20

CHORUS

Le Sac’s supporters did not wait for the next week’s paper but instead had a broadsheet printed indignantly refuting Mr Ord’s claims. I read it on the coffee-house wall at midday; by the time I reached the spot, the paper was already tattered at the corners by the wind. All the insinuations of AMATOR JUSTICIAE were rejected; the paper claimed that fifteen shillings was not an unreasonable wage for so distinguished a performer and asserted that Le Sac was not in the least motivated by greed or vanity. All these slurs, I read, were put about by a so-called modest young man who was jealous of Le Sac’s eminence.

There was some truth in this accusation, I had to confess, but none of it was my doing. I could not be blamed if certain gentlemen chose to exert themselves on my behalf, or rather – for I had no illusion about the matter – if they chose to exert themselves against Le Sac. For the one thing no gentleman will tolerate is hubris on the part of those that are his inferiors.

I went into Nellie’s coffee-house and found a quiet place by the window to drink and muse on my present situation. Esther Jerdoun’s words the previous evening still astonished me. She had gone on to warn me that Lady Anne loved to make others dance to her own tune, reminded me of the trick she had played on Le Sac the night he came to play and hinted that Lady Anne had her own aims with regard to the gentleman, and that I was part of her schemes. Nothing of this was new to me.

But the harshness in Mrs Jerdoun’s voice had taken me by surprise. Why should she speak so vehemently against her cousin? Was this merely another game that the ladies were playing against each other? Many an apparently loving pair of sisters or cousins have hated each other with cold passion.

I drank coffee and idly observed the streets. The mysteries seemed insoluble; if only I could be clear of them… But I knew I did not wish to be clear of Esther Jerdoun at all. In an effort to distract myself, I pulled from my pocket the list of subscribers for my music. The list numbered more than ninety now and the prospects of publication were increasing. Perhaps this would be a good day to canvass more support. After all, patronage of my music would imply rejection of Le Sac.

When George and I came to Hoult’s for the concert rehearsal at noon, only half the gentlemen were gathered. I found Mr Ord tuning his violin ineffectually and wondered whether to mention AMATOR JUSTICIAE. But a fear that Mrs Jerdoun might be mistaken held me back. Instead, I pulled out a copy of the proposal for my harpsichord pieces.

“My dear fellow,” Ord said as soon as he saw the paper. “Of course I shall subscribe. Put me down for six copies – my nieces are wild about all things Scotch and the music will make delightful presents for them. Heron, my dear fellow, you will put your name down for Patterson’s music?”

The gentleman inclined his head.

“And Jenison – you too.”

So I found myself patronised by Mr Ord and gathered ten names for a total of eighteen copies. All the time, however, I was watching the faces and counting those who did not arrive. It was inevitable that some of the gentlemen should support Le Sac; Henry Wright, for instance, was absent, which left us with no tenor violin. I had been prepared for that, but the woeful state of the cellists (only one arrived out of four) left us with almost no bass. We had the instruments themselves, of course, and Mr Ord volunteered to play the tenor, but the defect in the lower parts was very audible.

Apart from that, the rehearsal went tolerably. George had gathered confidence as first violin but his youth and inexperience left the way clear for me to direct from the harpsichord unchallenged. Jenison had perhaps anticipated the problem with the performers and had chosen music we knew well.

We worried over Mountier, who did not arrive until the end of the rehearsal, apologising that “the damn horse had gone lame”’ (by which we guessed that he stopped too long in Chester le Street for refreshment). He was almost drunk as usual and, as the gentlemen wished to leave, we agreed that I alone should accompany his songs. We rehearsed only a short time, since we both knew the songs well, then parted; I went to a lesson; Mountier (as it transpired later) went to get even more drunk.

So to the evening. Jenison arrived with the son of his agent who played very loudly upon the cello with a poor tone, but in excellent time, and Mountier stumbled in noisily in the middle of the overture but sang his songs perfectly. All in all, it went a great deal better than I had feared. It was inevitable, however, that the next morning should bring crowings of delight from Le Sac and his supporters. I saw the man himself as I was about to step into Fleming’s for harpsichord wire; he lifted his head, smiled triumphantly and strolled on. By the time I reached Nellie’s, a second broadsheet had been pasted over the first.

To read it, you would have thought the concert a disaster. Mountier’s drunkenness I could not deny, nor the raucous quality of the cellos, but Mr Ord upon the tenor was most unjustly vilified. (Did they suspect, perhaps, that he had written the letter in the Courant?) He had in fact been much better than upon his usual violin and had rather enjoyed the responsibility his sole possession of a part had given him. As for George – poor George. His age was enough to condemn him. What can be the quality of a Concert led by a twelve-year-old boy?

At Jenison’s agent, where I went for the harpsichord key, I found Ord seated at a desk under a window smeared with drizzle, a pile of paper stacked in front of him and a quill laid beside it. He chortled at me as the agent sent his boy for the key.

“Have you seen their latest efforts, Patterson?” His round face was shiny with excitement; the lamp which the agent was lighting against the gloom outside glinted in his eyes. “They are struggling, are they not? They say anything to keep their man in the public eye. After all, his absence was not much remarked upon last night, was it?”

I had, in fact, been asked three times if Le Sac was ill and the audience had been noticeably thinner after the interval when it had become obvious Le Sac did not perform.

“Well,” Ord said, puffing himself out, “I flatter myself I have a better way with words than these foreigners and a better case too. We shall see what they think of my next offering.”

I looked with foreboding at the pile of paper, gleaming in the lamplight. Rain splattered against the window.

“Would it not be better, sir, to treat their accusations with the contempt they deserve and remain silent?”

“My dear Patterson!” he cried in horror. “And let the whole town think I have run away defeated?”

Not much of the ‘whole town’ was interested in the matter, judging by the slight interest shown in the broadsheets. But Ord was plainly set upon the matter; there was nothing I could do but murmur, “I defer to your judgment.”

He twinkled at me as the agent’s boy brought the key. “Oh, I have plans, Patterson, grand plans.” He tapped his nose. “But more of that later.”

I left the office with foreboding and a sure knowledge that I would not like Ord’s plans. In heaven’s name, was the whole town mad over plotting and planning?

I was glad to see one or two people at Hoult’s who complimented me upon the concert, particularly the harpsichord solo I had played (a piece from Lady Anne’s volume). Several remarked that George had played very well and if they added “for a boy of his years” I could not take offence, for I thought the same myself. The praise was enough to encourage George to concentrate upon his lesson on the harpsichord and then to send him willingly home afterward to practise on his violin. I spent the afternoon practising on the harpsichord at Hoult’s, much to my benefit, and turned out to go home in the early evening. The drizzle had not long cleared and a warm dampness was fragrant in the air. A spirit spoke to me from the arch of an inn.

“Mr Patterson, sir? I carry ye a message from Dick Kell.”

“The fiddler? At Mrs Hill’s?”

“The same, sir. He wonders if you would come and see Mr Mountier on to his horse.”

I sighed and turned back. What in heaven’s name was Mountier still doing in Newcastle?

The last butchers’ stalls were being packed away as I came into the Fleshmarket and Mrs Hill’s was full of company in bloodstained aprons. Half the butchers, it seemed, congregated here after a long day’s business. I stood upon the doorstep, almost gagging at the stink of old meat.

Dick Kell spoke from a barrel to one side of the door. “Charlie lad, well met. How’s that father of yours?” Kell was as bluff-voiced and beery as he had been in life.

“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him for years.” My father, luckily, died in Durham, at the Red Lion there – a place which I take good care to avoid on my rare visits to that city. We were not on the best of terms in life and he has not changed his opinion of me since.

“Pity,” Kell said. “Many’s the good chin-wag I’ve had with him over a pint of ale.”

“I was told you wanted to talk to me about Mountier. I can’t see him.”

He snorted with laughter. “Over by yon wall.”

Pushing through the crowds, I found Mountier lying face down upon a bench, a hand trailing to the ground. He was snoring. A bloody handprint marked his coat in the small of his back; when I eased him over, I saw his watch was gone.

Dick Kell was a grease stain on Mountier’s shoulder. “His horse is in the stable. I’ve had one of the lads saddle it up if you can but get him sober enough to mount it.”

“Why on earth call me? One of the ostlers could have done it.”

“Too busy, Charlie lad. Now how d’you want to go about it? Water? There’s some in the rain butt out back.”

The stink of bad meat was making me irritable. Worse, I saw, as I looked down, a thin trail of sinew and gristle trailing from the skirt of my coat in a smear of blood. “Let him sleep it off.”

“Nay, Charlie. He’ll just wake up and ask for more.”

“Then let him get drunk again.”

“Weeelll…” Dick Kell was keeping something from me. He had always been a protective man, lying easily, with a chuckle, to keep his friends in good odour with those who might otherwise hurt them. “As a matter of fact,” he went on confidingly, “he said the high-ups there at the Cathedral –”

“The Dean and Chapter?”

“If you say so,” he said doubtfully. “You know I never did get the hang of anything to do with the church.” Kell had always been one for whom religion was a harmless mumbling. “Anyway, they’ve said he has to be back. Don’t trust him, I reckon.”

No one could blame them, I thought. The Dean and Chapter are always jealous of their reputation and Mountier’s increasing drunkenness would have exasperated a far more lenient body. I sighed. “Very well, show me the water butt.”

I threw water over Mountier – three bucket-loads before he stirred and then he only mumbled and shook himself to be rid of the moisture. By the time I had got him upright and forced him, with Kell’s encouragement, to stagger out to the horse in the yard, it was dark. I saw him trot off down the Fleshmarket with some trepidation. The horse, however, seemed to know its way and was a great deal more sober than Mountier.

So I was late and yawning when I let myself into the house. Mrs Foxton’s voice drifted from the back of the house, from the room behind the stairs where the seamstress lodged. The silence upstairs seemed to suggest that George had long since fallen asleep over his practice and I was eager to follow his example. I came to the door of my room – and heard a creaking of floorboards. Looking up, I saw two men on the landing above.

I knew at once they were trouble. They looked very like the ruffians Demsey had hired. I grabbed for the wedge in the door of my room. No, of course, I now had a key. I fumbled in my pocket, felt the metal slip out of my fingers and settle deeper. Then they were upon me. Their silence was terrifying. I opened my mouth to call out, tasted rancid cloth and stinking flesh. An arm forced my teeth against my lip. I struck out wildly, heard a grunt. Then something rough caught around my neck and tightened, so that I could not breathe…

 

21

SOLO

I came to myself slowly, aware only that I lay upon a hard surface and that my throat burned. I opened my eyes to darkness that hurt, and squeezed them shut again.

“Mr Patterson,” a voice said insistently. “Mr Patterson!”

Wood. I lay upon a wood floor. And the voice, yes, that was Mrs Foxton. I rolled over with a groan. My head pulsed and throbbed.

“Can you rise, sir?” Mrs Foxton said. “Mr Patterson!”

I crawled into a sitting position against the wall.

“Find your key, sir,” Mrs Foxton said patiently. She was somewhere above me – on the door perhaps, or one of the paintings on the stairs. “Your key, sir. In your pocket. That’s it. No, don’t go to sleep. Put the key in the lock.”

Struggling to my feet would have been impossible. I dragged myself on to hands and knees, and poked tremulously in the direction of the lock. The movement set me retching; the coughing set my damaged throat on fire. I found the lock at last and turned the key. The door swung open. I toppled into the room.

By stages, I got myself to the chair by the table. The chair scraped away from me and I almost fell to the floor, but finally got myself on to the seat. I dropped my aching head into my hands.

“Well done, sir,” Mrs Foxton said approvingly, as if I was a child. “And well done too for fighting off those brutes.”

My memory was hazy but I knew I had done no such thing. “I thought –” But all that came out of my bruised throat was a hoarse croak. The villains must have been disturbed; perhaps they had heard Mrs Foxton and run off. I crept to the bed, crawled on to it and curled up, struggling to ease my pounding head.

I remember little after that. At some point, George came in; I heard him say something. Perhaps I mumbled something in return. But nothing was clear until I woke to find sunshine lying aslant my bed, stinging my eyes. A man was leaning over me, and after a moment I recognised Claudius Heron. The sunshine gleamed on his lean face and on his fair hair that, unusually, was a trifle disordered, as if he had been hurrying. But he was outwardly as impassive as ever.

“Does your head ache?”

“Like the devil,” I croaked, trying to sit up. He made no attempt to help me but watched until I was still. He was, I noted, as impeccably dressed as always, still wearing his greatcoat.

“I have had the apothecary examine you,” he said, sitting upon the edge of the bed. “He says there is nothing seriously amiss. Your landlady told me what happened. Did you see the ruffians?”

“Too dark,” I managed.

“It was Mr Sac!” I had not seen George until he blurted out the words. He had been standing behind Heron and my first thought as he moved into my line of vision was how unkempt and vulgar he was, compared to Heron’s cool elegance. But he was also wide-eyed and fearful. I sighed; I had hoped he had conquered his fear of Le Sac.

“It is unwise to jump to conclusions,” Heron said. “Even an honest man may have rash supporters who think they know how to please him.” (Did that mean he too suspected Le Sac?) “From what I’ve heard, this was no chance attempt at robbery. They were waiting for you.”

I tried to speak, choked. Heron signalled to George and he poured me ale. It was weak stuff but it soothed and cooled my throat. “They were outside my former room. Not knowing I had moved.”

Heron hesitated. “Do you have any other enemies, Patterson?” He said other as if he took Le Sac for granted. “Anyone who might wish to harm you?”

“I trust not.”

“You are not in debt?”

“Most definitely not,” I said forcibly.

“Good.” He rose. “I shall have the matter investigated. Who is the parish constable?”

“Mr Bedwalters, sir,” George said.

“The writing master? I shall speak to him. In the meantime –” That impassive expression did not change; did he ever smile or scowl? “I suggest you keep yourself at home.”

“I have a living to earn, sir.”

That provoked some expression of emotion in him, a displeasure that twisted his thin mouth, as if the very idea was distasteful.

“Very well. Then make sure the boy is with you at all times. Boys have strong lungs and loud voices and, in my experience, need little provocation to use them.”

Looking at George’s fearful glance, I could not imagine he would be much use to me.

I was not wrong. When Heron had gone, I gave George money to fetch food, but he refused to leave the house.

“You went out to find Mr Heron,” I pointed out.

“I didn’t, sir!” George protested, on the verge of tears. “I didn’t fetch him. He was walking past the end of the street.”

“And the ale?”

“The seamstress went for it. I can’t go out, sir. He’ll be waiting for me.”

“Nonsense!”

“It was me he wanted,” he cried hotly. “He sent those ruffians for me!”

“George, I won’t have this!” But shouting made my throat burn. I fell to coughing so hard my eyes began to water. The whole thing was preposterous; how could he think that the oafs would have mistaken a grown man for a twelve-year-old boy? I dried my eyes upon the blanket.

“Where were you last night? Why weren’t you here?”

He hung his head. “I did start to practise, sir.”

“And then?”

“Tommy the cheesemonger’s boy came by and shouted up there was a juggler in the Bigg Market. And a fiddler, sir.” That, I supposed, was intended to try and convince me he had had his musical education in mind when playing truant.

“George,” I said, forcing myself to speak quietly. “When I took you on as apprentice, I vowed to myself that I would not beat you. I flattered you by thinking you were not the sort of boy that needs chastisement. After your experiences with Monsieur le Sac, I would have thought you would be eager to please me.”

He took a deep shuddering breath and looked up at me from under his lashes. Then he took up the money I had laid upon the table. “Yes, master.”

“Then fetch me food and do not disobey me again.”

He fled from the room and I heard his footsteps clattering on the stairs.

“About time,” Mrs Foxton said from the door. “Boys need beatings.”

“I lack the strength,” I said, falling back upon the bed.

I must have slept, for when I woke a new jug of ale and a potato pudding lay upon the table beside me, together with a note from George. The note, in the boy’s neat hand, said he had gone to take a message to my pupils to tell them I could not attend them that day. I was loath to lose the money but pleased to see that George was at least trying to behave responsibly. I was even more irritated at the loss of income when, an hour or so later, the apothecary sent up a boy with his bill for attending me. Apparently Heron had not considered the expense of the consultation.

In late afternoon I woke again and took some exercise about the room. George, I saw, had been in again while I slept and spent some time copying out the concerti from Lady Anne’s volume. Mrs Foxton, who came when she heard me moving about, said he had gone out to eat about five minutes earlier. After a moment’s consideration, I followed him, wrapping a muffler around my throat, partly to keep warm, partly to hide the livid bruises my mirror had shown me.

The fresh air revived me, although I couldn’t help looking around in case my attackers were loitering in the area; I resolved to be home before dark. I set myself the task of buying a new piece of music from Barber’s bookshop behind St Nicholas’s Church and sauntered that way through a crowd of Scotch carters haggling over prices. Joseph Barber himself was in the shop and I had to wait until he had finished selling a walking cane to an elderly gentleman. He is a man of much good humour and made great play with my croak of a voice.

“But in truth robbery is not to be laughed at,” he said, after doing just that for ten minutes or more. “These days a man can get hit over the head for a penny or two. Though I have heard –” He looked at me thoughtfully, his ruddy face with its flaring eyebrows suddenly sober. “I have heard robbery was not their aim, in your case.”

“I know not,” I said, thinking hard for a way to change the subject.

“And now this duel they’re proposing…”

“Duel?” My voice cracked on the word. “Who is to fight?”

“Why, the Swiss and that boy of yours.”

I had a vision of Le Sac and George facing each other across a brace of pistols. Preposterous! I rubbed my aching brow.

“Mr Barber,” I said, “I would be much obliged if you would explain it all from the beginning, slowly and, if you please, very quietly.”

 

22

PHANTASIA

Lady Anne was sitting in her withdrawing room over a dish of tea with Mrs Jerdoun. In my agitation I had blundered into the house with not a thought for the dangers – which had not appeared – and now stood at the door of the room staring wildly at the ladies. Lady Anne turned in astonishment.

“Mr Patterson! My dear sir! You look exceedingly troubled. Pray sit down and tell us what has happened.” She signalled to a servant to bring another dish.

I sat but could hardly restrain my anxiety. Lady Anne was as light-hearted as ever; even in my distressed state I perceived that the orange gown she wore was unflattering to her colouring and clashed with the red-and-white-striped satin of her chair. There was an air of reserve about Mrs Jerdoun.

“I hardly know where to begin.”

They were startled by my croak of a voice. I outlined quickly the attack upon my person. During my tale, the servant returned with a dish and Lady Anne, listening intently, poured the tea. Afraid that its heat might scald my sore throat, I left the brew until I came to the end of my story.

“Do you know, sir,” Lady Anne said at last, when I had finished, “whether this was merely an attempt at robbery, or something more sinister?”

“Nothing was stolen, madam.”

Lady Anne glanced at Mrs Jerdoun – who sat upon the edge of her chair looking at me as gravely and coolly as had Claudius Heron – then returned her gaze to me. “One name comes inexorably to mind in connection with this matter.”

I forestalled her. “I cannot think, Lady Anne, that anyone would have cause to set ruffians on me.”

“No? Perhaps you do not understand the continental temperament.”

Mrs Jerdoun rose and walked across to the fireplace, poking with an elegantly shod foot at the desultory embers among the ash. I started to rise politely but she waved me seated again. Her face was turned away from me.

I sipped my tea warily. “Too much has been made of – of certain disagreements between myself and the gentleman in question. I acknowledge his superiority to me as a musician, though I confess I envy his place as musical director of the Concerts.” Here Esther Jerdoun turned and gave me a steady look. “So when the gentlemen asked me to take that place, I thought it foolish to refuse, believing in any case that it would only be for a short time, until the argument between the gentlemen and Monsieur le Sac was resolved. But since that time some of the gentlemen – annoyed with what they believe to be Monsieur le Sac’s presumption – have chosen to conduct their quarrel in public.”

