‘I’m sure I don’t understand, District Commissioner,’ Tóti said.
Bl?ndal sniffed. ‘Excuse me for speaking plainly, Reverend – Agnes believed that she deserved more. A hand in marriage, I would expect. Natan was an indiscreet man – his bastards litter this valley.’
‘And he broke his promise?’
Bl?ndal shrugged. ‘Who said he promised her anything? As far as I can see, Agnes was under the impression that she had successfully seduced him. But Sigga testified that Natan preferred her . . . attentions.’
‘This was spoken of in the trial?’
‘A coarse matter. But murder trials are composed of coarse matters.’
‘You believe Agnes planned to kill Natan because she was spurned.’
‘Reverend. We have a seventeen-year-old common thief armed with a hammer, a sixteen-year-old maid afraid for her life, and a spinster woman whose unrequited affections erupted into bitter hatred. One of them plunged a knife into Natan Ketilsson.’
Tóti’s head spun. He focused on the white feather resting on the edge of the desk before him.
‘I cannot believe it,’ he said, finally.
Bl?ndal sighed. ‘You will not find proof of innocence in Agnes’s stories of her life, Reverend. She is a woman loose with her emotions, and looser with her morals. Like many older servant women she is practised in deception, and I do not doubt that she has manufactured a life story in such a way so as to prick your sympathy. I would not believe a word she says. She lied to my face in this very room.’
‘She seems sincere,’ Tóti said.
‘I can tell you that she is not. You must apply the Lord’s word to her as a whip to a hard-mouthed horse. You will not get anywhere otherwise.’
Tóti swallowed. He thought of Agnes, her thin pale body in the shadowy corners of Kornsá, describing the death of her foster-mother.
‘I will invest all my energies into her redemption, District Commissioner.’
‘Allow me to redirect you, Reverend. Let me tell you of the work Reverend Jóhann Tómasson has done upon Fridrik.’
‘The priest from Tj?rn.’
‘Yes. I first met Fridrik Sigurdsson in person on the day I went to arrest him. This was in March of last year, shortly after I heard news of the fire at Illugastadir and saw for myself the remains of Natan and Pétur.
‘I rode to his family’s home, Katadalur, with a few of my men, and we went to the back of the cottage so as to surprise him. When I knocked on the farm door, Fridrik himself opened the hatch and I immediately set my men upon him. They put him in irons. That young man was furious, exhibiting behaviour and language of the most foul and degenerate variety. He struggled with my men, and when I warned him not to attempt escape, he shouted, plain enough for all to hear, that he regretted not having brought his gun outside with him, for it would become me to have a bullet through my forehead.