Airs and Graces (23 page)

I escaped at last and made my way home, anxious to have a bite to eat and some of Esther’s soothing presence before hurrying on to my next lesson. Esther was at the harpsichord in the music room again, going over a phrase she always plays wrongly. The winter afternoon was so gloomy she’d lit a branch of candles; I stood for a moment in the doorway, admiring her slender figure in the pale gown, the graceful curves of arms and neck. Looking at the pale eyelashes lying on her cheeks as she glanced down at the keys of the harpsichord, the way she pursed her lips in concentration  . . .

She said irritably, ‘Yes, I know it is bad, Charles. There is no need to grin like that!’

‘I wasn’t grinning at your playing, but at you.’ I kissed those lips which is exactly what I’d been thinking of. If I hadn’t had to go out again, I would have lingered a lot longer on that kiss. I leant on the harpsichord. ‘You’re trying to put too many ornaments in the piece, too many grace notes.’

‘Too many?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, Charles, the length of time I have practised those trills and now you tell me they are unnecessary!’

‘You’re distracting attention from the melody. It’s the air itself that’s important – the graces are merely an additional pleasure.’

She sighed. ‘I would not mind so much if it was not such a dull piece of music.’ She took my hand lovingly. ‘Write me something of your own, Charles.’

‘Mr Scarlatti,’ I said severely, sitting down beside her on the harpsichord stool and putting an arm round her waist, ‘is considered the best composer of harpsichord music now living. And
I
am decidedly not a great composer.’

‘But your music is fun to play,’ she protested. ‘Always full of delightfully unexpected Scotch tunes. Surely music should be entertaining?’

‘Don’t start on that topic again!’ Last time we had dinner with Claudius Heron, we spent three hours discussing whether music should be mere entertainment, whether it had an educational purpose or, as Heron insisted, a moral imperative. It had been a stimulating discussion, but at one point Heron had become so heated, I thought we’d come to blows. Which reminded me  . . .

‘I forgot to ask Heron to dinner,’ I confessed. She sighed. I protested and told her the tale of my encounter with the gentleman.

‘It is not like him to be so preoccupied with trifles,’ she said, frowning.

I laughed. ‘He’d be horrified to hear you call them that!’

She made a dismissive gesture and the lace on her sleeve tickled my hand. ‘There’s nothing important about ancient coins or half-broken statuettes with neither grace nor beauty, whose only virtue is that they are old.’

I’d have loved to see Heron’s reaction to such heresy. I kissed her again. She emerged a little ruffled. ‘I take it you have been teaching all morning. Have you heard what is going on at the shop?’

‘Gregson’s not causing trouble again?’

‘You have to remember I have not ventured out of the house yet,’ she said, ‘and the tales have been brought to me by George, which means they will have been slightly embellished—’

‘Only slightly?’

She gave me a mischievous grin. ‘Apparently Mr Bell the vicar went down to talk to Gregson and the spirit threw the tiles off the roof at him.’ She leant close to my ear and whispered, ‘I am afraid all this is setting George a very bad example – he has been trying to lift the candlesticks on the mantelpiece!’

The prospect of George’s spirit tossing household furniture around appalled me. ‘He didn’t succeed?’

‘Thankfully, no. Charles—’

I heard a certain note in her voice and knew we were coming to what she really wanted to say. She said carefully, ‘You surely do not need to go back to that house?’

I remembered my appointment with Fowler and winced.

‘Charles!’ She drew back, exasperated.

‘I want to talk to the apprentice,’ I said apologetically. ‘But there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t intend to disturb Gregson’s spirit.’

‘I know you don’t
intend
to.’

She spoke lightly enough but I saw real anxiety in her eyes. That decided me. This affair was going on much too long; it was time I put an end to it, before anyone else got hurt. ‘George!’ I called, and the spirit slid between the door and the jamb. ‘I need you to take some messages. I’m cancelling all my lessons this afternoon.’

Whoever had murdered the Gregsons, I was going to catch them. And very soon.

Twenty-Eight

Have I already said? I adore the women!