“That letter in the Courant,” Lady Anne said, laughing. “I recognised old Ord’s style at once. And there have been broadsheets posted about the town. Have you seen them, Esther?”

“I thought them too ranting and vulgar to take notice of,” her cousin said. Yes, there was certainly some coolness still between the ladies.

“It is the matter of the duel that concerns me,” I said.

As Mrs Jerdoun looked up sharply, Lady Anne sighed. “I have the greatest admiration for you gentlemen, Mr Patterson, but to meet with swords at dawn seems to me to be an extreme way of settling a violinist’s wages.”

“Not at dawn,” I said gloomily. “Next Wednesday afternoon, between two and three o’clock at Mrs Hill’s in the Fleshmarket.”

“You will have the watch down on you!” Mrs Jerdoun said in horror.

“They would not enjoy the experience.” I had no more stomach for the tea and put the dish down on the polished wood of the table. “It is to be a musical duel. It has been proposed that Monsieur le Sac and my apprentice George compete, in the presence of the best judges of the science of music in this part of the country, to see which is the better violinist.”

“The boy?” Lady Anne echoed, looking nonplussed for once. “Why the boy?”

“Monsieur le Sac is evidently aggrieved that his place as leader of the band has been taken by a twelve-year-old. He considers it an insult.”

“But it is not the boy who insults him,” Lady Anne pursued, leaning forwards. “The boy merely does as he is told. It is the man who puts the boy in that place who insults Le Sac and that, surely, is you, sir. Why does he not duel with you?”

She seemed disturbingly eager to see myself and Le Sac at odds but I acknowledged she had a good argument. “I have only heard of the matter at second hand, my lady. But evidently comments were made that George played as well as Le Sac and that the Swiss was no loss to the Concerts. That seems to have spurred him into action.”

“He is a fool,” Esther Jerdoun said contemptuously. “No one with any judgment could fail to see the truth of the matter. The boy is good for his age but he cannot match Le Sac. The man demeans himself by agreeing to such a preposterous contest.”

I nodded. “I’m afraid there is some plot behind the plot, so to speak – a plan to humiliate Le Sac.”

“You fear, in short,” said Lady Anne, “that the contest will not be a fair one. Tell me the exact terms.”

The fire was burning more strongly and Esther Jerdoun moved her full skirts away with care. She turned to pace across the room. From the long windows at the far side of the room the gardens of the square could be seen, bedraggled by the early chills of winter.

“Each player is to bring with him an accompanist and a piece of music in which he is well practised. Each piece will be played, then exchanged and played again by the other party.”

“To test their sight reading,” Esther Jerdoun said, pacing restlessly. “Le Sac will give the boy one of his impossible compositions.”

Lady Anne shook her head. “No, no. The boy was his apprentice, remember. He will know Le Sac’s hand and perhaps even remember the pieces. But in general terms you are correct. Le Sac will produce a piece of virtuoso playing which is impossible except after years of practice. Who are to be the judges, Mr Patterson?”

I laughed shortly. “That depends upon which side you support, madam. Le Sac’s partisans insist upon Mr Nichols, organist of St Nicholas.”

“Brother to Le Sac’s crony! And the boy’s supporters?” She smiled impishly. “That is to say, Mr Ord and Mr Jenison?”

“They want Thomas Mountier of Durham.”

“Known to be your friend.” She glanced at Esther Jerdoun, who was shaking her head. “I agree – quite unacceptable. In any case, he is surely a better judge of vocal music than instrumental.”

“When he is sober,” Mrs Jerdoun said sourly.

Lady Anne tapped her fingers upon the rim of her tea-dish and bit her lip thoughtfully. “Mr Patterson, you have not finished your tea. Drink up, sir, you need strength.”

The brew was chill but I sipped obediently while Lady Anne considered. Esther Jerdoun toyed with straightening the china ornaments upon a small table.

“Hesletine of Durham would be a better choice,” Lady Anne said at last. “He knows both you and Le Sac, I think? And he is such a cranky, obstinate man, so confirmed in a sense of his own good taste, that it would be next to impossible to influence him. Mr Patterson, would you be distressed to see your boy lose this contest?”

“I would think it only just. But is it fair to allow the boy to compete, knowing that he must be defeated? He will lose confidence in his own ability. And he will be disadvantaged if he becomes known merely as the boy who lost the duel.”

Lady Anne sighed and set down her tea-dish. “You are quite right. An effort must at least be made to stop the affair. I take it, Mr Patterson, that you wish me to undertake that task?”

“I have not come here without making the effort myself, Lady Anne. I called upon Mr Jenison. He said it was not an affair that concerned me and I should stand well clear of it. Mr Ord said that I must trust them to know what they were doing and that I could not help but benefit from the matter.”

Mrs Jerdoun laughed harshly. “Such men always believe that they know best.”

Lady Anne shot her a swift look. “Indeed,” she said dryly, and I fancied some feeling in her voice. “But I agree that you should not be seen to be involved, Mr Patterson. If Le Sac has taken so strongly against you, your interference can only make matters worse. Whereas I – as Le Sac’s patroness – must carry some weight.”

“You may as well save your time and strength,” Mrs Jerdoun said. “Nothing will prevent the contest. Too much pride is involved.”

Lady Anne smiled and I saw a mischievous delight in her eyes. “We shall see.” She rose in a rustle of silk and I hurriedly got to my feet. “Come, Mr Patterson, I will see you to the door. You are not to worry. We shall win this particular game.”

“Life is not all games,” Esther Jerdoun said sharply. “We are talking of men’s livelihoods.”

Lady Anne cast her a mocking look. “My cousin thinks I am much too frivolous, but I assure you I take this matter quite as seriously as anyone could wish!”

Glancing back as Lady Anne laid her hand on my arm, I met Mrs Jerdoun’s gaze. Her last remarks, I knew, had been intended for me, as a warning. But surely Lady Anne could not toy with us all at such a serious juncture?

Lady Anne flung open the door and we proceeded into the hallway. A servant hovered at the foot of the stairs but Lady Anne dismissed him and he walked away through the door to the servants’ hall. Lady Anne turned to me.

“I fancy you think the worse of me, Mr Patterson, for not having restrained Monsieur le Sac’s vanity before this time. But –”

And then the whole house seemed to shudder.

The walls wavered around me; I saw Lady Anne shiver and shimmer. I tried to reach out to her. Then the walls settled, as steady as they had been before, unchanged – no, had not a landscape hung on that wall below the stairs? It was now a portrait of an elderly man with a big old-fashioned wig. I turned on my heels, trembling, my head and throat throbbing, saw furniture that I did not recognise, a mirror that had not been there before…

And a stout, ruddy gentleman came noisily down the stairs, calling my name. I turned. It was the gentleman at the dinner party I had glimpsed – the one who had sat at the head of the table on that earlier occasion when I had looked through the window.

I could not speak a word. The pain in my head was squeezing at my eyes and making the gentleman’s face blur and fade. I glanced round, looking for the only certain thing in this place, for Lady Anne – but she was gone. Had she ever been here? Had she come into this insane place with me or had I left her in the hall of her house? The man was speaking to me again and that frightened me more than anything. Before, I had been a spectator, looking on a scene as if in a theatre; but now, now I was required to speak and act…

The man took hold of my arm. I felt his warmth, the hardness of his grip, the stink of his breath on my cheek. “You have come in perfect time, Patterson. You received my note?”

I would not panic; I would not be overcome. I licked my dry lips. “Indeed…”

“You’ll play for my niece’s wedding, then? Good, good.” He barked with laughter. “Never known a busier fellow – all those damn pupils and the Concert series. Which reminds me –”

He was walking towards the door. I went with him in a kind of fearful daze. What else could I do but walk through this strangeness, letting it unfold around me? Who was this gentleman? How did he come to know me? Why was this house both so familiar and so strange? Where was Lady Anne and the familiar reaches of Caroline Square?

The door stood open (in my daze, I had not noticed the fact before) and the day outside was chill and sunny. I looked out on the street that I had only seen in darkness before. By daylight it looked of no great significance, neither busy nor quiet, not shabby yet not especially grand. A few carts trundled up its length, followed by a carriage with the blinds drawn down. A woman who passed inclined her head to my companion; she was of a respectable middling sort – the wife of a tolerably well-off tradesman, perhaps.

Two men lounged against a sedan chair at the pavement’s edge. They straightened as they saw us and hurried to the chair’s poles.

“You’re a good man, Patterson,” the gentleman said, regarding the scene with some satisfaction. “I said as much when we appointed you to St Nicholas. And that music of yours – good decent stuff.”

He seemed to wait for a reply; I said mechanically: “Thank you, sir.”

“Well, I must be off.” He nodded goodbye to me. I expected him to climb into the chair but no, he strode away along the street. The chair, expensive as it was, was mine.

I stood on the doorstep, looking at the bearers. What if I was to get into the chair, allow the men to carry me away? Would I find the rest of the town subtly changed, with people I did not know but who knew me, with different streets and buildings, with perhaps even stranger, as yet unknown phenomena? If I walked away from this house would I ever get back to the people and the places I knew?

I put my hand to the smooth paint of the door. It was chill under my fingers. And the chill spread up my arm, into my heart and my head, and I was falling, falling.…

 

23

SINFONIA CONCERTANTE
Movement I

Lady Anne swept into my room, laughing aside the protests of Mrs Foxton who hung upon the door jamb. Startled, I raised myself on one elbow against my pillows. I had been lying fully dressed upon my bed, trying to ease the throbbing in my head and the turmoil in my mind, staring into the shadows of the room and the dark of that madness last night. I could still feel the light touch of Lady Anne’s fingers on my arm as the walls had begun to waver, still smell the man’s sour breath, still see the gaudy livery of the sedan chair bearers…

Mrs Foxton’s shimmer reflected the late afternoon light and worsened the pain behind my temples. Lady Anne was dressed in a pale gown with a velvet cloak thrown about her shoulders; her face was flushed and her hair awry.

“Oh, stop your fussing, spirit!” she cried. “Go and talk to that sallow-faced seamstress. Leave us alone.”

I protested. “Your reputation, Lady Anne –”

“Never mind her reputation,” Mrs Foxton said shrilly. “Think of your own. Think of the rumours about Mr Demsey.”

Ignoring her, Lady Anne produced a basket from the folds of her skirt and, from the basket, took a bottle of brandy and two glasses. Mrs Foxton made a noise between a sniff and a snort, and the gleam of her slid soundlessly between the hinges of the door and out of the room.

Lady Anne perched upon the edge of one of my chairs and insisted I drank the brandy. It was a very fine brandy. “You gave us all a fright, Mr Patterson,” she said, and there was an odd edge to her voice, a hint of – I could not be certain what. Concern? Could that be true?

“I had not intended to, my lady.”

“You virtually fell into my arms.” Yes – a forced edge to her good humour. “I thought for one dreadful moment that you had expired. But the apothecary said it was merely an after-effect of your dreadful experiences the other night, so we had you carried home and physicked. But I vowed to be certain you were well, so here I am!” She leaned forward. “A strange thing… You sounded as if you were speaking with a gentleman. Do you recall anything?”

Now was the time to tell Lady Anne what I had seen and heard in her house, but I looked into her face and knew I could not. There was concern in her gaze, yes, but there was mischief too, a gleam of bright pleasure. She was a woman with little to do who had therefore turned to setting one part of the town against another. She would greet my story with sympathetic understanding, no doubt, then tease me with it in front of others, embarrass me with hints. Exaggerated fears, perhaps, but I did not trust Lady Anne’s understanding of how careful a man must be when he relies on the favour of others to earn a living.

So I lied. “I did seem to have a dream. But I don’t remember it.”

She was watching me closely. “Nothing at all?”

“An impression of sunshine,” I said, sensing that she would not be satisfied with a denial. “And voices.” I shook my head. “I cannot recall what they said.”

She straightened in her chair, smiling at me over the top of her brandy glass. “Well, sir, I have more news for you, though I fancy you will not be pleased to have it. I have spoken to Mr Jenison and Mr Ord and they are adamant that the contest will go ahead.”

I set my head back against the pillows and cursed their obstinacy. “And the other gentlemen?”

“Mr Nichols and Mr Wright are acting for our Swiss friend. They in their turn insist upon the right of their principal to defend his reputation.”

“And Le Sac himself, madam? Have you spoken to him?”

“Impossible. He has gone to Sunderland for a concert and will not return until the day of the contest. Jenison and Ord are of the opinion that he has fled but I know him better than that. He is, in his own way, a man of his word. Having consented to the duel, he will not withdraw.”

“Then I will forbid George to take part.”

“You have that right, certainly. But I think Jenison and Ord will not forgive you interfering and you will then find yourself in a more difficult position than before. No, I have considered all aspects of the matter and I cannot find any way of preventing the contest that will not make the situation worse.”

Suddenly she bent forward and laid her hand upon my arm. “Mr Patterson, I beg you to take my advice on this matter. Let the contest go ahead. Le Sac will win. The boy will be disappointed, certainly, but you are a man of tact and understanding – you can console him. I assure you I will use my influence to raise general sympathy on the boy’s side.”

She drank down the rest of her brandy with a mannish gesture and got up to leave. “You had better rest, Mr Patterson. I have instructed the boy to send your apologies to your pupils and I will ensure that no one takes offence at your absence.” She took the empty glass from my hand. “My cousin, by the way, has sent a potion for you.” She indicated a small bottle upon the table, stoppered with cork and a twist of cloth. “It is a remedy for the headache; she brews it herself. I can personally recommend its efficacy.”

At the door, she almost walked into George, racing up the stairs. But she was in a good mood; she merely chided him laughingly and submitted to being taken downstairs by Mrs Foxton.

I had not seen George for some hours and I saw a change in him. He stood in the middle of the room, panting for breath and trying at the same time to list all the people he had visited on my behalf. He was in great good humour; yes, that was the difference – I had never seen him so animated.

“You seem to have been having a good time of it,” I said.

He looked guilty and his hand, all unbeknown to him, I think, crept to the pocket on his left side. What had he in there? Surely he hadn’t been indulging in boyish pranks – stealing fruit or cheeses, perhaps, from some stall. Yes, I thought, resigned, that would be it.

“And I saw Mr Jenison and Mr Heron upon the Key by the Printing Office. They told me to go home and not to catch cold before the contest. At least,” he amended, “Mr Jenison said so. Mr Heron just frowned.”

Heron. I caught at a faint hope. He was a man of sense. Might he prevent the duel?

I struggled off my bed. The brandy had made me warm but also dizzy. “Well, if we are committed to this stupidity, we had better take it seriously. We must decide what you are to play.”

“The Vivaldi!” he said eagerly.

I stared. “Which Vivaldi? I never taught you Vivaldi. I wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

“Mr Sac taught me it.” He started rummaging among the papers on the table. (I allowed him a corner at the back of it to keep his own music.)

“Corelli,” I said forcibly. Quite apart from the fact that I could not allow any apprentice of mine to exhibit inferior taste, I considered it more sensible to play a piece he had recently practised. And Le Sac himself would be familiar with the Vivaldi if he had taught it to his apprentice, and would no doubt play it excellently. No doubt he would be familiar with the Corelli too; we had played one or two of the concerti in the Concerts. But he had shown small enthusiasm for them, dismissing them contemptuously as ‘simple’ pieces. Such attitudes have a way of being heard in performance. And Hesletine, the proposed judge, was fond of Corelli, and would probably be offended by Le Sac’s indifference.

We produced the music at the same time. I stood with my hand on a printed edition; George waved a paper filled with that lamentable scrawl of Le Sac’s.

“Corelli,” I repeated, opening the book. “Get out your violin.”

“I don’t need to practise that one,” he said, looking beneath my arm. “We played it at the last Concert.”

“I was there,” I said. “You need to practise.”

He lifted his head defiantly. “Mr Jenison says I’m an excellent violinist.”

“You have the prospect of becoming so, certainly.” I was feeling light-headed; the brandy, I realised, had been stronger than I had made allowance for.

“Mr Jenison says I’m going to win this contest.”

A harsh retort hovered on my lips but I looked down at the boy and held my tongue. If the effects of his inevitable defeat were to be lessened, I must tread carefully. But I cursed Jenison as I looked down at the upturned face and saw the swaggering confidence there and the childish glee at anticipated victory.

“And what did Mr Heron say?” I asked gently.

“Nothing. I don’t think he likes boys.”

I had come to the conclusion that Claudius Heron liked nobody very well. “Mr Jenison’s opinion,” I said carefully, “is valuable, but he is, after all, only a gentleman amateur. If you are to win this contest, you must satisfy Mr Hesletine. And he, as I’m sure Mr Mountier’s anecdotes have made clear to you, is very difficult indeed to please. Now, get out your violin.”

He made a face of mutiny but fetched the instrument and I lingered at the window as he tuned the strings. The shrill sound of it made my head throb again and it seemed to me that George deliberately produced an inferior tone to spite me. I remembered Mrs Jerdoun’s potion and read the instructions she had neatly inscribed upon the label. Pulling out the stopper, I sniffed at the summer scents of lime flowers and rosemary, mixed with wine.

I drank a small glass of the potion and felt the warmth of it seep down my throat. Leaning my hot cheek against the chill window glass, I gazed out into the dusk and tried to concentrate on George’s begrudging lifeless attempts at the first bars of the faultless Corelli. Figures scuttled beneath me: a child with a barking dog, a woman with a baby heaved up on a hip. And at the far corner, just turning out of sight...

Demsey.

 

24

SINFONIA CONCERTANTE
Movement II

I heard Mrs Foxton call as I flung open the front door. The cold air made me reel; for a moment the world seemed to spin. The road was full of people – housewives coming home from markets, children shrieking, carters edging horses through the melee – and the gloom of night was gathering fast. I pushed my way down the street. A barrel rolled across my path; I leapt it, turned the corner...

Nothing. The street was empty.

It was a momentary condition; almost at once, a group of miners trudged around the far corner. Might Demsey have gone into a shop? Or a tavern? I stumbled along, glancing in at every window, staring after every dark passer-by. I even accosted two gentlemen, complete strangers.

The air was making me giddy, or perhaps it was Lady Anne’s brandy. Had I merely imagined a likeness in a passing stranger? Demsey had gone to Aberdeen to make a new start, to teach young Miss Scotts their native dances or to introduce them to the civilising influence of the English. Hamilton had said so.

I wandered on as night gathered, unwilling to go back home. I’d left George without a word of explanation; he must think me mad, or ill again. But to the devil with George. An obstinate part of me whispered that I had not been mistaken; Demsey had returned. Perhaps Hamilton had misunderstood him, or he had changed his mind after speaking to Hamilton and not travelled north after all. I am not a man who likes to be at odds with his friends and since Demsey’s departure I had felt acutely the need of a friend. Moreover, I was conscious I had behaved abominably to him; I would have welcomed a chance to apologise. And a reassurance that he was well and did not suffer from the false accusations against him. Good God, what was happening? First the plot against Hugh, then the duel (besides all the mysteries happening in Caroline Square). Would there never be an end to it all!

“I am besieged on all sides,” I cried aloud. “Insulted, manipulated by men for their own purposes...”

“You are drunk, sir,” a cold voice said.

I looked up the steps of St Nicholas’s church, to the deep shadows of the half-open door. Light-Heels Nichols stood upon the step, looking down at me superciliously.

“Brandy, sir,” I said. “Fine brandy. It is beneath me to get drunk on anything less.”

“And where do you get the money, sir?” he returned contemptuously. “I trust the rate of interest upon the loan was not too extortionate.”

He was hardly fit to comment, considering his brother was so well acquainted with the money-lenders. But I could not quite express the thought; there seemed a gulf between my brain and my tongue.

