Chords and Discords (9 page)

“Shall we say tomorrow?” she said bluntly.

I took fright. A single gentleman teaching a single lady with only a maid for chaperone? A lady moreover whose interest in music is known to be slight? And at her house? I hated that house.

She must have read my thoughts in my face; she added quickly, “I thought we might use the harpsichord in the Assembly Rooms. The Steward frequently says he wishes it was played more over
the summer months.”

“Indeed it should be.” I breathed more easily. The Assembly Rooms were a public place; the Steward would pop in and out, we could hardly be accused to being alone.

“Very well,” I began – but then my name was bellowed along the street.

William Bairstowe strode towards us. He had clearly not been to church; he was dressed in crumpled clothes that looked as if he had worn them for days, slept in them even.

“What the devil are you about, Patterson?”

“Good day, Mr Bairstowe,” Esther Jerdoun said.

He ignored her. He was so forceful, I thought he might even seize hold of my coat to drag me into the alley. “I want results, man. I want this fellow’s name!” He sneered.
“I see what kind of fellow you are. You want the money but not the work, eh?” In the light of what Strolger had just told me, I considered that an unwise comment. “Well, question
the folks that matter. Like my wife. She’ll tell you all about the notes. I’ve told her often enough.”

If all Mrs Bairstowe knew was what her husband told her, I did not consider that of much value. But Bairstowe was seizing me by the arm and propelling me back down the street towards the alley.
“Get in there, man! I’ve business to do so you have a clear run at it. Go on, man!” And he strode off down Silver Street.

“So it is true,” Mrs Jerdoun said. “You are investigating this matter? Claudius Heron told me something of the sort but I could not believe it. I would have thought you would
steer well clear of such things after your experiences before Christmas.”

“Needs must, madam,” I said dryly.

“Money?”

“Indeed.”

“Debts?”

“A few.” I did not wish to discuss the matter but she persisted.

“Unpaid bills, sir? I mean, your bills are not paid by your pupils?”

“A natural hazard in my profession.”

She studied my face. A few lines showed around her own eyes and mouth – she was after all a woman in middle life.

“I am not accustomed to letting problems defeat me, Mr Patterson,” she said at last. “Though I confess they often send me into a frenzy of frustration. I cannot abide to stand
back and do nothing!”

“Madam – ”

She gathered her cloak around her more tightly. “Tell me frankly – is it essential that you obtain this money from William Bairstowe?”

“If I am to escape a debtor’s prison.” I spoke lightly but it was the stuff of my nightmares.

“Very well.” She took my arm, steered me into the alley. “Then we had better question the lady.”

We?

In the shadowed yard, overhung by the church tower, I felt an ineradicable chill, almost like the deep cold that had always struck me just before that other world had opened up
during the Caroline Square business a few months ago. I shivered violently, walked across the yard to the workshop; there was a new lock on the door, fresh wood and gleaming metal. Cupping my hand
against the window, I peered through fly-speckled glass. At first, I saw only the deepest of darknesses, the speckles on the glass giving the illusion of a starlit sky. Then the inside of the
building came into focus; it had been tidied after a fashion; ruined pipes had been thrown into one corner, wood piled in untidy heaps.

“Who the devil are you?”

I started, turned. A woman stood at the door of the house, a bowl in her arms. “Get out,” she said. “We don’t give to beggars.”

As Mrs Jerdoun was dressed in a gown of expensive quality, this was patently a calculated insult.

“Mrs Bairstowe?” It was the woman from the church, the woman Holloway had been so solicitous over. She made a contemptuous noise and flung the contents of the basin past me. The
stink of it, and the colour, told me it was the pot from under their bed; some of the contents splashed on to my stockings and on to the hem of Mrs Jerdoun’s skirt. The woman smiled
grimly.

“Take yourselves off and bother other folk,” she said.

“My name’s Patterson,” I said sharply. “Your husband has asked me to find out who is threatening him.”

She stood with the basin loose in her hands, regarding me with calculating hardness. “Has he now? And the lady?” She gave Mrs Jerdoun no chance to reply, said contemptuously:
“Fashionable ladies have nothing better to do, I suppose, than see how their inferiors live.”

“If I’m to help your husband, I need information – ”

“And you reckon I know something?”

