by Roz Southey
“You are not unwronged, sir,” I conceded. “But Demsey meant only to scare you, not to kill you.”
His face seemed to crumple in fear or as if, perhaps, he meant to cry. Then he caught himself up, said stiffly, “I could not know that.”
“No?” I rubbed at my eyes. The fury and the grief returned in full force, flooding through me in a red-hot wave. Demsey lay at death’s gate and Nichols was mixed up in it somehow. I would not let him out of this church until he had told me everything he knew. I pushed myself from the organ stool, advanced on him. He backed away, came up against one of the pews. The door of the pew swung open and he ran inside, jumping up on to the seat and vaulting the partition into the next pew. I raced after him but I did not have his suppleness and agility. By the time I scrambled awkwardly over the partition, he was scuttling across the loft to an open door. And another stair down.
I jumped for him as he reached the door. He was fractionally out of my reach but I snagged my fingers round his coat-tails and dragged him back. He stumbled, came down on one knee then struggled up again. I got between him and the door. He ran back. The doors of the pews at this end were locked. He tried to clamber over one of them. I seized him, flung my arm around his chest and pulled him down.
We crashed together against the stone balustrade of the organ loft. I heard bone crack. Nichols screamed out, a strange womanish scream; we were hanging over the balustrade, leaning out over the void of the church, seeing the nave pews far far below.
Then light and pain exploded in my head. The last thing I saw was the patterned floor of the nave swinging below me…
33
AIR
Stone was cold beneath my cheek. My head ached abominably. I pulled myself on to my elbow and the world tilted. Carvings danced crazily around me; shadows leapt and spun. I gasped with pain, fell back. The ribs of the vault curved above me; a thin dusty light strained in through the high windows.
With a great effort, I pushed myself off my back, leant against something hard. The balustrade. I put up my hand to the crown of my head and brought it away sticky with blood. I could hear my own breathing, heavy and ragged, and put my head down between my knees.
At last I looked up. A pew door stood open beside me; I hauled on it to pull myself to my feet. The darkening church swung around me, then steadied. I had a distant recollection of seeing it do so before, a vague memory of half-waking then drifting into sleep again. How long had I been unconscious?
I hung on to the door, listening for someone else in the church. I had arrived here in late morning but the gloomy light percolating into the church suggested it was now dusk. I clung there, trying to banish the headache, trying to work out what had happened. Someone had come up behind me, hit me over the head and rescued Nichols. But who? Nichols surely had few friends, perhaps none except Le Sac. What of his drunken brother? Nichols senior might have come in to practise, seen us, decided to rescue Light-Heels. A drunk man might not think too carefully about how to accomplish such a rescue or know his own strength when striking another man.
I went unsteadily to the stairs leading down. The door was shut and locked. Would a drunk man and a frightened man think sensibly enough to lock the door after them? It seemed unlikely. I heaved myself over the pews to the organ-stool and thence to the door to the second stairs. This too was closed and for a moment I thought I was trapped – but no, the latch lifted and the door creaked open. The stairs were black as coal and I had to feel my way down them; once I stumbled and scraped down three or four steps, jerking myself to a safe halt only with the help of the rope pinned to the wall.
I went out through the arch in the screen into thick twilight, and felt my way down the dark length of the church. The west doors were closed and I lifted the latch with trepidation. But the heavy oak door swung towards me. A voice from the porch said faintly, “Prithee, sir, are you unwell?”
“Who is that?” My own voice sounded unfamiliar, as if it belonged to a sick and feeble stranger.
“Ned Boothby, sir, that died in this porch eighty-eight years ago coming from the church service. I kept the door open for you, sir, knowing you were still in there.”
A spirit in the church porch. I had never known such a thing before. The spirits of the dead are usually long disembodied before their coffins come to the church.
“I told them,” he said. “Don’t lock the door. The gentleman who went in there hasn’t left yet.”
“Them,” I said, almost as faintly, yet suddenly feeling an inclination to laugh. “You saw them leave.”
“Several hours since,” he agreed. “In a hurry, they were. The gentleman was in a real state.”
The gentleman. Something in the way he stressed the word made me pause. “And the other?”
“The lady, sir? She was urging him on all right. Get yourself together, man. For heaven’s sake, don’t be such a weakling. Don’t marry one like her, sir, she’ll make the very devil of a wife. Ask the gentleman.”
The lady. I stood in the chill darkness of the porch. Nichols had no wife. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that he might have made an assignation with the girl he had used to trap Hugh, but he had not looked like a man awaiting a lover. And the girl was much too short and slight to have hit me. I felt the back of my head again; the wound was too high, the girl could not have inflicted it.
No, only one woman knew of my suspicions of Nichols, knew that I intended to confront him. I myself had told her as we struggled to get Demsey to the surgeon in Gateshead. And I could see so clearly how she might have carried out the attack on Gateshead Fell. She had seen Hugh and me trying to wheedle the name of his killer out of Le Sac, had feared we might be successful; he was after all a spiteful man, who might grasp a chance for revenge. She had shot at us, run off when I chased her, then taken advantage of my fall to find her way to the place where she had previously left her horse. She had been dressed in breeches; I might easily have mistaken her at a distance for a man. Then coolly, brazenly, she had ridden towards us, ready to assume the guise of an innocent passer-by. She had helped to get Demsey to a surgeon, true, but her intention might never have been to kill – merely to prevent our talking to Le Sac. And she had succeeded.