“I intend to make my fortune,” I said, waving my hands expansively. I was feeling reckless, wild enough for anything. And nauseous.

“Indeed?”

“Indeed,” I cried. “I am off to Aberdeen, to write Scotch tunes and pass them off as centuries old –”

I stopped. He had drawn back. He turned his head away from me, came rapidly down the steps and pushed past. I yelled after him and was rewarded by an irate shout from the upstairs window of a nearby house. Then he was gone.

Some time later, I managed to find Mrs Hill’s in the Fleshmarket. I stumbled into the place reeking of offal, for in the darkness I had slipped in a pool of butchers’ blood and sat down in discarded guts. The tavern was packed and noisy; I collapsed upon a bench and called for Dick Kell.

“You’re drunk,” he said accusingly from the carved handle of a tankard. The candlelight flickering from the metal and from the glitter that was Dick Kell made my head spin. I put my face in my hands.

“I’m trying not to be,” I said thickly. “Wait, wait.” Had I learnt nothing from that episode with Claudius Heron? When I was drunk, I did the most foolish things. And to wander around the town out of my wits when there were ruffians out to get me was more than foolish. I gathered my thoughts together at last. “Dick, you were here when Light-Heels Nichols first came to this town, were you not?”

“Lord, yes. Year before I died. Let me see. I died – um – four years back. That year we had the terrible snowstorms. Year before you came back from London.”

“You don’t by any chance,” I said carefully, squinting at the ale-damp table to one side of the tankard, “know where he came from?”

“Lancaster.”

My hopes plummeted.

“Born and bred there. Father was the organist. His brother had the post too but put himself up for the St Nicholas’s job. More money. Always liked money, those two. And women. Well, Light-Heels does anyway. If you ask me, that’s why he left Aberdeen.”

“Dick,” I said to the pool of ale on the table, “I’m tired and I can’t think properly. Talk to me slowly. Nichols came to this town from Lancaster?”

“No, no,” he said good-humouredly. “You are in a sorry state, aren’t you? Light-Heels was born in Lancaster, but he spent some while as a music teacher in Aberdeen before he came here. Taught singing.”

“Singing?” I echoed incredulously.

“And the violin. Can’t have made much a of a go of it. Left. Oh, sorry.” He mimicked Light-Heels’ careful voice. “I resigned in order to return to my native country. The Scotch were most complimentary about my playing. Well, let me tell you, I’ve stood in front of Light-Heels Nichols in more than one concert and if the Scotch think a violin should sound like a nail being drawn across a metal box, they’ve even less sense than I’ve always thought – and that’s not saying much! And what’s up with you?”

“Aberdeen!” I said and started to laugh.

I made one last effort to prevent the contest on the Monday next, two days after I thought I had seen Demsey. Before I gave his son a lesson upon the harpsichord, Mr Heron came in to take his first lesson. I spoke directly about the matter of the duel, for I knew he would scorn subterfuge or roundaboutation. I asked him to speak to Jenison and Ord and request them to call off the affair.

He was taking his violin from its case and paused to look sideways at me. In the clear chill sunlight entering through the window, his pale eyes seemed to glitter.

“I do not think there is any point in wasting time in an endeavour that cannot possibly succeed. Why do you object to the contest?” He straightened, bow-stick in one hand and his resin-box in the other. “Do you fear your boy will lose?”

“I know he will,” I said, rather more forcibly than I had intended. “As you are aware, sir, I was in London scarcely three years ago and I heard few violinists even there who could stand comparison with Monsieur le Sac.”

“What, then?” He rubbed the horsehair over the resin.

I hesitated, but still judged it best to speak plainly. “Mr Jenison and Mr Ord have been filling the boy’s head with expectations that cannot be fulfilled, which will only lead to disappointment. It is not fair on the boy.”

Heron did not speak for a moment. He laid the bow-stick upon the table and lifted the violin to the light, angling it as if to catch the patina of dust upon its surface. One lean finger plucked a string.

“Slightly flat,” he said and glanced again at me. “I approve your good sense, Mr Patterson, but there is no avoiding this matter. I advise you to do as I do and stand well clear of it.”

I considered but was not able to agree. “I cannot, sir.”

“Then there is no more to be said on the matter. Shall we proceed?”

And so I gave him that first lesson, surprised by the seriousness with which he undertook the task. Teaching gentlemen is never easy, for they are rarely amenable to accepting advice, or anything but praise, no matter how undeserved. Heron, however, made it plain he expected honesty from me, and did not snap at me for giving it. It is rare to find a gentleman who takes the science of music so seriously as even to practise.

Only later did I realise that Claudius Heron had done me the honour of adding to my name the title of Mr.

I had, perforce, to accept the inevitability of the duel. Lady Anne, Heron, gleeful Mr Ord – all thought it impossible to avoid. But I was determined to enjoy the Concert upon the Tuesday night, as it might be the last I directed and I wanted to leave a good impression. It went very well, I thought, despite Mountier’s absence (he had another engagement in Durham); at the end of the music, I went down into the yard of the Turk’s Head, to feel the coolness of the evening air after the heat of the crowded Long Room. Despite my tiredness, and my aches and pains, there was a warm pleasurable feeling in my gut, a certainty that, given a larger opportunity, I could do very well as musical director, that this was something I could excel at.

A shadow moved beneath the arch of the inn. Then Esther Jerdoun came cautiously across the cobbles, holding up her blue satin dress from the mud and horse manure, stepping in and out of shafts of moonlight, her shining shoes bright. She stopped in front of me but said nothing. She dropped her skirts and smoothed them down, then looked into my face with a directness that disconcerted me.

“Did you never consider staying in London, Mr Patterson?”

I was astonished; her hint was unmistakable. “Are you advising me to consider it now, madam?”

Her ash-blonde hair gleamed in the moonlight; her bare arms, white and slim, lay smooth against the satin. She was without a cloak but did not seem to feel the cold.

“I wish I could say there is no danger to you, sir, but I would not be honest.”

“Do you mean to warn me against your cousin again?” I said boldly.

Her face hardened.

“Forgive me,” I said. “But I am well aware that Lady Anne enjoys playing games with lesser mortals. She –” I searched for polite words, then recklessly plunged on. “She finds everyday life tedious and seeks to enliven it. I do not like that, I confess. Nor do I like being embroiled in your quarrel with her.”

She was contemplating me, expressionlessly.

“For you do have a quarrel with her, do you not, madam? You seem to disapprove of almost everything she does. Well, madam, if you wish to play your games, and try to diminish your cousin’s standing with the world, I cannot prevent you. But I will not be caught up in it.”

I stopped, appalled to hear my own words, the force and the anger behind them. Esther Jerdoun regarded me for a moment, then reached to lift her skirts again.

“You are a fool, Mr Patterson,” she said, and turned away.

 

25

SINFONIA CONCERTANTE
Movement III

And so to the duel.

I rose early on the Wednesday morning, looking out of the window on to a gloomy drizzle; a thin layer of mud gleamed on the street below. George still snored, entangled in his blanket on the floor, and I kicked him awake before splashing my face with cold water from the previous night. He was full of glee and talked incessantly of how he was going to defeat his old master. I curbed my impulse to speak to him sharply – now was not the time to weaken the boy’s confidence – but I inwardly cursed Jenison and Ord. Vanity should not be encouraged, particularly where it has no basis in fact.

“I must give my lessons as usual,” I told him. “I’ve lost enough money recently as it is. You will stay here and practise the Corelli.”

“Master –”

“Put on your best clothes just before you go. When you get to Mrs Hill’s, speak to Dick Kell. He knows what’s what.” I buttoned up my waistcoat and glanced down at his eager face, wondering how it would look when I saw him next, after the defeat Le Sac would inevitably inflict on him.

“Play as well as you can, George. I cannot ask more than that. I’ll meet you here tonight and you can tell me all about it.”

“Yes, master.”

As I left, I wished he had been more sombre and thoughtful. He had that look of mischief that always bodes ill.

I spent the morning teaching on the Westgate and, on my way back into town, looked in again at Demsey’s school. The room itself was as it had been, except for a thick layer of dust on the chairs. But, as I turned to go back down to the street, I saw something catch the light on the stairs to Demsey’s rooms above; I turned back. The fragment of a bright button, twisted and broken. Perhaps that glimpse in the street had not been born of the brandy, after all. I looked closely and saw, in the dust on the stairs, the faintest trace of footsteps. Demsey was always extraordinarily light upon his feet. I went up to the attic and rapped on his door. Not the smallest sound. I prised up the floorboard but the key was gone. He had certainly come back.

I went down to the coffee-house to write him a note saying I had seen him, that I regretted my last outburst and wished to speak with him. But the words were impossible to find. I sat long in Nellie’s, with a dish of coffee cooling before me and the ink drying upon the quill. My dear Demsey. Easy enough to begin, but how to continue? How many men find it easy to say I’m sorry?

I was biting the end of the quill when there was a great noise at the door and I saw the massive figure of Tom Mountier, rolling and reeling against the jamb. Flattening at least three men on his way, he hailed me with a roar.

“Charles, I’m parched! Buy me a drink!”

I signalled to the serving wench. “I’ll buy you coffee, Tom. You’re drunk.”

“Nonsense!” He gave me a wink. “I can sing as well as ever. Listen.”

He rollicked off the first notes of a hunting song and of course all heads turned. Some shouted encouragement and some joined in so that soon nearly the entire coffee-house was singing. I sat back and listened, with a half-smile on my lips and the cold fear of dread in my heart. For I heard today, as I had never heard before, the edges of roughness creeping into that fine polished bass voice – the suggestion of hoarseness and, worse, the lack of care he took over the shaping of phrases and the small graces that show true taste. Before, even when drunk, those things had come effortlessly to Tom Mountier, once the darling of London concert-goers.

He finished, tossed off the coffee and called for ale. Someone shouted for another song but he roared that he was too sleepy, and melodramatically flung hmself down on the table, his head on top of his arms, snoring loudly.

“Why are you in Newcastle?” I asked.

Bright-eyed and wide awake, he lifted his head and grinned. “On my way to Edin – Edinburgh. To the good gentlemen and their private concert.”

“Leave of absence again? I wonder Hesletine allows it.”

“Doesn’t know about it, my boy! Blissful ignorance and all that. I left him a note reminding him I told him of it weeks ago; he’ll not remember whether I did or no. When our esteemed organist sits down in front of manuscript paper, the outside world exists no longer. Even now, he is penning some sublime Ode.”

I laughed. “‘Not at this moment, he isn’t. He’s in the Fleshmarket, being entertained – or otherwise – by my apprentice.”

Mountier stared at me. “My dear Charles, you run mad. I left Hesletine deep in the throes of composition. I had to creep past his window to avoid his notice.”

“He probably set out minutes after you did.”

“Nonsense. He’ll not stir till he goes to conduct the rehearsal for the concert.”

“Tom,” I said patiently. “Thursday is concert night in Durham. Today is Wednesday.”

“Not the public concert,” he said. “The private one in the Deanery. Handel, Handel and more Handel, the saintly one. Charles, my dear fellow...”

I was already halfway to the door, mowing down newcomers in my turn and running for Mrs Hill’s.

The butchers’ stalls in the Fleshmarket were crowded so there was scarce space for a dog to run down the street. I pushed through the mob, apologising hurriedly, stepping on feet, oversetting baskets, apologising again. Someone spilt beer over me, someone else jabbed an elbow in my side. Gasping for breath, I stumbled against the wall of Mrs Hill’s – and felt a hand seize my arm.

I tried to pull free, twisted and looked into the sombre face of Claudius Heron.

“It’s a trick,” I said, breathing heavily. “Hesletine is not coming. He probably doesn’t even know what’s going on.”

Heron nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

My recriminations died on my lips. Something in Heron’s expression stopped them – a twist to his mouth, that familiar hint of distaste and... And what? I put my hand against the cold wall and drew a deep shuddering breath. “What is happening in there, sir?”

He drew me aside, to the mouth of an alley. He was perhaps an inch or two shorter than I, and his hand on my arm was chill even through the cloth. His speech was always slow but on this occasion more than usual. “I regret to say that Ord and Jenison are trying to manoeuvre Le Sac into a position where he feels so humiliated that he leaves the town. They intend to impose new conditions for the contest which he will not be able to accept.”

“He will never leave,” I said, recalling that night on the Side when Le Sac had threatened to force me out. “He’ll not give in. He’s too obstinate.”

Heron nodded again. “I have told them so. But they are set upon the idea and they are the last men in the world to yield to a counsel of caution.”

I gave him a direct look. “And your part in this, sir?”

“Nothing.” Again that grimace of distaste.

“Then may I ask why you are here? You advised me nothing could be done.”

I could not keep the anger from my voice and my tone was far from respectful. Heron lifted his head.

“Because,” he said, “I have a higher opinion of your perspicacity than they do. I guessed you would fathom their plans and come here to stop them.”

“You are right, sir,” I said and made to push past him. He took hold of my arm again. When I tried to pull free, he bore me back against the wall, gripping my flesh with those lean fingers.

“You must not be associated with this, Patterson. No, hear me out.” I had made to free myself. “If you take sides in this matter, whichever side you take, half the gentlemen of the town will shun you. How then will you make a living?”

“You take great care of my reputation, sir,” I said sarcastically. I had had enough of being told what to do: Lady Anne, Esther Jerdoun, now Heron...

His grip upon my arm was fierce. “I am trying to ensure that as little damage as possible is done to all concerned.”

I hardly heard him. “I am already associated with the matter. The boy is my apprentice.”

“The boy is not here.”

“Not here?” I echoed. “Then where –”

“I sent him home.” He seemed to realise he still held my arm, let me go and stepped back, flexing his fingers. “I intercepted him at the top of the Fleshmarket and told him the contest was postponed. He seemed... disappointed.”

A little, a very little, of my anger was dissipating. If George was out of the way (at least for the time being), the matter might yet be mended. I murmured thanks but Heron was not listening to me. He stood under the unlit lamps of the tavern rubbing his fingers together and staring into some private thought. A strand of his fair hair had escaped from the bow at the nape of his neck and curled on the shoulder of his dark coat.

“I abominate these petty intrigues,” he said. “They are set afoot by men with nothing better to occupy them than small jealousies and their own pride.” That sharp gaze settled on my face. “Do not, I pray, Patterson, force me to lodge you in their company.”

“I never wanted this,” I said vehemently. “Everything in this matter has been forced upon me from the beginning. Even the boy.”

“Then go home, Patterson. I certainly intend to.”

“You do not go in?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Sometimes my fellow men disgust me, Patterson. While I deal politely with them, drink wine with them, discuss trade and politics with them, ride with them, play music with them, go to church with them, their breath is stinking on my neck. My stomach turns with it all.” His mouth twisted. “Sometimes even my son disgusts me. I was never so glad as the day my wife died, for that event absolved me of the need to act the kind hypocrite every day. No, I shall not go in.”

And, brushing past me, he pushed into the mob in the street and was lost from sight.

I admitted the wisdom of all he said; I knew I could not afford to alienate any of the men on whom my living depended. But I knew too that I must see what went on inside the inn. I waited a moment or two, to be sure Heron had gone, then pushed my way into the inn-yard.

The door leading to the stairs to the Long Room was open. I leant my weight upon the bottom step cautiously, knowing the stairs creaked. A murmur of voices was audible from the upper room. I heard Ord’s shrill tones and the measured low rumble of Jenison. And was that Nichols?

On the top stair, I eased myself to one side to look into the room without being seen. Mrs Hill’s Long Room was not as spacious as that of the Turk’s Head and there were no glittering chandeliers here, merely a branch or two of unlit candles upon the windowsills. The room was laid out for a supper; the long tables down the centre of the room were covered with white cloths and servants at the far end were clattering cutlery and uneasily tiptoeing in and out.

At the near end of the room, under windows that looked down into the street, a cluster of men were gesticulating and shouting. In their centre stood Le Sac, stocky yet elegant in his suit of midnight blue, a cravat of purest white at his throat, disordered by the imprint of his violin. That black fiddle was gripped in his left hand, the bow stick held like a cudgel in the other. He was red-faced, and I have never seen such a look of malice on any man.

Yet he was stock-still and silent. It was Nichols who made the noise, arguing his principal’s case with near-incoherent rage. One of the gentlemen of the concert band stood nearby, awkwardly clasping his cello – Le Sac’s accompanist, I presumed. And, standing in the full glare of the daylight from the windows was Jenison, hands behind his back, head raised, feet planted apart in a stance of stern implacability. Behind him, sly Mr Ord bobbed and grinned.

I went back down the stairs, careless of the creaking, knowing that none would hear me. Le Sac had brought the confrontation upon himself, yet of all the men gathered in that window it was he who sparked my compassion. For his dignity in fury, if nothing else.

And Ord and Jenison were the men whom Claudius Heron would have me placate, men who had decided to be rid of someone they found difficult to control and instead to put in his place another man of more pliability. And I knew I had no choice but to accept the situation. Jenison and Ord held the key not only to my successful future as a musician but to my very survival. A man must eat and thus must earn money in his chosen profession.

But it sickened me. Walking up the Fleshmarket, ignoring the children that bumped me and the carriers that barged the corners of their boxes into my legs, I felt disgusted at myself. And when a tavern presented itself with open doors, I turned into it, regardless of the urine-damp straw upon the floor and the stink of sour ale. And there, for some hours, I proceeded to drink as much as Tom Mountier ever did, and to become progressively more and more sober and morose. Who was Claudius Heron to lecture me on my behaviour? He was a gentleman with an inheritance and coal mines aplenty, stocks and shares by the hundreds, money to drop into a working man’s outstretched hands. What did he know of earning a living?

Eventually I went home, walking straight, with a mind sharpened still further by the cold night air. As I let myself into the house, I could hear voices, miners arguing in the back rooms; on the first floor, Mrs Foxton called to one of the lodgers. I was in no mood to speak to anyone; I climbed the stairs wearily, searching my pockets for my key.

My gaze was arrested by the door to my room. Wood showed pale and raw where the lock had been broken. I touched the door; it swung silently open. I listened for the quick rush of footsteps, tensed myself for an attack.

None came. The door swung on, opening wide.

And showed me the boy, sprawled upon the floor amid the smashed fragments of his violin. In his right hand was clutched, not the Corelli that I had insisted upon, but the Vivaldi. And the pages were soaked with blood.

 

26

ELEGY

I leaned over the banister and called down to Mrs Foxton. The muffled voices from the first floor ceased; Mrs Foxton’s voice came from the landing below.

“Can I help you, Mr Patterson?”

“I would be obliged if you would send for Bedwalters,” I said, amazed at the calmness of my voice. “There has been an accident.”

But as I stood over George’s crumpled body again, I knew it had been no accident. There was nothing to explain the blood upon the music – no broken glass or fallen knife. Nor would George have been so careless as to fool around with his violin in his hand; his livelihood depended upon that instrument. And the violin itself lay oddly beneath the boy – face up, the bridge sprung free as the tension of the strings was released. The curved back had been smashed and the neck broken. I could not imagine how it might have fallen thus: because of the grip with which the player holds the neck, the violin should surely have fallen face down when George fell.

Bedwalters came up, the street girl who seemed to be so often with him treading behind. The girl carried a candle, its light flickering across her curious composed features. The intake of breath I heard did not come from her but from Bedwalters. From the door jamb, Mrs Foxton muttered.

“I have not touched him,” I said.

Bedwalters nodded. He shifted forward, cautiously trod to the other side of the body and lifted an unlit branch of candles from the table. As the girl tilted the flame of her candle to them the room grew brighter and the hunched shape upon the floor more awful.

“Not much blood,” Bedwalters said, looking down. “Perhaps he broke his neck in falling. But then why should there be any blood at all?”

