Airs and Graces (13 page)

‘You know Mrs Fletcher, do you not, Mr Patterson? I met her in the bookshop and said at once she must drop in on us any time she liked. Such a dreadful thing.’

‘Mrs Blackett has been most gracious,’ Mrs Fletcher said.

Mrs Blackett poured a dish of tea and leant across to bestow it on me. ‘I knew Sophia Gregson well.’

‘The mother,’ Esther murmured in my ear.

‘A
very
agreeable woman.’

There was a chorus of tales relating Mrs Gregson’s generous behaviour. She was apparently close to being a saint.

‘I didn’t know them at all,’ I said. ‘Of course Gregson himself had a very good reputation.’

Mrs Fletcher gave me a contemptuous look.

‘I met the youngest girl, Sarah,’ Esther murmured, ‘but not Alice.’

‘I was in the shop one day last week when she was very rude to her father.’ The lady who spoke was Mrs Cunningham, a thin spare woman with a down-turned mouth. ‘Demanded money to buy some bag or other. Said she’d seen it in the mantua makers and was determined to have it. She said if she was going to have to stay in such an out-of-the-way place, she’d at least have the necessities of life to comfort her.’

‘Out-of-the-way place!’ Mrs Blackett said horrified. ‘
Newcastle
?’ She looked extremely offended. ‘This is not Scotland! We have every new thing here as soon as one could wish it.’

‘I suppose,’ Esther said, ‘she must have been annoyed when her father refused her.’

‘No such thing,’ Mrs Cunningham said, the lines about her mouth deepening. ‘He gave her a sovereign straight away and sent her off again. Just to be rid of her, I daresay.’

‘But if he gave her the money she wanted,’ Esther said, ‘I can’t understand why she killed him.’

‘Children are ungrateful,’ Mrs Cunningham said with calm hard certainty. ‘There’s nothing more certain in this world.’

‘My sister was, certainly,’ Mrs Fletcher agreed. ‘But that doesn’t make her a murderer.’

There was a flutter of excitement amongst the ladies. ‘In any case—’ Mrs Fletcher spoke more loudly to be heard over the hubbub. ‘I thought we were agreed, Mr Patterson, that it was an accomplice who carried out the killings.’

There was a great deal of commotion; Mrs Fletcher overrode the ladies’ excited exclamations. ‘You may not be aware of it, but Mr Patterson was attacked yesterday in the street and the key to my father’s house taken. Then the house was ransacked. The villain was plainly looking for anything that might incriminate him.’

The spirit on the tea-kettle shrieked in an attempt to be heard as the ladies asked a dozen questions all at once. Was I all right? Had I been injured? (Oddly enough, it was the hard and unpleasant Mrs Cunningham who asked after my health.) Was anything taken from the house? Had the villain left any clue as to his identity?

‘But of course,’ Mrs Blackett said, ‘I
knew
the daughter couldn’t have done it. No daughter could.’ She trailed off into silence, and it was obvious she was thinking of her own two daughters.

‘No,’ Esther said, in an oddly curt tone. ‘I don’t believe any daughter could.’

‘Surely,’ Mrs Cunningham said, ‘it should be a simple matter to see whether anything was taken from the house? If such things as candlesticks and other valuables have disappeared, then the man was probably a common thief, seizing his opportunity to raid a house he knew would be empty. If they’re still there, however, then it would suggest this man was indeed the murderer, revisiting the scene of his dreadful crime.’

‘Mrs Fletcher would know if anything was stolen!’ Mrs Blackett cried.

The ladies took up the idea with enthusiasm. If they’d had their way, they’d have packed Mrs Fletcher and me off to the Gregson’s shop immediately and made a picnic out of it. I remembered I’d meant to contact Armstrong and had not yet done so and said, mendaciously, to put them off, that I thought it was snowing heavily. Some of the ladies immediately got up, frightened they wouldn’t be able to get home again. But a servant who came in response to calls for carriages said it wasn’t snowing and in fact the sun had come out and it was very pleasant. The ladies subsided again.

‘If the murderer was indeed an unknown man,’ I said, ‘that doesn’t completely exonerate Alice. She may have plotted with him to rob her own family, she may have let him into the house. If she was entirely innocent, surely she’d have come forward by now.’

‘I believe my sister is innocent of
any
wrongdoing,’ Mrs Fletcher said directly. ‘I think she’s guilty of no more than being fleet-footed enough to escape. Let us consider another possibility.’

