Airs and Graces (31 page)

She held the door open. Heron gestured me in front of him, came behind, hand on sword hilt. It was a large room, comfortably, if shabbily, furnished for sitting. Mrs Fletcher – Alice – strolled to the table in the middle of the room, where a book lay open, beside the remains of her supper of bread and cheese on a plate. I glimpsed an unmade bed through a half-open door; she must have been sleeping when the spirit’s warning came.

‘And when I’ve told you everything,’ she mused, toying with the plate. ‘What then? Will you let me go?’

I hesitated.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I thought not.’

She swung round. I caught a glint of metal in the candlelight. Heron shouted; his sword sang out of its scabbard. But it was too late – Alice had an arm round my neck and a knife at my throat.

I choked, more from fear than from the pressure of the cold metal against my skin. Alice was a tall woman, and her arm round my neck dragged me back, and down. Her voice was close to my ear.

‘Put the sword down! Now! Or he dies.’

From my uncomfortable position, I could just see Heron, in the doorway, sword at the ready. He stood for a long, frightening moment, before lowering the sword point to the floor. Without taking his eyes off us, he closed the door behind him. He sounded almost conversational. ‘If you hurt him,
you
will die.’

‘We’ll see,’ Alice said grimly.

I could hardly talk for the pressure on my throat. ‘While – while we’re here, why not tell us—’

‘Only if you guarantee our freedom.’

‘You have that guarantee already,’ Heron said. ‘Even if we put you both in prison, you can easily escape to that other world.’

She nodded. The knife twitched unpleasantly at my throat; my back and knees ached from bending over backwards. My awkward position sent a stab of pain through my bruised shoulder.

‘We want freedom to come and go as we please, in both worlds.’ Mrs Fletcher – Alice – laughed softly. ‘Why should we suffer for what Balfour did? That patronizing, condescending idiot!
So
careful not to tax puny female brains! And Alice liked him!’

The old doubts resurfaced. Had Balfour been telling the truth? Or was he the killer after all?

I gestured feebly. ‘I can’t breathe  . . .’

She shook her head. ‘You don’t fool me that way. You talk like this or not at all.’

Struggling for breath, trying to crane back away from that knife blade, I managed, ‘If you’re innocent of the killings, why didn’t you just tell me about Balfour, and what happened that night? Instead of all this complicated plotting and planning?’

‘Would you have believed us?’ she said. I had to admit I probably would not. ‘Besides, you’re a dangerous man, Mr Patterson. You can step through between worlds. We didn’t want to be looking over our shoulders the whole time, wondering if we’d see you in hot pursuit. We had to make sure you were so convinced of Balfour’s guilt you didn’t even attempt to look for us – which meant allowing you to come to your own conclusions.’

‘So you posed as your sister from Bristol.’ Heron was calm again, cool. I knew that look – he was waiting his opportunity. He’d sheathed his sword but still had his hand on its hilt.

‘Dear Sophia.’ Mrs Fletcher nodded. ‘I’ve derived a great deal of satisfaction from offending people in her name – we’ve never got on. Of course, I mean in my own world.’

‘Nor with the rest of your family, I suppose,’ I said.

‘My father was a brute,’ she said roughly. ‘The only decent thing he ever did was die and leave me an allowance. A paltry allowance, it has to be said, but enough to guarantee genteel independence.’

‘So robbing another Samuel Gregson in this world was an attractive prospect.’

Heron was very still, but I’ve seen him leap into action in the fraction of a moment. I fixed my eye on him, ready to react, to play my part if he decided to act.

‘Very attractive,’ she said. ‘But we’re not fools, Mr Patterson – neither of us wants to hang.’

She hadn’t denied the charge, I noted. ‘I don’t believe Balfour killed them,’ I said. ‘He can’t stand the sight of blood. His father was killed in front of him and he has never forgotten it.’

‘He killed in Kent,’ she pointed out.

‘He says the deaths were accidental.’

She said nothing. There was no sense in holding back now; I said. ‘
You
killed the Gregsons. You or the other Alice. Which one?’

A long, long silence. I tried to ease my aching back but she tightened her grip. Choking, I put up my hands to my throat but she kicked at my ankle. I nearly went down. The knife point pricked my throat and I felt the warm trickle of blood.

Heron never moved.