But why, in heaven’s name? What game was she playing? Why kill Le Sac, or George? I remembered Lady Anne’s hints that Le Sac knew something to Claudius Heron’s discredit; could he also have known something about Esther Jerdoun?
I set my head back against the chill wall of the porch. I could not see Esther Jerdoun as a murderer. I did not want to see her as a murderer. But I could not deny that she would have had the determination to carry it through.
“Are you all right, sir?” asked the spirit again. “You don’t look at all the thing. Why don’t you sit down for a moment?”
“No, no,” I said, then added more calmly, “Thank you, but no. I really am most grateful for your help.”
But I was not, in truth, I was not in the least grateful, as I went out into the cold damp night air to find Esther Jerdoun.
34
RONDEAU
I stood in the street with the spire of St Nicholas towering over me. The stillness of the night, the unwonted quietness of the town, the way the dusk blurred the outlines of roofs and chimneys, all seemed like a dream. I thought for a moment that if I took a single step forward, I would step from my own world into that strange unknown place that haunted me. But I took that step forward and nothing happened, except that I knew the only thing I could do.
I had to go to Caroline Square and see Lady Anne. I did not look forward to her incredulity when I named her cousin as a murderer; but she, if anyone, would know how credible my suspicions were.
I set off towards the square. I had to presume Hugh and I had been shot at to prevent Le Sac naming his murderer; but how could Mrs Jerdoun hope to escape the consequences of her crime that way? Someone else could come along and ask Le Sac for the truth. And why leave the body where his spirit might be found?
George’s murderer had gone to extraordinary lengths to separate body and spirit; why then neglect to take the same precautions with Le Sac?
Unless – I rubbed my aching brow – unless Le Sac had been attacked upon the moor, lured off the road to some isolated spot. Then the murderer, thinking him already dead, had thrown him into the pond to be found later and labelled a suicide. But life had lingered until after Le Sac had been thrown into the pond; therefore his spirit clung to the water rather than to the place where he had first been attacked. As for Le Sac’s horse, that would be hidden somewhere or, more likely, sold to some itinerant vagabond.
I was happier now with the matter of how Le Sac had been killed, though still adrift with regard to the motive. I considered returning to the pond to speak with Le Sac again but, as Lady Anne had said, he was a man of his word. I did not believe he would betray the murderer. A murdered spirit, especially one like Le Sac, might well cling to the only power he had left – the power to torment his killer with the possibility of discovery.
Mist gathered around me, drifting along the street. I stopped on a corner to catch my breath.
And heard footsteps behind me.
The odd quietness and the mist magnified the sound; the steps echoed in the confined street. They stopped.
Silence.
The wraiths of mist swirled around me. I started walking again, more quickly, listening intently. Yes, there were the steps again, at a little distance behind me. I slowed and the footsteps slowed with me. No innocent idler behaved in such a manner.
A thief, it must be a thief. The town could be dangerous at dusk. I turned quickly, and caught a glimpse of a figure moving into a side street. The blur of mist took hold of the figure but it was a man, I saw that much. Yet Esther Jerdoun had been wearing breeches…
There was only one refuge. I quickened my pace. The house in Caroline Square, despite the unnerving things that happened to me there, now seemed sanctuary. I could see it ahead, brightly lit; a footman passed behind a window. I hurried across the square, ignored the mutterings of the spirit. The footsteps echoed behind me, quickening as I did. I imagined I heard my name spoken, and broke into a run.
As I ran, I saw at the last moment a place on the cobbles where the stones themselves seemed to waver. I jolted to a halt but the footsteps behind me were closing in. I heard the spirit in the gardens shout. Just beyond that patch of ground was the safety of Lady Anne’s house; there was nothing else to do. I leapt for the door.
But I was already shivering with cold, everything wavering around me. I gasped for breath. Then I was falling, into mud, putting out my hands to save myself. I rolled as I fell…
And found myself sitting in a wet street with rain drenching me, splattering into my face and plastering my hair to my head. My knee grazed a pile of horse dung.
I rose groggily; hands heaved me up. A woman’s voice said, “That’s what I like. A gent that falls at my feet.”
A street woman, gaudy and only half-dressed despite the drizzle. She poked a finger in my shoulder. Her mouth wrinkled archly. “Too much drink, my fine gent. Always lands you in the shit.” And she sauntered past me, evidently pleased with her sally.
I stood in that street of tall houses that I had seen before. In the light of the lanterns, neatly dressed tradesmen unlocked doors, motherly women carried empty baskets home with the chink of money sounding from their pockets. Carts rumbled over the cobbles. And no one seemed to think my presence there odd; even the street woman had only believed me to have fallen in the street.
