Chords and Discords (11 page)

It was a struggle; at times I could hardly breathe for the pain in my chest. The worst part of it was the last part – climbing the stairs up to Hugh’s attic room. I got up the first
flight, to the door of Hugh’s dancing-school, then felt I could go not a step further. I yelled and it came out a croak. I yelled again. Pray God Hugh was at home.

There was movement upstairs; a woman’s voice called sharply, “Go and be drunk elsewhere. It’s Sunday – do you have no shame?” The widow on the first floor. I yelled
again.

This time Hugh came clattering down the stairs, swearing when he saw me. Somehow we staggered up to the attic and I collapsed on Hugh’s bed under the attic eaves. He dithered here and
there, threatening to call out the apothecary and listening in mounting incredulity as I told him what had happened.

“Spirits!”

“Dozens of them.”

“How can spirits hurt a living man?”

I closed my eyes, trying to remember. The buffeting, the rushes of air, the loud noises close to my ears. “Some disturbance of the air, perhaps? Some vibration? I caused some of the damage
myself. My knee cracked against the cobbles when I fell, for instance. Hugh, never mind
how
they did it!
Why
did they do it?”

He perched on the edge of his table. He was only half-dressed, shirt loose and open, stockinged feet, hair awry. I guessed I had surprised him dozing.

“Bairstowe,” he said. “He set them on you.”

“Why?”

He frowned. “He is trying to make you think the matter more dangerous than it is.” He warmed to his theme, started to pace about the room. “He sees you think he did the damage
to the workshop himself so he persuades the spirits to attack you. You will think you are attacked because you know something you shouldn’t and will therefore insist on continuing to
investigate the matter.”

“It’s more likely to frighten me off,” I said tartly, pushing myself up against the wall. “I’ve never heard anything more preposterous.”

“Very well,” Hugh said, glowering at me. “Then it was Mrs Bairstowe –
she
was trying to frighten you off.”

“Why?”

“She sent the notes.”

“I don’t believe there were any notes.”

“Then she doesn’t want you to investigate because she knows there is nothing to investigate. She doesn’t want her husband to make a fool of himself.” He added,
conscientiously: “Any more of a fool that he already is.”

“She could just have told me that. She could have taken me aside politely and said, ‘Mr Patterson, my husband is a little disturbed at the moment’.” No, on second
thoughts, I couldn’t imagine Mrs Bairstowe being polite. God in heaven, my knee hurt.

“Then it was Holloway,” Hugh said, beginning to scrape the barrel.

“Why?” I asked wearily.

“Because Bairstowe hasn’t paid his bills.”

“That’s reason to attack Bairstowe, not me! Really, Hugh, you’ll be accusing the maid next!”

“She’s no better than she should be,” he said darkly.

“You’ve never seen her!”

“I know the type.”

“No, I don’t believe it. Hugh, she’s a timid thing. I warrant you Bairstowe abuses her. He’ll have had her in bed the first day she came into the house.” I rubbed
my aching knee, tried to get comfortable. “You don’t have to convince me that half the town has a grudge against Bairstowe. Probably he owes them all money. But the attack was on me,
not him.”

“To stop you finding something out.” Hugh started walking about again, along the middle of the room where he could stand upright under the ridge of the roof. I set my head back
against the wall and longed for sleep.

“In that case,” I said, “they have succeeded. I know nothing at all.” And suddenly, the terror of it all nearly overwhelmed me. I was so tired – I heard my voice
shake. “Hugh, I’m giving the matter up.”

“Charles!” he said, horrified. “You can’t! Are you going to let whoever’s behind this get away with it?”

“The spirits were behind it,” I said. “What am I going to do? Ask Bedwalters to clap them in prison to await the next Assizes?”

I could still hear that whisper:
That’s him.
“Hugh,” I said. “My mind’s made up. I am going to go to sleep on your bed and when I wake up tomorrow, I am
going to tell Bairstowe he can sort out his own problems.”

“Coward,” Hugh said scornfully.

