Chords and Discords (29 page)

We went into the church.

The great building, dilapidated as it was, had a solemn grandeur in the darkness. Shadowy pillars rose up to the vaulted roof. I thought I heard a faint whistle and chatter; a tiny bird swooped
in the recesses of the chancel, flittered and was gone. We stood for a moment to adjust our vision in the lantern light; Holloway dug the pistol into my back.

“Where is it?”

I went down the aisle slowly, arm in arm with Esther; she glanced at me as if trying to judge when I would make a move. I wished I knew what to do. I was praying that Hugh was here, slipping
through the west door after us, hiding amongst the dark, locked pews. In the name of all that was holy, I didn’t want to go up the narrow stairs to the organ loft with Holloway’s pistol
in my back. Not in his present nervous state. Nor did I want to cross the organ loft in the darkness – I had an unfortunate encounter in an organ loft not so long ago and damn near lost my
life. I suppose there are worse places for a musician to die but I would rather not die at all. Not for a good few years yet.

The lantern light was fitful and the maid walked with it behind us. The light cast dancing shadows before us and hid obstacles in our way. Esther walked into the edge of a pew and stifled a
curse. Mrs Bairstowe said again: “Where’s the deed?”

“In the organ loft,” I said, reluctantly.

“Stop!” We halted while she walked round to stand in front of us. Holloway’s pistol was still at my back. The maid leant against the side of a pew on the other side of the
aisle. In the flickering light cast by the lantern, I saw that the door of the pew next to us stood unlocked and ajar. But even if we dashed inside, where could we go from there?

“Now,” Mrs Bairstowe said. “I’m going to keep my hands on her ladyship and you are going to go with John to get the deed. So if there’s mischief planned, the lady
will suffer. Understand me?”

I did not want to be separated from Esther. Together we might surprise them; separately we could not. And Jennie McIntosh and Mary Bairstowe were no weaklings, in body or in mind – they
would not hesitate to injure Esther.

I heard myself laughing, as if hysterically, allowed my voice to rise in volume. Inwardly, I was praying, and praying that I had guessed correctly. “What the devil do you think I plan to
do? Create some diversion?”

On the words, the great west door slammed shut.

Jennie McIntosh jumped and dropped the lantern. I heard it smash on the floor. The light flared and went out. In the darkness, I threw myself against Esther and she pitched sideways; we crashed
to the floor of the open pew. And in the same moment, I heard a shot, a grunt, and a heavy thud.

Then silence.

In the silence, I heard a faint singing, as if the dissolved spirit in the alley had returned. But this was a male spirit, unharmonious, its voice cracked, singing, very
solemnly, Purcell’s music for the funeral sentences.
Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live
. The voice echoed in the pitch-black church.

“Charles?” Esther whispered.

She was visible only as a sense of movement, against the wall of the pew.

“I’m safe,” I whispered. “Are you hurt?”

“Bruised. Nothing more.”

No other sound but the swift patter of running feet.

Holloway said uncertainly, “Mary?”

I heard the west door swing open. Peering from the end of the pew, I saw a sliver of the moonlit street and Jennie McIntosh’s slim figure, squeezing through the narrow gap.

“Hugh!” I called. “Do you have a lantern?”

His voice came back from somewhere at the west end, under the organ gallery. “Can’t get the damn flint to strike.”

A moment later, light flared, then settled. The light advanced up the nave, held by a shadowy half-lit figure. I could see Holloway, standing very still; I reached out and took the pistol from
his nerveless hand.

We looked down on Mary Bairstowe’s slumped figure. Esther was rubbing her right arm as if it hurt; Hugh was dishevelled, covered with dust from travelling, and bleary-eyed. Holloway,
stricken, stood with tears coursing down his cheeks. And I – I was wondering how we were going to get out of this mess.

I gave Holloway back the pistol. “Throw it in the river. Then go home and be surprised when they come to tell you your sister’s dead.”

“Charles!” Hugh protested. “You cannot let the fellow go! He killed her.”

“He was aiming at me.”

“He’s a villain. They were plotting to kill Bairstowe!”

