “We have serious doubts you’re related by blood to the family.”
“What would you know?” She shrugged, as though his opinion was of little value.
“It’s not what I know; it’s more intuition. You claim Konrad Hartmann was your father. He and your mother had a sexual relationship?”
“Ah, come off it!” She laughed crudely. “Is that so unusual?”
“Perhaps not. But my father was a good judge of character. He thought Konrad a fine man, a gentleman. He didn’t see him as a man who would seduce a young girl in his employ. A part-aboriginal girl, which would have made her so much more vulnerable.”
The woman’s brilliant dark eyes flashed. “Ah, spare me the fine-gentleman stuff. I know what my ma told me.”
“But you don’t actually know. You never saw anything with your own eyes; otherwise, I’m sure you would have told us all. Mr. Hartmann never acknowledged you. Never let down his guard for one moment, or tried to make things up to you in some way. Have you sent away to be educated.”
She froze. “He wanted me around. Just like he wanted my ma around.” It was clear Orani and not her alter ego, Mrs. Saunders, didn’t want to deal with those questions.
“The other members of the family had no sense of kinship,” Bruno continued.
“They hated me.”
“Mightn’t it have been the other way around?” Isabelle gave the woman a long, searching look.
“Mrs. Abigail used to ask me questions about all the terrible things that happened.”
“What terrible things?” Bruno asked briskly.
The woman drew in a sharp breath, held it, then released it on a sigh. “Never you mind. Mrs. Abigail believed me.”
“You sound incredibly proud of that fact,” Bruno commented.
“Mrs. Abigail Hartmann told you she believed you?” Isabelle asked, feeling a sense of pity.
“She acted kindly to me. Not like that bitch, the Missus. The two ladies did not compare. As for that Helena, my God, was she a wimp! All she could do was play the bloody piano. I ask you!”
“So you selected her as the one you would punish?” Isabelle said bleakly. “How cruel was that?”
Mrs. Saunders responded with a harsh laugh. “Cruel? Oh, that’s good! No one cared about me. I wasn’t as beautiful as them.”
“You’re a beautiful woman, Mrs. Saunders, though you’ve done your best to hide it,” Bruno said. “Your aboriginal blood has made you even more striking, though you could equally as well be Greek. Your features are finely cut.”
“Why wouldn’t they be? I have Hartmann blood.”
“There’s no genetic resemblance. You don’t look remotely like Erik Hartmann, for instance. Or Stefan Hartmann. Kurt obviously resembles his mother’s side of the family.”
“Look, are you ready for me or not?” the woman flared, a feverish look in her eyes. “This family owes me. Once we know I share their blood, they’ll pay.”
“Okay,” Bruno said, as though giving in. “This whole business can be easily resolved. If you want us to help you, you might tell us who helped Helena get away. If you don’t actually know, an educated guess will do.”
The woman gave Bruno an amused look. “Some man. Some man who worked here. Some man who visited. Even the piano teacher. He was a handsome young guy. He was kind to her. She could have contacted him. Who knows? The thing is, I don’t know who it was. I would have shaken their hand if I did. It could even have been Mrs. Abigail. Those sharp eyes of hers missed nothing. She was the only one who didn’t fall under that Myra’s spell. Her and me.”
Isabelle broke in. “I thought the two women were close friends? They went riding together.”
Mrs. Saunders appeared genuinely shocked. “How d’you become close friends with a woman who stole your husband? Go on, tell me that!” Her tone was so strong, so challenging, it rang round the room.
“All this is hearsay, Mrs. Saunders,” Bruno said. “Lots of suspicions, lots of conjecture, but no actual proof.”
She shrugged her straight shoulders. Her cream shirt, Isabelle had noticed, was silk, not everyday denim or cotton. What else did she have hidden away in her wardrobe? “Believe what you will,” the ex-housekeeper said in disgust. “Now, are you going to take this sample?” She reached in her riding pants’ pocket. “I cut a lock of my hair as well. I already know the answer. It’s you two who have to make sure.”
“Laboratory testing will do that, Mrs. Saunders,” Bruno said. He picked up a clean cotton tip. “If you wouldn’t mind opening your mouth. This will only take a moment.”
The woman complied without a word. Clearly, she thought she would soon be in a position to give the family hell.
“Either way, you intend leaving the station?” Bruno asked, sealing off a plastic bag similar to the one that contained the lock of hair. The woman’s position had become untenable. She would have to go. But where? When all was said and done, Eaglehawk Station and the Hartmann family had been her life.
