Sword and Song (3 page)

Hugh and I went out into the chill warmth of the August night, stood looking up and down the cobbled street. I felt like a traitor, assuring Bedwalters that I could achieve something I was
already convinced was well-nigh impossible.

“The fellow will have left town,” Hugh said. “Long since. Obvious thing to do.”

“Yes.”

“And given a false name to the girl, anyway.”

“If he had any sense.”

“There’s not the slightest chance of catching him.”

“The book, Hugh,” I said. “What the devil was that all about?”

“God knows.”

“But it’s at the heart of the matter. It must be! Why else should he kill her? For want of something better to do?”

“The girl’ll tell us in three days’ time.”

“I’ll be in the country entertaining lords and ladies who don’t even know people like Nell exist.”

Hugh gave a bark of laughter. “I bet the gentlemen do!” He slapped me on the shoulder. “You can come back, Charles. Long End’s only an hour out of town on a tolerably
fast horse. Don’t worry about this one – this isn’t going to puzzle you for long.”

We parted in Amen Corner by St Nicholas’s church, Hugh to go to his lodgings on Westgate and I to cross town by the High Bridge to reach my rooms in All Hallows parish. I
needed sleep if I was to be fit to flatter the ladies and gentlemen tomorrow.
Today
. The streets were dark and I walked in a brooding silence, haunted by thoughts of the dead girl, by the
memory of Bedwalters’s face, by a longing to be able to turn back the clock and prevent this dreadful thing happening.

And killed for such a small cause too. How could a book be so valuable that it was worth a life?

I heard an owl moan and glanced up to see it swooping low across the dark street in front of me, rising up again towards the tower of All Hallows church –

Towards the rosy glow of dawn...

I held my breath, stepped cautiously forward. A moment’s shiver of cold and I was standing in morning sunlight.

There is a world that runs alongside our own, as near as two pages in a closed book. The other world looks much the same as our own; there is no difference between All Hallows church and its
counterpart in the other world, no difference in many of the houses, the streets, the trees and gardens. We living men have our counterparts there too, sometimes uncannily like ourselves, sometimes
unnervingly different. My own self lives there – a much wealthier man than I; Hugh’s counterpart is twenty years older. There seem to be, as far as I have been able to tell, two main
differences between the worlds: there are no spirits there; and time does not run at quite the same pace. Sometimes, as now, it is night in our own world, day in the other. Sometimes the seasons
seem to change at a different rate.

Worlds like pages in a book. Separate, self-sufficient. But at times it’s possible to step from one world into the other. Not everyone can do so but I seem to have that ability. I have
been to that world a number of times now, knowing my
stepping through
from one world to the other by a faint sensation of cold.

And I have learnt that it is only at times of crisis that the passageway between the worlds opens up. Principally, when I am searching for answers to a death.

I walked down the street in that other world. I heard a servant talking, a distant fiddler strike up a tune. The gate to All Hallows churchyard stood invitingly open. I put my hand on it,
intending to go in, to walk among the sunlit graves, to look for whatever had brought me here...

But the owl swooped down again, bringing darkness back with it. I shivered, stood in the darkness of my own world, a hand on the closed gate of the graveyard.

The residents of the entire street turned out when Claudius Heron’s travelling coach drew up at my door. As my patron and, I strongly suspected, the man who’d put
my name forward for the houseparty, Heron had not unnaturally offered to transport me. I’d expected to be travelling in his servants’ coach but it was Heron’s own equipage that
stopped up at my door, drawn by glossy black horses, the bodywork of the carriage polished to shining perfection, and notable by the lack of a coat of arms on the door, though Heron was perfectly
entitled to bear one.

I was watching for him from the window of my room and hurried down with my bags, battling through crowds of children to the carriage. One footman took the bags from me, another flung open the
door and let down the steps; I went up them in a hurry and the carriage was in motion almost as soon as I was in it. I jolted back in my seat and caught a glimpse of the cheesemonger’s
disapproving face as the carriage passed.