The ladies were breathlessly attentive. Esther cast me an uneasy glance.

‘The apprentice and the key,’ Mrs Fletcher said. ‘In fact, the apprentice
is
the key. We all know what such youths are like.’ A chorus of agreement; I was glad Fowler wasn’t here to hear the contempt in their voices. ‘This unknown man was intent on robbing the shop and he suborned the apprentice, persuading the boy to let him into the house. I’m told the key was in the lock inside the house, which is where it would be if the boy let him in. The villain found money but the apprentice was afraid he’d take it all and leave none for him. They argued, and the villain stabbed the boy. Meanwhile, the noise of their argument woke everyone else  . . .’

‘And he killed them all!’ Mrs Blackett cried, in a kind of triumph.

‘They tried to prevent his escape!’ the sister’s spirit squeaked. The ladies broke out in eager embroidery of the facts; in the hubbub, my insistence that the Gregsons were all asleep when they were killed, went unheard.

I glanced at Esther; she was looking very tired. I stood up. ‘I believe we must go.’

The ladies protested, but I insisted and Esther rose with a grateful sigh that fortunately went as unheard as my previous protests. But, as we were on the verge of leaving the room, Mrs Fletcher said, ‘I have some time spare tonight, Mr Patterson. I would be happy to look over the house with you.’

With the ladies all eagerly supporting the idea, I thought it politic to acquiesce. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Tonight.’ And we agreed a time.

In the hall, the servant gave us our outdoor clothes and we paused on the doorstep. The sun had indeed come out, sparkling off the drifts of snow.

‘I’ll call for a chair to carry you home,’ I said, looking at Esther’s pale face.

She shook her head. ‘I need some air, Charles. That room was stuffy.’

I wished I thought that was all it was. ‘Let me call the apothecary. Or Gale.’

‘I do not need a surgeon!’ she snapped. ‘Or an apothecary!’ She stopped, bit her lip, then laid a hand on my arm. ‘Forgive me, Charles. I am merely feeling low. I loathe this dreadful weather.’

She’d seemed to delight in it on Saturday night. ‘You’re too tired to walk.’

She drew her cloak up over her head. ‘I will be all right, Charles, I promise you. I will walk up Westgate so that if I feel tired I can call in on Mr Demsey for a rest.’

I had to let her go – it was plain she’d settle for nothing less. But I was worried as I watched her walk away. She’d seemed all right when I arrived in the drawing room. Something had distressed her, something that had been said – but I couldn’t for the life of me think what.

Sixteen

The public buildings, I must say, are generally very attractive, but they have their slums, just as we do.

[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

Froidevaux, 20 January 1737]

I found a spirit to take a request to Armstrong and was about to walk off to my next lesson when it called me back hurriedly. The spirit had plainly been a young man in life, rough but good-natured. ‘Message for you from Mr McLintoch. Could he have the honour of your company on the bridge, he says.’ The spirit positively twinkled. ‘Polite man, Mr McLintoch. Always mindful of his manners!’ And with a flourish, it shot off.

I altered direction and was with McLintoch on the bridge in five minutes. He was wearing an ancient greatcoat that looked held together with goodwill, and saluted me as if I was a naval commander. ‘Mr Patterson, sir!’

‘The spirits have disembodied?’

‘No, sir.’ He must have seen my disappointment; he made an obvious attempt to try and cheer me up. ‘We’ve found where the girl hid, when she fled from the house.’ He gestured along the Key. ‘Out to the west. Did you want to look, sir?’

Even this was a disappointment, I thought wryly: they’d found the place but not the girl herself.

I fell into step beside him as he led the way along the riverside, following the route I’d taken the night of the murders in pursuit of the girl. We passed the snowy ruins of the town wall and came to the alley where the woman’s spirit had brought me to a halt with her cries of
rape
. There was no spirit in evidence this time. McLintoch led me into the alley, bore left then right. We walked into a court, narrow and evil-smelling, with undisturbed snow on the cobbles. Three houses faced on to the court and all looked derelict – windows broken or boarded-up, doors hanging askew on twisted hinges.

‘No one’s lived here since we cleared out a nest of thieves last year,’ McLintoch said. ‘We’ve a spirit who keeps an eye on it for us.’ He raised his voice. ‘I wants a word with you, young lady!’

There was a pause, then a spirit slid down to a window pane at eye level.

