Chords and Discords (25 page)

He shook his head. “That was not the agreement I made, sir. Good day.”

And with the dignity of a man three or four times his age, he turned and walked away. I admired his probity but feared that in another ten years he would be a pedantic sour-faced fellow. He
looked very like what I had seen of his mother.

The spirit slid on to the bench next to me and manoeuvred round a spill of beer. “Mr Patterson, sir.”

“Who the devil are you?”

“Just a fellow out for a good time.” The spirit’s voice took on a sly tone. “Billet-doux from a young lady, eh?”

I stuffed Hugh’s note into my pocket. “None of your business.”

“Oh come, sir,” said the spirit. “I like a good tale. Particularly when it involves a lady, eh? Or rather, a female who ain’t a lady. Eh?”

If he had been alive, he would have been winking and nudging me in the ribs. I drained my ale and walked out. Never trust a spirit, I said to myself; I’ll never trust a spirit again.

The lesson with Mrs Jerdoun did not go well. She was stiff and polite, to the extent that the maid, sewing in the corner, glanced across with a puzzled frown. I was stiff and
polite in return, still annoyed by the fact she believed Jennie to be my mistress. I had said she was not. I felt that she should have believed me.

Yet I was secretly glad she did not.

At the lesson’s end, Mrs Jerdoun swept out of the Assembly Rooms with a curt farewell, leaving me only with a faint reminder of her perfume. I wandered out into a thin drizzle on Westgate,
trying to talk myself out of a depression. I had no money and had lost the trust of the woman I admired. I told myself I was still alive and still had my musical skills; moreover, I knew how to
live frugally. But I was not cheered.

I had walked as far as St John’s church when I heard my name called; I turned to see a muffled figure hurrying towards me through the thickening rain. He was so wrapped up in clothes that
I did not recognise him at first. Richard Softly.

He was out of breath and dishevelled, his eyes dark-rimmed and bloodshot. In heaven’s name, had he been crying? He had gone beyond that now. He was filled with anger, incoherent and
stuttering, hardly able to get words out between his clenched teeth. He thrust a note at me, so fiercely that I took a step back against the wall of the church porch.

“You had a hand in it,” he said, as I clutched at the paper. “You had a share in it. You and those Bairstowes.”

“A hand in what?” The paper was damp and warm in my hand. He must have been clutching it all the way up the street.

“It’s thanks to all of you,” he said, his voice breaking. An elderly labourer hurrying across the road looked curiously at him. Rain splattered against us.

“Your sister,” I said, with sudden fear. “Is this to do with her? Something has happened?”

“She’s dead,” he burst out. “Pushed into the river last night.”

Last night I had been on the bridge talking to Edward Bairstowe. I remembered hearing screams and a splash. God, could that have been the girl falling in? I had taken it for revellers.
“Pushed?” I echoed. “Are you saying she was deliberately killed?”

“They’re saying she jumped,” he said fiercely. “Distressed about
him
.”

“Tom Eade?”

I remembered the girl as I had last seen her, the determination in her face. And there had been something secret there too – she’d had plans. I couldn’t believe they had
included suicide.

“She would not have jumped into the river,” I said, with certainty. “If she had intended to kill herself, she would have done it in the yard, so she could be with
Eade.”

He nodded again. He seemed visibly to become calmer; perhaps he had anticipated that I would not believe him.

“Read the note,” he said. “Two days ago she gave me it. She said if something happened to her, I should bring it to you.”

I hesitated before opening the paper. “She believed Tom Eade had been murdered.”

“He was murdered,” he said. “I don’t know what they were planning, the two of them, but William Bairstowe was at the heart of it.”

I drew him out of the rain into the church porch, and sat him down on the stone bench against the wall; it was chill but tolerably dry. A brewer’s dray clattered past outside. I was
beginning to suspect I knew what Tom Eade and his fisher girl had been doing.

“Your sister told me that she and Eade were planning to set up a food stall.”

“That was why he was so close with money,” Softly said, with a mixture of contempt and envy. “Saving every penny, the pair of them.”