‘The more you know, the less likely you’ll get out of here alive,’ Mrs Fletcher said softly. ‘Think twice, Mr Patterson – do you really want to know the truth?’

She’d already told me too much to let me go. I was staking my life on Heron. I was frightened, but knew how good a swordsman he was, and how unflinching. ‘Yes, I want to know. Tell me.’

‘Really, Mr Patterson,’ she said, and laughed. ‘You’ve no concern for your own safety at all, have you?’

She pressed the knife in harder. Heron started forward but she shouted at him and he jerked to a halt. Hot blood ran down on to my coat.

Oddly, there was no pain. ‘What exactly happened?’ I felt her warm breath on my cheek, heard it quicken and catch. Then an infinitesimal relaxation of her arm.

‘Why not?’ she said, as if to herself. ‘Very well, I’ll tell you. Alice came for me about an hour before Balfour was due to arrive. She brought with her the box of coins from the cellar. Not the old coins but the recent takings of the shop – there was fifty pounds or more there. Then we came back to the shop in
this
world.’

She paused; I said encouragingly, ‘And then?’

‘Alice went downstairs to wait for Balfour to arrive while I killed the people upstairs.’ Her voice was steady but I felt the hand with the knife tremble. ‘You have no idea how many years I have wished to lay hands on Samuel Gregson.’

So many years that she killed another man: a man with the same name, but a different person nevertheless.

‘When Balfour came,’ she continued, ‘Alice let him in, and told him where the coins were. He went down into the cellar, I came downstairs and killed the apprentice; we’d left him alive until then so Balfour heard his snoring and was reassured. Then Alice took me back to my own world.’

She took a deep breath; I felt the knife turn slightly against my throat as she took a firmer grip. ‘Alice came back to this world to leave a trail. It had to look as if she was fleeing for her life, so she slid down the rope to escape. She was to go to the derelict house to wait for the furore to die down; when the spirit told her Balfour was captured, she’d have run out and told her story.’ She added wryly, ‘She’d have told it very well. She’s extremely good at wheedling and winning her own way.’

I thought of the girl I’d encountered in the alley. Mrs Fletcher spoke of her with some exasperation, yet when we had arrived, she had said she loved her dearly.

‘Just before she slid down the rope, she woke the child so the alarm could be raised,’ Mrs Fletcher said. ‘Unfortunately, Balfour was more alert than we’d anticipated, and escaped. Which left Alice the only suspect.’

My back and leg muscles were beginning to twitch from the unnatural position. ‘I can understand why you killed Samuel but what about the others? The girl, Sarah, and the apprentice? Why did they have to die? And then you attempted to blame the boy for the killings!’

She laughed harshly. ‘Oh, don’t have any sympathy for them! Sarah was going to marry a man four times her age just for the money. And the boy was no saint – he was always creeping out to some girl or other. Well, he should have crept out that night, or not come back so early.’

‘So it was
their
fault you killed them.’

She was still holding on to me firmly; Heron was watchful but I knew there was nothing he could do, unless I could break Mrs Fletcher’s hold. And there was only one way to do that – to make her careless with anger.

‘You want us to believe
you
killed them,’ I said. ‘You know – I don’t believe you. I think the other Alice did it.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said roughly. The knife shifted at my throat. ‘I’ve told you the truth.’

‘Nonsense. You’re an intelligent woman; you’re not foolish enough to think you could get away with something like this. But the other Alice – she’s a silly impetuous child, acting on impulse, without thinking of the consequences.’

‘
I
did it!’ she said. ‘Not Alice.’ And her anger broke the surface. ‘Can’t you understand, you stupid fool!’

Her weight shifted, the knife quivered. Her grip on me loosened.

I kicked backwards.

I caught her shin. She shrieked. Heron was already halfway across the room, lunging forward, sword coming up. Mrs Fletcher struggled to get a firmer grip on me; we stumbled sideways, fell against the table, toppled it over. It crashed down—

Mrs Mountain’s voice floated up from below. ‘What’s going on! Mr Patterson! Mr Heron!’

It was only a momentary distraction but Mrs Fletcher seized her opportunity. She pushed me. I stumbled against Heron; he whipped the sword away with a cry of alarm – and then Mrs Fletcher was out of the door.