[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

Froidevaux, 22 January 1737]

My first visit was to Balfour. The servants told me he was in his room, and gave me the sort of useless instructions –
up the stairs, turn left and it’s straight in front of you
– that people who are used to a house think are sufficient for strangers to find their way. I insisted on one of the maids taking me up and paid her a penny for doing so. Following her through the twists and turns and odd corners, I thought wryly that the thief had been lucky to find his way. Which, of course, suggested he was familiar with the inn.

‘I suppose you’re happy working here?’ I asked.

The maid dimpled at me. ‘Mustn’t complain, sir!’

‘No awkward souls amongst the other servants?’

‘Not here!’ she said, shocked. ‘It’s a good place, this.’

‘I can tell you know your business,’ I said admiringly. ‘Have you worked here long?’

‘Five years last Monday,’ she said promptly.

‘You’ll know everyone here then, I daresay. You wouldn’t have noticed any strangers hanging around?’

‘Look,’ she said, stopping dead in the middle of a passageway. ‘If you’re going to suggest I robbed the gent, then just say it! And I’ll tell you what I told the gent himself. I wouldn’t risk my job for his silly little trinkets, and neither would anyone else here!’

And she flounced off, leaving me stranded which, I supposed, was what I deserved.

I looked for Balfour’s room by scratching on every door I thought might be his, disturbing in the process a middle-aged couple reading their Bible aloud, and a whore who turned on me with a winning look until she saw I wasn’t the person she was expecting. ‘And tell him to hurry up!’ she yelled after me.

I eventually scratched on the right door. Balfour called entry and I found him sitting over the plans for the Assembly Rooms, which lay unrolled on the table with tankards and dirty plates weighing down the corners; he’d apparently been scrawling notes for changes on a scrap of paper. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept, but was cheerful.

He tossed down his pen. ‘Patterson!’ he said with open-faced pleasure. ‘I’m glad to see you! Or anyone,’ he added, which was less than complimentary. ‘I’m beyond caring about all these alterations!’

‘You look as if you’ve been up half the night with them.’

‘Working till the small hours.’ He pushed the scrap of paper on to the plans, released the weights and let the plans roll up. ‘And nothing to show for it but a headache and sore eyes.’ He leapt up. ‘Come for a bite to eat.’

‘I’ve just eaten. To be honest, I wanted to ask about that burglary you had.’

‘Oh, that’s not worth spending time on! Nothing but a minor irritation.’ He tucked his arm through mine and turned me to the door. ‘At the very least, have a drink with me and tell me what’s been going on. They’re saying the spirit tried to kill the vicar!’

He led the way through the maze of corridors as I detailed what I knew of the vicar’s adventures.

‘Gregson’s behaving abominably,’ Balfour said, laughing. ‘But then
I’d
be furious if my daughter had killed me and stolen all my wealth.’ He sobered. ‘I don’t mean to treat the business lightly. Do you still have no idea where Alice Gregson is?’

‘I was wondering,’ I said, determined to get out the question I’d come to ask, ‘whether you saw anyone suspicious hanging around the George in the day or so before you were burgled.’

We’d come to the head of the stairs down to the yard; Balfour stared at me in some perplexity. ‘Why?’

‘I think your burglary may be connected to the murders.’

‘But how?’

Reluctantly, I explained. ‘It’s possible someone is collecting antiquities and it was the coin he really wanted from you.’

Balfour silently assimilated this.

‘Who knew you had the coin?’ I said. ‘Did anyone see you take it from the ruins?’

He shook his head.

‘And you put it on the mantelpiece?’

‘The servants knew it was there,’ he said. ‘It must have been one of them.’

‘Not necessarily.
Did
you see anyone acting suspiciously?’

‘Well  . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Yes. And no. For heaven’s sake, there are always odd people around inns! You never know whether they should be there or not. Most of them are drunk.’

I described Kane’s exciseman to him. ‘Did you see anyone of that description?’

He shook his head dubiously. ‘Is he significant?’

‘He’s committed some burglaries in Kent. A thief-taker’s looking for him.’

He looked shocked. ‘Do you mean— Did he kill in Kent too?’

‘Apparently.’

For a moment he plainly didn’t know what to say. He paced up and down, his face bright red, his fists clenched. ‘Everything’s wrong!’ he burst out. ‘The whole world! Just like my father! Everyone at each other’s throats  . . .’

‘Not at all  . . .’