I explained my reservations about the violin; Bedwalters nodded again. “You’ll know that better than me, Mr Patterson. Since you were good enough not to touch the body, perhaps you were good enough not to touch anything else in the room? A knife, perhaps?” He must have seen my puzzlement. “Some people prefer not to be associated with suicide.”

“Suicide!” I echoed incredulously. “George would not do that!”

“I only meant that it must always be considered, sir. You would be surprised how many people in this town live in quiet despair.”

I glanced at him in surprise, for he had spoken with a kind of passion. And I saw too a shift in the girl’s stance; she had for a moment lost her composure. But she was still again in a moment. I looked down upon the body with Bedwalters silent beside me.

“It cannot have been suicide,” I pointed out. “He has the violin in one hand and music in the other. How could he also have handled a knife?”

Bedwalters nodded. “If you don’t object, sir, I’d like to turn him on his back.”

With considerable reluctance, I bent to help him. The movement set the candle flames leaping and the shadows moving, and for one dreadful moment I thought I saw the boy move too. But his flesh was already cold and passive under my hands; he seemed extraordinarily heavy. As we turned him, the violin slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. Then his head fell back against my shoulder and Mrs Foxton said faintly, “God have mercy.”

His throat had been cut.

I turned my head away from the gaping maw of flesh, sinew and bone, and helped Bedwalters lay George down again. I brushed at the shoulder of my coat. There was no blood there but I fancied I could see the imprint of that bloody gaping hole, that it would be there for ever.

“Not suicide,” Bedwalters said. “No boy could do that to himself.”

“Murder?” Mrs Foxton said in shocked tones.

I forced my mind to work. “He would have made an easy victim – small, not very strong. Both his hands were occupied. He would have been fearful of dropping the violin too...”

I stopped. Bedwalters and I both stared at the ruined instrument that had slipped from George’s limp fingers. Bedwalter’s large hands hovered over the fragments of wood.

“He wasn’t holding the violin,” he said. “The dead don’t let go of what they were holding when they died. Not at once, at any rate. Look how he grips that paper. He held that when he died. But the violin – no.” He reached down to George’s left hand and, to my extreme discomfort, shifted the fingers. I heard the rasp of broken bones.

“His hand was broken to force the violin into it.” Bedwalters stood up, tapping his teeth thoughtfully. “And another thing. A cut throat should have covered the floor with blood.”

“Yet there is hardly any at all,” I agreed, still rubbing at my shoulder. “And all of it on the music.”

Bedwalters bent and set his palm flat against the floor as if feeling for moisture. He brought it up dry. “A spot or two, nothing more. So...” He gave a heavy sigh. “He wasn’t killed here.”

We looked unhappily at one another, but it was Mrs Foxton who spoke the words aloud. “If you don’t know where he was killed, you’ll not find his spirit. And if you can’t find his spirit, you won’t be able to ask who killed him. The murderer will get away with it!”

Bedwalters departed to inform the Justice of the death; he managed to lock the damaged door again and took the key with him. I did not wish to go back into the room, but as I stood at the door, looking out at the chill starry night, I wondered where I was to spend the night.

“Mrs Foxton, I will stay with – with friends. If I am asked after, by Bedwalters or the Justice, tell them I will return tomorrow before ten.” I turned to go, then paused. “Did you not hear anyone come in?”

“Of course I heard someone come in,” she said sharply. “Twenty-five people live in this house. People are always coming in.”

“Thank you,” I said, and stepped into the street to prevent myself snapping at her.

The cold air made me reel, or perhaps it was the lingering effects of the ale I had consumed that afternoon. I was tempted to head back to the inn but I needed rest and quiet thought, not ale. For one thing, I must be clear-headed on the morrow for the inquest. I would have to explain not only how I had found George but also when I had last seen him, and that would entail awkward questions about the duel.

A cold realisation gripped me. If Claudius Heron had sent George home, he could have been the last to see him alive. I stopped in the middle of the street, appalled by the thought that had crept into my mind. I had only Heron’s word that he had sent George home. And the man had been unusually bitter, unusually discomposed when I spoke to him.

Heron?

I needed to think, in quiet, on my own. I might find a room for the night at Mrs Hill’s, but there I would have Dick Kell to deal with. I turned my footsteps towards Westgate Road.

There was a frost in the air; it sparkled in the stone of the walls and gleamed off the windows. Overhead, stars glittered in a faultless sky, although to the east a heavy cloud hung upon the horizon – the smoke from the salt-works at Shields. Plenty of people were still about; whores laughed in the arms of sailors, an embarrassed chaplain hurried quickly by, children played jumping games on a grid scratched into the earth of the street. At the entrance to Caroline Square, I paused, glancing across at the dark outline of Lady Anne’s house. Lady Anne, Esther Jerdoun, even the house itself, seemed to conspire against me but I would not complain. I was still alive.

Westgate itself was quiet, as more genteel districts generally are. The tall houses, thin-faced, marched up the hill towards the dark hulk of the West Gate itself. I passed the dark wall of the Vicarage Gardens, crossed to the guttering dying lanterns of the Assembly Rooms and came to Demsey’s dancing-school. The side door was unlocked as ever; I was preoccupied as I climbed the flight of stairs. Could I conceive of Claudius Heron as a murderer? He had the coolness for it. But what possible reason could he have for harming George?

I passed the schoolroom. I had no wish to spend the night on the floor, or on one of the damned uncomfortable chairs round the walls. (“Of course they’re uncomfortable, Charles. They are designed to encourage people to stand up and dance!”) I climbed to the attic, lifted my hand and tapped on the door of Demsey’s rooms.

“Hugh? Hugh, if you’re there I need to speak to you.”

Silence.

“Hugh, for God’s sake! It’s not about that... that quarrel we had. It’s about George.” I could hardly bring myself to say the words. “The boy’s dead, Hugh. Murdered.”

A moment’s silence, then a key clicked in the lock. The door swung open on to a shadowy room lit by only a single candle. Demsey stared at me, wild-eyed.

“Murdered?” He clutched at my sleeve. “I didn’t do it, Charles. I swear! The boy was alive when I left him!”

 

27

SONATA

I pushed him back into the room and shut the door lest our voices echo down the stairs to any chance passer-by. In the shadowy candlelight the room looked very much as it always had; the bed was made, clothes were piled in an open chest, papers laid across the table as if Demsey had been working at them.

“When were you with him, Hugh?” I asked carefully.

He looked at me with a glimmer of amusement. “Don’t use that damn tone with me, Charles. I know I’m in your bad books.”

“Can you blame me? After that affair with Nichols?”

“It was none of your business!” he flared, then swore and took a turn about the room to calm himself.

“Perhaps. And I ... I behaved abominably,” I said, finding, I admit, some difficulty in saying the words.

He spun and flashed me a grin. “So you did. But I knew if I left you to stew a week or two, you’d come round.”

“Hugh!” I exclaimed in exasperation. “Of all the –” But I could not remain angry. Our old friendship mitigated against it. I seized and embraced him, then fell to further abusing him, until we were both convinced that all grudges were satisfied. And I felt a huge relief too, that I was not left alone to cope with this mess.

“Hugh – have you ever been in Caroline Square?”

He was pouring ale from a jug on the table. “Of course. I’ve a couple of pupils there.”

“Did you ever notice anything odd about it?”

“There’s that damn spirit, in the gardens.”

“No, I meant at Lady Anne’s house.”

He looked bewildered. “How odd? New cobbles? New railings?”

“No, no. Take no notice.” I downed ale while he watched me critically. “I cannot think straight with this business of George.”

“Charles –”

“Wait.” I perceived he was about to ask me about the boy. “Let me take this in order. Tell me what you have been doing since I last saw you.” There was fear in my mind, if truth be told – fear of finding out what had happened to George, of discovering Hugh had played some part in it.

He ran his hand through his black hair. “I went to Aberdeen,” he said, “to chase after friend Nichols’s past.” He seized my arm. “Charles! You know what they suggested of me with the Lindsay girl!”

“I have seen her,” I said. “She was pointed out to me at a concert. As sly a slut as I have ever seen.”

He snorted with laughter. “She is one of those that twists this way and that when dancing, always seems to be looking past her partner’s shoulder, or under his arm, and when you glance round to see what’s caught her attention, you see it’s her own reflection in the glass!”

I sipped my ale; Demsey always bought the best, and hang the expense. The sloping roof prevented me from standing upright and I perched upon the edge of the bed.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head at my stare of disbelief. “Honestly, Charles. I knew nothing of the matter until the day after. Her governess sat with us the entire lesson.”

“Then how could anything ever be proved against you?”

“Charles, Charles. There is no need of proof. Rumour does the trick amply. The girl denied the whole thing throughout. The father – as sour-faced a bigot as I ever saw – summoned me to his inner sanctum and called upon the slut to accuse me. “Oh, father,’ she cried.” (Demsey’s imitation was scurrilous.) “‘Oh, father, how can you think such a thing. Mr Demsey is the soul of honour!’ And all the time she’s making sheep’s eyes at me and damn near winking!”

“And you say Nichols put her up to it? What persuasion did he use? She came perilously close to sacrificing her reputation.”

“Marriage.” He grinned at my incredulity. “Close your mouth, Charles – it does not become you. He swore he would marry her and bear her off to the delights of London.”

“Good God.” I could not conceive that even the most naïve of females could tolerate the thought of marriage to Nichols. “But the fellow’s a mere dancing master – she would hope to do better than that!”

I stopped. Demsey’s expression had twisted and he looked upon me with some dislike. “A mere dancing master?”

“I was referring to Nichols,” I said quickly. “You are of such a superior stamp that I had for a moment quite forgotten your profession.”

He regarded me consideringly. “A tolerable retreat, Charles, tolerable. No more than that. But what can one expect of a mere musician?”

I grinned. “Touché. And what did you find at Aberdeen?”

He swung round to the table and seized up some papers.

“See here, Charles. Letters from – well, I had better not say the name. A gentleman in Aberdeen, the younger son of a trading family there, with connections in Norway and the Baltic, very respectable, well-moneyed. He has a daughter whom friend Nichols taught. Nichols tried to seduce her, promised her marriage and might even have gone through with it had not the girl confided her joy to her elder sister.”

“He wanted the money, I suppose.”

“No,” Demsey said grimly. “What he wanted was the title of gentleman. He tried to bargain with them. He said they could tie up the largest part of the girl’s dowry so he could not gain access to it, provided they gave him an allowance, accepted him at dinner parties and introduced him to polite society. It was politely suggested to him that he should return to his native land.”

“Where he thought to try the same trick again for a different purpose – to be rid of a rival.”

Demsey stood, papers in hand, the animation dying from his face. “I brought the whole matter on myself, did I not? Rising to his bait, arguing with him, setting those ruffians on him...”

“Indeed,” I said.

He laughed shakily. “Damn it, Charles. A friend’s supposed to say something consoling in a situation like this.”

“I cannot feel consoling. My apprentice has just been murdered.”

“Damn, I forgot.” He tossed the papers down upon the table. “I saw him this afternoon and he was alive and well. Obstreperous, but well.”

I drained the ale. “Do me the favour of an explanation.”

He shrugged. “No sooner had I returned than I heard about this so-called musical duel. Why in heaven’s name did you agree to it, Charles?”

“I never did. It had gone too far before I knew of it. Ord and Jenison are the guiding hands of the affair. Le Sac made the mistake of injuring them where it hurts them most. He asked for fifteen shillings a night.”

Demsey whistled.

“Of course he is the darling of the audiences.”

“What do they know about music?” Demsey retorted.

“Enough to recognise my worth, I hope,” I said dryly. He made a mocking bow to me. “Go on, go on,” I said irritably. “You had returned and heard of the duel.”

He perched upon the edge of the table, gathering the skirts of his coat away from the flames of the candle. “I thought you might appreciate some support, so I went along to see the affair, thinking I would find you there. Only I arrived at the very moment Le Sac and Nichols stepped across the threshold, and I hung back. I didn’t want to see Light-Heels. Those papers go to lawyer Armstrong tomorrow and I fancied I might be inclined to gloat and arouse Nichols’s suspicions.”

I nodded. “And then?”

“I walked up and down the street to waste a minute or two. I planned to slip in under the arch and go in the back way. But then I saw your boy running along the Fleshmarket, violin case in one hand and music in t’other – till he ran slap-bang up against Claudius Heron. God knows what he was doing there.”

“He was, I believe, trying to prevent the affair.” Or rather, I thought, trying to prevent my becoming embroiled in it. But why, I asked myself, should Heron take such care over me?

“That would accord with what I saw,” Demsey said thoughtfully. “He exchanged a few words with the boy and sent him away. I was too far away to hear what was said but I could see the boy didn’t want to go.”

I sighed. “Jenison and Ord had worked on him. He thought he could defeat Le Sac.”

“That boy? Then he is a bigger fool than I thought.”

“He was,” I agreed.

Demsey winced. “I thought he looked rebellious still, even as he turned back, and then he went charging off at such a pace I was at once suspicious. Do you remember that narrow lane down beside Humble’s stationers?”

“In heaven’s name! The boy ran round the corner, dashed down the alley into the back street, then cut into Mrs Hill’s yard from the rear!”

“Out of Heron’s sight,” Demsey agreed. “I knew I hadn’t time to follow him – I could never have got through the crowds round the butchers’ stalls. So I slipped into the yard when Heron’s back was turned and caught the boy as he came down the alley. I got him by the collar and marched him back out into the street again.” He shifted the candle and glanced at his coat for signs of singeing. “I knew the affair would do you no good, Charles, and I thought that if the boy went missing for an hour or so, the contest could be called off with no blame on you.”

His tone was mild but so like my late unlamented father’s way of reproving me for some foolishness that I at once bristled.

“They would have said I instructed the boy to stay away! And how did you ensure he kept away when Claudius Heron could not?”

He looked shame-faced. “I took him into the nearest tavern.”

I looked upon him with foreboding. “Hugh!”

“I told the landlord the boy was trying to get up courage for an important performance and treated him to strong spirits.”

“Good God, it’s a wonder he wasn’t sick. How much did you ply him with?”

“More than I thought I’d have to. That boy was no stranger to strong drink!”

I started to speak, then shook my head. “I cannot berate him for it now. So how long were you there?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t watch the clock. I fed him enough to get him well away, then steered him in the direction of your lodgings. He was singing,” he added with some asperity. “He was a damn annoying child!”

“Where did you leave him?”

“At the end of your street. I didn’t go to the house in case that landlady of yours saw me. But I watched the boy to the door.”

“Did you see him go in?”

“No,” he said reluctantly.

I was too restless to sit still any longer and started to pace the room. “Could he have decided to go back yet again? He was drunk, after all.”

Demsey straightened the papers on the edge of the table, which I had knocked against in passing. “Charles, why do you not ask the boy’s spirit when it returns?”

“We found the body in my room but he was not killed there.”

“Where, then?”

“We do not know. But there would have been a great deal of blood – his throat was cut.”

“Poor bastard.” Demsey restlessly straightened papers again, trimmed the guttering candle. “Charles, I can’t see Le Sac killing the boy. He had nothing to fear, surely – he would have won the contest.”

“It is not as straightforward as that.” I explained what Heron had told me. “Ord and Jenison never intended the duel to go ahead. They were merely manoeuvring to get Le Sac into a position from which he could not withdraw with honour.”

“He will not accept defeat,” Hugh said decisively. “Perhaps he killed George to revenge himself on you, thinking that the gentlemen are acting out of partiality for you.”

I laughed harshly. “They are partial to men they think they can control. No, no, I cannot believe it. Le Sac is too proud a man. He thinks George beneath his notice – that’s what galled him about the duel. He did not kill George, I’m certain of that.”

“Then who?”

“God knows.”

A silence. A rumble of wheels from the street outside.

“Charles,” Demsey said at last. “Are you certain George was the target?”

“Who else should it be?” I asked bewildered.

“Damn it, you were attacked only days ago! Yes, yes, I’ve heard about that too... Charles, what if the killer was after you?”

I stared at him. “What was that you said about friends consoling each other?”

“Damn consolation. I’m talking about your life.”

“I cannot believe it! How could anyone mistake the boy for me, even in the dark? And remember, he wasn’t killed in the room – he was placed there afterwards.”

“To incriminate you.”

That suddenly struck me as uncomfortably likely. But my head was aching again, and I was abominably confused.

“That would give Le Sac a good motive,” Hugh pressed.

“Only a moment ago, you said you couldn’t see him as a murderer.”

“Well, he – no, I – damn it, I can’t think straight, Charles.” He swept a hand in a melodramatic gesture at the shadowy room. “It is all hidden in darkness.”

“It will not be,” I said. And in that moment I determined to discover the truth of the affair. George had been an innocent child – offensive and unattractive, yes, but he had not deserved to die.

I accepted, without reluctance, Demsey’s insistence that I stay the night with him, though I anticipated lying awake tormented by dark thoughts. But I fell asleep quickly, waking only once to wonder why the ceiling was so low. Then I heard Demsey’s breathing steady beside me, and the soft patter of hailstones outside, and I remembered where I was. I turned over and slept again.

In the morning, we heard that Le Sac had disappeared.

 

28

SONGS AND AIRS

As I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, I heard a murmur of noise from the street, like a multitude of soft voices.

“What in heaven’s name’s that?”

“Rain, you fool,” Demsey said, his voice muffled by the bedding.

“Rain!” I crawled over him to peer from the narrow window; Demsey muttered and tried to push me away, dragging the blankets about his ears. The glass was speckled with water and, outside, rain drove in visible sheets across the houses; a small stream trickled along the centre of the earthen street.

“Damn!”

“Go back to sleep,” Demsey said indistinctly.

I collapsed back upon the bed in despair. I had dreamt in a curiously logical fashion. In my dream, I had followed George as he crept to the end of the street to check that Demsey had gone; from there, I had seen him hurrying back to Mrs Hill’s, determined to take part in the duel. And from some dark alley, Le Sac had stepped out, pulled George into the darkness and slit his throat. Blood had sprayed out, soaking the walls, the earth, the rubbish lying in the alley.

Waking, I had imagined I dreamed the truth. City streets are an eminently sensible place to commit a murder. Slit a man’s throat in a house or even a public building and his blood and his spirit will remain to condemn you. Use some anonymous alley in a lawless part of town where respectable men refuse to go, and it will be much harder to discover the scene of the murder.

So I had decided to make a start in looking for George’s spirit by walking back from my own lodgings towards the Fleshmarket, investigating every alley for blood. But the rain would stir the streets into mud, wash the walls of the buildings and drench the rubbish in the gutters. All I could hope to do now was to repeatedly call out George’s name. And the spirits of children are notoriously slow to appear; two or three days perhaps might pass before George’s spirit came to itself. In the meantime, if Demsey was right and the murderer hoped to kill me as well...

In a soft, drenching drizzle we set out, an hour later. Demsey was bound for lawyer Armstrong’s office with the papers that might help clear his name, I for the Fleshmarket. I called first at my own house and spoke to Mrs Foxton, who informed me that the jury had viewed the body in my room and it had now been carried to a neighbouring inn where I was expected to attend the inquest that afternoon. She said also that Claudius Heron had called and had insisted on walking up to my room and looking about as if for some clue. I went up and looked about the room myself, but nothing was out of place or changed.

I promised my attendance at the inquest and set off again, following what I thought to be George’s most likely route, walking into every dank, muddy alley, calling for the boy’s spirit. To no avail. Then I went to Hoult’s tavern to request old Hoult to ask the other spirits if they knew where George’s spirit was. But the spirit demurred.

“Much too early, Mr Patterson, sir,” he said soothingly. “You know children never disembody quickly. Ask again in a day or three.”

It was what I had expected but the outcome depressed me nonetheless. I went on to Mrs Hill’s, tired and discouraged, ready to snap even at good-humoured Dick Kell.

