Airs and Graces (18 page)

He shook his head. ‘Not that I heard.’

I digested this, conscious of a little disappointment. However Gregson had obtained the coins, he must have had some reason for wanting them; financial gain – selling the coins to some collector – was the most obvious. As an upholsterer, he’d have known what value some people place on genuine antiquities; he’d certainly have known, or been able to discover, those gentlemen who were interested in such things and had money enough to acquire them. He might, of course, have decided to allow some time to elapse before selling, to make sure the coins weren’t connected with the mercer’s shop.

Fowler signalled for more beer; the girl came with a seductive flounce in her step. She didn’t give me a second glance, which was unflattering.

‘You should tell Heron to be careful,’ I said, when she was gone. ‘It looks very much as if someone’s stealing all the antiquities he can find; he – or she – may may attempt to get hold of Heron’s coins.’

Fowler laughed. ‘Steal from Heron? Have you any idea how locked up tight that house is?’

‘
I
realize that. A thief may not.’

‘You reckon this thief might be the girl?’

‘Or her lover.’

‘Maybe we ought to encourage them to try,’ Fowler said, only half-joking. ‘We could lay a trap.’

I’ve set the odd trap in my time. Too much can go wrong. ‘There’s one other thing.’

‘There always is with you,’ Fowler said. He swore at a man who knocked against him as he barged past.

‘There’s a thief-taker in town, looking for a man who’s robbed houses in Kent.’ I hesitated, reluctant to give Kane’s robber more importance than he warranted. ‘There’s a possibility – no more than that – that the Kent fellow could be Alice’s lover. He poses as an exciseman, apparently.’ I gave him Kane’s description of the man: burly, middle-aged, strong and charming.

Fowler shrugged. ‘Sounds like a dozen men.’

‘He’ll be new to town and have a Kentish accent. You’re a southerner yourself, you’ll recognize that kind of accent faster than most. But don’t go near him if you spot him. He’s apparently killed twice already – he could be dangerous.’

‘And you think
I’m
not, do you?’ Fowler said with soft mockery. He contemplated me for a long moment. ‘Does this really have something to do with the killings or are you just trying to give me something to do, to distract me from what happened to Ned?’

‘Both,’ I said.

He laughed sourly.

Outside it was snowing heavily again, softly, silently. Merchants trudged, heads down, along the Key; whores huddled in doorways. Ice edged the keels of the boats; across the river, the trees on Gateshead bank were dark behind a curtain of white.

I hurried for the protection of the coffee-house, to wash away the taste of the Old Man’s thin beer. The cobbles were slippery; the previous snow, worn to slush, had frozen during the night and the fresh snow, falling on top, hid the icy patches. I was watching my feet when I heard my name and glanced up to see Joseph Kane hailing me. He broke away from a group of sailors and strode across, slipping and sliding.

‘Any luck?’ I asked.

He was exuberant, bullish. ‘Maybe, maybe! A couple of fellows who might be my man. One made off yesterday to Shields for a boat.’

‘He won’t have got far.’

‘Nonsense!’ His lip curled; it was clearly my day for being sneered at. ‘It was a fine sunny day yesterday! I’m off following him. If you get any news—’ his expression said he thought my chances of finding anything were pretty small— ‘leave a message at the Fleece.’

I watched him stride away, his dignity marred by a slip on the cobbles. Perhaps someone who knew the area might have got through to the coast yesterday – though I doubted it – but only a fool would try it today in the thickening snow.

Nellie’s coffee house was surprisingly quiet, perhaps the weather was keeping everyone at home. But sitting in the far corner, scribbling away on a scrap of paper, was Hugh.

He glanced up as I settled into the chair opposite him. ‘I can’t get this damn advertisement right. Here, you have a look.’

He pushed the paper at me; I read:

NEWCASTLE
:
JANUARY 21st 1737

Mr HUGH DEMSEY, Dancing-master, begs the honour of informing the Ladies and Gentlemen of this Town, as well as the Public, that his Ball, originally intended to be held on the 29th Inst., is now postponed until—

I glanced up at him. ‘I don’t see a problem. This seems very wise – the weather’s much too bad to risk any public entertainments.’

‘It’s not the postponement that’s the problem,’ Hugh said irritably. ‘It’s the wording. You know how touchy the ladies and gentlemen are. I’ve got to make it clear I’m putting this off for
their
convenience, not mine.’