I felt better already, for having made the decision. “Swords at dawn,” I said sleepily, stretching out on the mattress. “Call out your seconds. I let no man call me –
”

I woke in the early hours of the morning, when twilight was filtering through the thin curtains across Hugh’s window. Hugh, beside me, was snoring. For a moment, I could
not remember what had happened, then it all came flooding back. The spirits, the great shimmering wall, the buffeting, as of a strong wind, that had felt like blows on my body. I tried to turn over
and my bruised knee screamed at me.

That’s him.

They had known me. They were targeting me. No one else. No casual unfortunate passer-by, no chance victim; the whole affair had been arranged to frighten
me
.

Arranged by whom?

Damn it, I would not be scared off by a gang of spirits tied to one alley of ancient, disintegrating houses. I was a living man, and as free as any man to decide his own actions. And I chose not
to be intimidated by thugs and bullies, alive or dead.

I crawled out of bed, washed my face in Hugh’s cold water, pissed in his chamberpot. Then I went out to find out who was behind this affair.

I limped down the Side towards John Holloway’s shop in a drizzle that failed to wet my clothes and hair. The first task was clearly to check whether Holloway had indeed
sent a message for me – if he had, it would suggest that the spirits had merely taken advantage of a chance encounter. But I could not believe that. “That’s him,” they had
said. They had been expecting me.

Near the foot of the Side, I came face to face with Claudius Heron, climbing purposefully in the opposite direction. For a fashionable man, he was up early. He halted, stared at me. “What
the devil have you been doing?”

I was startled by his unusually intemperate language, all the more because I knew from Hugh’s mirror that I had not even one bruise to show for yesterday’s encounter.

“I slipped,” I said. “Injured my knee.”

He said, brusquely, “Come with me.”

“I have an appointment – ”

But he was already striding away, his coat skirts slapping against his thighs.

I was in two minds as to whether to defy him. I had come all this way to see John Holloway and it would be a wasted journey if I did not; moreover, I had soon to struggle back up Westgate to the
Assembly Rooms for the lesson I had promised Esther Jerdoun. But it would be the height of folly to offend a patron. And it soon became apparent that Heron was heading for Nellie’s coffee
house; a chance to sit down appealed to me enormously. Walking had tired me more than I cared to admit.

In the coffee house, we sat in a corner, Heron with his back to the wall and me stretching out my leg to ease the pain in my knee. I sipped at coffee and discovered a headache I didn’t
know I had; the coffee eased it. The house was unusually quiet; occupied only by a few gentlemen lounging in comfortable chairs, rustling their newspapers or turning the pages of the latest
pamphlet.

I told Heron everything that had happened since I had last seen him; he sat very still, his fair hair ruffled slightly by the back of his chair. Telling the story calmed me, although I was only
too well aware how incredible it sounded. Something of my anger came through in my voice, I fancy, for he looked very closely at me.

“You are not leaving the matter there, I take it?”

“Not in the least. There is no one else to deal with it. I can hardly ask the constable to raise the hue and cry against spirits!”

He permitted himself a grim smile. “I agree. It is difficult – one so rarely hears of such things.”

I was startled. “It has happened before?”

“Once, to my knowledge. Four or five years ago.”

“I don’t recall it – I must have been in London at the time.”

He stretched. “There was an incident in one of the chares down by the Key. Colvin’s Chare, I believe. A band of spirits set on an elderly woman. One of them had a grudge against her
– he thought she had cheated him of something in life. I forget the details.” He looked at me soberly. “The woman died, Patterson. You were lucky.”

“Unpleasant though the attack on me was,” I mused, “they left no injuries – my knee was hurt when I fell. How can spirits kill?”

“The woman died of fright.” Heron frowned. “Lawyer Armstrong was coroner – he would be better able to tell you than I. She was frail, and in these cases the body can
simply give out. There were witnesses. They said she gasped, clutched at her chest and fell over.” His lip curled. “They did not seem to feel it incumbent upon them to help her. Some
evidently even joined in the attack.”

I took little notice of these last comments. Heron’s sour view of mankind leads him to believe the worst of everyone.

“What was the verdict of the jury?”

“Murder,” Heron said. “What else?”

It must have been a unique verdict, I reflected: murder by the dead. But, in effect, the woman’s age had killed her; a robust man in the prime of life would not have been in danger.