“What a to-do,” he said cheerfully, accosting me the moment I emerged by the back lane into the courtyard of Mrs Hill’s. “Never heard anything like it.”

I leaned against the wall of the yard morosely. Rain dripped upon my head from the eaves; the yard was covered with a slick, greasy patina of silver upon the cobbles. Above me, Dick Kell hung on a torch bracket, chuckling rustily.

“Read the broadsides,” he advised, almost giggling. “There’s one on the front wall. One of Jenison’s men put it up an hour ago.”

“I am not interested.”

“You know what they say: if you win, rub it in.”

“I can imagine.”

“Read it!”

“Damn it! A boy died last night because of that duel!”

“That brat,” Dick said, still good-humoured. “Couldn’t play the fiddle for love nor money.”

I pushed myself from the wall. If he had been alive, I would have punched his face to a pulp. “He was twelve years old,” I said. “And he could have outplayed you any day!”

“Rubbish music,” Dick Kell snapped. “He couldn’t have played a decent tune to save his life.”

I flung pebbles at the wall-bracket. Dick Kell slid higher up the wall, taunting me with childish noises.

“Jigs and reels, a good strathspey, a proper country dance,” he said. “That’s your decent music. Not that la-de-da, ever so po-lite music you play, all die-away airs and scraping to see how high you can play, and setting people’s teeth on edge with the screech of it. Kill a pig and you’ll get the same noise.”

“You can’t even read music,” I said contemptuously.

“Who needs to? Music’s in your hands, and in your head, and in your heart!” He was yelling at the top of his voice now, for I had walked away from him, out across the slippery yard, dodging a carter who clattered in under the arch as I reached it. The horse was blowing and sweating, steam rising from its flanks in hot gusts; the clop of its hooves drowned Dick Kell’s last shouted taunts.

The broadsheet was short and extremely nasty. It purported to be an account of Le Sac’s ‘defeat’ at the duel and had been written in a gloating frame of mind by one of Le Sac’s detractors (Mr Ord?). It was in the form of a mock obituary – surely penned before George’s death was known, for no one could have been callous enough to have written it afterwards. We write to tell of the death of a cholerick little fiddler, a nimble-finger’d Swiss...

No, I would not read it. I walked away, heading down the Fleshmarket, through the air that smelled of rain, somehow accentuating the smells of the blood and offal. Le Sac, I thought, was as much a victim as George – manipulated by Ord and Jenison, idolised and humoured so long as inclination lasted and occasion demanded, then humiliated as soon as he became inconveniently demanding, even though the gentlemen’s flattery had encouraged those demands.

Yet, I reflected as I walked through the last of the rain on to the Sandhill, the gentlemen might have been too clever for their own good. Once they succeeded in being rid of Le Sac, I became their only recourse if they wanted the Concerts to continue. In disposing of Le Sac, they had strengthened not their hand but mine. And I would not give in to them. Brave words, I know, but I had no doubt of adhering to them. I had such contempt at that moment for Ord and Jenison that I could not have lived with myself had I yielded to them.

I had engaged to meet Demsey again at Nellie’s but I was early for our appointment and paused in thought, staring absently across the Sandhill to the ugly mass of the Guildhall and its double staircase. Claudius Heron was standing at the foot of one of the stairs; he seemed to be staring across at me. When he saw I had recognised him, he crossed the Sandhill towards me. He seemed ill at ease.

“I called to see you earlier, Patterson.”

“So my landlady informed me. You wanted to see where the boy died?”

“I feel some responsibility,” he said. “That I did not talk some sense into him that day at Mrs Hill’s.”

“You think the matters are connected? The duel and the boy’s death?”

His lean face hardened. “Do you not suspect Le Sac of this?”

“I cannot imagine him a murderer. What danger was George to him?”

His fingers tapped the edge of his thigh. “Could he not rather have seen a danger in you?”

He and Demsey were thinking alike. “No one could mistake George for myself!” I said, exasperated.

“Give the man some credit for subtlety, Patterson,” he said with a trace of sarcasm. “Perhaps he intended a warning – a suggestion of what might happen if you did not mind your own business. Perhaps he did not intend to kill the boy, only to frighten both him and you. You were yourself attacked only a few days ago – was that not for that very same purpose?”

He leant closer. “Someone is after you, Patterson. I think it is Le Sac; if you choose to believe otherwise, so be it. But I would advise you to be careful, very careful.”

And he walked away.

Devil take it, was that a warning from a genuinely concerned well-wisher? It had sounded almost a threat. What in heaven’s name was Heron doing – first searching my room, then this? For God’s sake, where was the truth in all this?

I pushed through the crush of merchants and clergymen in Nellie’s in search of Hugh. As I reached the window, a figure rose up and seized at my arm; I turned to find Demsey mouthing words in my ear. I could not hear him in the noise and shook my head. We struggled through the crowds into the passageway at the back of the house and thence into the street at the rear.

“Le Sac has gone!”

“I am not surprised. Have you seen the latest broadsheets?”

“Not left. Disappeared!” Demsey ran his hand through his hair. “His clothes are still in his lodgings – most of them, at any rate – and his music books. And they found a bag of money under his mattress. But he himself is gone.”

“How do you know this?”

A carter turned into the end of the street; we pressed ourselves against the wall until he had passed. A trail of smoke from the Key seemed to drift after him, along with the smell of horse dung.

“They came to Lawyer Armstrong’s while I was there.”

“They?”

“Light-Heels Nichols and Le Sac’s landlady. It was damned awkward, I can tell you, in view of my conversation with Armstrong. Anyway, I hid in Armstrong’s office until they were gone – or, as the lawyer put it, I retired to allow him to consult with his clients. The landlady had the money and didn’t want it on her hands, afraid someone would rob the house and she’d be accused of stealing it. Made Armstrong’s clerk count it there and then.”

“How much?”

“One hundred and fifty guineas.”

“Good God!” I had not made a third of that these last five years, let alone saved it.

“And, of course, while they were counting, the whole story came out. Nichols was extravagantly wild. ‘Find my friend!’ he cries. ‘Find my friend!’ Armstrong told him to call out the watch.”

“Did Le Sac take his violin?” I said.

“It wasn’t in his rooms.” Demsey grimaced and kicked at a stray dog that came sniffing round his ankles. “Armstrong more or less said outright that the fellow had run off in panic. Threw out broad hints about George’s death.”

“What does Armstrong know about that?”

“He’s presiding over the inquest this afternoon.”

“So he thinks Le Sac murdered George, then ran off in fear of being taken for it.”

“Exactly. But he’s not right, is he?” Demsey snorted and thrust his hands into his pockets. “What fool flees for his life leaving a hundred and fifty guineas behind him? With that kind of money, he could be halfway to London or even St Petersburg by now.”

A flurry of soot settled upon my sleeve. Smoke blew across our faces. Demsey swore and waved it away ineffectually.

“So what say you?” I asked. “Is Le Sac murdered too?”

“Why? And by whom? Ord? Jenison? Can you think of anything more preposterous?”

“Nichols?”

Demsey screwed up his face. “I won’t deny I’d like to think so, but half of Light-Heels’ importance comes from his friendship with Le Sac. And you didn’t see him this morning, Charles. I would swear he was genuinely distressed.”

“And if Le Sac is dead, then it is likely his killer killed George too. Two murderers stretches credulity.”

“Nichols kill George?” Demsey snorted with laughter. “By cutting his throat? That prancing fool would probably faint at the sight of blood.”

“I agree it sounds unlikely.” I sighed. “But who else might do it? Heron?”

“He would have the coolness and wit for it. But why, Charles?”

I kicked through the mud; Demsey took my arm. “Charles,” he said, “stop blaming yourself for George’s death. Come back inside and take coffee with me.”

We went back into Nellie’s, to see Claudius Heron sitting in a corner, taking coffee and reading the London news in the latest edition of the Courant. He did not seem to see us. We sat and drank a dish of coffee in some despondency, offering each other fragments of ideas. Perhaps Le Sac had hired ruffians to kill George, then been killed in turn when he refused to pay them. Perhaps the two matters were unconnected, and Le Sac had met with an accident somewhere. Or he had ridden off into the country to give a lesson and been delayed in his return.

“You know...” Demsey sat up with an arrested look. “That last idea has a ring of truth to it. The weather was dreadful last night – hail, then heavy rain – and the fellow is vain about his appearance. Suppose he begged a bed for the night from a country gentleman rather than get wet? Especially after the last time he was out in a downpour, when he caught a chill from it.”

“But Nichols must surely have known if Le Sac was merely off giving a lesson.”

“I don’t know every lesson you intend to give. Where did the fellow hire his horse?”

Now I sat up too. “At the Golden Fleece, I should think.”

We got up together. From Nellie’s we hurried to the Fleece, scarcely a hundred yards away. When we came under the arch into the yard, an ostler was grooming a horse there and offered at once to help us. He remembered Le Sac very well.

“Yes, sir, indeed, sir. Came in here last night in a great rage. Wanted a horse straight away.”

“Had a violin with him, did he?”

The ostler looked doubtful; Demsey sketched a shape in the air.

“Oh yes, sir. He had a case that shape. Yes, sir. Strapped it very careful to the saddle. Struck me, that did, him being in so great a rage yet so careful with the case.”

“Did you see which way he went?”

“Off towards the bridge.” He jerked his head in that direction. “To Durham, he said.”

“Durham!” I exchanged a glance with Demsey. “To the city itself or somewhere in the country?”

The ostler shrugged.

“And has he come back?” Demsey demanded.

“Not yet, no sir. But the rain was so bad and he went so late, he probably stayed over. He’ll be back. Reliable gent, Mr Sac.”

“No one has ever before called Le Sac reliable in my hearing,” I commented as Demsey and I walked out onto the Key, “but I suppose he is. He has never missed a concert, never turned up late; I have seen him play – and play excellently – when he was streaming with cold. Odd how you never notice such things, or never give credit for them, at any rate.”

“Durham,” Demsey mused, staring up at the bulk of the bridge with its haphazard roofline of houses and shops. I heard a noise behind me, glanced round and saw Heron walking away from Nellie’s. “What’s so attractive in Durham, I wonder?”

“Hesletine, I daresay. The fellow’s touchy. If he thought Ord and Jenison had been taking his name in vain, he might support Le Sac out of spite.”

“A big fuss about nothing, then,” Demsey said.

“Looks like it.”

We were, of course, wrong.

 

29

CATCHES AND DUET

I came away from George’s inquest greatly depressed. To stand in the presence once more of that small body, to see that head lolling at an odd angle and presenting the gaping slash in the throat to the ceiling of the inn and the fascinated horror of the eight jurymen – that was an experience I fervently hoped never to repeat.

Armstrong the lawyer was a gangling individual whose build suggested a boy growing too tall, which sat oddly with the weather-beaten face of a middle-aged man. He was the sort of man who uses silence to provoke witnesses into saying more than intended and into his silence I poured the story of George’s fear of Le Sac, the things he had said, those occasions the boy had seemed afraid to go out for fear of meeting the Swiss. Armstrong complimented me on my Christian behaviour to a sad child whose life had been so villainously cut short. Neither Demsey nor Heron was called to speak but Armstrong questioned Tommy the cheesemonger’s boy, who told him lurid tales of beatings and threats, and a thin woman who said she had seen Le Sac beat George. As Demsey said later, the verdict brought in by the jury – murder by Henri Le Sac – had been inevitable.

We both thought the verdict incorrect. Claudius Heron, who had sat silently through the inquest, apparently did not. He accosted me outside the tavern, stared Demsey into moving a step or two away. “The boy’s death was a warning, Patterson,” he said shortly. “Keep out of the affair. Leave it be.”

I shook my head. “I cannot, sir.”

He walked away.

In the Bigg Market, Demsey and I encountered Mr Ord hurrying down towards St Nicholas’s Church. “Well, well,” he cried, on seeing me. “You must be gratified, Patterson. Good news, good news indeed. I am hurrying to tell Jenison, you know. Good day, good day.”

“Gratified,” I repeated as we watched Ord’s plump figure disappear into the crowds in Amen Corner. “Gratified that a child has lost his life?”

“I hope I never make such efficient enemies,” Demsey said.

We passed Barber’s bookshop and were turning from the vestry door of St Nicholas’s when it opened and a man came hurrying out. Light-Heels Nichols. I bowed to him and made to pass, but he cried out shrilly, “I trust you’re satisfied!”

“Leave it, man,” Demsey said wearily.

“Leave it? When my friend cries out for justice? His reputation is ruined!”

It was damnably difficult to push past him; he seized my coat and for fear of tearing the cloth I was forced to turn back. His thin features were pinched, as if he had not slept nor eaten. But he had, by his breath, drunk a great deal.

“Condemned as a murderer!” he said shrilly. “For a dirty, poxed brat and a notebasher like you! Oh, you saw your way clear, didn’t you? You saw how to make your fortune at the expense of his!”

“Shut up, I say,” Demsey said through clenched teeth.

I tried to speak soothingly. “I had nothing to do with the matter.” I put a hand on Demsey’s arm, looking to deflect his rising anger, conscious of faces shifting behind windows, Barber staring from his shop door.

“Nothing to do with it?” Nichols shrieked. “Ord and Jenison are your cronies, the boy’s your apprentice. You arranged the whole thing. You killed the boy!”

Demsey swung his fist. I lunged to prevent him but too late – bone crunched as the fist connected with Nichols’s jaw. His grip on my coat loosed; he toppled into the mud of the churchyard, cracking his temple against a tombstone. Demsey was all for going for him again but I dragged him back and pinned him against the church railings.

“Leave him,” I said.

Nichols lay at our feet, moaning.

“He accused you of murder!”

“He is looking for someone – anyone – to blame. After all, his prospects disappear with Le Sac.”

“Damn it, Charles!” He rubbed at his bruised knuckles, and smiled sweetly at an elderly man who hovered in uncertain curiosity. The man hurried off.

“What do you say to a ride in the country?”

His brow creased. “Are you raving?”

“A trip to Durham.”

We left Nichols groaning in the mud and walked down the hill towards the Key. A curl of sulphurous smoke came up to meet us, yellowy-black like a bruise; the narrow curves of the Side seemed to sink into it, as if burrowing into a fragment of hell. Demsey coughed as we came into the first tendrils of the smoke but they curled up and away from us and left a mere thickening of the air, a haze as on the outskirts of a fire.

“Charles,” Demsey said, “do we go to capture Le Sac or to warn him?”

At the foot of Butcher Bank, a quack was trying to sell potions to a little cluster of women. The Row, climbing from our left up towards All Hallows Church, stank with decaying meat; a rivulet of blood came down the gutter to meet us. Demsey stepped fastidiously across it.

“Which do you suppose?”

“I suppose you’re a fool,” he said tartly. “I admit I don’t think Le Sac a murderer, but you will never persuade Ord and Jenison of that.”

“I do not look to save the man’s reputation. But his life is a different matter.” I stopped, astonished at myself. “Do you hear me, Hugh? Did you imagine you would ever hear me speak of helping Le Sac?”

“I wish I could decide who did kill the boy,” he said. He was still rubbing at his sore knuckles. “That’s more important than Le Sac’s affairs. For all you know, Charles, you might be the villain’s next victim.”

“Or you,” I pointed out. “If the villain is Nichols, for instance.”

We turned into the yard of the Golden Fleece, and Demsey went to bespeak two horses. I lingered under the arch on to the Key, watching the wisps of smoke drift along the river, hearing among the clatter of loading and unloading the whispers of spirits and their pleas for help, and involuntarily shuddering again at the thought of dying in that water, drifting in the mad babble of confused spirits, even being borne out by the tides into the desolate seas. The clatter of hooves behind me raised me from my reverie; I turned – and saw Claudius Heron outside Nellie’s. He nodded and moved on.

“That fellow’s haunting us today,” Hugh said, leading a pair of horses out to me. They were not the finest pieces of horseflesh I have ever seen but they looked sturdy enough. Hugh handed me the reins of a bay and kept a grey for himself. “This expedition has all the marks of a fool’s errand,” he said. “We are not dressed for riding, there’s a wind from the sea and a smoke coming with it – and rain too, damn it. We are not even certain the fellow went to Durham, or if he merely said so to deceive the ostler. And it’s so late in the day we will never get to Durham and back in the light!”

He hauled himself into the saddle of the grey. As in all things, he did it gracefully.

“I for one, Charles, do not intend to ride back in the small hours of the morning. The post boy was robbed of six letters beyond Chester le Street last week and I don’t want to meet the fellow who did it. I shall lodge in Durham overnight, at the Star and Rummer in the Market Place.”

I shuddered. “What, with that fellow Blenkinsop? Have you heard him sing, Hugh?”

“I don’t care how he sings. He does very good beef.”

I climbed into the saddle of my own horse, with rather less grace than Hugh. We rode up the slope on to the bridge and wound our way through the crowds of passers-by. A few raindrops splattered on my hand. “I told you!” Demsey said triumphantly.

We urged the horses up the bank in Gateshead, past St Mary’s church and its tilted, uncertain gravestones. From there, the roads diverged; we took one that led away from the town and climbed on to Gateshead Fell. We were above the smoke now; looking back towards the river, I saw it hidden beneath twisting yellow clouds. The houses on the bridge seemed to rise out of the smoke as if they floated upon it; all else was hidden.

We kept silence awhile, lost in our own thoughts. Then Demsey said, “I’m glad I hit him. Nichols, I mean. I have longed to do that for months.” I nodded absently, but my thoughts were elsewhere – wondering where poor George’s spirit wandered.

The rainstorm came upon us more quickly than we had anticipated. A great bank of dark cloud on the eastern horizon seemed to well up and race to overtake us. A blue-black pall flung itself across the sky and tossed driving torrents of water over us, stinging our exposed hands and faces. We galloped for a stand of trees a little aside from the road; the foliage had been thinned by autumn but kept the worst of the rain away. We shivered as water dripped from the trees and slid coldly down our necks. The horses shifted restlessly.

“This is dangerous, Charles,” Demsey said uneasily. “God knows what thieves might be lurking in this murk.”

“They won’t want to get wet any more than we do.” But I too fell to scanning the shifting shadows in the rain.

We sat on in gloomy silence, every so often imagining that we saw a lighter patch of sky behind the black clouds. The horses fidgeted and tossed their heads against the rain. I was inclining to Demsey’s view and contemplating a return to Newcastle when suddenly lightning streaked out of the clouds and thunder clapped hard upon its heels. My horse started and it was all I could do to prevent it rearing. I could feel it trembling between my legs.

“We can’t stay here! The trees will draw the lightning!” I jerked my head into the darkness. “Let us try to get to Gateshead. I teach the Hawks family there – they will shelter us.”

Demsey yelled agreement and we turned our horses into the fury of the rain. Then came another streak of brightness, simultaneous with the clatter of thunder, and Demsey’s horse reared up. He cried out, hauled back on the reins, fought the frightened brute. But it bolted away into the darkness, running like a pale wraith into the black moor.

I urged my horse after them, praying there were no hidden obstacles, no rabbit holes or abandoned mine workings. I could hardly see the ground beneath the horse’s hooves, reined him back to a canter. I felt him quiver as the thunder cracked overhead.

Then to my right, I saw a patch of even greater darkness. It puzzled me, even as the horse veered away from it. It was a pond, I realised, folded into a dip in the fell. Lightning flared over our heads again. A few bushes rimmed the edge of the dark water – and I glimpsed something clinging to one of the bushes.

I dragged the unwilling horse towards the pond; reluctantly it stood shivering at the water’s edge. The object blown by the wind against the bushes was only part of an old sack, after all. I was turning away when the lightning showed me another object floating near the edge of the pond.

