Chords and Discords (13 page)

“Forgive me, sir,” she said, not sounding in the least apologetic. “I have urgent business.”

“So have I.”

She hesitated as if she was about to confront me, then strode past the alley to the organ manufactory, and went on towards All Hallows Church. I paused by the entrance to the alley.

“You have missed your object.”

She called back: “I am bound for the church.”

I did not move. “I am going to question Tom Eade’s spirit.”

She stopped, close by the gate of All Hallows, then swung round and came back to me. Her hair and shoulders were bedewed by the rain, her face was twisted into something akin to a snarl. Perhaps
that was understandable. Perhaps she wished to speak to her betrothed alone; at the first time since death, there is a grief that is difficult to face in the presence of others. I remember the case
of my own dear mother...

The girl came back to me silently, went past me silently, into the alley. As I followed her, I caught a shimmer of light on the wall high above and shied away before I recalled it was only the
girl’s spirit. She called down to me. “Do you know Master Bairstowe, sir? Master Thomas Bairstowe? The carpenter?” We went on into the yard.

The house and workshop were closed up, the place deserted. For a moment, it felt as if it had never been occupied. Piles of broken wood and crushed pipes still lay about the yard; the two
lengths of seasoned timber were still propped against the wall. I saw the girl shiver as she looked at them.

“Tom!” she called out. “Tom, are you there? Mr Patterson and me want to talk.”

Silence.

“See,” she said. “He’s not here yet.”

I shook my head. “It’s nigh on four days since he died. His spirit will have disembodied by now.”

“We’ll come back later,” she said, turning for the alley. “Tomorrow, maybe. He’ll be here then.”

“He must be here now,” I said, and raised my voice. “Tom Eade!”

No one replied. I knew I could not be wrong; no spirit took so long to disembody, yet there was no sound, no shimmer of light –

Was that a murmur? No, I must have been mistaken.

I raised my voice. “Tom,” I called again. “I want to know who killed you.”

“No one killed him,” the girl snapped. She stared at me, defiantly contradicting everything she had said before.

“Then what happened?” I demanded.

“Wood fell on him.”

“When he came to court the Bairstowes’ maid?” I gingerly touched one of the wet baulks of timber. It slid along the wall and I stepped back quickly. Bairstowe was right in at
least one respect; this yard was not a pleasant place. It was unsettling – gloomy and chill.

And I stopped, hardly daring to acknowledge the thought that had just come into my mind...

The girl was frowning at me. I gathered my wits. “I’m not surprised you want to speak to him alone. He was up to no good, wasn’t he?”

A new voice high above me made me start. “That’s between her and me,” it said.

I looked up into the cold drizzle.

And saw overhead the night sky. I did not stand in the manufactory but in a graveyard under a speckled field of stars and the rich curve of the Milky Way. Tombstones stretched white on either
side of me, casting impenetrable shadows across black grass...

Then the world righted itself and I was in the yard again, in gloomy March daylight, looking high on the wall of the workshop at the faint shimmer of a new spirit and shivering in the residue of
a great chill.

The girl had apparently not noticed anything; she was craning to look up at the eaves of the workshop.

“You’ve got explaining to do, Tom Eade,” she snapped. “Like what did you see in that trollop?”

“Good manners, maybe,” the spirit said.

“You weren’t after good manners,” she said. “You were after bad behaviour.”

And so it went on, the insults going backwards and forwards. All so nicely done, I began to suspect they had spoken before. I was shaken, but this was no time to be distracted; I had questions
to ask Tom Eade. I cut in on the girl. “How did you die, Tom?”

The spirit gave a sharp gasp, almost a cry of pain. The girl said hurriedly: “Tom, Tom – it’s all right, love. Don’t you worry, I’m still here.”

My own shock had made me too outspoken, too brutal. The girl turned a look of such distress on me that I knew I was out of place and could not in all decency stay. I took the girl’s arm,
said: “Get the truth out of him and let me know it. You need help. You can trust me – ”

She broke away from me, laughing bitterly. “Trust anyone of your kind? What d’you care about the likes of us?”