‘Now, young lady,’ McLintoch said, winking at me. ‘Tell the gentleman here what happened last Saturday night.’

‘Don’t know why I should,’ the spirit said sullenly. I stared at the dull gleam; it was the spirit I’d spoken to on the night of the murders.

‘We’re trying to find who killed Mr Gregson and his family,’ McLintoch said. ‘That’s a good thing, don’t you think?’

Apparently the spirit didn’t agree. It was silent.

‘You see, Mr Patterson,’ McLintoch said, conversationally. ‘We have a network of spirits throughout the town. Good law-abiding folks who let us know if any malefactors are working their wicked ways. Couldn’t manage without them.’

This blatant flattery had its effect; the spirit said, a trifle coyly, ‘If
you
would like it, Mr McLintoch, I dare say I don’t mind saying something.’

‘The night the Gregsons died,’ he said. ‘Tell us what happened.’

‘Came running in here like the devil was after her, she did,’ the spirit said. ‘Hair about her shoulders and wearing only her nightgown under her shawl!’

‘Young female, was it?’ McLintoch said. ‘Pretty?’

The spirit sniffed. ‘If you like them fair.’

‘Anyone with her?’

‘No, Mr McLintoch.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She found herself a corner and stayed there the rest of the night.’

‘When did she leave?’ I asked.

‘Didn’t see,’ the spirit snapped.

‘Sunday, was it?’ McLintoch said.

‘Might have been.’

‘What time Sunday?’

‘Didn’t see.’

I glanced at McLintoch but he apparently thought that was as far as he could persuade the spirit to go. ‘Let’s have a look at the place then,’ he said.

The spirit glided off its windowpane, and made its way towards the end house, disappearing through a gap in the broken-down door. McLintoch had come prepared; he dragged a couple of candle stubs and a tinder box out of his pocket.

I held the stubs while he lit them, wondering why the spirit was lying. I’d seen the girl when she fled the house and she’d been wearing not a shawl but a cloak. Nor had she been wearing a nightgown. Nightgowns are flimsy and white in colour; the girl had been wearing something dark and substantial. And, now I came to consider, her hair had been up, neatly arranged. More evidence against her – a woman fleeing in panic doesn’t have time to put her hair up.

I must have been very close to catching the girl that night and the spirit’s intervention looked more suspicious with every moment.

We came into a damp, dank, stinking darkness. I paused to let my eyes adjust to the gloom. The room was bare except for dirt and dust, and a pile of rags in the corner furthest from the window. A stick was propped against the wall; I used it to prod the rags. A stench of decay rose.

‘She slept here?’

The spirit didn’t answer. McLintoch asked the question again.

‘Yes, sir,’ the spirit agreed.

‘Did the girl bring anything with her? A box or bag or blanket?’

McLintoch dutifully repeated the question.

‘Nothing at all, Mr McLintoch.’

‘Did she say why she was here?’

With a little encouragement from McLintoch, the spirit said she’d thought it an elopement.

‘But you must have heard about the murders,’ I said, trying not to sound confrontational. ‘I know how quick and clever you spirits are when it comes to passing messages.’

‘I was otherwise occupied,’ she said with great dignity, and apparently could not resist adding, ‘There are always some
gentlemen
who like to pester spirits. You’d think they’d have some respect for the dead, but no, they come blundering in and bother good, god-fearing folks  . . .’

‘Now don’t you get yourself in a fash,’ McLintoch said soothingly.

‘I don’t shelter murderers,’ the spirit said indignantly. ‘I don’t have nothing to do with people of that sort. I always was on the right side of the law.
You
know that, Mr McLintoch.’

McLintoch gave me a speaking look.

‘I never knew nothing about the girl being the one from the bridge until the Watch came and told me.’

I couldn’t understand why she thought I’d believe this. Every spirit in town would have had the news of the murders within minutes of the child screaming.

‘You’ve not found anyone else who saw her here?’ I asked McLintoch.

He shook his head.

‘And there’s no word of her after she left here?’

‘Nay. Nothing.’

McLintoch went through a great charade of wishing the spirit well, and flattering her, leaving her giggling. We threaded our way through the narrow alleys; as we came out on to the Key again, McLintoch said, ‘I’ve been hearing of a fellow from Kent who might have come north. Robs big houses. He woos the maids and gets them to let him in. After he’s had his way with them, he robs the house and is off, leaving them to face the music next morning.’