Mrs Mountain screamed as Mrs Fletcher went headlong past her, knife in hand. She was standing where the stair took a turn on to a second flight; she grabbed at my arm as I stumbled against her. ‘Mr Patterson – oh, dear God – blood!’

Heron vaulted over the banisters, landed awkwardly on the lower flight of stairs, regained his balance and rushed on. Mrs Mountain whispered, ‘Blood  . . .’ and crumpled in my arms.

I dumped her unceremoniously on the floor but the door to the street was already slamming back. I leapt down the stairs, fumbled with the lock, pulled it open, skidded as I stepped out on to ice. Snowflakes stung my cheeks.

The street was empty.

I yelled for a spirit. One came with alacrity and didn’t even ask what I wanted. ‘Left at the end of the street!’ it shouted. ‘Then into the alleys on Pilgrim Street!’

‘Damn!’ Once she was in those alleys there were a dozen ways she could go. I dashed out into Pilgrim Street, ran for the nearest alley – and met Heron coming back towards me.

He shook his head.

Thirty-Nine

Odd how the unexpected ought always to be expected. And the lady was so charming, too.

[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

Froidevaux, 24 January 1737]

I woke with a burning pain at my neck; instinctively, I put up a hand to touch the raw flesh. There was the smell of  . . .

Chocolate.

I opened my eyes. Esther was sitting on the edge of the bed, in a haze of candlelight, a dish of hot chocolate in her hands. She was still in her diaphanous nightgown, her blonde hair in a braid down her back, and she was looking at me with such an enigmatic expression  . . .

‘It really wasn’t my fault,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘George has had the entire story from one of the spirits at Mrs Mountain’s. Admittedly, I think he probably exaggerated the swordplay but judging by what I can see, and the blood on your coat and shirt, I would say he has the story generally right.’

‘It’s just a scratch,’ I said. ‘Heron said it wasn’t anything to worry about.’ It didn’t feel like a scratch; it was very painful. More painful than it had been at the time.

She said nothing.

‘It probably was a mistake to try and apprehend Mrs Fletcher,’ I admitted, ‘but I thought she’d escape to the other world.’

She shook her head. ‘I know you too well, Charles. You didn’t think at all.’

I sighed and heaved myself up against the pillows. The candle flames fluttered wildly. ‘No. But I did have Heron and his sword with me.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he would have caught her if she’d killed you,’ Esther said sarcastically. ‘Charles  . . .’

She pushed the dish of hot chocolate into my hands. It was so hot I nearly dropped it over the bedding.

‘I know better than to think I can stop you trying to unravel these puzzles,’ Esther said. ‘I even admire you for it – after all, someone should bring such people to justice. But  . . .’

An odd, uncharacteristic hesitation. As the silence lengthened, I started to say that I’d take more care in future, but she interrupted me. ‘I wish you would not put yourself in danger, Charles. It is important to me.’

My heart contracted; I looked down into the dish of chocolate.

‘And,’ she said, with an air of great determination, ‘to our child.’

I stared at her. At the candlelight gleaming on her pale hair, the fine strands escaping from the braid to curl against her neck. At the flush on her cheeks, the wary look in her grey eyes. I should have known, of course I should. Her recent erratic health, her lack of appetite and unusual longing for sweet things  . . . I’d been so tied up in the mystery of the Gregson’s deaths that I hadn’t paid any attention to what was going on in my own house!

And my principal feeling was – fear.

Esther was watching me closely. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is alarming, isn’t it? Particularly with the ladies agog over stories of Alice Gregson’s misdeeds, relating the endless ingratitude of sons and daughters, saying how impossible it is to control even young children.’

I’d like to see any child disobey Esther. I cleared my throat. ‘I disliked my father,’ I said. ‘Very much.’

‘I loved mine,’ she said, and gave me a careful, tentative smile.

Forty

I am in the middle of my preparations to come home and I find I have left my belongings and scattered halfway across the country, in inns here and there.

[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

Froidevaux, 24 January 1737]

We had an enormous argument after that. I wanted Esther to go back to bed, and not overtire herself. Esther insisted she had to finish the Norfolk estate accounts. I said she must leave all that to me now. She burst out laughing. In the end, of course, she had her way, and we breakfasted in amicable silence, broken only by sneaking looks at each other and giggling like two young girls.