“He’s already been punished,” I said. I held out the pistol to Holloway; he seemed hardly to notice.

“Forget the trip to London. Sit quiet a few years and pretend you know nothing. Better still, sit quiet for the rest of your life.”

He gave me a helpless look. “There is nothing left in life.”

“For God’s sake!” Esther said impatiently. “Stop whining and thank your maker no one will bring you to book for this stupid business.”

He stared at her unseeingly, then looked at me, looked down at the pistol. With a convulsive gesture, he knocked my hand aside; the pistol slipped from my grasp and went clattering amongst the
pews. Then Holloway swung round and was off at a halting, panicked run. And we three were left, silently looking down at the crumpled body of Mary Bairstowe, while the unseen spirit intoned the
funeral sentences into the darkness around us.

We argued about whether to call out Bedwalters, and tell him frankly what had happened, but it was such an unlikely tale we thought he would not believe us. After all, we still
had the fatal pistol in our possession. Moreover, I was unhappy that Esther – Mrs Jerdoun – should be involved at all. Yet there would be no escaping should the spirit choose to accuse
us. In the end, Hugh pointed out that if we were not seen near the body, we might be able to claim that Mary Bairstowe’s spirit was being vindictive in any accusations against us, and we
decided to leave the body for someone else to discover.

So Hugh and Esther went off together for safety’s sake, in case the ruffians from the chares still roamed the streets; I gave Hugh the pistol to throw into the river.

I waited until they were gone, then took the lantern up the stairs in the middle of the church. As I walked down the Sailors’ Gallery towards the organ, my footsteps echoed in the great
empty church; leaning over the balustrade, I saw the huddled dark shape on the nave floor below, and shuddered. We all came to an end sooner or later but to meet one’s fate at the hands of
the only person one trusts is dreadful irony.

The organ loft swam with shadows, cast by the huge case, the organ stool, the charity children’s pews. I ducked under the curtain and stood looking for a moment at the debris before me:
the ranks of pipes Bairstowe had laid on the floor, the discarded pallets, a rag or two and a missed tool.

Bairstowe, in his short time in the church, had dismantled parts of the mechanism but yesterday Strolger had also said that he had repaired one of the ranks of pipes. Perhaps William had guessed
what I was looking for when he saw me searching – perhaps that was what he had been trying to tell me as he lay stricken on the floor.

I shone the lantern into the cobwebby interior of the organ. Bairstowe had swept most of the mouse-droppings into a heap; a mummified mouse lay dead in a corner. Bairstowe had repaired one of
the ranks on the Swell, Strolger had said. The work was easily recognisable – the pipes were the only clean things in the entire interior. Five gleaming pewter-grey pipes had been restored to
their places – I shone the lantern at the largest.

Edward had not lied after all.

The parchment crackled in my hands as I eased it from the pipe. It was curved into a tube beyond remedy and I struggled to unroll it. I glimpsed a date fifty years before and the words
Whereas this deed witnesseth that the Vestry of All Hallows Church...

It was what I had been looking for.

There was one more thing to be done before I could go home. William Bairstowe could not be left in his house, to die alone. I left the church, walked down Silver Street towards
the manufactory. The alley was oddly quiet, being now unspirited, but when I came into the yard, I saw lights burning in the house, on the second floor where I knew William Bairstowe’s room
to be. There was a light in the attic too. Surely Jennie McIntosh could not have returned?

As I approached the door, she burst out of it, coming to an abrupt halt as she saw me. She wore travelling clothes, a thick cloak over her shoulders, a demure cap on her head. A heavy bag hung
in her hands. As she jerked back, startled, I heard coins jingle in the bag.

“Off to London?” I said.

She sneered at me. “No business of yours, sir.”

“It’s William Bairstowe’s business if you’re making off with his savings.”

“His savings!” she spat. “I’ve taken nothing of his. It’s all hers. What we were going to live on in London until the house was sold.” She stood looking at
me. “Well, and are you going to stop me?”

“What would you do if I did?”