Heron, in the opposite seat, was dressed in his usual pale colours, and the noon sunshine glinted on his fair hair. A man in his early forties, he considers himself immune to fashion but even
his practical travelling clothes were several degrees smarter than my best coat. I saw his gaze flicker over me with a gleam of amusement.

“New clothes, Patterson?”

“I felt nothing else would do.”

The amusement turned a little sour. “Yes, I hear our host is always well turned out.”

I’d never met the gentleman whose house I was about to visit but I did know that Edward Edmund Alyson was barely twenty-three, four years younger than myself – I’d just passed
my twenty-seventh birthday. He had very recently inherited his uncle’s estates and was celebrating his good fortune with a summer houseparty for his friends. My part in providing the
entertainment would earn me fifteen guineas – about as much as I got for an entire year’s playing as deputy organist of All Hallows church.

“Am I to thank you for a recommendation to Mr Alyson?” I asked Heron.

He shook his head. “Lawyer Armstrong has arranged it all. Alyson apparently wrote to him from London asking him to hire new servants and draw up a guest list.”

I stared. “Does that mean Alyson knows none of his guests?”

“Apparently not. But he is eager to make a place for himself and his wife in Newcastle society and wants to meet all the local notables. And of course few people are going to turn down the
chance to eat and drink at someone else’s expense for an entire month.”

Heron’s cynicism is familiar to me; I nodded and reserved judgement.

“His uncle and I had part shares in three ships,” he went on. “I have been deputed by my fellow shareholders to ascertain Alyson’s views on the management of the vessels.
And he has inherited at least two mines – there is the question of how he intends to transport the coal.”

“Did you know his uncle well?”

Heron nodded. “A very decent man. Very strict – he would not tolerate the least dishonesty, or immoral behaviour.”

In my experience, that usually means maids turned off the moment they’re seen to be with child.

“He was sadly reduced at the end,” Heron said. “Not entirely sure what was going on around him. The nephew I don’t know at all. His parents lived in London and on the
continent in his early years. I fancy they were not on particularly good terms with the old man.”

We looked out at the passing streets. Heron nodded to one or two acquaintances, made light conversation, commented on the pleasures of travelling in such good weather. But as we moved north,
into the countryside around Barras Bridge, I could not drag my thoughts away from Nell. She’d been a mere girl, but in Bedwalters she’d found a man who would protect and care for her,
and whom she could respect. And he’d found a refuge from a shrewish wife and the burden of everyday cares. What would he do now?

“You’re thinking of the constable,” Heron said quietly.

Startled, I said: “You’ve heard what happened?”

“The servants were all talking of it this morning.” He looked out into the warm sunshine, on haystacks and shorn fields. “Is there any hint who did it?”

“A customer. Of medium height and build, medium dark. We’re hoping Nell’s spirit will be able to identify him.”

He hesitated then said, “If there’s any difficulty in finding him, I could offer a reward. Five guineas, do you think?”

I stared at him astounded. The last time he’d met Bedwalters, he’d bullied him mercilessly, with the hauteur of a gentleman born and bred, in order to get what he wanted. A mere
constable – even one as resolute as Bedwalters – cannot hold out against a determined gentleman. As Heron’s actions had saved me from a charge of murder, I’d been in no
position to object, but I hadn’t liked it. Was Heron feeling just the slightest twinge of remorse?

Somehow I doubted it.

“I think that might not be wise,” I said reluctantly. “I suspect a reward will simply attract a whole host of undesirables ready to spin you whatever tale they think you want
to hear.”

He nodded. “So I suspected. But the offer stands.”

I thanked him, stared out at a boy and a dog shepherding five sheep. “There was a book,” I said absently. “Nell was keeping it for this man.”

Heron raised an eyebrow. “Stolen, do you think?”

“Almost certainly. But who would kill for a book?”

Heron’s lean, handsome face was cynical. “Last winter, a traveller on the Carlisle road was killed for his cravat.”

“It had lace on it,” I said tartly. “Worth a fortune, they say.”