“Of course,” Mrs. Saunders confirmed. “I’ve contacted Mrs. Abigail. She’s coming for me this very afternoon. She’s the best of them all. She’s promised me she will help me find
a position in the city. Hers is a respected family. Establishment. She has influence.”
“That’s very kind of her, I must say,” Bruno commented. “We would be very pleased to meet her, however briefly.”
“I can’t promise you anything,” the woman said.
“I understand.” Bruno spoke gently. “It’s a very emotional time for you.”
Mrs. Saunders jerked up her raven head to look at him, searching his eyes. “It is,” she said, as though reading compassion there. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Abigail,” she offered. “If the occasion presents itself, she will. She’s a very kind woman.”
“And she will be wanting to speak to her son and grandson,” Isabelle added.
For the first time, Mrs. Saunders looked unsure of herself. “I’ll leave it all up to Mrs. Hartmann. She will decide.” She turned to go. “You will continue taking your meals in the breakfast room. Nele will look after you. I’ve trained her well.”
* * *
They had the Turkish Room to themselves once more. “Abigail Hartmann is coming to whisk Mrs. Saunders away. How about that?” Isabelle exclaimed in a tone of wonder.
“Dad spoke to Abigail.” There was a vertical frown between Bruno’s black brows. He was starting to think he didn’t believe in anything anymore.
“Spoke to, yes,” Isabelle said, noting his unsettled, upset expression. “She really needed to have been interrogated.”
“Police do that, Bella. Not private investigators. They can only ask questions. Elicit comments. Dig deeper.”
“We have to speak to her,” Isabelle said.
“I don’t think she’s going to fall into that trap. What’s the betting?”
“No bets. Maybe her curiosity will be aroused? Maybe she’ll want to see me? It would be good to get her reaction. What I don’t understand is why, if she’s such a lovely woman, a woman of honour, she’s not closer to her son and her grandson. If she’s coming, surely she will want to see them? No nice grannie would simply fly in and fly out. Or maybe she’s having someone drive her overland?”
“I seriously doubt it,” Bruno said. “They all use helicopters for mustering these days. She’ll come by chopper.”
“We ought to speak to Kurt,” Isabelle said.
“If he’s around. He seemed very anxious to support his father all of a sudden.”
“Especially when his father can, if he so chooses, use the whip hand,” Isabelle said, picking up another leather-bound book.
“Surely Abigail would get through a message? She is very much family.”
“So why is she giving them such a wide berth?” Isabelle put the book down to ask.
“We don’t know that exactly. Both Stefan and Kurt may well intend to come back to the house to greet her. If that’s the case, we have to make sure we join them.”
“I can’t wait.” Isabelle picked up the book again. “Sir Walter Scott,” she identified the author.
“‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . . when first we practise to deceive,’” Bruno came up with the familiar quote.
“Wasn’t he right about that!” Isabelle met his darker-than-dark eyes. Always the little butterflies in the stomach. The feeling of instability she desperately wanted made stable. “Sir Walter was enormously popular,” she said. “The first blockbuster author. A close friend of Byron, who admired his work. Christian must have loved his books too. There are a lot of them here. This is Ivanhoe, the knight returning from the Crusades only to find he’s been disinherited and thwarted in his love affair with the Lady Rowena.”
“Classic ingredients for a romantic tale.” Bruno gave one of his elegant shrugs.
“I ought to read it.” Isabelle opened up the dusty book, giving a start as something fell out. “What’s that?” she cried.
Bruno made a grab for it before it landed on the Kurdish rug.
“Pray it’s a love letter.” She was trying to stay calm.
Bruno scanned the single yellowing page. “Here’s the tricky part. It’s in German.”
“Give it here,” she said quickly, holding out her hand. “I may be able to read some of it.” Suddenly, her heart was pounding.
“It could be anything, Bella,” he said, warning her against false hopes. “No envelope. Something Christian jotted down. It’s a man’s writing. Pen and ink.”
“It’s a poem,” she said.
“Can you read it?”
“Not only read it, I know it. It’s one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s short poems.”
Bruno grimaced. “I give up. Who might Rainer Maria Rilke be? I never found him in my law books.”
“Arguably one of Germany’s greatest poets,” Isabelle replied, nibbling her lip. “Have a look to see whether there’s a book of his poems shoved in with the rest.”
“I will when you tell me what the poem says.”
