HS04 - Unholy Awakening by Michael Gregorio Read Free Book Online Page A

of you know her?’
    ‘Both of us did,’ Gurt Schuettler said.
    ‘Did you, now?’ I asked. ‘How come?’
    ‘Angela was here this week, sir. Needles and buttons was her trade.’
    ‘In this house?’ I asked.
    The brothers exchanged a smile, but it was always Gurt who spoke.
    ‘You have spoken with the mistress, have you not, sir?’
    Perhaps I should have summoned them to my office in town, and questioned them separately. ‘Answer my questions directly,’ I ordered him. ‘Did Angela Enke work for you two?’
    ‘Not for us. For Fraulein Rimmele, sir.’
    ‘The lady has only recently arrived in Lotingen,’ I said. ‘How did she know of Angela Enke?’
    ‘She came knocking on our door, sir, asking if we knew of anyone that was good with a needle. Well, I sent her to that place in town…the one with the girls that sew and knit. Someone there must have given her Angela’s name,’ Gurt Schuettler replied. ‘The mistress wanted some one who would come up to the house to work. Said she didn’t want to leave her father on his own.’
    I made a note of what he had just told me. Check Frau Graube’s .
    ‘What about the father?’ I resumed. ‘Have you seen him?’
    Schuettler grimaced, tapping his right temple with his finger. ‘Something wrong up here,’ he said. ‘She never lets him out on his own.’
    ‘When Angela Enke came here to work, how long did she stay?’
    The brothers’ eyes met for a moment. The silent one nodded as if Gurt had asked him a question. I wondered how they communicated. Was a glance sufficient? Could they read each other’s thoughts? There was a close tie between them, certainly, but I could not determine whether it was based on love, respect, or subjection.
    ‘That’s hard to say, sir. A couple of hours, I suppose. She worked in the kitchen, as a rule. It’s that door over there,’ he said, pointing through the archway to a narrow door on the ground floor of the house, which gave onto the garden.
    The image flashed through my own mind as he spoke.
    I saw the girl alone in the kitchen, the door open, her clever hands busy with her needles and thread, while those two strange Schuettler brothers stood watching her from beneath the archway which led into the sunken garden.
    Spying on her.
    Was that it? Two strong countrymen against a defenceless woman? An attempted rape: the girl screams; one of the men strikes her with the garden rake he is carrying: together they throw her body into the well before Fraulein Rimmele or her invalid father can appear on the scene…
    The objections to my hypothesis were all too evident: would they have put the tooth into the bucket? Would they have left the well-cover on the lawn, calling attention to the crime? And why would they have called the magistrate from town?
    ‘Regarding the tooth you showed me,’ I said. ‘Did you call Fraulein Rimmele’s attention to it?’
    Gurt Schuettler shrugged his shoulders. ‘One minute we’re looking down the well. Next thing, so was she.’
    ‘You did not call her?’ I asked, surprised.
    ‘She must have seen us from the window,’ he said, glancing towards the broad façade of the house, ‘and come down as the fancy took her.’
    They had probably made a great deal of noise, I supposed. I could imagine the brothers, working in the garden, sweeping up leaves, finding the cover lifted off from the well, discovering what was hidden in the old bucket, shouting out loud, expressing their surprise. Emma had heard them, of course. Her sitting-room overlooked the garden. Concerned for the peace of her father, she had come down, meaning to ask them to be quiet. Then, she had seen what they had seen.
    ‘Was she afraid?’ I asked.
    ‘Frightened? Her, sir?’ He seemed about to say something more. I stopped writing, and looked up at him. Gurt Schuettler scratched his chin, then winked at me. ‘I got the impression she was furious, sir.’
    ‘Furious? Why was that, do you think?’
    He spread his arms in a