“Tell a round tale.” She laughed. “Say you shot her. Say she came upon you and your whore playing together in the church and threatened to tell the world so you shot her to
prevent it. Couldn’t have your reputation tarnished, could you? Not that you’re too concerned about the lady’s reputation, eh?” Her face twisted in contempt. “You men
never worry about us. We’re only here for one thing, aren’t we? For your service or your pleasure – and oftentimes they’re the same thing.”

I could hardly try and persuade her she was wrong; the whole of her experience said otherwise. I stood back.

“I’m not preventing you going. Take your ship to London and spend your mistress’s money.”

“It’s mine,” she said sharply. “She wanted me to share it.”

I merely nodded and she was gone, slipping out of the bright light cast by the candles in the house, into the dark alley. I did not know what she would do in London but I did know that even the
greatest amount of money lasts only a short time there. Once it was gone, she would have to become a servant again, or worse. And I did not doubt that in a few years time, I would be reading her
name in the
Courant
as condemned to transportation or to the gallows.

“Good riddance,” Tom Eade’s spirit said bitterly out of the darkness.

“Pity her,” I said. “At least you had your love, for however short a time. I don’t think she knows the meaning of the word.”

“She didn’t pity my lass,” he said.

The kitchen was cold, the fire long since gone out. Plates still stood in ranks upon the dresser, although I saw a gap in the rank of knives – the girl had taken some defence against the
world. I went into the back of the house; as I mounted the stairs, a faint snoring came from upstairs, a rattle of breath, a pause, more snoring. William Bairstowe plainly still lived. I went
through the door into his room, and saw, to my amazement, Claudius Heron, looking up from a chair at the side of the bed.

He had a book upon his knee and a pistol in his hand. As he looked up, he half-raised the pistol, recognised me, lowered the weapon again. “Caught her, have you?”

I laughed unwillingly. “Have I been running about the town in a mad confusion for days, while you have known all along?”

He shook his head, indicated at another chair that stood against the wall. I dragged it forward, and he reached for wine that stood on a small table beside the bed. There were, I noted, two
glasses, one unused. Candlelight gleamed off Heron’s pale hair, glittered in his eyes.

“I have had plenty of time to consider the matter, sitting here tonight.”

I looked on William Bairstowe in the neatly-ordered bed, with his slack mouth and stentorian breathing. His colour seemed better.

“Even then,” Heron said, “I had not fully resolved the matter until the maid came running back.” He filled a glass and held it out to me. I downed the wine eagerly, not
knowing till then how thirsty I was; I had taken neither drink nor food for half a day.

“I heard a shot,” Heron said. “Then the maid came home without the mistress, ransacked the place and made off again.” He smiled thinly, his eyes on my face. “I
overheard your conversation below. Is the woman dead?”

“Yes, and unfortunately – ”

“Yes?”

“In the church.”

He grimaced. “That will cause a stir. We will have the bishop, the archbishop and half a hundred other clerics descend on us.”

“We did think of dragging her into the churchyard,” I said. “But we thought better of it. We can’t drag her spirit out of the church.”

“We?”

I told him the story. His face tightened when I told him how I had been knocked out, and lengthened in unmistakeable disapproval when I told him of Esther’s exploits, and I told him as
little of that as I could. He sat in the flickering candlelight, his long thin fingers clasped around the stem of his wineglass, leaning across to refill my glass from time to time, only speaking
at the end.

“The spirit will be malicious. When she disembodies in two or three days from now, she will be eager to talk, and you can be certain she will not be complimentary to any of you.”

I sighed. “Esther – Mrs Jerdoun – has gone home and her servants will say she has been in bed with a slight fever. Her maid will swear she has sat with her all the time. Hugh
and I will say we were in our respective beds. What more can we do?”

Heron considered, staring at William Bairstowe’s restless figure.

“Go downstairs and find some water,” he said. “Clean yourself. There are cold meats on a platter and some stale bread in the kitchen. Bring them back up with you.”

I stared at him in confusion.

“You have been here with me all night,” he said, drinking wine. “Looking after Bairstowe in the unaccountable absence of his wife. We dismissed the nurse together. She was so
abominably drunk she probably saw three of me in any case. And we have been talking ever since.” His thin lips curved into a cynical smile. “No one will doubt my word.”