by Roz Southey
Someone made a play of fainting noisily in the crowd and was borne up and helped to a chair. Heron watched in grim contempt; his servant, standing behind him, caught my gaze. Fowler’s lean sardonic face was harsh and angry. Whatever had Heron said to him?
Armstrong asked for the little girl, Judith Gregson. In the sensation caused by the appearance of the child, Balfour slipped into the room. He reddened when he saw I’d noticed him and, under cover of the noise, said awkwardly, ‘I thought I’d just see how things were going.’ A pity; I thought he’d have been much better keeping away.
Mrs Fleming brought up the child and she stood in front of Armstrong’s table, clutching her rag doll to her thin chest. Armstrong has no children but he does have a kind way with them and he coaxed her delicately. ‘You sleep in the attics, I hear. Is it warm and cosy up there?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘And your doll lives up there too? Does everyone else sleep downstairs?’
Another nod.
‘Including your Aunt Alice? Did you like your Aunt Alice?’
She said nothing, which was eloquent in its own way.
‘Do you like your Aunt Sarah?’
‘She plays shops with me,’ she said shyly.
‘I’m sure she does.’ Armstrong twinkled. ‘Now, I’m very sorry, Judith, but I’m going to have to ask you about last Saturday. Do you remember going downstairs in the middle of the night?’
She started crying.
In the end, with the exercise of a great deal of patience, he got the information from her. She’d thought she heard her grandfather calling and went down to see him. But he’d been in bed and she couldn’t wake him. She couldn’t wake her grandmother either nor Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Alice wasn’t there. And the shop door was open. And she was scared, and wanted someone to come. So she screamed.
Several ladies openly wept.
Armstrong thanked her, said she’d done very well and he was very pleased to have met her, and Mrs Fleming bore her out of the room talking of lemonade.
Two watchmen gave evidence, which interested me rather more. Abraham McLintoch told of discovering the knife that had obviously done the dreadful deed, near the body of the apprentice, in the shop. A hubbub followed this revelation and McLintoch had to wait for it to subside. The knife was probably from the kitchen, he added, a very sharp knife, more than capable of inflicting severe damage.
The second watchman told how he’d searched the house. He couldn’t see that anything had been stolen, at least the house hadn’t been ransacked or turned over. Most of it looked undisturbed. There was jewellery upstairs and some nice candlesticks. But in the cellar he’d found a money box, open but not forced – the key was still in the lock. There was nothing left in the box except a receipt for some money Gregson had been paid. He’d searched everywhere, he said, but found no more money.
Fleming then heaved himself up from the jury chairs. His description of how he’d woken to screams on the night told me nothing new, but I was interested in his information on Alice Gregson. Her father had evidently sent his apprentice, Ned, down to meet her at the Fleece on the Tuesday evening before the murders; Fleming had seen them walk up the bridge together. ‘She was a little thing,’ he said, ‘dolled up in the London fashions – all thin petticoats, and feathers in her hair. And her nose in the air, as if she smelt something she didn’t like. Looked like she couldn’t make the effort to put one foot in front of another. One of your city girls who’s never done a stroke of work in her life.’
Heron shifted impatiently; he glanced at me and raised his eyebrows.
Alice Gregson had been in Newcastle only four days but Fleming had seen a great deal of her, in more senses than one. The assembled crowd muttered in shock when he described her flimsy London dresses, how low they were cut, how many ribbons and how much expensive lace she had on them. She’d usually stood staring out of the window, as if looking for someone, or hoping for some diversion. She’d yawned a lot, and said she wanted to go back to London. She’d even said she thought Newcastle barbaric. This produced outraged gasps of horror.
Armstrong cut through the noise and asked if Gregson had kept much money in the house.
‘His recent takings only, I believe,’ Fleming said.
‘But there might have been enough to take the girl back to London?’
Fleming nodded. ‘There might have been.’ He added scrupulously, ‘I don’t know for certain.’