But he was clattering down the stairs ahead of me; I heard an ostler call to him to take care on the slippery cobbles. By the time I reached the yard, he was out of sight.

I dawdled around the ostlers, and the stable boy, and the maids, asking if they’d seen anyone suspicious. As far as the ostler was concerned, anyone who wasn’t a horse was suspicious; to the stable boy, all
women
were suspicious – and he loved the idea of finding out more. The maids were mostly too busy to spare me much time; I suspected they’d been warned off by the one who’d escorted me upstairs.

I abandoned Balfour’s burglar and tackled Hugh’s. There was plainly no prospect of getting any more useful information out of the widow, but I wandered into the clockmakers on the ground floor of the building and found two talkative apprentices. One lived off the premises, but the other slept in the shop and had heard Hugh’s burglar leaving. He’d even peered out through the shutters to see who it was. But there wasn’t a lantern burning nearby – all he’d seen was a man wearing a greatcoat. Tallish, thinnish and darkish, he said. That description didn’t sound like Kane’s exciseman.

I went back to the inn next to the mercer’s house and found the landlord enjoying new prosperity, serving the workmen who were digging up every part of the mercer’s shopsite with enormous enthusiasm. They were apparently getting paid by the day and were determined to make the job last as long as possible.

The landlord had seen no one hanging around but one of the workman had. ‘Very nice she was too,’ he said grinning. ‘Tall lady, in a cloak and hood. Stood watching for an age. I thought she might like to come back home with me but she declined.’ He said the last word with an elaborately cultured accent, in gentle mockery.

‘Fair-haired?’ I asked.

‘Dark,’ he said regretfully. ‘But a handsome figure for all that.’

A dark-haired woman in a hood and cloak. There was something I’d heard, or seen, but I couldn’t quite remember what. Half-distracted by the fugitive memory, I asked, ‘Did she say anything?’

‘
Have you found anything
?’ He mimicked her voice again, giving his fellow workmen the chance for a hearty laugh.

‘And you said?’

‘I said, ‘
It’s more than my job’s worth to tell you what we’ve found in here
.’

‘Buried treasure,’ someone called from the back of the crowd of workmen.

‘Spanish doubloons!’

‘Nay,’ said the workman. ‘It were the Holy Grail!’

I walked to the end of the street along the alley behind the inn and back along to the other side of the site, still mulling over that annoying half-memory. Here the snow still lay more thickly, almost undisturbed. Beyond the site, I found the place where Alice Gregson had tempted me into the other world and stood contemplating the snow. Why should she have betrayed her ability to
step through
? It seemed ridiculously foolish.

Only one explanation occurred to me: it had been a test to see if I had that ability too, and to what extent.

Behind me, the workmen laughed and joked over their digging. How could Alice have known there was even a possibility I could
step through
?

Now I remembered what had been eluding me! Sunday. In Gregson’s shop with Balfour, looking for a hint as to why Alice Gregson should have killed her entire family. I’d seen someone on the bridge while I was trying to fix the broken shutter, and found myself briefly in that other world, facing a cloaked and hooded woman who’d hurried away from me.
A dark-haired woman
. Like the woman the workman had seen.

She’d
known I could step through. Had she passed that information on to Alice?

I’d suspected Alice had an accomplice, but had been looking for a man. What if it had been a woman?

Twenty-Nine

They love nothing better than love, which is a delight for someone of my tastes.

[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

Froidevaux, 22 January 1737]

And as if I’d conjured her up out of the air, Alice Gregson was watching me. She leant against the wall of the alley, her cloak pulled tight against the cold; I glimpsed demure white petticoats beneath. She was toying with improbably golden curls hung with ribbons, and gave me a coy look. ‘Mr Patterson? I’m charmed to meet you again, sir.’ She bobbed a little curtsey, mockingly. ‘I’ve been watching and thought you might appreciate a little conversation.’

‘And in our own world too,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you afraid of being captured?’

She grinned. ‘There’s no holding me, Mr Patterson.’ She gave me a flirtatious look. ‘If I was captured, I could simply walk out of my prison cell into that other world.’

That was, I had to admit, a problem.

‘You gave me a test to see whether I could step through too,’ I said. ‘The first time we met, you tempted me to follow you into that other world.’