“And not above taking what wasn’t theirs?”

He reddened. The rain blew in around our feet.

I said, “Come, come, we both know that John Holloway’s none too canny with money and doesn’t miss the odd shilling or two from his receipts.”

“I have no part in that,” he said sharply. I reflected wryly that he was indeed probably honest, yet Holloway valued him less than Tom Eade, who had been quite the opposite.

“You didn’t tell Holloway that Eade was stealing from him?”

“How could I?” he burst out. “If I’d told him, he’d have fired Tom, handed him over to the Assizes even! She’d never have forgiven me. Perhaps she’d
have been taken as well!”

I nodded. “So your sister and Eade were saving, and didn’t mind too much what they did to get money. Would that include blackmailing William Bairstowe?”

“There’s something wrong in that house,” he said sullenly.

I didn’t disagree with that. I contemplated the possibilities; William Bairstowe was careless with money himself – perhaps there had been dubious activities that had come to the ears
of Eade and his lover. Maybe Holloway had let something slip in Eade’s hearing. Or had it been something about William’s relationship with the maid? She had, after all, been the one Tom
Eade had ‘courted’. Or had that just been a ruse to get inside the house?

Was it something to do with the death of Edward Bairstowe? There was something not yet told about that.

Shivering in the chill of the porch, I unfolded the note from the fisher girl. The rain spotted it at once. Holloway’s name decorated the top of the page with extravagant curls and loops;
the words below were carefully and neatly written. In no way could they be described as a childish scrawl; it seemed unlikely, on this evidence, that the girl had been the originator of the
threatening notes William Bairstowe had received.

The note read:
Look inside that house. Look at the pair of them and you’ll see what they want to keep quiet.

I had hoped for something more informative.

Look inside that house
. She must mean Bairstowe’s house. What could there be that was so significant? Others had been in there – Gale, the barber surgeon,
Claudius Heron. Whatever the girl referred to could not be on open display, or it would have been remarked upon. A casual social visit would clearly not reveal it.

I chewed on that fact, while the daylight lengthened and evening came on. I went back to the Assembly Rooms, was fortunate enough to find the Steward distracted by a gentleman who wanted to use
the Rooms for card assemblies, and went upstairs to open the harpsichord. I was in sore need of a practice – at least the present lull in my teaching gave me time for that.

I played through some of Scarlatti’s sonatas, preoccupied at first by thoughts of the Bairstowe household. Slowly the music took hold of me. The difficulties of a piece have always
engrossed me; I practised several challenging passages with increasing determination.

And all the time, the puzzle revolved in the back of my mind. I had known the fisher girl only slightly but I was convinced she would not have killed herself. Not, at least, before she had had
the opportunity to avenge her lover. Two deaths now. One called accident, the other called self-destruction. Two young people rubbed out of life. They deserved justice. William Bairstowe too had
asked for help – did my commitment to that end, now he was cast down by fate?

Money was one thing, and I sorely needed it. But I had made promises too and I would not back out of them while there was something left that I could do.

Look inside that house
, the fisher girl had said. And look I would.

The alley was dark. I tiptoed along it, trailing my fingers across the wall to keep my balance. By some miracle I avoided treading in any dog shit. I could hear the spirit
singing faintly, her voice ebbing and flowing like the sea. She was very close now, I thought, to that final dissolution which we all must face, that final fading into the night air.

A blur of light illuminated the end of the alley. I peered into the yard and saw a light burning behind curtains at the top of the house, in the attics. A bright light that suggested many
candles flickering. I thought too that I saw a light in a room on the floor below but it was so faint I wondered if I was imagining it.

I stood for a long moment, to be sure no one was moving about the house or yard. What I was proposing to do was foolish in the extreme; if Mary Bairstowe discovered me in her house, she would be
entitled to call out the constable and hand me over for trial. And she would certainly do so. I could hear Hugh’s voice in my ear, demanding what the devil I was doing. But Hugh was in
Shields and I must act on my own. And act I would; Tom Eade and his lover demanded it. Even William Bairstowe, rude as he was, was entitled to justice.