‘But in view of the burglaries last year, Gregson might have said he had no money even if he had?’
‘I suppose so, yes,’ Fleming said, doubtfully.
There was never any doubt of the jury’s decision. The four deceased were pronounced to have been murdered by Alice Gregson, aged twenty-three. Heron was at my elbow seconds after the pronouncement. ‘Nellie’s coffee house,’ he said peremptorily.
‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Heron threw himself back in his chair. An acquaintance nodded to him in passing; half the town seemed to have repaired to the coffee-house once the inquest was over – the male half at least. ‘I don’t doubt the girl killed them, but the evidence is totally unsatisfactory. Armstrong should have asked more questions. For one thing, the neighbours say she was a slip of a girl, who did not have the strength to walk a hundred yards. But she apparently had the strength to stab four adults and then climb down a makeshift rope dangling above a deep river.’ He signalled to one of the serving girls. ‘It is not easy to stab a man.’
Heron’s a swordsman and not merely in the practice rooms. I’ve seen him fight in anger; I’d wager he knows from experience exactly how hard it is to kill someone.
He paused to order coffee from the girl. ‘Secondly,’ he continued, ‘there is the question of the knife.’
‘Found near the apprentice,’ I agreed. ‘Which logically means he must have been the last victim. Alice was in her room, probably pretending to sleep. She must have killed her sister first because she would have woken as Alice crept over her. Then she killed her parents, went downstairs, killed the apprentice. So far, so good. But then she made her way back upstairs in order to flee down the rope. That’s not logical. Why did she not simply walk out of the front door?’ I stopped to allow the girl to put the two dishes of coffee on the table. ‘And why leave the child unharmed?’
Two elderly gentlemen accosted Heron, enthusing about the price of coal. I hunted in my pocket for some money to pay the girl and nearly gave her the foreign coin I’d picked up from the snow. I waited until Heron extricated himself from the two gentlemen. ‘And why did she choose the dead of night to steal the money?’ I asked. ‘She could have taken it while everyone else was in church on Sunday. She’d have had a free run of the house, and been away several hours before they got home. She didn’t need to kill those people. Even if for some reason she had to steal the money at dead of night, they were asleep – they weren’t threatening her.’
Heron reached for his coffee but didn’t comment.
‘And what happened to the money?’ I worked through a possible sequence of events. ‘The box was opened with a key which presumably Samuel Gregson kept close. As an inmate of the house, Alice could have had easy access to that. But only the money was taken – the box was left. So she must have put the coins in a bag, or in her pocket. But that means she would have been carrying them when she climbed down the rope – and she wasn’t running like a woman with a heavy burden.’
‘Perhaps there wasn’t much in the box.’ Heron nodded at yet another acquaintance.
‘Then why murder for it? Surely she’d have made certain in advance it was worth the effort?’
‘Perhaps there was no money at all – perhaps it was government stocks? Or Mrs Gregson’s best jewellery.’
‘There’s no suggestion Mrs Gregson had expensive jewellery. Gregson was evidently not a generous man.’
Heron sipped coffee. ‘Then she moved the contents of the box before the crime.’
I thought of the rope of sheets. ‘If s
he moved the money earlier, and took her time to make the rope, as she must, then it was all planned in advance – though the theft would have to have been at the last moment, or Gregson might have missed the money. But if she already had the money, there was even less reason to kill them.’
Heron paused for a moment. ‘Then only one answer comes to mind.’
I nodded. ‘She wanted to kill them.’
We sat in silence as the noise of the coffee house raged around us. Almost everyone, it seemed, was discussing the murders. More than one gentleman bemoaned the fact he’d never set eyes on Alice Gregson. She was christened an Amazon, a doughty warrior. Gregson, it seemed, was not regarded with a great deal of sympathy; he’d apparently not been entirely aboveboard in some of his financial dealings. Several gentlemen mentioned grossly inflated bills they’d received from him.
I set my head back against the chair. ‘Alice had only been here four days – she hardly knew any of them. What had they ever done to her?’