She fell silent, and stayed so until I had walked from the alley. I lingered in the hope of hearing their conversation but all I heard was the soft singing of the spirit in the alley.

I was for a short while unaware of what was going on around me. I walked through drizzle-dampened streets, oblivious of passers by. Shaken by events I had hoped never to
experience again. Once more, as before Christmas, I had ‘stepped through’ from our own world to another. It had been a brief occurrence this time and without ill effects, but I was
disturbed that it had happened at all. I had thought these worlds touched only in the region of Caroline Square – now it transpired that there were other places in the town where stepping
through was possible.

I found myself on the Keyside, staring at sailors shouting over the loading of sacks of candles. At least this experience explained one thing that had been puzzling me. William Bairstowe had
sworn that there were spirits in his yard when I knew there to be none; he had talked of hearing their voices. Spirits did not exist in the other world but perhaps Bairstowe had heard the voices of
the living people there and mistaken them for spirits.

Turning along the Key, I made for the Tyne Bridge. Perhaps the existence of a link between the worlds in Bairstowe’s yard also explained the confusion of the spirit in the alley. She had
called Bairstowe a carpenter. Perhaps she too had seen the opening up of the other world and glimpsed there another William – not an organ-builder but a carpenter? Could she be less confused
than I had imagined?

I put the matter aside for the time being. There was one further mystery that I might be able to clear up. Was the spirit of Edward Bairstowe, William’s brother, on the bridge as the
spirit in the alley said, or had he jumped into the river, as Mrs Bairstowe claimed, and was therefore lost for ever? Mrs Bairstowe had seemed anxious to avoid the subject – did
Edward’s fate have any connection with what was happening to William?

On the bridge, there was a busy to-ing and fro-ing amongst the shops. Pedestrians hurried against the drizzle; carts and horses clattered past, dogs and children ran underfoot. Hens pecked in
every corner. Through a break in the buildings, I looked upstream into the murky drizzle that patterned the grey water. A miserable day.

I accosted a spirit gleaming on the timbering of one of the buildings.

“Edward Bairstowe?” she said scornfully. “A newcomer. He died a mere five years ago. How long do you think I’ve been here?”

I ventured on flattery. “Longer than anyone else here, I warrant.”

“Forty years,” she said. “Forty!”

“Heavens! I’d never have known.” I heard a murmur, like a self-satisfied purr. “You must see everything that happens here.”

“Everything,” she said firmly.

“I’m told this fellow Bairstowe killed himself – jumped off the bridge. But in that case, wouldn’t his spirit be in the river?”

“They lose courage, you know.”

“He couldn’t bring himself to jump? So what did happen?”

“Cut his throat,” she confided, with glee. “Went all over the apron of his wife – terrible to wash out you know, blood.”

“He had a knife, then?”

“A carving knife,” she said. “A huge thing. But you don’t want to hear about him. My own death – ”

I extricated myself with difficulty.

I found Edward Bairstowe near the blue stones at the centre of the bridge though I had to look long and hard until I spotted a small patch of shine on a stone at the edge of the road, directly
under the parapet. So he was on the bridge, not under it. And he was clearly a suicide – tied to one spot, unable to move even within the confines of the place where he died as spirits
generally do; all he could do was move the length of that one cobble.

“Edward Bairstowe?”

A sudden convulsive movement in the stain. “Yes?” the spirit said eagerly. “Do you want to talk to me? Heavens, sir, do you know how long it has been since I talked to anyone?
My dear sir, pray do not stand up there. Sit down here, next to me.”

Reluctantly I squatted, with the parapet against my back; the cobbles were damp with rain. A cart trundled past. A thin cat hesitated a yard or two away, lifting its head to stare at me.

“You haven’t introduced yourself, sir.”

“Charles Patterson. I am a musician in this town. I have been asked, Mr Bairstowe, to assist your brother in a – a personal matter.”

The spirit said sharply: “William?” The cat stretched to sniff at my arm.

“He believes himself to be in danger – he has received threats. I am looking for the culprit.”