“Do you?”

“Nay,” she said. “I’m just a stupid woman. All brawn, no sense.”

She did indeed have brawny arms; her sleeves were rolled up past the elbow and I saw muscles cording her forearms. She was a big woman – perhaps an inch taller than myself, and I am above
the middle height. Her face was weathered, and her dull brown hair pulled back into a loose knot. She looked like a farmer’s wife, not the wife of a prosperous tradesman. Next to Mrs Jerdoun,
she appeared battered by life, worn down.

“Can we talk?”

“Aye,” she said. “We can. I don’t know that we will.”

She screwed up her face in a kind of grim triumph but stood back to allow us into the house. I found myself in a kitchen so clean it might never have been used. Bowls stood in regiments upon a
dresser, strictly in order of size; on a table, knives were ranked from largest to smallest. The fire was not lit and a deep-seated chill pervaded the house.

She was still standing in the doorway behind us.

“Well? Are you going to ask or not? I don’t have all day to idle.”

I curbed my annoyance. Mrs Bairstowe was plainly a match for her husband when it came to rudeness. “I understand your husband has been receiving threatening notes.”

“He says.” Her incredulity was palpable.

“You’ve not seen any of them?”

“What good would it do to show me?” She was bullish with me, but Mrs Jerdoun’s calm silence seemed to unsettle her – she kept glancing at her, although Mrs Jerdoun did
nothing but stand in the middle of the room, showing polite attention.

“He didn’t mention them to you?”

A pause. “He might have,” she said at last.

“Is that yes or no?” Mrs Jerdoun asked.

The woman reddened but rallied. “He’s paying you to look into the matter too, is he, my lady?”

“Did he tell you about the notes?” I said, sharply.

“Aye. He told me.”

“He showed them to you?”

“Nay,” she said scornfully. “Never shows me anything. Anyhow, what would I have done if he had?”

“You cannot read?”

“What do I want with reading? A stupid lump like me?”

“So you think he invented the notes?”

She laughed contemptuously.

“Why should he fabricate threats against himself?”

“Ask him,” she said.

The maid came into the kitchen from the house. She walked to the table, laid down a pile of sewing, took up another pile from a chair and walked out. She cast Mrs Jerdoun one quick, wary glance
and did not look at me at all.

“And the ransacking of the workshop the night before last,” I persisted. “You saw no one in the yard?”

“Nay.”

A noise outside. A stray dog barked, a man called to it to get down. Then Holloway appeared in the doorway, stopping in mid-greeting as he saw us. His gaze lingered on Mrs Jerdoun – I saw
such pleasure in his eyes that I wanted to kick him.

“Mr Holloway,” Esther said.

“Mrs Jerdoun, madam.” Yes, definitely a note of over-familiarity there. He turned his gaze on me. “Are you still investigating William’s affairs, Mr Patterson?”

“I am, sir.”

That didn’t please him. “I think I made the situation clear at our last conversation.”

“You were most clear,” I said. A quirk of a smile touched Mrs Jerdoun’s lips.

“Very well,” he said impatiently. “Let’s deal this matter straight away.” He glanced at Mrs Bairstowe and I saw the oddest look pass between them – I could
have sworn the sternness of her face relaxed and his expression briefly hinted at a smile. “Have they spoken with the maid?” he asked.

Mrs Bairstowe said sharply: “I’ll not have the girl waste her time.”

“But she knows – ” He looked significantly at her.

She seemed almost to snarl. “Five minutes,” she said. “Nothing more.”

The maid was summoned back. She stood before us, head bowed, hands wrapped in her apron, speaking in a child’s voice, all breathy and humble. The evening before last she couldn’t
sleep, she admitted in a whisper: too upset over Tom Eade. She had heard a noise in the yard and peered out of her attic window to see Mr Bairstowe going into the workshop. Then there had been a
great banging, and when he came out he was covered in dirt. Then she saw him take a hammer to the door.

Not once during the tale did she look at any of us; we let her go when it was obvious that she had nothing more to say.

Both Holloway and Mrs Bairstowe were looking smug; I said, “And you heard nothing of this, madam?”

“Slept through it,” she said. “Nought disturbs a lump like me.”