I dismounted, groped among the bushes for a fallen branch. Pushing the branch out into the dark water, I snagged the object, pulled it ashore. So familiar an object: a little box, of the type that violinists keep their resin in. And beneath the bushes that overhung the water’s edge bobbed a larger object, which came out only after a struggle.

Torn cloth, the dark edge of curved polished wood. A heavy object in which water sloshed. I tugged back the cloth and exposed the blackness within.

A black violin.

 

30

SYMPHONY

It was a dishevelled group that gathered at the pond the following morning. The day itself was bedraggled, overlaid by a blanket of grey cloud, damp with a drizzle that soaked our hair and clothes. The night before, we had ridden into Gateshead to David Hawks’s house and he had generously offered us shelter; we went to bed to the rumbling accompaniment of the thunder. In the morning we woke to find that Hawks had called out the constable, and we all rode back to the pond with a handful of Hawks’s servants.

Now one of the servants was venturing cautiously into the middle of the pond, testing his footing as he went, edging out until he was almost waist-deep. A thick rope about his waist was held by three men on the bank among the reeds; he clasped a second rope in one hand.

Suddenly he dipped, his hands splashing into the water as if he dived for a fish. But there was no silver flash of scales, no desperate flap of tail – merely a widening spread of ripples. He straightened and signalled to his friends on shore. He had left the second rope attached to something underwater. Another two fellows waded out to join him and together they dragged at the rope. It came up with a rush, water flooded away, and I saw hair hanging in rat’s tails from a lolling head.

“We were too late,” Demsey said laconically, touching the bruise on his temple where he had struck a branch during his horse’s mad flight the previous evening. “Is it just as well, I wonder?”

“Where is his horse?”

Demsey shrugged. “Gone back to its stable?”

“Nonsense. It would have been back before we set out.”

Hawks was calling to us; we went across to where the men were dragging the body on to boggy ground. The constable was bending over the body, turning the head this way and that, checking arms and legs for injuries. He, and I, saw none. Saw nothing but a parody of a man, a stocky figure hardened for ever into death, fashionable clothes torn and muddied, elegant clever fingers like claws. The constable heaved the body over; water dribbled out of the mouth.

“Drowned,” said one of the men.

“Never ride on dark nights,” said another, shaking his head philosophically.

Hawks nodded me to one side. He was a lean hard whip of a man, long past sixty but not looking a day beyond his prime. Every inch the gentleman.

“I have heard the rumours, Patterson.” Weak sunlight glinted off the silver buttons of his coat. “I saw Heron yesterday and he told me everything that has happened – the duel, the death of the boy, the suspicions of Le Sac. Do you think he was fleeing?”

I was conscious of Demsey hovering behind me. “I cannot believe him guilty of murder, sir.”

“Then what the devil was he doing out here?”

“I think he was on his way to Durham to speak with the organist there, to ask if he had anything to do with the duel.”

Hawks guffawed. “Hesletine? A miracle if he could get any sense out of Old Fusspot. Still, he might have thought to try. Don’t know when he left Newcastle, do you?”

“Late Wednesday afternoon, the ostler said.”

He pursed his lips. “Looks like an accident, then. Lost his way. Didn’t know the fell, I daresay.”

“I would have thought he did, sir,” I protested. “He gave lessons in several houses in the country.”

But it was plain he had already made up his mind. I glanced at Hugh; I was certain an accident was much too fortuitous, and Hugh seemed to agree. But what evidence did I have to prove it?

“I’ll have his body taken down into the town,” Hawks said, “and we can hold the inquest this afternoon. Might as well get it over and done with.”

My heart sank. The prospect of attending two inquests in two days was not enticing and would hardly do my reputation much good. But Hawks, scowling down at the body, went on. “Shan’t need you, Patterson. My men will bear witness to finding him.”

He strode off. Demsey came to my shoulder and together we watched the men struggle through the wet grass with their sodden burden. The body’s long fingers hung almost to the ground, the head drooped grotesquely. And at the end of the short trip, only an ignominious toss on to the back of a cart, which then bumped off across the fell.

“If Le Sac was killed on Wednesday afternoon, on his way to Durham,” Demsey said, “where’s his spirit? A day and a half is quite long enough for it to disembody.”

“He could have died on his way back – sometime yesterday. In which case, it may yet be a few hours before his spirit makes an appearance.”

“Do we still go to Durham, to find out if he was there?”

“We do,” I said.

We rode into the cathedral city two or three hours later, both tired and exhilarated by the ride. The horses were fresh and willing to gallop along the safer stretches of the road, and I almost – almost – rode out the frustrations in my mind and body.

Demsey insisted upon going to the Star and Rummer straightaway, for some of the famous beef, and the ride had stirred up my appetite to such a pitch that I was willing to fall in with his wishes. Durham is a tiny dirty town, full of colliers pushing through narrow streets, not troubling at all to get out of the way of the fastidious clerics who look down their noses at them. And above the thin houses crammed into their few streets looms the great church with its fortress-like towers, and the crenellations of the castle beside it.

In the Star and Rummer, Demsey was greeted like an old friend, shown to his favourite place by the window and supplied with beef before he had had time to ask for it. And before I could sit down, my name was shouted across the room and Mountier hurtled towards me, making the tavern seem half the size it had before. Behind him came a small man, dwarfed by Mountier but beaming. I had seen the small man once before, at a distance in the cathedral; the fellow was all nose, and I recalled that his voice came down that nose like a sheep bleating.

“Is all of Newcastle here?” Mountier cried. “We are overrun by you! Setting yourself up in competition, eh?” He ranted on while the small man smiled and raised his eyes to the ceiling.

“Friend of mine,” Demsey said to me, indicating the small man as Mountier rambled on unregarded. “Met, have you? No? Charles, this is our host, Peter Blenkinsop. Blenkinsop’s the best brewer of ale this side of York, you know. And the best singer in the cathedral choir.”

Blenkinsop hooted with laughter. Mountier flung his arms around him. “S’right. Sing, pretty Peter, sing.” And he launched into a rendering of Te Deum, Laudamus that was decidedly secular in spirit. Blenkinsop obligingly opened his mouth and good-humouredly joined in. I stared at Demsey, who was grinning; I had remembered correctly, for the man hooted through his nose like a penny trumpet.

“We are looking for someone,” I said.

Mountier stopped in the middle of an out-of-place Amen and looked reproachfully at me. “You mean you seek company other than mine, Patterson? You distress me beyond all measure.”

I recoiled from his breath. “Le Sac.”

“Oh, the French fellow.”

“Swiss,” Demsey said through a mouthful of beef.

“Seen enough of him.”

“He was here, then?”

“Yesterday,” Blenkinsop said in his reedy voice. A girl slid a plate of beef in front of me. “At least, turned up late Wednesday night and was off again yesterday. And I don’t care if he never comes again. Upset the Lord and Master no end. Right after Evensong when he was looking forward to a quiet evening to himself.”

“Hesletine,” Mountier said in confidential explanation. “Deep in the throes of that Ode still and Le Sac bursts in and accuses him of some plot.”

Blenkinsop frowned. “There was talk of a duel.”

“A musical duel,” Demsey said, gulping ale. Mountier leapt up and pranced about the crowded room, in blundering imitation of swordplay. The serving girls fended him off irritably.

“Fiddlesticks at dawn!”

“The duel never took place,” I said. “And now both parties are dead.”

They were silenced, staring at me. The clatter of crockery and the raucous laughter of a party across the room seemed incongruously disrespectful.

“Who was the other fellow?” Blenkinsop asked, curiously.

“My apprentice.”

“The boy?” Mountier cried. “Alas, poor Richard.”

“George.”

“Did they stab each other with their fiddlesticks?”’

Blenkinsop, with a quick frown, tried to sober him but he was too drunk to take notice. Demsey speared meat with his knife. “The boy was murdered. Throat cut. Le Sac was found last night in a pond on Gateshead Fell.”

“Did he lose his way?” Blenkinsop asked. “There have been some devilish storms the last two nights.”

“That is the commonly believed explanation,” I said, exchanging a glance with Hugh.

“Poor fellow.”

We did not trouble ourselves to go up to Hesletine’s lodgings in the North Bailey. With the skill born of long practice, Blenkinsop banished Mountier to another party in the room and gave us a round account of what had happened on Wednesday.

Despite his voice, Blenkinsop was a sensible man. It had been his turn, evidently, to chant the psalms at evensong in the cathedral that night, and he had done so to a near-empty church, the Dean and prebendaries being at their other livings in more salubrious climes nearer London. Only the one prebendary required by statute was there, with a couple of the minor canons and Hesletine, who for all his argumentative nature was pious. On leaving the church, Hesletine had delayed Blenkinsop on some matter or other when Le Sac burst upon the scene, accusing Hesletine of all kinds of villainy.

It had taken both minor canons to separate the two but, to cut a long story short, Hesletine had said enough to convince Le Sac he had not known a duel was to take place, let alone that he was supposed to judge it. So Blenkinsop had talked the Swiss into calmness, put him up in the Star and Rummer, and with his own eyes seen him mount his horse and head northward on Thursday morning.

Soon we were riding north again ourselves. “It would have been around midday when Le Sac reached Gateshead,” Demsey protested as we came close to Chester le Street. “I know the fell is a wild spot but a daylight attack?”

“If he was attacked,” I agreed, “someone was audacious.”

By the time we came to the bridge across the Tyne night was falling; the bridge was quiet and the town in a sleepy state. Demsey had composed a long indignant letter refuting all the accusations against him and laying out his counter-claims against Nichols, which he intended to publish in the Courant. He therefore went off to the Printing Office while I took the reins of both horses and walked them to the Fleece. I had hardly left the inn again when a voice spoke behind me.

“I have been waiting for you, sir.” Lady Anne laughed as I started. She was impeccably dressed as always, the ribbons of her cap dancing as she moved to face me. “I have been hearing of your exploits on Gateshead Fell.”

Exploits? It was an odd word to use, I thought, for the discovery of a body. I was curt. Her constant meddling annoyed me. Moreover, two people were dead and she was smiling and amused by it all. “The news has spread, then?”

“Claudius Heron came back from Gateshead with it. He is a friend of David Hawks.” Another smile. “How did you discover poor Henri?”

“Demsey and I were sheltering from the storm.” Poor Henri? I could not help but remember that she had been scheming against poor Henri behind his back quite as much as Ord and Jenison, and probably for much the same reason. Le Sac’s greatest fault had been his failure to understand what constituted one demand too many.

“Whatever his failings,” I said sharply, “he should not have died.”

She opened her eyes wide in astonishment. “You call murder a failing?” Her look challenged me, those green eyes steady in the thin plain face. “Mr Patterson, do not tell me you doubt that Henri killed the boy?”

“I can think of no convincing reason why he should have done so.”

“But surely it is clear – he murdered the poor boy, then drowned himself in remorse.”

Remorse was not an attribute I had ever associated with Le Sac. “Suicide, Lady Anne? When I last saw Mr Hawks he was of the opinion it was an accident.”

Lady Anne shook her head. “The verdict of the inquest was suicide.”

Claudius Heron had spoken to Hawks, she said. Had he persuaded Hawks to change his mind? But why?

“And Mr Heron also believes that Le Sac murdered George?”

“From what he says, yes.” She regarded me for a moment. “One should not gossip, Mr Patterson, but –”

I hated her for that but. She was teasing me with it, inviting me to encourage her to talk. And devil take it, I had to. I had to know what had happened to George. If there was the remotest chance that I had been in some way, no matter how small, to blame for his death, I owed him the courtesy of discovering the truth. “But, my lady?”

“A suggestion, no more,” she said coyly, “that poor Henri knew one or two things about Heron that Heron might not wish known.”

Her lack of courtesy, the way she casually referred to Claudius Heron without his title, annoyed me. And the suggestion that Mr Heron had guilty secrets was beyond belief. Lady Anne was playing games with me again.

No matter. The spirits on the river were whispering, calling. Tomorrow, I thought, I would speak to Le Sac’s spirit and find out the truth.

 

31

VIOLIN CADENZA

Demsey was waiting in the street when I stepped out into the cold misty drizzle of early morning; he was so wrapped up in his coat I hardly recognised him. And he was inclined to grumble. “We’ll probably find half the town waiting to talk to Le Sac’s spirit.”

“No one else will be waiting,” I said. “Everybody thinks they know already what happened.”

We hired horses again from the Golden Fleece and rode out across the Tyne Bridge. Two or three countrywomen trudged in the opposite direction, bearing on each arm baskets heavy with straw-bedded eggs or tiny black cheeses. I was tired; I had slept poorly, unable to ignore Lady Anne’s hints, remembering Claudius Heron’s constant coldness towards Le Sac, his refusal to play at the benefit, his warnings at the inquest, his insistence on blaming Le Sac for George’s death. Had he persuaded David Hawks to regard Le Sac’s death as suicide?

I had waited on Heron at his house the previous night; but he was closeted at dinner with ship-owners and merchants, an official function that had no doubt continued well into the night. After that, I had gone to old Hoult and insisted he ask the other spirits to find George’s spirit. They had not been able to. I could only conclude the spirit had not yet disembodied, although so late a disembodiment was unheard of.

Where in heaven’s name was George’s spirit?

There were no answers anywhere. Unless Le Sac gave them.

Wind swept across the fell, shivering the reeds and cotton grass at the pond’s edge; the water was misty in the early morning light. A thin drizzle dampened our shoulders; Demsey said, “God preserve us from drowning.” I wondered what I was doing there, seeking to talk to a dead man, to persuade him to give up the name of his murderer. I never even liked the fellow. But I could not let the matter drop, for George’s sake, for my own safety, for the safety of others. If Le Sac was not the murderer, the real culprit was free to kill again.

I raised my voice. “Le Sac! Do you hear me?”

No reply, except for the screech of a gull wheeling overhead. A rabbit burst from the cover of bushes and scampered across the fell into a burrow.

“Le Sac! I do not believe that you killed the boy. Nor that you killed yourself.”

The fellow’s spirit was as secretive as the man ever was. I have never known a spirit who did not want to tell the whole world how he died.

A rustling in a stand of trees a short distance off. Another pair of rabbits scuttled into the open, stood briefly twitching.

“I want to find out who killed George. If you tell me, I can bring you justice too.”

A sheen upon the rippling water. A harsh voice swore in French. Demsey huddled into his coat.

“I had nothing to do with the plot against you,” I said into the thick twilight. “I had no idea what Ord and Jenison were planning.” I shrugged. “I know I did you no favours then; let me make amends now.”

“Very friendly,” Le Sac’s voice, more guttural than in life, said hoarsely. “I do not trust friends. There are no such things.”

“Nichols?” Demsey suggested.

The spirit cackled with laughter. “That prancing idiot?”

“Who killed you, Le Sac?”

“Why should I trust you, Patterson?”

“Because no one else believes you innocent of killing the boy.”

A moment’s silence. “I had not seen him a se’nnight,” he said. “I rode straight from those –” he seemed hardly able to speak the word – “those gentlemen, to Durham. They are gentlemen there too,” he added bitterly.

“And on the way back?”

A shot cracked in the still air.

Demsey cannoned into me, knocking me flying. I hit the muddy ground with a force that jarred my bones. Demsey grabbed at my arm, trying to drag me away. “Come on, damn it! Quickly!” Mud and reeds slithered under my hands; another shot splintered a stone inches from my face. Two shots. Surely that must be all – the attacker could not have more than a brace of pistols.

I was up on my feet at last but stumbled as pain stabbed at my right ankle. Demsey ran ahead, urging me on with a shout. Beyond him, our horses had taken fright and bolted. Hugh raced after them, and for a moment seemed to be on the verge of catching at the reins. Then another shot rang out. Demsey jerked forward, seemed to hang in mid-air …

I spun away behind a tree.

To my left, the horses galloped off like a quickening heartbeat. Demsey lay sprawled on the rough grass.

I was not rational. My mind was filled with a great rage. My heart thumped, my blood seemed to heat like a fire. If I could have seized hold of the attacker in that moment, he would not have survived. I forced myself to breathe more slowly, to concentrate on the hurried ripple on the pond, the rustle of foliage in the stand of trees to my right. Surely the attacker could not fire again; how many pistols could he have? I must do something before he had time to reload…

Le Sac called sharply, “No more killing!” His voice echoed eerily in the chill damp air, directed at the hidden attacker. “I will make a bargain with you. Go away and I will tell no one what happened to me. Until the day my spirit fades into the wind, I will be silent. No one here will endanger you. Let them go.”

No hint of movement, no reply. I cursed. Le Sac’s bargain might buy me my life at this moment, but if he honoured his word the murderer would go free for ever. And they say that a man who kills once will kill again.

I slipped from the tree to the shelter of a thick cluster of bushes. Crawling behind them, I crept away from the pond, closer to Demsey’s sprawled body. His head was turned towards me, his eyes closed, his black hair drifting across his cheek. I found myself whispering to him – ridiculous, I don’t even remember what I said – with in the back of my mind the thought that if he could hear me, he could not yet be dead.

My course of action was obvious. I must escape. I could not count on the murderer accepting Le Sac’s bargain or keeping to it if he did accept. But how to escape across such open land? Only the occasional clump of bushes or trees offered cover. In any case, I could not abandon Hugh, living or dead.

Behind me, Le Sac’s voice talked on into the mist, cajoling, bullying, dripping with sarcastic sincerity. I would not have accepted any bargain he offered. I began to work my way back, away from Hugh, back towards the vegetation from which the murderer had fired. If I could creep through the shrubs at the edge of the pond…

I crawled on hands and knees through reeds and gorse bushes, hardly daring to breathe. The attacker had had plenty of time to reload at least one of the pistols. Why had he not fired again? My hands fell on a thick fallen branch, half-hidden in the grass. An inch or two of it broke off, rotten in my grasp, but the rest seemed sound. Struggling along with it in my hand was even more difficult but, out of breath and bruised, I achieved the shelter of a thicket of willow.

And, in that moment, I heard the clatter of a horse’s hooves.

Was that our horses? Or a passing rider? The sound alone was enough to frighten off our attacker. Bushes rustled violently; a dark figure, great-coated, broke from the shelter of a clump of trees, racing wildly across the fell, heading towards the slope down into Gateshead. There were woods there, gardens, streets in which anyone might lose themselves. Roaring with fury, I was up at once, racing after him, waving my broken branch maniacally.

The rough ground was my undoing. I put my foot in a rabbit hole, pitched forward. My foot twisted. I tried to right myself, stumbled again and went down with a force that knocked the breath out of me. By the time I had staggered to my feet, the greatcoated figure was out of sight.

I hobbled back towards the pond, to the dark huddle of Demsey beyond it. Along the track, I could see a rider on a grey horse climbing the hill from the south and leading two other horses – our horses. Even from this distance I could see the rider was a woman, sitting astride.

Esther Jerdoun.

As I stood over Demsey, she urged her horse up to me. I was dazed, confused, in a rage, recklessly suspicious of the entire world. “What the devil are you doing here?”

Her hat was blown askew; her hair was tousled and wind-swept. “Mr Patterson,” she said evenly, “this is not the time for argument or explanation.” She jumped down from her horse and knelt over Demsey. “We must stop this bleeding.”

Tugging a scarf from her neck, she reached across Demsey’s back to press the material against his shoulder. The pale yellow cloth suddenly bloomed in a great burst of red. I was thinking slowly, stupidly. “I thought –”

“He was dead? Dead men do not bleed.” She glanced up at me. “Who did this? Who would want to shoot Mr Demsey?”

As I stared at her, I was filled with a sudden certainty. Everything was so clear – why had I ever been confused? I knew who the villain was. I knew who had wanted to injure Hugh. I knew who had murdered George and Le Sac.