I began to wonder if my presence here was in any way by chance. I had been wondering if Le Sac might had known a secret about Esther Jerdoun. What if this was it? Was my knowledge of this place why she had shot at me? I had after all asked Lady Anne about that strange vision of the room in her presence; I had questioned her about the house on another occasion.
I stood bemused, in the lessening rain, jostled by the passers-by, and heard my name called. I looked round and saw on the doorstep a man frowning at me. The stout red-faced man from the dinner party, the one to whom I had spoken in Lady Anne’s house.
“Patterson!” he said again, coming down the steps towards me, looking more and more puzzled. “My dear fellow, you’re bleeding! Have you been involved in some accident? Or – never say you have been attacked!”
If this was a part of the mystery, all I could do was to allow myself to be caught up in it, to be carried along and see what came of it. “Yes,” I said cautiously, seeing he was waiting for an answer. “Some fellow was following me.”
He clapped a hand on my back. “Heavens, man! I shall have the constable’s hide for this.” He called to his servants, ushered me into his house. I protested for form’s sake, but if the answer to this mystery lay anywhere, it lay in or near this house. I was becoming more and more certain of that.
“No, no, man.” He overrode my protests. “You cannot wander the streets looking like that! I have a meeting at the Exchange but the servants will take care of you. And I shall speak to the constable before I come home. Devil take it, it is virtually broad daylight!”
And he went off into the gloom, muttering angrily to himself.
In the wake of a servant, I trod upstairs, conscious of the muddy imprints I left upon the stairs. A bath was prepared for me in an elegant bedroom, and I wallowed in hot scented water until it grew cold and my fingers wrinkled. Demsey lay at death’s door in a house in Gateshead and I lay idly here, yet I was more and more convinced that here was the solution to all the puzzles and crimes of recent days. If I was patient I would find it.
The servant offered me a dressing robe and a dish of hot chocolate. Clean clothes were laid out upon the bed, and the respectful servant, on the verge of withdrawing, indicated I should ring when I needed help to dress. The curtains were drawn and the candles numerous, in three or four branches placed around the room; the bed covers were brocade and the scent of the bath lingered still. The velvet taste of the chocolate lay upon my tongue.
And a voice whispered, “Master?”
35
LAMENT
I jolted upright, spilling hot chocolate on to my bare knee. “George?”
“Master,” he sobbed. “Help me, help me, please. I don’t know where I am. No one talks to me. I’m so lonely and I don’t want to be dead.”
I set the chocolate dish carefully down on a small table and looked about the candle-lit room. The shifting shadows made it difficult to see properly but at length I found George, a small dull sheen upon the newel post of the bed.
“There are no spirits in this place, master,” he whispered. “And I so wanted to speak to you yesterday but you just shivered and said the room was damned cold, and you wouldn’t talk to me. Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”
“I wasn’t here yesterday, George.”
“You were!” he cried. “You brought something for the gent that lives here!” A door slammed open at the far side of the room. “Come and see, master. Come and see!”
I went barefoot across soft rugs into a room that was plainly a gentleman’s study. A table shrouded in darkness was piled with books. At George’s insistence, I fetched a branch of candles from the bedroom and set it on the table.
“The second book down, master. Look at it.”
It was a printed book of music in score in a handsome green binding, with the parts in a pocket at the back.
“Open it, master.”
Words stared up at me from the title page.
Seven Concertos in seven parts by Chas Patterson, Organist, Newcastle upon Tyne. A dedication page was inscribed to Miss Ord of Fenham. “Look at the first concerto, master.”
I turned the pages, read the first printed staves.
“It’s the one from the manuscript book Lady Anne gave us,” George said excitedly. He started humming but I had already read the tune for myself. “You never said you’d had it printed.” He slid closer, lingering upon the silver candlestick. “I won’t tell them you di
dn’t really write it.”
“George –”
“You brought it yesterday. I saw you. Fresh from the press, you said. And I said, I didn’t know you were having it printed, master. And you said, It’s cold in here, and the gent who lives here said, Damn those children babbling in the street. I told him it was me but he didn’t listen. Master, why didn’t you talk to me yesterday?”
I stared at the music; the notes danced and blurred in the uncertain candlelight. George was right; they were the concerti from the book Lady Anne had lent me. And the other book, the one with the unknown Thomas Powell’s signature – did that book belong in this place too?
George was insistently demanding my attention. I recalled, at last, that I had not spoken to him since his death and that, unlike Le Sac, he had taken no vow to protect his killer.
“George,” I said soothingly. “I’m sorry if I have ignored you – indeed, I did not mean to. I give you my word I was not here yesterday but I cannot explain why I am here today or even where this place is. I need to know everything I can, before I can tell what has happened. I must know, George. How did you die?”
He began to weep, a thin sound in the darkened room. “It wasn’t my fault, sir.”
“Of course not. I know Mr Heron turned you away from the Fleshmarket.”
“He said there was to be no duel and I knew there was!”
“So you tried to go back.”
More snivelling. “Yes, sir.”
“And this time Mr Demsey intercepted you.”
“He said I didn’t want to get mixed up with men like Mr Ord and Mr Jenison.”
“He was right,” I said wholeheartedly. “And Mr Demsey saw you to the door of my house. And then?”