I’d ordered coffee and a hot pie on my way in; the serving girl laid them in front of me and I tucked in with relish. My toes were warming up again.

Hugh threw down his pen, and swore as ink splashed over his draft. ‘All this running around about the Rooms is tiring me out. Balfour is meeting with the Directors right now. The meeting started late because Heron didn’t turn up on time, and when he
did
turn up, he just wanted to interrogate me on how the ring was stolen! Thought he’d never stop. The other directors were not best pleased – started to get very fractious. So I pleaded other business and made a quick escape.’

‘And left poor Balfour to deal with it?’

Hugh was unrepentant. ‘He’s in a good mood today – very chirpy. I thought he was a nice quiet, restrained fellow, Charles, but let me tell you, now he’s got over his sea-sickness, he’s working his way through every whore in town!’

I cradled the hot coffee dish in my hands. ‘Damn it, I knew I’d forgotten something. McLintoch said to tell you they’ve found your buttons.’

Hugh sat bolt upright. ‘They’ve caught the thief ?’

‘Not exactly. He tossed the buttons off the Low Bridge into the Lort Burn.’

Hugh’s mouth dropped open. I resigned myself to an indignant tirade and sat through it patiently. Or more or less patiently, until he started repeating himself.

‘Hugh,’ I said, businesslike. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘You
are
talking to me,’ he said irritably. ‘My buttons! Tossed away as if they didn’t matter!’

‘That,’ I said, ‘is proof our thief was after the antiquities. Hugh – I think I know how the murders were done.’

Twenty-Two

The English gentleman has as many
affairs d’amour
as you do, my friend – he merely does not brag about it as much.

[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

Froidevaux, 21 January 1737]

I drew circles in the condensation on the table. ‘Alice Gregson has been brought up in London and doesn’t want to come back to the “barbaric” north. She especially doesn’t want to leave her lover, whom we have to presume no one knows about.’

Hugh’s brows drew together in disapproval. ‘I still don’t entirely believe in the existence of this unknown man.’

‘Of course he exists! He’s robbed three of us now and I’ve seen a letter from him. And your widow saw him run from your rooms.
And
neighbours say Alice was constantly looking out for someone.’ I went back to my theory. ‘Newcastle is conveniently close to Scotland, ideal if you’re planning to run away and be married. They make their plans. Alice will come back home and search her father’s house – he’s wealthy so they think there’s bound to be some money about. Even a small amount might be sufficient to enable them to run off. After they’ve eloped, they reckon the family will have to be reconciled to them, to save Alice’s good name. And Sarah’s name too – her rich merchant won’t want a girl from a disgraced family.’

Hugh looked begrudging. ‘Go on.’

‘Alice comes home, searches the house and finds two boxes of coins in the cellar.’

I explained about the coins, and the mercer, and my suspicions about Samuel Gregson; Hugh whistled. An elderly gentleman gave him a disapproving look from behind his paper.

‘Alice took at least one of those boxes of coins, probably both. At some point she took a single specimen from the old coins, possibly to show her lover – she dropped it in the snow after the murders and I picked it up.’

I sipped at the coffee, to give myself a little time to sort out details.

‘Alice then knotted a rope made of sheets and hid it. She may have done this on Friday afternoon. She may have met her lover then too – she absented herself from the shop and no one knew where she went. On the night of the murders, she crept downstairs to meet her lover, opening the front door with the key which was easily accessible to anyone in the house. She was going to walk out of there with him and head for Scotland. Only something happened.’

‘Wait!’ Hugh held up a hand. ‘If they were going to walk out the front door, why the rope?’

‘To make people
think
she’d escaped that way.’

He wrinkled up his nose. ‘Doesn’t sound convincing to me.’

‘Maybe it was a contingency measure, an alternative means of escape if they were caught.’ He made a sceptical face; I doggedly went on. ‘There was an argument. Alice fled upstairs and  . . .’

I ground to a halt. Hugh was shaking his head.

‘Yes, I know,’ I said wearily. ‘If there’d been an argument, the family would have woken up.’

‘And,’ Hugh pointed out. ‘If they’d argued in the shop, the apprentice would have been the first to wake and therefore the first to die. But the murder weapon was with his body, so he was presumably the
last
to die. Unless there were
two
murder weapons.’

I grimaced. ‘I don’t need more complications, Hugh!’

He had a bright gleam in his eye. ‘I know what happened! She double-crossed him in some way, he chased her upstairs. She escaped down the rope and he killed the rest of them in a raging fury  . . .’

