Chords and Discords (28 page)

“He knows where the deed is?” Holloway said eagerly.

“So he says.”

“I do,” I agreed. “And I’ll show you. On one condition.”

“No,” Jennie McIntosh said. She laughed. “We’re not letting you go. You know too much.”

“Then why should I tell you where the deed is?”

Holloway and the maid exchanged glances at that; Mrs Bairstowe remained stolidly impassive. “Reckon you could keep quiet for thirty guineas?”

I was ready to agree to anything that would get us out of there alive. “Easily,” I said.

“He’s lying.” Holloway threatened us with the pistol. “He’ll go straight to the constable.”

An owl swooped overhead, a great white shape in the darkness. I didn’t want owls; I wanted people – drunks, thieves, whores – anyone to distract our captors and give us a
chance to run off. There was no one. No one but Esther and myself and our own quick wits to get us out of this mess.

“It was a nice trick you pulled on Demsey and myself,” I said, to flatter Holloway. “You and Jennie here staged that scene in your house, didn’t you? Jennie even lingered
outside until Hugh could catch up with her, so she could lead us into the chares. Her friends were supposed to oblige you by beating us up and thereby frightening us so much we would give up our
pursuit of you. In return, they’d get our clothes. A pity the spirits intervened.”

“Lord,” Jennie McIntosh said, with a yawn. “How you can talk!”

“And since that didn’t work, you’ve engineered this plot. I admire your persistence.”

Where the devil was Hugh?

“Of course, something did come of that first plot,” I said, reflectively. “Jennie was supposed to gain my confidence. Which she did. And I bore her off to Mrs Jerdoun, which
gave you the idea to play this second trick.”

“Aye,” Mary Bairstowe said. “And just think on this. If ye give us away, we’ve no reason not to tell the world about your lady friend.” Her gaze flickered up and
down Esther’s slim breeched figure. “If ye can call her a lady.”

Esther stood silently beside me, her face calm, her breathing untroubled. But I knew her well enough to recognise the alert readiness in her; she would act the moment I gave the word. My
admiration for her was boundless.

My hands hurt like the very devil from the rope burns and my eyes ached with the strain of seeing in the flickering lantern light as I tried to stare Mrs Bairstowe out of composure. “We
can come to an arrangement that will suit us all, surely?”

“Keep talking,” Mary Bairstowe said grimly.

“You want the deed so you can sell the property and take yourself off somewhere on the proceeds.”

“London,” Jennie said, with relish. Holloway grinned widely. That obsession again!

“But for you to inherit the money, William must die. And, unfortunately, he lingers between life and death.”

“He’ll die,” Mary Bairstowe said, contemptuously. “Like his father before him.”

“You’ll have to be careful,” I said. “If you’re suspected of having a hand in his death, you’ll inherit nothing. And Edward Bairstowe is doing his best to
thwart you by refusing to reveal the whereabouts of the deed.”

“Edward is a rogue and a cheat,” she said.

“Kindred spirits,” I said. “Lawyer Armstrong told me you were as thick as thieves once.” She said nothing yet I sensed indecision in her. Perhaps she was as puzzled as I
was about how to come off safe from this situation. One thing was certain: she was the leader of the conspirators. Where she led, the others would follow. “You and Edward were going to kill
William, weren’t you?” I pressed. “Five years ago.”

Jennie McIntosh began to protest impatiently but I thought I had the whole of it now and wanted Mary Bairstowe’s confirmation. “Edward’s threat to jump from the bridge was a
trap. He never got up on that parapet, although he threatened to do so. He was simply trying to lure William within reach of the knife. When William tried to take the knife off him, there would
have been a terrible accident and William would have been killed.”

“Ye can talk,” the woman said. “I’ll give you that.”

“You had to play the farce out,” I said, “because William had to believe it. When the coroner questioned his spirit later, you had to be certain William would say it had been
an accident. Only it had been sleeting and the cobbles were slick. Edward fell and the knife cut into his throat.” She still said nothing. “Why did you wait another five years before
trying a second time?”

“The deed, man,” Holloway said, impatiently. “We had to have the deed.”

I laughed; Esther murmured a warning.