Another pause. “And you think I may have information? I have been five years dead, you know.” His tone changed abruptly. “Will you please run that cat off!”

The cat was sniffing at the stone; cats are curious about spirits, unlike dogs, who give them a wide berth. I pushed gently at the cat, which took the gesture as an invitation to rub itself
against my knee.

“I wondered if you knew of anyone who might have a grudge against your brother.”

“Mr Patterson,” the spirit said, apparently amused. “My brother’s greatest talent is for rudeness. Dozens of people dislike him heartily!”

“Anyone in particular?”

“I have no recent knowledge.” The spirit sighed hugely. “Alas, no one from the household comes near me.”

I hate people who invite sympathy. I drew back, out of the way of a boy pushing a handcart. The cat yawned. “They cannot accept the manner of your dying, sir?”

The spirit sighed. “When I was alive my brother made my life a misery. It can be said that he drove me to my death. No, pray do not interrupt. I trust, sir, that whatever the wrongs done
to me, I do as the Bible bids me and forgive my enemies.”

His complacent tone set my teeth on edge.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

A cart rumbled past in the drizzle. I eased my back against the parapet; the old stone crumbled beneath my fingers. The cat eyed a cluster of hens then curled up next to my
feet and showed every sign of intending to sleep.

“I was the oldest child,” Edward Bairstowe’s spirit said, rather pompously. “Then there was a sister but she didn’t survive a year. Then came William. Then Thomas.
After that, my mother gave birth year after year, and all the babies died.” (This sounded all too like my own dear mother’s experience.) “Of course, one year she died in
childbirth. I was ten years old at the time and William was eight. My father never recovered from the loss – he dedicated himself to his organ-building and was often away from home visiting
this church or that, repairing organs or installing new. We were brought up by my aunt, his sister. A good woman, but a maiden lady with no idea how to treat children. I was of an age to fend for
myself, but William of course was spoiled. The baby of the family.”

I shifted restlessly. This sounded like a recital that had been given several times before. The spirit laughed. “Now, now, Mr Patterson, don’t tell me you are not interested in
ancient history. It has relevance, I promise you.”

It was not the ancientness I objected to, but the smooth sentimentality. I had a premonition that it was going to turn out to be one of those educational tales for children on the evils of
indiscipline in youth. And that Edward Bairstowe in life had been one of those men who are always angling for sympathy, probably as a prelude to asking for money.

“William envied me from his earliest years,” the spirit continued grandiosely. “I was my father’s support, introduced to the business early and relied upon. I had no
musical genius, but I had an excellent head for figures and managed my father’s accounts. William, on the contrary, had the musical genius and helped with the manufacture of the
organs.” The spirit sighed. “But, alas, he had one fatal flaw.”

Yes, indeed it was to be an educational tale.

“He dislikes effort,” the spirit said. “He has always enjoyed spending money but working to get it – no, he does not like that at all. He saw me sitting in the house
every day, with papers in front of me – he didn’t call that work, not when he had to hammer and saw and roll sheets of lead. He saw me wine and dine elegant gentlemen, and thought I was
taking my leisure when I was actually canvassing for business or settling a contract. He was envious, Mr Patterson. He thought he did the work and I reaped the benefit.”

I suspected William Bairstowe might have had some justification for this point of view. “And when your father died?” A flock of sheep pattered on to the bridge from the Gateshead
end, driven by one man and a brace of dogs. Headed for Butcher Bank, no doubt. The cat watched them pass.

“Father left the business to us jointly. He had been so bound up in his own concerns that he did not see how ill at ease we were with each other. The twenty years after that event, Mr
Patterson, were the most troublesome of my life. William was so unreasonable. He always wanted the best materials even when I told him they were too expensive. He simply wouldn’t make the
slightest effort to understand! And then he married that harpy.”

“Mary Holloway, as was?”

“Scheming bitch,” the spirit said. “Only one thing on her mind. Money.” It crowed with triumph. “Now there’s the culprit for you!”

“You think Mary Bairstowe is threatening her own husband? Why?”