Isabelle lifted her eyes from the sheet of paper. “It seems to me this is lightly perfumed. What do you think? Men are supposed to have the better sense of smell.” She waved the page under his nose.
“It is,” he confirmed. “Musky but discernible.”
“Myra’s perfume? Abigail’s?”
“It was a long time ago, Bella,” he said.
“We’re never free of the past,” she countered. “It’s only one verse. I studied this poem among others at college in London. It was in connection with the life of a brilliant Australian violinist, Alma Moodie, born in Brisbane. She was regarded as one of the finest female violinists of her time. She made Germany her home, obviously to further her career. She died in Frankfurt where she was a teacher at the Conservatorium in 1943 during a bombing raid. Her friends thought she committed suicide. It’s on record Rilke had greatly admired her playing.”
“Is it going to help us?” Bruno asked. He wasn’t feeling a lot of hope. A scrap of unsigned paper? A love poem? Not original. A famous German poet.
It is life in slow motion,
It’s the heart in reverse,
It’s a hope-and-a-half:
Too much and too little at once.
“That’s deep,” Bruno said, feeling the weight of emotion that was inside him. Bella’s speaking voice had a quality that pierced his heart. It excited and consoled him at one and the same time.
“It’s called ‘The Wait,’” she said, meeting his eyes.
He drew a breath. “I get that. Their love affair—if we’re right about that—never did move forward.”
“Both of them were killed.”
“Or got themselves killed. Crime and punishment.” Bruno rose slowly to his full height, beginning once more to riffle through the crowded, dusty bookcases.
It was Isabelle who located the volumes of German poetry. “Goethe, Schiller, Heine,” she said, pulling out the volumes and placing them precariously on top of a high stack. “Schiller wrote the ‘Ode to Joy’; Beethoven set to music in his Ninth. Goethe you must have heard of. I won the Goethe Prize for German my last year at school. Heine wrote the lyrics for a lot of German lieder. Schubert, Schumann songs.”
“The stuff you know!”
“Lots of it. I’m a great reader. And there you are, only making a fortune!”
“Well, at least that’s something positive.”
“The family brought their German heritage with them, just as the British and the great influx from Europe in the twentieth century brought theirs,” Isabelle remarked, a student of history. “They came from everywhere all over the British Isles and Europe to live in peace.”
“No wonder. They must have had a brutally cruel time in Europe from the Great War right through World War II and long after that. My Italian grandparents and my mother were assisted migrants.”
Isabelle looked up. “You’ve never spoken of your grandparents.”
“Much like you. I didn’t know them.”
“Don’t you want to find them? They could still be alive.”
“I suggested it once to my mother. That caused major trauma. Apparently, one of the reasons she married
my father was to get away from her strict parents. Or so she said. Could even have been true. My mother didn’t have a lot of heart.”
“You do,” Isabelle pronounced with considerable approval, peering closely at something she had just found. “Read this.” A shiver passed through her as she passed Bruno a slim volume.
“To the centre of all my labours and my loves.
Forever yours, Myra.”
“No one wrote that to someone they didn’t love,” he said.
“Christian?” she asked the question.
Another rap came on the door, so heavy Isabelle jumped. “Who is it this time? I wonder.”
“If that door weren’t solid mahogany, they’d have put a fist through it,” Bruno said. He opened the door to find Kurt waiting outside. “Hi, Kurt! Can I help you?”
“My grandmother is here,” Kurt announced, as if on an important mission. “She’d like to meet you.”
“We’d be delighted to meet her,” Bruno responded, his natural charm to the fore.
“She’s having coffee with my father and me,” Kurt continued in the same ambassadorial tone of voice. “If you’d like to join us in, say, a half hour?”
“It will be our pleasure,” Bruno returned suavely.
“Gut.” Kurt turned away.
“Why the hell does he pronounce good as gut?” Bruno asked, irritated by the younger man’s manner.
“I don’t think it’s an affectation. I expect Kurt speaks German. One doesn’t like to lose a language.”
“No, of course not.” He had to agree. “I didn’t lose my Italian. I never anticipated the grand invitation, did you?”
“That Abigail might ask to meet us?” Isabelle asked.
“Most likely to take a good look at you.”
“I expect so. But we don’t need her to prove if I have Hartmann blood. DNA will do that for us.”
“Certainly, but the woman has all the information my father needed and didn’t get. It’s pretty clear now Myra and Christian were lovers.”
“In which case, we can assume Abigail would have been the first to know.”