“Of course,” I agreed. “Not much point in going to all this trouble if you can’t prove ownership of the land. And Edward wouldn’t tell you where the deed is. What
was the matter? Argued, did you?”

“He thought we’d tried to cheat him,” Holloway said, indignantly. Mary Bairstowe stood impassive in the moonlight, as if she didn’t care what we did and didn’t
know.

“Edward thought that you and William had plotted against him, and intended that he should die?”

Mary Bairstowe said nothing.

“A tangled web,” I said. “You plotted with Edward against William, Edward thinks you plotted with William against him, and in reality you were plotting with your brother to
kill them both and take the money.”

Mary Bairstowe said heavily: “The only folks you can trust are your own.” I saw Holloway flush with pleasure.

“Which of course,” I said, “is why you chose Holloway to stage that scene in the yard and hit you over the head. One more piece of evidence to convince everyone that William
really was under threat and from an unknown outsider. And he himself was helping by muttering about persecution, and spirits being after him, and generally becoming more and more unstable.
Wasn’t John panicked when he realised how hard he had hit you!”

“I didn’t mean – ” Holloway began but Mrs Bairstowe put a hand on his arm.

“Aye,” she said, “I know.”

Esther was murmuring uneasily in my ear. “This will only make them more anxious to kill us!”

“Trust me,” I said.

She hesitated, then nodded. That meant more to me than almost anything else that night. Now all I had to do was to justify her faith in me.

“But you have tried again even though you don’t have the deed,” I said. “You sent William those notes written by our friend Jennie here.”

The girl curtseyed mockingly to me.

“And when he, and I, didn’t seem to take much notice of them, you wrecked his workshop to make the point.”

“Well, he doesn’t use it much,” she said.

“And I thought he’d done it. No wonder he was so indignant. Next time don’t break the lock from inside. But why try to kill William even though the deed is still
missing?”

“The organ in the Cordwainers’ Hall?” Esther suggested. “They’ll use the proceeds of the sale to take them to London.”

“Fifty guineas,” I mused. “That won’t get you far in London, especially not with three of you.”

“We’re going,” Jennie McIntosh said with a pout of determination, flaunting her moonlit curls. “I’m not staying in this hole any longer.”

We all looked at her. Holloway was nodding in agreement; I swear I even saw Mary Bairstowe’s face soften. So the girl was leading them all by the nose, was she? Seizing her chance of bliss
come what may, while Mary Bairstowe and John Holloway were both besotted with her. I wondered just how much she cared for the pair of them, and how soon they would find their demure maid dancing
attendance on the first handsome man who dangled a few guineas in front of her eyes.

“I know where the deed is,” I said, determinedly bringing the conversation back to the point. If no one was going to break in on our
tête à tête
and
distract our captors, our best chance was to get out of this damn chare and into the wide streets where we might have a chance of running. If we could evade that pistol of Holloway’s.

I thought I heard the sound of footsteps down the Key and risked a quick glance in that direction. I saw no one, though the erratic light of the lanterns, which were burning low, was
confusing.

“Let’s make a deal,” I said. “We give you the deed. You ride off to Shields and take that ship for London. Whatever business you need to do in selling the property when
your husband dies can be done through lawyers. After all, as yet no crime has been committed. Edward died by his own hand, William was struck down by God. And meanwhile, we’ll forget all
about it.”

Mary Bairstowe was laughing softly. “You’re forgetting a pair of love-birds.”

I had been hoping that she would not think of Tom Eade and his lover. I sighed with resignation. “That’s a tale easily told. Tom and his girl found out about you and Jennie here, and
threatened to tell your husband unless you paid them not to. So you killed first him and then her.”

“Easy meat,” she said contemptuously.

“Did you push her into the river yourself? That was unkind of you.” She was plainly unmoved. “But did you not think that Tom Eade would talk once he knew his lover was
dead?”

“Of course!” said Esther, beside me. “That’s why they are in such a rush to go tonight. Because tomorrow Tom Eade will talk his heart out to the constable.”

I nodded, smiling at Mary Bairstowe. “You miscalculated. He talked to me tonight.”

“That’s your bad luck,” Jennie McIntosh said.