A spirit slid down the wall, hesitated on the edge of the table as if unwilling to interrupt us. It was an old spirit, rather faint. It said, ‘Pray excuse me, my dear sirs, but I have a message for Mr Patterson from Lawyer Armstrong. Would he oblige Mr Armstrong by visiting him in his rooms as soon as possible.’
Heron permitted himself a small smile. ‘There must be a problem with the will.’
‘I don’t see why it should involve me.’ I got up nevertheless. Armstrong is a sensible man, who wouldn’t inconvenience me for no reason.
Heron said, ‘Is there any point in telling you to be careful? You do, after all, now have a wife to consider.’
That brought to mind other occasions on which he’d told me to take care – and when I’d taken no notice of him and paid the price.
‘I’ll try,’ I said.
He raised one elegant eyebrow.
Nine
If there is one thing the English enjoy more than anything else, it is a good family argument; they can cosset these with the greatest enjoyment for decades.
[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe
Froidevaux, 18 January 1737]
Lawyer Armstrong’s house stands in Amen Corner behind St Nicholas’s church, not far from the head of the steep Side. A brisk short walk from the Fleece, snow crunching underfoot and sunshine warming my back. Armstrong was waiting in the sunlit outer room of his office; he greeted me with a smile that had a great deal of relief in it, and thanked me for coming.
‘I have Mrs Fletcher with me. We’ve been reading the will.’
We went into the inner office, a room lined with books and boxes; dust motes floated in the sunlight. Mrs Fletcher, in her severe cap and neat practical dress, turned a look on me so expressionless it was daunting. We sat down, Armstrong cramming himself into the small space beneath his desk.
‘To reiterate,’ he said, ‘Samuel Gregson left all his property to be divided equally between his children, with arrangements made for the upkeep of his wife should she outlive him. There are three surviving children, two sons, in Exeter and London, and Mrs Fletcher.’ He nodded at her in acknowledgement. ‘There are strictly four surviving children but of course Alice cannot profit from her murderous acts.’
‘Assuming she did kill them,’ Mrs Fletcher said.
Armstrong said sharply, ‘The inquest has come to that verdict.’
‘The jury were fools,’ Mrs Fletcher said contemptuously.
Which was tantamount to saying that Armstrong was a fool. I hurriedly intervened. ‘Why do you believe your sister may be innocent?’
‘Look at the evidence! Alice is a slight girl who has never done a day’s work in her life, yet she’s supposed to have killed four people in a particularly brutal manner.’ She lifted her head in the face of Armstrong’s obvious annoyance. ‘It’s plain someone else was involved. Obviously, she disturbed a burglar and fled in fear.’
‘And what happened to this burglar?’ Armstrong said.
‘He ran off when he heard the child’s screams. With the money, and whatever else was stolen.’
This was patently not the first time the subject had been raised, and was, I suspected, the reason I was here. ‘There is nothing to suggest anything else was stolen,’ Armstrong said, with an obvious effort to be civil.
‘I will be able to tell you if that’s true,’ Mrs Fletcher said, ‘when I’ve had a look at the house and its contents.’
‘I have already said—’
‘My mother had some jewellery which would attract a thief.’
‘The watchman who searched the house said the jewellery was still in your mother’s room,’ I pointed out.
She smiled grimly, the sun catching her hard profile. ‘My mother had some trinkets which are no doubt still there, but she also had more valuable pieces, inherited from her mother.’
‘The house must be inventoried,’ Armstrong said firmly. ‘I will send one of my clerks to do it. Moreover, your brothers must be informed of what has happened before anything can be moved.’
‘And in the meantime the house could be broken into and the jewellery stolen!’
‘No one is to be allowed inside that house,’ Armstrong said sharply. ‘I have it in trust for all the beneficiaries.’ He turned to me. ‘You, of course, may go in and out of the property as you see fit, Mr Patterson, but Mrs Fletcher does not have my permission to do so.’ He glared at her. ‘I trust I make myself plain.’