 

32

SONG FOR TWO VOICES (DUETTO)

The great church of St Nicholas had an eerie stillness. I stood just inside the west door, my hand lifting the curtain that hung there to prevent draughts, and looked towards the east end of the church. My view of the chancel and altar was blocked by the bulky screen on top of which the organ sat. Beyond the screen and the tall dulled pipes of the organ facade, the east window was a mere shadow.

Churches are gloomy places and on such a dreary day as this more than usually so. I listened for the shift of a footstep, the rustle of clothing. Nothing seemed to stir among the high-backed pews. Yet there was movement, sensed rather than seen, up in the organ loft. A flutter of sound, like the pages of a book being ruffled. Perhaps it was only the older brother indulging in a rare organ practice. But Light-Heels’s landlord had been certain he was here.

I kept close to the church wall as I went softly up the aisle. Pew after pew of closed doors, private domains where those with delicate sensibilities need not mix with vulgar inferiors. Where the screen joined the wall, an open door showed a staircase rising through a stone shaft. I stepped carefully up the worn stairs; at the top a second door stood open on to the organ-loft. I could hear the sound of feet shifting on the floor, the thud of books. I eased myself through the narrow gap between door and jamb, taking care not to move the door in case it creaked. For a moment I looked over a low parapet to a dizzying drop to the nave below; I drew back, briefly nauseous.

Nichols stood in front of the organ stool. The manuals were locked into their cabinet but the mirrors designed to allow the organist to see priest and congregation below were exposed, and I drew back, fearful of Nichols glimpsing my reflection. Laid out along the wooden stool were piles of music-books. Bound printed volumes stacked in one pile, manuscript commonplace books in another. Loose sheets of manuscript in a third pile, odd handwritten notes at the near end of the stool. Nichols himself held a small book that looked very like a book of psalm tunes; he clasped it in both hands and looked from one pile to another as if trying to decide where to put it. His lips moved soundlessly.

“Well met,” I said, moving forward.

He started, dropped the book, stared at me.

“Thinking of taking your brother’s place?” I bent to pick up the book, held it out to Nichols. He did not move.

“You do not seem out of breath.”

His colour, which had receded, flushed again.

“From your ride back,” I elaborated. “You did well to get back before I did. Although of course I was somewhat delayed by concern for my friend.”

He seemed to pull his wits together. He managed a laugh. “You’re talking nonsense, Patterson.”

“I had to see Demsey to the care of a surgeon before I came to find the man who shot him.”

Esther Jerdoun had seemed to wish to detain me but I would not stay, desperate to catch Nichols before he escaped. Yet here he still was, hardly seeming to hear what I said. He said mechanically, “Indeed,” and turned back to his sorting of the books.

The first doubts prodded at my certainty. When Esther Jerdoun had asked who might wish to injure Hugh, I had seen at once that I had been looking at the matter from the wrong perspective. I was not the attacker’s intended target; Hugh was. And the only culprit then could be Nichols. Le Sac’s contemptuous references to friendship, Nichols’s antipathy to Demsey, a desire for revenge for the ruffians Hugh had set upon him – all these pointed to Nichols’s guilt. True, I could not understand how George’s murder fitted but otherwise I had no doubt. All this trouble had been caused by a quarrel between a man too quick to anger and another too quick to malice.

And yet, faced with the man in this dulled lethargic state, my reasoning began to seem flimsy. Did a man kill on so slight a provocation?

I was walking through a fog, trying to find my way in an unknown country; all I could do was take one step at a time. I put my hand on Nichols’s arm. “Listen to me. I know what happened.”

He frowned.

“In Aberdeen.”

He reddened and pulled away from me, put the end of the organ stool between us. His voice raised a tone or two in pitch. “Aberdeen? Nothing happened in Aberdeen.”

“Tell that to the poor girl you tried to seduce. Such a sordid, commonplace trick.”

A flash of his old spirit returned. “So Demsey went to find scandal, did he?” he said contemptuously. “And you’re seizing the chance to ruin an honest man who is only trying to make a living.”

“Honest!” I echoed incredulously. “After that trick you employed with the Lindsay girl to discredit Demsey? I saw her at the Concert – a baggage if ever there was one.”

“Demsey started it!” Nichols backed further away. “He set those ruffians on me!”

That was true enough; I was on rough ground there. I stepped back and perched upon the end of the organ stool, as if trying for some peace between us. Nichols might retreat all he liked; I was between him and the stair down. He regarded me with that dazed look still, like a man trying to make sense of a world that has gone mad.

“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 didn’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?”

“I waited till he’d gone,” he said reluctantly. “Then I went back to Mrs Hill’s again.”

“With the Vivaldi,” I said with resignation, remembering the music clasped in the dead boy’s hand.

“It’s much better than the Corelli,” the boy burst out.

“Never mind that,” I said, hurrying on. “How far did you get this time, George?”

“The Bigg Market, sir. That’s where the lady picked me up in her carriage.”

My heart grew heavy. “Go on.”

“She said she was looking for me. She said she wanted me to do something for her again.”

“Again?”

“I thought she wanted me to take the violin again,” he said in a small voice.

“Le Sac’s violin!” I said. “You sneaked into his rooms while he was ill and took it.”

“He never stirred,” the spirit said proudly. “Fast asleep he was and snoring. And I knew where he kept it – under the floorboards.”

“That’s why you were so afraid of Le Sac. You kept thinking he’d find out you’d stolen the violin.”

“He deserved it,” George said viciously. “I hated him.”

I shifted the branch of candles and sat down on the edge of the table. “I wonder you wanted to help the lady again, since you were so afraid of the consequences the first time. What did she ask you to do?”

George was a thin pool of light on a chair. “She said Mr Ord and Mr Jenison had stopped the duel this time but she was determined it should go ahead because she wanted to teach Mr Sac a lesson. She said he was arrogant and designing and – and she regretted the day she ever saw him. And she asked me to play the Vivaldi to her – she said she’d give me two guineas. Two guineas, master. Only – only –” His voice shook.

I said gently, “What happened, George?”

He seemed to sniff. “She brought me here, sir, to this house, and took me into a big big room, with a harpsichord in it. And she asked me to play.” Another sniff. “I just turned away to get my violin out. And then there was such a pain …” He was crying now. “Such a pain, master, in my throat, and everything was wet and hot. And – and she said, –˜Fly away, boy. You’re one spirit who will never be found’.”

“In this house?” I repeated.

“Well, I knew the house when we got out of her carriage, sir. But when I got in the big room, I felt a bit funny. And when I looked out of the window, when I was getting my violin, I couldn’t seem to see the square – just a street with lots of houses instead.” The pool of light flickered; he whimpered, “I don’t know what happened, sir!”

I was remembering the drunk spirit in the square who never knew where he was, who had insisted I was organist of St Nicholas. I ran my fingers over the title page of the book. Here was the explanation of that puzzle; the drunk spirit had been cast out of this mysterious place into my real world. Might not, then, a spirit from the real world – George – be cast into this place?

And, as George’s story seemed to suggest, could the lady come and go between the two places as she pleased? She had certainly used the uncanny connection between them to exile George’s spirit and so cover up her crime.

I turned, hearing a noise at the bedroom door. She stood there, smiling in the flickering light of the shadows.

“Alas, Mr Patterson,” she said. “You really should have kept out of this affair. You really should.”

I saw the candle-light glint on the metal hidden in the folds of her skirt.

“Good evening, Lady Anne,” I said.

 

36

SONG FOR SOLO SOPRANO

She regarded me with amusement. “Confess, sir, did you suspect me before this moment?”

I sighed. “Indeed not, my lady, though I suspected everyone else in turn. Now, of course, I cannot conceive why I omitted you.”

How strange, I thought, to be talking in so light-hearted a fashion to a murderess. And she, without a trace of fear, set her head on one side as if curious to hear me out.

“You killed George,” I went on, “who trusted you because you had paid him to steal the violin. Then you killed Le Sac, making it look as if he had killed the boy and had done away with himself from remorse. Le Sac of course was your real target.”

She inclined her head in acknowledgement.

“But is it not rather an excessive way to be rid of a protégé Why not merely tell him you refuse to fund him further?”

The flickering candlelight showed a swift spray of emotions across her face. I calculated the distance between us, confident that I could take the knife from her. Once I had heard her explanations.

She laughed softly. “It is not so easy to be rid of a blackmailer.”

“A love affair?” I suggested, although I had never imagined Lady Anne susceptible to the softer passions. “An irregularity with money?”

She threw back her head and laughed uproariously. I heard George’s spirit whimper in fear. “Mr Patterson, do you not wonder where you are?”

“There have been times I have thought of little else,” I confessed. “And of the people in this place. There is a man, particularly, stocky, red-faced –”

“My father.”

“I thought him dead, long ago.”

She nodded. “In your world, yes. But not in this. Not in my world.”

I could hear a clock ticking faintly in the bedroom. One of the candles in the branch on the table flared; smoke and a spark drifted from it. The shadows licked at her. I am not a superstitious man, and have only a conventional amount of religion in me, but in that moment I fancied her a devil.

She advanced, and I contemplated putting an end to all this. I was barefoot and wore only a dressing robe but nevertheless… She smiled and shook her head.

“Do not do anything foolish, Mr Patterson. I can come and go as I please. I could kill you and go straight back to your world. It would not trouble me if I never came back here.” Did I detect a note of falsity in that statement? No matter, she was continuing. “And once I am back in your world, sir, I will go straight to Gateshead and finish the work I began this morning. In short, sir, if you value your friend the dancing master’s life, you will do as I say.”

I held her gaze but she did not drop her eyes in shame or confusion. It was clear she meant what she said. I retreated a step or two, putting the table between us, conscious that the wall and curtained window were at my back, preventing me from moving very far. An amused smile played about Lady Anne’s lips.

“You have abandoned your pistols, I see,” I remarked as coolly as I could. “Too noisy, I suppose. One of them was Le Sac’s, was it not? Stolen from him when you killed him.”

She ignored my words. “You need not be afraid yet, Mr Patterson. I do not intend to kill you in this house. You seem to have an ability to step through between worlds and your spirit might exhibit the same trait. I do not want you to escape into your own world and betray me there.”

“Your world, my world?” I said. “I know which is mine. Do you tell me that you originate in this place? That you are not Mrs Jerdoun’s cousin?”

She gestured with her hands. “Imagine, sir, a book. Like this music book.” She indicated the book I had left open upon the table. “A book has many separate leaves of paper, all stacked neatly one upon another. Imagine that the whole of creation is like this book. Each page is a separate world, each entire unto itself – lying very close to its neighbours, yet with no communication between them. In each of these worlds live sets of people going about their daily concerns with no knowledge of the people in the other worlds, or any contact with them. Yet many have their counterparts in those other worlds. A man like yourself, Mr Patterson, may exist on two worlds, or perhaps more. Or, rather, two men with your name and your characteristics may so exist. Similar, yet different. Two versions of the same man.”

She dropped her hands and the knife flashed in the candlelight. Her expression was again one of amusement. “You are a great deal more successful in this world, Mr Patterson. A well-respected concert promoter, a composer much admired even at so young an age, in possession not merely of one organist’s post but two, and with dozens of rich pupils pleading for your attention. Oh, certainly you must work hard, but you are recognised as above the average run of musicians, and the patronising speeches of men like my father are tempered by respect.”

She leaned forward, her brown hair slipping across her shoulder. “Would you not wish to change places with your other self, Mr Patterson? It would not really be like stepping into another man’s shoes. And who knows, he might prefer the anonymity of being merely competent and scraping a living.”

I was stung by her assessment of me, although I could hardly deny it. But I was more concerned with the implications of what she had said.

“Is that what you did?” I asked. “Changed places with your other self in my world?”

She shrugged. “She died young, aged fourteen, an orphan in the care of an aunt and uncle in Norfolk. When I first stepped through to your world I had some considerable work to cover my tracks, to hide the fact that my other self had died. But once I had succeeded in that, I had few difficulties. I inherited her father’s money and became a rich heiress. I confess, however, that I was unnerved to discover I had a cousin. Esther does not exist in this world.”

She idly turned the printed pages of the music book. I considered disarming her now but the distance between us was too great, and I knew that if she escaped she would do as she threatened and step through to my world to kill Demsey. For all I knew she might be able to step through in a moment; perhaps she would one second be standing in front of me, the next be a fading shadow. I could not risk that. I would disarm her only when I could be certain of success. If I could distract her…

“That manuscript book I lent you,” she mused. “I had it from the original author, of course, to practise a harpsichord lesson from it. It is easy enough to take material objects between the worlds.”

“How – how do you step through to my world?”

She stared musingly at the rich hangings over the window. “I really do not know, sir. It is a gift I have always had. As a child I used to visit strange worlds in my play, or use them to hide from my father.” She smiled. “My governesses always used to remark on my remarkable imagination. I only came to realise that the worlds were real many years later. And there is something about this house.” She glanced about her as if seeking something. “It is as if the pages of the book have been stuck together, here, and certain people may step through from one page to another at will. I am not the only person with the ability. Others possess it – the spirit in the garden, for instance, and yourself.” She smiled. “Why not ask how you do it, sir?”

“I do nothing,” I said. “It happens or it does not. A chill, a giddiness and the world shifts like a curtain blowing, then all is still and I am in a different place. I cannot do it at will.”

She shrugged. “That skill would no doubt grow.”

I did not want it. “And you live two lives? Are you not missed in this world?”

“I am a semi-invalid, sir, so ill that I must keep to my bed all day. I cannot even bear to have a maid with me; such creatures fuss so, you know. I put in an appearance occasionally at the dinner table. My father has lost all patience with me and constantly reminds me how one day my distant cousins in Norfolk will inherit the house and throw me out of it. It is all entailed to a male heir, of course.”

“And what will you do then?”

“I will thankfully retreat to your world and abandon my prior self altogether,” she said mockingly. “I would do so now, except that this world has its uses.”

“You prefer my world? Why?”

“My dear Patterson! In your world I am an independent heiress with no man to tell me what to do or say. Here I am merely a daughter, suffered to have a small allowance and constantly nagged to marry this man or that, who in his turn will tell me where to go and what to do. Which would you prefer?”

I pondered on the matter – not on her reasons, which could not be denied, but on her actions. The curtains were heavy, soft velvet at my back; with my hand behind me I tugged surreptitiously on them, to see how easy they might be to pull down. The curtain rail, unfortunately, seemed good solid oak.

“And Le Sac?”

“Alas, poor Henri. The contact between the worlds cannot be entirely controlled; occasionally the passage opens up of its own accord. Henri was with me on one of those occasions. I involuntarily stepped through, and he came with me. I flatter myself that no one could have reacted more swiftly – I knocked him unconscious, I may say – but unfortunately he did not accept my explanation that he had stumbled and fallen and dreamt the rest.”

“You should have killed him then,” I said dryly. “It would have saved you a great deal of trouble.”

“I was younger,” she sighed, “and naively over-confident. I had lived by my wits for ten years or more and believed myself to be able to carry off anything, certainly able to fool any mere man.”

“But surely he could not blackmail you over this? Who would believe him?”

“No one,” she agreed. “But Henri was always very quick to see the implications of any situation. If I was from this world, I could not be the real Lady Anne from his world. He even travelled to the village in Norfolk where my counterpart had lived, to look at the church registers. He found proof of her death. And if she was dead, sir, all the wealth that I had inherited in her stead should have gone to someone else.” She smiled, with real malice. “In that world, your world, there are no male heirs living, only one female.”

“Esther Jerdoun,” I said.

“Indeed. Henri had all the evidence he needed to prove I was an impostor.” She looked almost admiring as she spoke of Le Sac. “He did not need to prove my origins or explain about a world no one would believe in. He simply needed to threaten to tell Esther that I was not her cousin.” She sighed again. “I am afraid I underestimated dear Henri. As, alas, I have underestimated you.”

I leaned against the wall, a handful of curtain in one hand behind my back. If I could tempt her across to me, perhaps I could tangle her in it. “I suppose it will not do if I promise to keep your secret?”

“No, it will not,” she agreed, raising the knife. “You would never let the boy’s murderer go free.”

“Nor Le Sac’s,” I said. “And you were nearly the murderer of Demsey.”

“I was aiming for you,” she said. “I was always a poor shot. Though, to do myself justice, you escaped the first shot by chance, before he knocked you aside. Mr Patterson, I must ask you to go back into the bedroom and dress.”

“Dress?” I echoed incredulously. Certainly, I would feel more at ease with my clothes on, but I could not understand why she insisted upon it. “In heaven’s name, why?”

“I explained before,” she said impatiently. “I cannot kill you here for fear your spirit will escape to your own world. So I must take you elsewhere. And if I am to walk through the streets with you, you will draw considerable attention bare-footed and in a dressing robe.”

Reluctantly, I moved past her into the bedroom. The clothes the servant had laid out for me lay like a dark stain upon the white counterpane. I turned my back on her and began to dress. I could not endanger Hugh, yet I would not go quietly to my own death. I turned back as I buttoned my waistcoat.

“George,” I said, “pray go downstairs and tell someone what is going on.”

His voice came from the table at the head of the bed. “But they don’t listen, master.”

Lady Anne laughed. “There are few spirits in this world, Mr Patterson. The dead go straight to whatever realm they inhabit and do not linger in the place of their death. Those few that for some reason do remain – or that we imagine remain – we call ghosts and are afraid of them. We certainly do not enjoy a chat with them.”

“Go down, George,” I said again.

“But they won’t hear!”

“Go down!” I roared, and I caught a glimpse of his hurried going, upon the bedpost, upon the door handle. Lady Anne, smiling, gestured towards the wall. “We will go this way, sir, by the servants’ stair. There is, I am afraid, no escape.”

 

37

MARCH

The servants’ stairs were pokey and dark; my candle lit only a step or two and the peeling paint on the walls. Muffled voices echoed distantly; male laughter, a shout, sharp words. I thought of snuffing out the candle and running while Lady Anne was disadvantaged by the darkness, but in a house I did not know I could only fall or lose my way. And that threat to Hugh, always that threat…

At last the dim candlelight showed me a door. “Open it,” Lady Anne commanded. I did as she bid; outside, the night air was cold; the moon glimmered fitfully on the cobbles of a back lane.

She reached over my shoulder and plucked the candle from my grasp, setting it upon a small table just inside the door. She pinched the flame, and smoke drifted upwards.

“Go out, Mr Patterson.”

I stood my ground. The further I went from this house the greater the danger. I was conscious, too, that I was leaving the only friend I had in this world, since George could not leave the place of his death. But Lady Anne slipped her arm through mine and I felt the prick of the knife below my ribs as she turned a laughing face to me.

“This way, sir. And smile for me. We are a loving couple out for a late stroll.”

She pulled me on, laughing for the benefit of the two men who lounged at the street corner, dressed in the rough clothes of miners. As we came up to them, they pushed themselves from the wall and I braced myself for a fight. But to my astonishment, they took one look at Lady Anne, halted in mid-movement and drew back, saluting her respectfully.

She did not speak until we were out of earshot of the men. “I told you, sir, that this world has its uses. Have you ever broken the law, Mr Patterson?”

“Never,” I declared. Then, because honesty impelled me, I added, “Leaving aside a few pranks when I was a boy.”

She laughed. “I break the law frequently. The only reason more people do not do so is because they fear they will be caught. But when you can escape to another world – why, what is there to stop you?”

We were walking down a hill; I did not recognise the street from my own world but the wisps of smoke that came drifting up to us told me we were heading towards the Key. A gaggle of whores passed us, giggling, three-quarters drunk. They looked once at us and were instantly silent, hurrying past as if they were children trying to get out of the reach of schoolteachers. A hundred yards further on, they burst into giggling again.

“There, sir,” said Lady Anne, gazing back at them, “go a considerable source of my income. In return for my protection and organisation, they give me a proportion of their profits. A large proportion, of course. And those gentlemen we passed, who are light-fingered in the extreme, need someone to buy their newly acquired property and dispose of it for them.”