Heron’s own cravat was plain. He smiled.

We travelled for perhaps an hour or two. Alyson’s house, Long End, stands seven miles north of Newcastle; our way lay along narrow lanes not entirely suitable for
carriages and our progress was at times slow. Fields gave way to woods then to fields again. We clattered through hamlets, scattering hens and geese; a dozen dogs leapt out of hedges to bark at us.
The countryside hereabouts is not particularly fertile; the gently rolling hills verge on bleakness and the living is poor. The few people we saw tended to give our expensive retinue sour
looks.

But the village we came to eventually, around the end of the afternoon, was well-kept, the houses all of the same type and apparently all built at the same time. An estate village. Beyond the
church, a stone bridge curved over a fast-flowing river; we turned sharp left and plunged through pillars topped with extravagant lions, into a drive that led deep into a wood.

The drive was atrociously potholed. An attempt to fill in the holes had met with singular lack of success. The coachman slowed the horses. Heron swore as we bounced along, and held on to the
strap beside the door. “Damned place has been neglected for years.”

I craned from the window to catch a first sight of the house; naïve and callow of me, I know, but I’ve not so far moved in the sort of circles where country houses are a commonplace.
I looked at it for a full three minutes before realising what it was; it was so small, I thought at first it must be a dower house or even a lodge. It was Jacobean, an old-fashioned building of red
brick, with a tower at each corner and more gable ends than any house should ever have. The formal gardens that surrounded it were bedraggled and weed-choked.

Heron was smiling in faint amusement again. “Disappointed, Patterson?”

I sat back, resigned. “Beyond all measure.”

“Well,” he said, “the Alysons suffer the fate of all nowadays.”

“No money?”

“Precisely. Not,” he added with extra dryness, “that they don’t have extensive rebuilding plans. Or so Armstrong tells me. They’re planning something in a much more
modern style and have an architect working on it even now.”

“Does he know they can’t afford it?”

“I suspect all architects expect a fight over money.”

Whatever their financial situation, the Alysons were not short of servants. As we drew up in front of the house, footmen leapt forward to open the coach door, a butler waited in dignified
disdain, maids hovered in the shadows.

Heron climbed down and was respectfully ushered in. The butler, however, took one look at my new coat, patently decided I must be Heron’s secretary or valet and wanted to banish me to the
back door. Heron turned his weary gaze on him. The butler reddened and stood back to let me past. I felt a reluctant sympathy for him; technically, of course, he was right – I was as much a
paid employee as he was.

The butler himself escorted Heron into some elegant recess of the house; I was relinquished to the care of a maid who couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. She swept me off with
ferocious dignity, across a dark wood-panelled hallway of miniscule proportions, to an ancient stair. The steps were of so dark a wood that they seemed black; they were canted at uneasy angles,
first leaning into the wall then away from it. The banister was worn to a glossy smoothness by a century or more of handling and was truly beautiful. Morose ancestors in ancient fashions hung on
every side.

At the first landing, the maid seemed to lose her way. She hesitated, turned left then turned back, found a narrower stair in a dark corner. She’d apparently decided I was of no
consequence; she said insolently, “Honestly, they seem to think we can work miracles. When you get here in the evening and have to welcome the master and mistress next morning and their
guests in the afternoon, well, you can’t have everything sorted, can you? Let alone find your way round.”

“You only got here yesterday?” I said startled.

“And the old servants had let everything go,” she said scornfully. “Eighty if they were a day! Lucky for us, of course. This is the best place I ever had.” She sounded
thirty years old, not fourteen. “Pay’s worse than a joke, mind, and I never could stand living in the country, but give me a couple of months and I’ll be in their London house.
They must have a London house, don’t you think?”

“No doubt,” I said. She reminded me of the girl in Mrs McDonald’s house, trying to be much older and more sophisticated than she was.

She found her way again and turned for a yet narrower stair; we were definitely headed to the attics, I thought. A voice floated distinctly from one of the bedrooms to my right.