Broken Harmony (24 page)

“But Nichols must surely have known if Le Sac was merely off giving a lesson.”

“I don’t know every lesson
you
intend to give. Where did the fellow hire his horse?”

Now I sat up too. “At the Golden Fleece, I should think.”

We got up together. From Nellie’s we hurried to the Fleece, scarcely a hundred yards away. When we came under the arch into the yard, an ostler was grooming a horse there and offered at
once to help us. He remembered Le Sac very well.

“Yes, sir, indeed, sir. Came in here last night in a great rage. Wanted a horse straight away.”

“Had a violin with him, did he?”

The ostler looked doubtful; Demsey sketched a shape in the air.

“Oh yes, sir. He had a case that shape. Yes, sir. Strapped it very careful to the saddle. Struck me, that did, him being in so great a rage yet so careful with the case.”

“Did you see which way he went?”

“Off towards the bridge.” He jerked his head in that direction. “To Durham, he said.”

“Durham!” I exchanged a glance with Demsey. “To the city itself or somewhere in the country?”

The ostler shrugged.

“And has he come back?” Demsey demanded.

“Not yet, no sir. But the rain was so bad and he went so late, he probably stayed over. He’ll be back. Reliable gent, Mr Sac.”

“No one has ever before called Le Sac reliable in my hearing,” I commented as Demsey and I walked out onto the Key, “but I suppose he is. He has never missed a concert, never
turned up late; I have seen him play – and play excellently – when he was streaming with cold. Odd how you never notice such things, or never give credit for them, at any
rate.”

“Durham,” Demsey mused, staring up at the bulk of the bridge with its haphazard roofline of houses and shops. I heard a noise behind me, glanced round and saw Heron walking away from
Nellie’s. “What’s so attractive in Durham, I wonder?”

“Hesletine, I daresay. The fellow’s touchy. If he thought Ord and Jenison had been taking his name in vain, he might support Le Sac out of spite.”

“A big fuss about nothing, then,” Demsey said.

“Looks like it.”

We were, of course, wrong.

29

CATCHES AND DUET

I came away from George’s inquest greatly depressed. To stand in the presence once more of that small body, to see that head lolling at an odd angle and presenting the
gaping slash in the throat to the ceiling of the inn and the fascinated horror of the eight jurymen – that was an experience I fervently hoped never to repeat.

Armstrong the lawyer was a gangling individual whose build suggested a boy growing too tall, which sat oddly with the weather-beaten face of a middle-aged man. He was the sort of man who uses
silence to provoke witnesses into saying more than intended and into his silence I poured the story of George’s fear of Le Sac, the things he had said, those occasions the boy had seemed
afraid to go out for fear of meeting the Swiss. Armstrong complimented me on my Christian behaviour to a sad child whose life had been so villainously cut short. Neither Demsey nor Heron was called
to speak but Armstrong questioned Tommy the cheesemonger’s boy, who told him lurid tales of beatings and threats, and a thin woman who said she had seen Le Sac beat George. As Demsey said
later, the verdict brought in by the jury – murder by Henri Le Sac – had been inevitable.

We both thought the verdict incorrect. Claudius Heron, who had sat silently through the inquest, apparently did not. He accosted me outside the tavern, stared Demsey into moving a step or two
away. “The boy’s death was a warning, Patterson,” he said shortly. “Keep out of the affair. Leave it be.”

I shook my head. “I cannot, sir.”

He walked away.

In the Bigg Market, Demsey and I encountered Mr Ord hurrying down towards St Nicholas’s Church. “Well, well,” he cried, on seeing me. “You must be gratified, Patterson.
Good news, good news indeed. I am hurrying to tell Jenison, you know. Good day, good day.”

“Gratified,” I repeated as we watched Ord’s plump figure disappear into the crowds in Amen Corner. “Gratified that a child has lost his life?”

“I hope I never make such efficient enemies,” Demsey said.

We passed Barber’s bookshop and were turning from the vestry door of St Nicholas’s when it opened and a man came hurrying out. Light-Heels Nichols. I bowed to him and made to pass,
but he cried out shrilly, “I trust you’re satisfied!”

“Leave it, man,” Demsey said wearily.

“Leave it? When my friend cries out for justice? His reputation is ruined!”

It was damnably difficult to push past him; he seized my coat and for fear of tearing the cloth I was forced to turn back. His thin features were pinched, as if he had not slept nor eaten. But
he had, by his breath, drunk a great deal.

“Condemned as a murderer!” he said shrilly. “For a dirty, poxed brat and a notebasher like you! Oh, you saw your way clear, didn’t you? You saw how to make your fortune
at the expense of his!”

“Shut up, I say,” Demsey said through clenched teeth.

I tried to speak soothingly. “I had nothing to do with the matter.” I put a hand on Demsey’s arm, looking to deflect his rising anger, conscious of faces shifting behind
windows, Barber staring from his shop door.

“Nothing to do with it?” Nichols shrieked. “Ord and Jenison are your cronies, the boy’s your apprentice. You arranged the whole thing.
You
killed the
boy!”

Demsey swung his fist. I lunged to prevent him but too late – bone crunched as the fist connected with Nichols’s jaw. His grip on my coat loosed; he toppled into the mud of the
churchyard, cracking his temple against a tombstone. Demsey was all for going for him again but I dragged him back and pinned him against the church railings.

“Leave him,” I said.