‘The timing won’t work,’ I said, gloomily. ‘We heard the child screaming very shortly after Alice had climbed off the end of the rope. There wouldn’t have been time for the accomplice to kill everyone before she raised the alarm. And if I’d been him, I’d have raced downstairs and tried to cut Alice off as she came ashore. There was simply no need for the killings.’

We contemplated the problem in silence. The gentleman with the paper expounded loudly, and at length, on the iniquities of the government.

‘I’d just have cut her rope,’ Hugh said. ‘Let her get out of that!’

‘Some of it’s right,’ I said obstinately. ‘I know the events leading up to the murders – I’m sure of that. But what exactly happened on the night  . . .’

‘What I don’t understand,’ Hugh mused, ‘is where she’s hiding now. If there
is
an accomplice, well, by the sound of it, he’s a rough fellow and the town’s full of rough fellows. No one would notice one extra. But a gently reared girl who’s a stranger here – where the devil could
she
hide?’

I sighed, and told him about my encounter with Alice in the other world. He scowled; he loathes the very idea of the other world. His one experience of it was not happy. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I said. ‘I didn’t invite this ability to
step through
– it just happened.’

‘You’re going to get yourself in serious trouble one day, Charles,’ he said, and refused to talk about it any further.

I left him rewording his advertisement yet again, and went to find Abraham McLintoch in his cosy room behind the Printing Office. In the Watch office, two men were enjoying the huge fire, smoking long pipes with the contented air of men who intend to spend the rest of the day there. A jug of ale stood on McLintoch’s table, beside a platter that held a few crumbs. He was writing an advertisement too, though both he and Hugh were far too late for this week’s
Courant
.

‘Good day, Mr Patterson, sir.’ The smoke got in the back of my throat; McLintoch paused to let me cough. ‘I was just writing a notice for the paper. Mr Philips sent to tell me to put one in.’ He handed me a sheet of paper, rather grimy. ‘Would you do me the honour, sir, of giving me your opinion on the wording.’

The note was written in large unformed childish letters, but impeccably spelt and punctuated.

Wanted [it read]. Alice Gregson, 23 years old, five feet four inches high, pale Complexion, fair Hair, blue Eyes, small Hands and Feet. Speaks in a London Accent. Last seen wearing a white Dress with blue Flowers, a flowered Shawl and white Slippers. Wanted for the Murder of Joseph Gregson, Alice Gregson his Wife, Sarah Gregson their Daughter and Edward Hills, Apprentice, on
Saturday 16 January 1737 at their Shop on the Tyne Bridge. Anyone having Information on the Whereabouts of the said Alice Gregson should deliver it to Abraham McLintoch at the Watch office, or at the House of Charles Patterson, Esq. A Reward of one Guinea will be paid if the Suspect is apprehended. N.B. No more will be offered at any time.

‘Well?’ McLintoch asked anxiously.

Oddly, the thing that most impressed itself on me was that I’d never seen my name with ‘Esq’ after it before; it made me feel quite a different person. I stifled another cough. ‘Where did you get the description of her?’

‘Mr Fleming, the stationer.’

‘Then it will be accurate,’ I said. ‘I presume that’s what she was wearing when he last saw her?’ McLintoch nodded. ‘A pity I didn’t see her more clearly when she fled. She was certainly wearing something dark then.’

McLintoch handed the notice to one of the other watchmen. ‘Here, Sam – take this to the Printing Office.’

The watchman departed, grumbling at having to leave the fire. ‘Do you think it will do any good?’ I asked.

McLintoch picked up his pipe again. ‘It does, sometimes. But it depends.’

‘On?’

He lit the pipe. Damp logs on the fire spat and crackled. ‘On whether it’ll pay her associates better to hide her or betray her.’

‘A guinea’s a lot of money.’

‘It is to a working man,’ he agreed.

I interpreted that easily enough. ‘You think she’s being sheltered by someone more respectable?’

‘Stands to reason,’ he said. ‘This is nothing personal, sir, you understand, but no working man’s going to shelter a girl like that. He’d want her to work for her living. He’d pimp her, use her to attract men and then help to rob them, mebbe. But there’re plenty of girls he could use that way – why should he take the risk on a girl the whole town’s looking for? He wouldn’t do it. Any working man would have turned her in days ago. It would get him some credit with the Watch and the constable – always useful.’