“How old is the girl?” Mrs Jerdoun said, moving from her station in the middle of the room.

Holloway seemed surprised by the enquiry. “Seventeen, I believe.”

“She looks older. Where does she come from?”

Holloway glanced at Mrs Bairstowe. “A local girl, from the Sandhill. Her father’s a keelman.” Another glance. “I am right, I believe.”

“Aye.”

Holloway laid a hand on my arm. I looked down at it, at him. He was plainly trying to be conciliatory, but his touch made me squirm – I could not help but remember how the spirits had
crawled about his neck. “Mr Patterson. You must trust me in this. William is a deeply unhappy man who feels he is not appreciated – this is perhaps his way of getting attention.”
He leant closer. “I would not go so far as to say he is mad, but instability runs in the family. His brother killed himself.”

“Jumped from the bridge,” Mrs Bairstowe said loudly. “Swept out to sea.”

“Alas,” Holloway said punctiliously. But I saw the quick glance pass between them; Mrs Bairstowe was far from pleased that Holloway had mentioned the brother.

“And Tom Eade?” I asked.

“What of him?”

“He died,” I pointed out. “Do you believe he walked into a trap set for your husband?”

“Nay,” she said scornfully. “I know who the trap was set for. That stupid girl. I’d have turned her off if she’d got herself with child. You can be sure of
that.”

I was. As I ushered Mrs Jerdoun out of the yard, I found myself, to my surprise, a little sorry for William Bairstowe.

Mrs Jerdoun and I walked up the street together. A chill breeze blew up from the river. “That woman is lying,” Mrs Jerdoun said. “Though I cannot imagine why.
She is not even doing it cleverly. She should have said she heard the noise. She could have made some excuse for not getting up to look – she did not feel well, she thought he was drunk,
something of that sort.”

“I swear the maid’s not lying,” I said. “Bairstowe did wreck his own workshop.”

“But why?”

We turned out of Silver Street into Pilgrim Street, crossing to the side of the street where the sun lay. “Perhaps the notes and threats are real,” I suggested, “but Bairstowe
thought I did not believe him. He staged this attack in an attempt to convince me. He is very afraid.”

By unspoken agreement, we were walking across town in the direction of Mrs Jerdoun’s house. My annoyance at the Bairstowes still lingered but I would not let it spoil my enjoyment of Mrs
Jerdoun’s company. She gathered her cloak around her and glanced in the window of a mantua-maker’s. She said in a conversational tone: “I dined with Mr Jenison last
night.”

“Indeed?”

“The company was extremely thin. A number of families have already left town for Easter.”

“It’s very late this year,” I agreed.

She nodded. “They will not think of returning until the beginning of May and some may decide not to return until Race Week at the end of June.”

“Indeed.”

“Which will delay their payment of your bills.”

I was taken aback by her directness and half-afraid she intended to offer me financial assistance. “I beg you not to consider the matter, madam. It is merely a temporary affair and will
rectify itself.”

“Therefore,” she said, not heeding me, “Mr Bairstowe’s offer is most opportune. But can you be sure he will pay you? Indeed, that he can? I have heard rumours –
”

“He has advertised a chamber organ for sale at the Cordwainers’ Hall next week. He may pay me from that.”

She glanced at me, but said merely, “I trust he will.”

We had come up to St Nicholas’s church; it is large and well-appointed, in much better condition than All Hallows, and has an organ of high quality. There was a time I cast envious eyes on
the position of organist there but I have long since concluded that some things are not meant to be. The tower and spires cast long shadows over the street.

“I did not find the dinner congenial,” Mrs Jerdoun said. “I was disappointed in the company.”

I took a moment to remember that she was referring to Jenison’s entertainment the previous night. I glanced at her. There was a trace of implacability in those blue eyes.

“I broached the subject of your benefit,” she said.

Dear God, her wish to champion my cause was both gratifying and frightening. If she should give the gentlemen cause for gossip –

“There was nothing but ‘oh, this was not possible’ and ‘oh, that was not desirable’, and ‘the expenses of these matters must be carefully considered’.
And not a trace of consideration of
your
position or the services you rendered them over the winter.” She was in full flow of indignation now. “Or there was mere indifference and
silence. Heron, for one.”