I was startled. “But your inheritance –”

“Insufficient, sir. How many gowns do you think it pays for? How many horses? No, I must also have my… business interests.” She caressed my arm. “In my world I earn money and in your world I spend it. A most excellent arrangement, do you not think?”

I found it impossible to speak. On to a road I knew – Westgate. I looked up at the houses as we passed and saw windows brightly lit. A cat-fiddle screeched out a jig. I recognised Demsey’s school-room.

“The differences between our two worlds fascinate me,” Lady Anne mused. “You are uncommonly like your counterpart here, sir, but that is not the case with everyone. Your friend Demsey, for instance, in this world is twenty years older, a fussy and choleric man, not much liked.”

I looked up at the house again. Strange to know that a man lived and worked there whom I did and did not know. A man very different from my friend who, for all I knew, lay dead in my world. I opened my mouth to call out but shut it again. Lady Anne murmured, “Most wise,” and pushed the knife against my flesh.

“I cannot understand why I co-operate with you,” I burst out. “I go peaceably to prevent your injuring me, yet I know full well you intend to kill me in the end.”

“Think of Mr Demsey,” she recommended.

We walked cautiously on, down the Side, through the pools of light cast by the flaring lanterns. “If you kill me,” I said, “my absence will be noted. In my own world.”

“I have made provision for that.”

“Provision?” I echoed.

“Come, sir,” she chided. “Do you not see that I have planned everything from the start?” She was apparently agreeably occupied in studying the windows of the shops. “After our first contretemps in the coffee-house – do you remember that, sir? – it occurred to me that you might be useful. You are known to be violently jealous of Le Sac.”

“Am I?” I said with some gloom, reflecting that perhaps I had been quite as obvious and foolish as Demsey had been over Nichols.

“I therefore fomented the argument between you and Le Sac by arranging the theft of his violin. I had that idea after the loss of the music – or its mislaying, I should say. You know he found the book later at the house of a pupil?”

“I guessed as much.”

“I forged your writing on the violin’s label to incriminate you, and encouraged poor Henri to think of you as the culprit. You can imagine I was not well pleased when Esther proved more perceptive that I had believed her to be and retrieved the instrument. She does not suspect half the truth, of course. She merely thinks me mixed up in something shady – but that has made her meddling enough!”

I thought back to my encounter with Esther Jerdoun on the bridge. I had thought she was accusing me of stealing the instrument when in fact she had been trying to reassure me that Lady Anne’s plottings would not affect me. Her manner, which I had put down to condemnation, must have been a natural embarrassment and anger at the conduct of her cousin.

“Then,” Lady Anne continued, “to incite your hatred of Henri, I sent those ruffians to attack you. You are my plan of last resort, sir.”

I frowned. “In what respect, my lady?”

“It was possible that Le Sac’s –‘suicide’ would not be convincing. I required an alternative solution to the mystery, in case his death was questioned. In short, sir, I will manufacture evidence which suggests that you killed the boy yourself, out of a belief that he had been conspiring with his old master against you – indeed, a belief that Le Sac never cast off the boy at all but used him as a conspirator to get inside your household. Le Sac found out and confronted you, so you killed him too.”

“You will not get Le Sac’s spirit to support that story.”

“Come, come, sir. You spoke to him yourself. He will do anything to torment me. I have simply to persuade him it is to my disadvantage that he keeps quiet and he will do it. Bear in mind, sir, that you will disappear, which will itself suggest your guilt. It will be assumed you fled for fear of being discovered.”

“Demsey knows what happened,” I pointed out.

She laughed softly. “The dancing master may not survive, sir. And as for my cousin …”

With fear squeezing my heart, I stopped. “What of her?”

“You must see, sir, that I must be rid of her. In a little while, when it will not look too suspicious.”

I fell silent. We walked on, on to the Key. Torches burned outside the shops and brothels, and on the low keels at rest along the wharves. I smelt the acrid dryness of the high piles of coal and heard a dog barking. And I knew now that only I stood between Lady Anne and the success of her ruthless plans. Only I could save Hugh and Esther. And I could only save them if I first saved myself.

We walked on. High on the hill across the river, a light flickered around St Mary’s church in Gateshead. Ahead, I saw the bulk of the building that in my world was Thomas Saint’s printing office. In this world, it stood empty and derelict, a shell with rafters gaping. Around the ruined walls lay a great litter of slates and laths, fragments of stone and brick. A dog sniffed and pawed at the rubble.

The pressure of Lady Anne’s arm on mine halted me. We stood looking across to the trees and hidden buildings on Gateshead Bank. Overhead, stars swam in a thin stream of smoke; below, water slapped gently against the wharves. The tide was at its highest, perhaps beginning to ebb. Lady Anne glanced back along the torchlit Key and I saw that the nearest bystanders were some distance off. Whores, by the look of it.

I shifted uneasily, but Lady Anne was already pulling away from me. The dog was pattering towards us in idle curiosity.

“I have a problem, Mr Patterson.”

“Indeed?” I said dryly.

“Oh, indeed.” She laughed. “Think of it. Mr Charles Patterson, the respected organist and composer, is called upon to examine a body which looks uncannily like his own. So alike indeed that it might be a twin. I do not want to avoid a scandal in one world to create another in a second.”

“You seem to be making life difficult for yourself in both,” I said.

She shook her head. “A momentary difficulty. Simply, Mr Patterson, I need to ensure that your body is never found.”

Instinctively, I knew her plans and, without thinking, protested. “The river – no!”

“The tide is just turning, and will carry your body out to sea.”

The memory of the spirits weeping and wailing in the billows of smoke rose up before me. Not that, I thought in panic, and took a step back. The dog hesitated, then padded on.

“Remember what I told you,” Lady Anne said. “There are few spirits in this world. Perhaps you will follow the general custom here and go straight to some heavenly paradise.” I caught the glint of amusement in her eyes. “Or perhaps, like the boy, you will find yourself alone and unheard.” She lifted her hand, the light gleaming on the knife.

The dog barked.

Startled, Lady Anne cast the dog a quick glance. In that instant I brought up my arm violently, knocking her hand away. The knife clattered to the ground. I threw myself against her, and my weight sent us crashing to the cobbles. The fall knocked the breath out of me, and as the dog skittered away in alarm I gasped for air.

In the flare of the lanterns I saw Lady Anne, on hands and knees, scrabbling for the knife. I struggled up, threw myself at her again. But she had the knife in her hand and swung her arm wildly. I staggered back out of reach.

I needed a weapon. My eyes set on the litter surrounding the derelict printing office. The dog was standing, legs braced, barking its loudest. Gasping still, I ran towards the building. Behind me, I heard Lady Anne swear.

Nothing. No weapon. Just a clutter of roof slates and tumbled stone. I swung round the corner of the printing office – into darkness. No lamps, only the glimmer of the river in the thin moonlight. I saw enigmatic humps of debris, rotting coils of rope, a haphazard pile – of baskets? I heard Lady Anne swear again. I flattened myself against the wall in a deep shadow and tried to still my breathing. The dog must have run off; I heard its barking in the distance.

Lady Anne lingered at the corner. Was she conscious that the outline of her body was visible against the faint moonlit shimmer of the river? She moved against the wall, into darkness. She was coming towards me. I strained to see her, to catch the glint of the knife…

Metal flashed in the moonlight. I flung out an arm to fend off the blow, felt pain, the warmth of blood. I stumbled, twisting away from her second lunge. My foot caught in something – a twist of rope? An unravelled basket? I staggered, threw out my arms to keep my balance, heard her laugh. Then I went down, landing upon my injured arm and crying out.

Rolling over, I tried to crawl away, knocked against something, heard boxes clatter down. My foot was caught fast and when I tried to pull away, pain near blinded me. Lady Anne lunged, stabbing down like a bird from a great darkness. Her ragged breath was loud in my ears…

Out of the darkness a second figure loomed above me. I felt a rush of air and over my head swung a thick plank of wood. The sharp ends of nails glinted in the moonlight. The plank struck Lady Anne in the stomach; a rib crunched and she screamed, flinging up her hands. The knife clattered on to stone as she staggered backwards, doubled over, screaming. And the plank swung again, crashing into her shoulder as she tried to turn away from the blow, then again upon her back as she went down in a crumpled heap.

Over her, vengeful hate flaring in his wild face, stood Claudius Heron.

 

38

FINALE

He leaned down to help me up. I grasped a hand that was cold and dry, and left it stained with the blood that ran down my own arm. He steadied me, said urgently, “Patterson? Are you hurt?”

I was in no mood to be polite. “How the devil did you come here?”

“That boy of yours. His spirit told me the woman was taking you out of the servants’ door and I managed to catch sight of you as you walked off.” The wildness was dying out of his face but there was a darkness in his eyes still, an anger that burned deep. “I would have reached you sooner but I was accosted upon the Side by a man who claimed he knew me, and kept talking of people I had never heard of. Patterson, where in heaven’s name is this place?”

“How did you reach it?”

His lean cheeks reddened. “I have been following you, whenever I could, since the boy’s inquest. I was close behind you in the square and somehow… Damn it, will you believe now that you are in danger!”

His hand was upon my shoulder and his cool voice quite returned. “We must get you to a surgeon.” He tore off his cravat and wrapped it around the wound in my arm. “I could have prevented this.”

A cool voice and cool hands, yet the vengeful look upon his face as he hit out at Lady Anne haunted me. I had not imagined he could feel so strongly. What had caused that rage?

But at that moment I glimpsed movement behind him, shouted, pulled myself from his hands. Lady Anne had dragged herself up and was stumbling round the corner of the derelict building, back to the Key. I ran after her, heart thumping, head reeling, arm aching abominably. Behind me, Heron cried out.

Round the corner of the printing office I was suddenly in the middle of a gaggle of women, a crowd of whores in ragged gowns with bared breasts and hooked-up skirts showing grimy legs. They pawed at me, dragged at my clothes, tugged at my hair. I yelled, tried to pull away, swung my fist and connected with the face of one of the women. Her head snapped sideways; she crumpled, dragging down her neighbour. I hooked a foot under a dirty ankle and uptipped another, who went down in a flurry of skirts and curses. Heron was close behind me, swinging wildly so that the whores scattered in alarm and we were free and running.

But Lady Anne was nowhere to be seen. Her whores had protected their protectress.

“The house,” I yelled as we raced along the Key. “We must get back to the house.” That house, and that house alone, could afford us passage back to our own world. If we did not catch Lady Anne, and she stepped through to our world, Demsey and Esther Jerdoun were at her mercy.

I came to the Sandhill, glimpsed a movement, glanced up the hill into Butcher Bank. A woman was loading up a cart. I ran up to the cart, snatched up the reins and urged the horse into action. The woman shrieked and the horse damn near bolted. But I got the cart turned and back on to the Sandhill where Heron was waiting. He leapt for the box and clambered up. The cart was filled with offal and stank of blood and urine; livers, hearts and guts spilled from a great pile and hung down behind us.

Pain throbbed in my arm as the horse galloped on; we raced across the Sandhill, scattering a group of drunken sailors. On to the Side, where I flogged the labouring horse mercilessly up the steep road. At St Nicholas’s Church, the horse got a second wind and galloped off again. The cart bumped and jolted, throwing us from side to side so that Heron gripped tight hold of the seat.

“We must stop Lady Anne getting back to our world,” I shouted. “She will kill Demsey and Mrs Jerdoun.”

“I understand none of this!” Heron shouted back. “But I trust your judgment, Patterson.”

I hoped he was right to do so. We turned up a new street and only then did I recognise our surroundings. A slow-moving brewer’s dray blocked the street halfway down; I vaulted from the cart and ran for the house.

As I came up to the front door, it opened and a gentleman came out. Young, well-dressed, self-assured, laughing at something. Meeting on the doorstep we stared at one another – and I saw my own face, astonished and startled, perhaps even fearful…

Heron seized my arm and pulled me past him, up the steps. We barged into the house, stumbled to a halt in the hallway with servants hurrying forward to intercept us. I raised my voice. “George!”

A distant cry. “The attic, master!”

We ran for the stairs. The servants caught at us. “Get rid of them!” I cried to Heron. He tripped one footman, shouldered another as they seized him. One caught at the skirts of my coat; I swung a fist, pulled free.

I took the stairs two at a time, leaping round the angles in the flights, slipping on the blood that was dripping from my arm, trying to work out where the servants’ stair was – for this public stair would certainly not go up to the attics. Below, I heard shouting and a call for the watch. Had Heron been overcome? I ran on.

George’s voice, close by, said, “The second door, master.” An elegant sitting room. “Under the picture of the lady.” I flung open a door on to the shabby servants’ stair.

As I scrambled up the wooden steps, I could hear movement above. George’s voice urged me on. “Quick, master, quick!” Up ever narrower stairs. Surely Lady Anne must have gone by now? Why should she delay? A last flight; giddy and exhausted, I fell into a large room, scattered with low beds…

Lady Anne was crouched over a bucket on the floor, spewing out vomit mixed with blood. She stared at me with lips stained scarlet and hands clutching at her stomach. I stumbled to a halt. Claudius Heron had done more damage than he had anticipated, with the nails in that plank he had wielded.

She screeched at me in a spray of blood. “I’ll kill you, damn you!”

I glimpsed metal in her hand. That damned knife again. As she lunged at me I snatched at the blanket on the nearest bed, swung it through the air. The knife sliced into it, her hand tangling in the folds. She screamed as I seized her wrist, felt the flesh chill and bloodless, took hold of her other hand to restrain her…

I saw a light in her eyes, an expression in her face. She seemed to dim, to become momentarily translucent. In astonishment, I almost let her go. She was stepping through. And then I saw my own hand, stained with blood, begin also to become thin and transparent. I heard George cry out, and Heron too from just behind me, and felt a great dizziness…

I came to myself upon cold damp cobbles. A thin drizzle dampened my face. Raising myself, I saw with relief the familiar shape of Caroline Square around me, the darkness-shrouded gardens, a thin curve of moon behind the leaves.

Above, on the open door of the house, I saw a sheen of light. George, excitedly calling to the servants within for help.

Upon the doorstep, Claudius Heron sat and stared out into the night.

 

39

TRIO AFTER THE CONCERT

The clamour of the coffee-house folded around us. Heron sat back in his chair, one arm stretched out to the dish upon the table, his eyes fixed upon the design. He wore still the neat sober clothes he had worn for the inquest when he had sat in charge of the inquiry into the death of Lady Anne, whose fatal injuries he had himself inflicted.

He had looked upon his own handiwork with, as far as I could judge, no emotion, either of horror or remorse. The eight jurymen had heard how Mrs Jerdoun had heard her cousin call out and hurried upstairs to find her dead of … Of what? Claudius Heron had listened to the evidence, persuaded the jury it would be immodest to look upon the body of Lady Anne, informed them there were no visible wounds, suggested to the few witnesses – the cousin, the surgeon, the servants – the word apoplexy. And the eight reputable and honest tradesmen had decided that the lady had been struck down by the hand of God.

So the matter was ended. There was nothing to connect Lady Anne’s death to the murder of George and the suicide of Le Sac, nor to the attack on Demsey and myself on Gateshead Fell. That had no doubt been the work of unknown criminals, perhaps those who had robbed the postboy, and everyone marvelled at Demsey’s luck in surviving so vicious an attack. Lady Anne’s death had been bloody, but most of that blood had been shed in that strange other world, and Mrs Jerdoun’s discreet maid had dealt with the little that had stained our own world. And if no one knew exactly what had happened to Light-Heels Nichols after he was seen walking through Amen Corner with Lady Anne – well, there were more important things to be concerned about than the whereabouts of a mere dancing-master, particularly one so universally disliked.

In the clamour of the coffee house, I was still pondering another meeting I had had, only an hour or two earlier, with Mrs Jerdoun. She had drawn me aside after the inquest and to my astonishment, had apologised to me. “I knew my cousin was a scheming woman …”

“You tried to warn me, madam.”

“That was not enough,” she said. She was dressed in black, as custom demanded on the death of her cousin, but the colour did not suit her; it made her skin seem sallow and her gleaming hair dull.

“I knew,” she went on, “or suspected at least, that she had a hand in Le Sac’s death. That was why I was at the pond, to see if I could persuade him to talk. And I had some suspicions that she received money from sources she was not willing to reveal, which could only be discreditable.” Her eyes met mine steadily. “I could make the excuse, sir, that I had no evidence against her, but in truth I acted from pride, not wishing our family name to be dragged in the mud. And more than that – I have always been a woman to take care of my own business.”

“I cannot blame you for keeping silent, madam,” I said. “No one would have believed accusations against your cousin.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “I should have made the attempt. If I had, Mr Demsey would not have been injured, and – more importantly – your life would not have been endangered.”

More importantly? My breath caught in my throat. And we stood looking at each other for a moment in a stillness so complete, so excluding the rest of the world, that I could hardly breathe.

Mrs Jerdoun smiled faintly. “I trust you forgive me, sir?”

I hardly knew what I was saying. “Indeed, madam, I –” I took my courage in both hands. “And I trust, madam, that this wretched business will not give you a distaste for my company?”

She laughed softly. “Oh, no, sir. You may count on that. You will see me again.” And she turned and walked away into the last of the crowds dawdling from the inquest.

In the coffee-house I looked at Claudius Heron beside me, still silent, still preoccupied. I said, “I have not yet properly thanked you for your help.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I was singularly inept. I was not there when you were attacked on the fell, nor when the woman trapped you in that house –”

“You were, I think,” I interrupted diplomatically, “always suspicious of Lady Anne’s activities?”

He flicked a glance at me with his pale eyes. “I knew suicide was a unlikely route for Le Sac to take. When he clashed with Jenison and Ord over that duel, he tried to enlist my help against them. Seeing I was not amenable to flattery, he threatened to invent and spread rumours about the conduct of my financial affairs.” He hesitated, added, “And other matters.” A glance at me. “I am a widower, Patterson. You understand my meaning.”

I nodded. His gaze lingered on me a little longer, with something in it I could not fathom. He looked away, went on. “Le Sac spoke like a man accustomed to blackmail. Moreover, he hinted he could count upon Lady Anne’s support, and I had the impression he had some hold over her. Who then was more likely to have a reason to dispose of him? It was obvious that the boy’s death was merely a preliminary, the prelude to the real play, so to speak.”

“Poor George,” I said. At least he was back in his own world again.

Heron shifted uneasily in his chair. “But there was no proof!” he said in some frustration. “And I knew you to be in danger too, particularly after those ruffians attacked you. Lady Anne had plainly used you in her schemings against Le Sac and I suspected she intended somehow to blame you for his death. After the boy’s inquest I knew you would be her next target.” He flushed. “At least I was able to prevent her killing you. I had no notion, however, of what I would discover in Caroline Square. Or, rather, out of it.”

We kept silence. Outside the window, the sunshine was flecked with smoke and fragments of soot, and a lady walked past with a kerchief held to her face.

“Patterson.” Heron’s voice was very still and level. “Are we mad or sane? Did we merely dream?”

I eased my arm within its sleeve, feeling the weight of the bandage upon it.

“No dream, sir. But a great mystery.”

“One I hope not to face again,” he said. “This stepping through she spoke of. Will it happen again, do you think?”

“I think –”

But what did I think? Looking back over the past few hours, it did all indeed begin to seem a dream. Yesterday I stood on the verge of a river in another world, staring at death. Today I sat comfortably in a coffee-house with an agreement to direct the Concerts at the next season, the promise of a higher wage for it and a volume of concerti praised by all knowledgeable lovers of music. (My music, attested to by my signature, yet not my own.) Today too I had the smiling half-promise of Esther Jerdoun, and the patronage of Claudius Heron.

“I think,” I said, “I shall keep clear of the house in Caroline Square.”