“It must have been a difficult decision to make,” I mused. “Alive, the girl would have bled you dry. Dead, her lover will betray you. All you can do is act and act quickly.
Hence your need to kill William now. Hence Holloway’s trip to North Shields to book passage on a ship. And your eagerness to be rid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Mary Bairstowe said contemptuously. “But there are folks who’ll listen to you. That gentleman William was supposed to be building an organ
for – he’ll have friends in London. He’ll send them after us.”

Holloway was restless, casting anxious glances up and down the Key. “Let’s be done with it. Get the deed and be gone from this pestilential town.”

“Kill them,” Jennie McIntosh said. “There’s no need to take risks.”

Mary Bairstowe spoke heavily. “I want that deed.” She glanced at the maid. “Ye want the money, don’t you? We can’t sell the land without the deed.” A steady
look back at me. “We’ll buy it from you. You give us the deed and we give you your lives.”

Holloway burst into anger. “Jennie’s right. They’ll talk! We can’t leave them alive!”

“We won’t talk,” I said. “Leave William alive, and leave us alive, and we’ll keep quiet.”

Mary Bairstowe considered. “Aye,” she said at last, and silenced the other two with a look.

We walked back through the narrow chare and up the silent stinking moonlit stretch of Butcher Bank. Esther and I walked first, arm in arm, like a married couple; she cast me an
occasional watchful look, as if to say ‘I know you’re planning something – I’m ready to aid you’. She seemed confident in my ingenuity. I wished I felt the same.

Holloway came behind us, with the pistol poking in my back. Then Mrs Bairstowe, breathing heavily on the hill, behind him. The maid was on Mary Bairstowe’s arm; I heard her murmur, thought
I caught the word London.

And somewhere behind all of us, I hoped, came Hugh.

As we walked, Esther said pensively, “Why did William Bairstowe never suspect any threat against him till now?”

“Because he’s a fool,” Holloway said, behind us.

“He’s a man who can’t see further than his own business,” I said. “He noticed nothing amiss in the matter of Edward’s death. Remember, he was accustomed to
Edward’s wildness. He didn’t even worry when the notes arrived – he thought them some foolish prank. It was the attacks by the spirits that alarmed him.”

Deliberately I raised my voice so that Mary Bairstowe could hear me. “Edward knew William did not take the notes seriously so he organised the spirits’ attacks to alert William to
his wife’s plans.”

“But why?” Esther asked, with a puzzled frown.

“To thwart those plans. Edward, you see, believes Mary Bairstowe caused his death. And he was right, wasn’t he?”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Mary Bairstowe said implacably. It was irritating not to be able to see her. “No one knew what John and I were planning for Edward’s
death. No one knew Jennie and I were sending those notes, neither. Edward cannot have taken a hand in the business.”

“John knew,” I pointed out, casting Holloway a mocking backwards glance. “And John – ” I teased them with a moment’s silence, as we walked up the moonlit
street. “John tells the spirits everything.”

“No,” Holloway protested, with sudden vehemence. “They wouldn’t tell anyone. They’re my friends.”

“Spirits are no one’s friends,” I said bitterly, and saw Esther Jerdoun look at me sharply. “They know everything, or can know everything if they take the trouble, and
there is nothing anyone can do to punish them. They may do as they please. Edward wants his revenge, on his brother and on you, doesn’t he, madam? That’s why he used the spirit attacks
to alert William to your plans. He achieves two objects with one action. On the one hand he thwarts your plans, on the other he frightens his brother almost beyond endurance.”

We walked on in silence, turning into Silver Street. Three lanterns burned in the street, one at the gate of All Hallows. I said to Esther: “William suspected neither his brother nor his
wife. He merely supposed he had offended someone with his manner or his unscrupulous business dealings. He didn’t mention the deed to me because he didn’t think it had anything to do
with the attacks on him.”

All Hallows loomed before us; the moon, nearly full, slid behind the tower. “The deed’s in the church,” I said.

Holloway seized his sister’s arm. He seemed unnerved by my accusations against the spirits. “It’s a trap!”

“Go in,” Mrs Bairstowe said.

“It’s dark,” I pointed out. “We won’t be able to see in there.”

The maid swore and darted to the nearest lantern. She unhooked it from its bracket and brought it back, flaring and spluttering.