“The spirits who attacked me merely wanted to frighten,” I said with conviction. “Not to kill. It might simply have been for mischief’s sake but I think not. I think it
is something to do with this affair of Bairstowe’s.”

Heron considered, his eyes unnervingly steady on my face. “You believe the man threatening Bairstowe set the spirits on you to frighten you off?”

That’s him
, they had said
.

“The fellow – whoever he is – would have done better to leave well alone,” I said. I drained my coffee and struggled to drag myself up from a chair that was far too
comfortable. “Forgive me, I must go. I have an appointment on Westgate.”

Heron also rose. “I say what I said to you before. Give this up.”

“It’s worth thirty guineas, sir,” I reminded him.

“But not your life.”

I hesitated. “I thank you for your advice, sir – ”

“But you do not intend to take any notice of it.” Heron put out a hand to steady me as my knee buckled under my weight. “Go home and rest.”

“I have a lesson at the Assembly Rooms. With Mrs Jerdoun.”

His face hardened; I said cautiously, “You are not on good terms, I think.”

We walked to the door. “She is a sensible enough woman,” Heron said, hesitating on the doorstep. He made the words sound like condemnation rather than praise. Outside, the drizzle
was still darkening the cobbles. “She was at Jenison’s dinner on Saturday, castigating him for refusing you a benefit concert.”

“I had heard she mentioned the matter,” I said diplomatically.

Heron stared across at the bedraggled fish stalls. “As a matter of fact, I agreed with what she said. But she was wasting her breath. There is no arguing with Jenison once he has made up
his mind. He put her down as a hysterical woman with no comprehension of the practicalities of the matter. I mean, of course, from the economic point of view.”

“My experience,” I said, rather too sharply, “is that ‘hysterical’ is the least appropriate word to apply to Mrs Jerdoun.”

“But you must agree that it is not a woman’s place to argue with a gentleman’s assessment of his business affairs.”

I turned for the Side; Heron walked with me in silence. As we passed Holloway’s shop, the chatter of voices drifted out of the open door and I glanced in to see Richard Softly proffering
advice on the rival merits of two walking canes.

I glanced at Heron. “Do you know John Holloway, sir?”

“I have spoken to him once or twice.”

“And your opinion of him?”

He was staring at a carriage driven by a careless and laughing young man; the carriage was hurtling far too quickly down the hill. “Do you wish for an honest assessment, or a polite
one?”

“An honest one.”

“I ask,” he said dryly, “Because it is my experience that most people do not like honesty.” A stray lock of his fair hair fell across his brow. “Very well, you may
have an honest assessment of John Holloway. He is a posturing incompetent whose shop lads keep him solvent. That is to say, the shoplads know exactly how much of his takings to pocket. A little
more and Holloway would go bankrupt; a little less and it would not be worth their while.”

I had forgotten how jaundiced a view of the world Heron has. He was studying my face.

“You disagree with me?”

I said carefully, “Not everyone is corrupt.”

He shrugged. “There are a few exceptions, I daresay.” He bowed to a lady of his acquaintance, walking past us. “But I would find it difficult to name more than one.”

He returned his gaze to me. “I know Holloway is Bairstowe’s brother-in-law, Patterson. I advise you again – give up the matter.”

Of course, having struggled up Westgate Road, and stumbled into the Assembly Rooms, I had to face scrutiny again, not once but twice. The Steward, who paused at the door of his
rooms to stare, was satisfied with my tale of slipping, but Esther Jerdoun was not. She stood at the top of the first flight of stairs watching as I limped from step to step, heard my story of a
fall, and said coolly: “I am no fool, Mr Patterson. Give me a round tale, if you please.”

Honesty seemed to be the fashion today.

We sat on the chairs that lined the walls of the small Assembly Room, while Mrs Jerdoun’s maid at the other side of the room bent her head over her needlework. I told the tale yet again.
Mrs Jerdoun heard me out in as great a silence as Claudius Heron, steadfastly looking at my face the whole while. I finished rather lamely, trying to reassure her that it had been a casual assault
occasioned by my own foolishness in venturing into dangerous alleys.