There was something wrong about the workshop. The door was ajar. Was someone inside? There was no light. I crept across the yard and slid to one side of the door. Looking down at the new lock, I
could see that the key had been turned – indeed it was still in the lock – but the catch had not engaged, and the door had swung open.

I nudged it further open. Light seeping from the attic window of the house showed me a dark hump just inside the workshop. I sank on to hands and knees, crawled to the mysterious bundle.

As soon as my hand touched it, I knew what it was – Bairstowe’s bag of tools, presumably dumped here out of the way. I fumbled for the opening, pushed my hand inside and felt
cautiously for an edge of parchment, taking care not to let any of the tools clink against each other.

The deed was not in the bag.

I retreated and pushed the door to, leaving it as I had found it. I was gathering myself up to run across the yard to the house when a voice spoke above my head. The spirit of Tom Eade said:
“Is it true she’s dead?”

I shifted back into the shadows around the workshop. “Your lover? Yes.”

“In the river, they say.”

“Yes.”

I looked for the spirit but saw nothing. Not a gleam on the door, or the window. Not the slightest suspicion of brightness. For a moment I wondered if he might have slipped through into that
other world. Then he spoke once more.

“I’ll never talk to her again,” he said. “Never kiss her, never caress her hair, never hear a word from her.” A silence. “They couldn’t even let her die
here, with me.”

“If she’d lived, she’d have told everything she knew, sooner or later,” I said.

“All we wanted was enough money to set ourselves up in business,” the spirit said. “Why shouldn’t we have something of our own? We’d have done well for
ourselves.”

They would have, too. They had clearly both been determined people.

“Was that too much to ask?” he said. “Why should they have it all?”

“No reason.”

“Anyway,” he said. “Folks who don’t want to be blackmailed shouldn’t have secrets.”

“Big secrets?” I asked, cautiously.

“
He’d
have thought so,” the spirit said.

“William Bairstowe?”

“Go see,” said the spirit. “Thought I’d never tell, didn’t they? Go in,” he said again. “Have a look. I make you a gift of it. Tell everyone. They
killed her and by God, I’ll ruin them.”

He fell silent, and no manner of cajoling would get more out of him.

I looked at the house, at the bright light in the attics and the pale light on the floor below. Bairstowe would have thought the secret significant, Eade said. So it was not Bairstowe being
blackmailed; on the contrary, he was the threat Tom Eade had held over his victim’s head. His victims’ heads – he had talked of
them
.

I tried the house door; to my surprise, it was unlocked and unbolted. They must have been confident they would not be discovered. I pushed the door open and walked in. The kitchen was cold and
dark. No smells of cooking; the grate might have been unused a year or more. I felt my way along the wall, trying to remember the places where furniture stood. The door to the rest of the house was
here somewhere – I found it, pushed it open.

A nightlight stood at the foot of stairs. I went cautiously up. It was not an old house and the stairs did not creak. At the first floor, I stood listening for a moment. I could heard
women’s voices at a distance. They must be in the attics, in the maid’s room.

I walked through the rooms on the first floor. They were small and ill-furnished. A few threadbare rugs had been tossed over the floor boards; chairs were of good quality but their coverings
worn into holes. Curtains were dusty, windows grimy.

In the largest room, heavy curtains had been drawn. A candle on a table guttered, and tossed wild shadows over the walls. Bairstowe lay naked on his back in a crumpled bed, with nothing but a
blanket thrown over him. His shoulders were bare, uncovered, blue with cold. The seizure had drawn down the left side of his face and spittle dribbled from that side of his mouth; his left hand lay
heavy on the blanket, but his right plucked at the cloth again, again, again. That slight touch of life was almost too dreadful to look upon.

I bent over him and saw that his eyes were open. His gaze slid to me. A grunt rose in this throat, a helpless attempt to speak. I felt a desperate urge to say something consoling.

“It was an act of God,” I said. “His will, not that of mortal man.”