Mrs Fletcher’s mouth set in a long hard line. Dust motes floated around her head. She held Armstrong’s gaze for a long moment, then got up. ‘Good day, Mr Patterson,’ she said, and swept out.
Armstrong leant back, sighing. ‘Just like her father – he was headstrong, would never be guided. Forgive me, Patterson, but I thought it best we confront the issue directly. Else she’d be at your door trying to sweet-talk you into letting her see the shop and you’d not know whether it was appropriate or not.’
‘I quite see your point.’ I hesitated. ‘You say you knew Gregson well. Would you describe him as a violent man?’
Armstrong pursed his lips. ‘Argumentative, certainly. He never raised a hand to me, or to anyone else in my presence, but a man will often behave differently in the bosom of his own family.’ He was being remarkably frank; I suspected he wouldn’t have said so much if he’d not already had some concern over the matter. He looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Violent or not,’ he said, ‘Samuel Gregson should not have been murdered. His life was unjustly taken from him, and that is indefensible, in both legal and moral terms.’
I nodded. ‘I was hoping for some understanding of the girl. If Gregson was violent towards her, that might, in some part, explain what she did.’
‘Would it explain killing her mother and her sister? And the apprentice whom she hardly knew?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem.’
The sky was clouding over as I stepped out of Armstrong’s office into the shadow of St Nicholas’s church. A few flakes of snow drifted down; it looked as if Hugh’s weather prediction was wrong after all – there would be more snow. The first concert of the year was due next week and I was beginning to doubt it could go ahead.
I decided to go home. I was still worried about Esther. She had been unwell for some days now; she really ought to see someone. If the illness developed into something like Philips’s, I would never forgive myself.
I turned into Westgate, the street where genteel folk live, in large houses and extensive gardens, above the fogs and smoke that drift up the river. Trees hanging over the walls were lined with white; a crow stood on a branch and cawed mournfully. The snow had been worn down into slush and I kept to the edge of the road, where the walking was firmer. The street was almost deserted, only one man, muffled in greatcoat and hat, hurried towards me, slipping as if his boots heels were worn and had no grip. He came abreast of me—
And with one swift moment, swung his arm.
I ducked out of his reach, slipped a
nd fell. I hit the ground with a thump that knocked the breath out of me. As I foundered in the snow, I heard him grunt, saw his fist heading for my face. I jerked back – and hit my head against a house wall . . .
Ten
An Englishwoman’s home is a stage; she invites all her acquaintance in to see the china and the tea and the little knick-knacks she herself has made.
[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe
Froidevaux, 18 January 1737]
Somehow I managed to stagger up Westgate. Through the pain in my head, I could think of only one thing – getting to Hugh’s rooms near the top of the street above the clockmaker’s. The shop was shut; I stumbled down an alley to the side door, dragged myself up stairs that seemed endless . . .
Hugh’s dancing schoolroom is directly over the clockmaker’s. I fell against the door; it gave way beneath my weight and I toppled in. At the far end of the long polished floor, Hugh was sitting at a small table, scribbling.
‘What the devil!’ He leapt up, seized hold of me and pushed me down into a chair. ‘Stay here! I’ll get brandy.’
He dashed out. I leant back against the wall, winced, sat upright again. There must be a bruise on the back of my head as big as the Tyne Bridge. At least it wasn’t bleeding. I put my head in my hands. Hugh came back with a bottle of brandy and poured me a glass. I downed it, squinted against the pain.
‘I was attacked,’ I said, thickly. ‘A fellow at the bottom of the street. Rifled my pockets.’
‘Did he get much?’
Grunting with effort, I hunted in my pockets. ‘I had a few shillings . . .’
‘House key?’
‘Don’t carry it.’
‘Nice to have servants to let you in,’ Hugh said without rancour. ‘Careful!’ He moved something from the table under my elbow – the ancient ring. ‘Is money all he got?’
