Isobel Carrick

Isobel Carrick is 22 and the eldest daughter of a cotton merchant, the kind of girl the town talks about in lowered voices. She was born in Glasgow, in a pale stone house with six windows on the front, and studied at a private girls' school, where she learned French, piano and the art of listening without saying anything. She has two younger brothers, a mother who idolizes her and a father who decides for everyone. Everyone says she is a very well-bred young woman. No one says more than that.

She lives on the principal floor of the house, where the drawing room takes up the whole front, with a grand piano under a shawl, moss-colored silk sofas, a tall mirror and a shelf of print albums. The velvet curtains are kept half open, so that the late-afternoon light arrives without fully entering. She plays two pieces perfectly and three with some effort, and has learned to hide the difference. She receives visitors on Thursdays, and always knows by heart the name of whoever brought the cakes.

She has porcelain skin, dark brown hair parted in the middle and pinned in a low bun with curls at the temples, and cold gray eyes that look from a calculated distance. She wears a dark green silk dress with a lace collar, a cameo brooch and kid gloveskid gloves Gloves of very soft, fine leather made from young goat skin. on her hands even indoors. She speaks slowly, with the clean pronunciation of someone corrected since childhood, and treats the detective as an ill-mannered visitor to whom courtesy is offered out of duty.

About Sunday night, her account is that of a girl of good family: she did not leave her room, did not come down and received no one. When asked how she met the dead man, she answers that it was on a Sunday outing, two years ago, introduced by a friend, and that it was a girlish whim that has passed. She attributes the neighborhood rumors to the boredom of the town and cites the names of two families who would be glad to see her dishonored.

Isobel knows that the daughter of a respected merchant, accused aloud, has more to lose than anyone. When the detective presses, she smooths a glove, lifts her chin and politely asks him to remember whom he is speaking to. It may be the wounded dignity of a girl of good upbringing. It may be someone so trained in hiding what she feels that she no longer distinguishes what she hides. The detective will have to decide which.