Nichols lay at our feet, moaning.

“He accused you of murder!”

“He is looking for someone – anyone – to blame. After all, his prospects disappear with Le Sac.”

“Damn it, Charles!” He rubbed at his bruised knuckles, and smiled sweetly at an elderly man who hovered in uncertain curiosity. The man hurried off.

“What do you say to a ride in the country?”

His brow creased. “Are you raving?”

“A trip to Durham.”

We left Nichols groaning in the mud and walked down the hill towards the Key. A curl of sulphurous smoke came up to meet us, yellowy-black like a bruise; the narrow curves of the Side seemed to
sink into it, as if burrowing into a fragment of hell. Demsey coughed as we came into the first tendrils of the smoke but they curled up and away from us and left a mere thickening of the air, a
haze as on the outskirts of a fire.

“Charles,” Demsey said, “do we go to capture Le Sac or to warn him?”

At the foot of Butcher Bank, a quack was trying to sell potions to a little cluster of women. The Row, climbing from our left up towards All Hallows Church, stank with decaying meat; a rivulet
of blood came down the gutter to meet us. Demsey stepped fastidiously across it.

“Which do you suppose?”

“I suppose you’re a fool,” he said tartly. “I admit I don’t think Le Sac a murderer, but you will never persuade Ord and Jenison of that.”

“I do not look to save the man’s reputation. But his life is a different matter.” I stopped, astonished at myself. “Do you hear me, Hugh? Did you imagine you would ever
hear me speak of helping Le Sac?”

“I wish I could decide who did kill the boy,” he said. He was still rubbing at his sore knuckles. “That’s more important than Le Sac’s affairs. For all you know,
Charles, you might be the villain’s next victim.”

“Or you,” I pointed out. “If the villain is Nichols, for instance.”

We turned into the yard of the Golden Fleece, and Demsey went to bespeak two horses. I lingered under the arch on to the Key, watching the wisps of smoke drift along the river, hearing among the
clatter of loading and unloading the whispers of spirits and their pleas for help, and involuntarily shuddering again at the thought of dying in that water, drifting in the mad babble of confused
spirits, even being borne out by the tides into the desolate seas. The clatter of hooves behind me raised me from my reverie; I turned – and saw Claudius Heron outside Nellie’s. He
nodded and moved on.

“That fellow’s haunting us today,” Hugh said, leading a pair of horses out to me. They were not the finest pieces of horseflesh I have ever seen but they looked sturdy enough.
Hugh handed me the reins of a bay and kept a grey for himself. “This expedition has all the marks of a fool’s errand,” he said. “We are not dressed for riding, there’s
a wind from the sea and a smoke coming with it – and rain too, damn it. We are not even certain the fellow went to Durham, or if he merely said so to deceive the ostler. And it’s so
late in the day we will never get to Durham and back in the light!”

He hauled himself into the saddle of the grey. As in all things, he did it gracefully.

“I for one, Charles, do not intend to ride back in the small hours of the morning. The post boy was robbed of six letters beyond Chester le Street last week and I don’t want to meet
the fellow who did it. I shall lodge in Durham overnight, at the Star and Rummer in the Market Place.”

I shuddered. “What, with that fellow Blenkinsop? Have you heard him sing, Hugh?”

“I don’t care how he sings. He does very good beef.”

I climbed into the saddle of my own horse, with rather less grace than Hugh. We rode up the slope on to the bridge and wound our way through the crowds of passers-by. A few raindrops splattered
on my hand. “I told you!” Demsey said triumphantly.

We urged the horses up the bank in Gateshead, past St Mary’s church and its tilted, uncertain gravestones. From there, the roads diverged; we took one that led away from the town and
climbed on to Gateshead Fell. We were above the smoke now; looking back towards the river, I saw it hidden beneath twisting yellow clouds. The houses on the bridge seemed to rise out of the smoke
as if they floated upon it; all else was hidden.

We kept silence awhile, lost in our own thoughts. Then Demsey said, “I’m glad I hit him. Nichols, I mean. I have longed to do that for months.” I nodded absently, but my
thoughts were elsewhere – wondering where poor George’s spirit wandered.

The rainstorm came upon us more quickly than we had anticipated. A great bank of dark cloud on the eastern horizon seemed to well up and race to overtake us. A blue-black pall flung itself
across the sky and tossed driving torrents of water over us, stinging our exposed hands and faces. We galloped for a stand of trees a little aside from the road; the foliage had been thinned by
autumn but kept the worst of the rain away. We shivered as water dripped from the trees and slid coldly down our necks. The horses shifted restlessly.

“This is dangerous, Charles,” Demsey said uneasily. “God knows what thieves might be lurking in this murk.”

“They won’t want to get wet any more than we do.” But I too fell to scanning the shifting shadows in the rain.

We sat on in gloomy silence, every so often imagining that we saw a lighter patch of sky behind the black clouds. The horses fidgeted and tossed their heads against the rain. I was inclining to
Demsey’s view and contemplating a return to Newcastle when suddenly lightning streaked out of the clouds and thunder clapped hard upon its heels. My horse started and it was all I could do to
prevent it rearing. I could feel it trembling between my legs.

“We can’t stay here! The trees will draw the lightning!” I jerked my head into the darkness. “Let us try to get to Gateshead. I teach the Hawks family there – they
will shelter us.”

Demsey yelled agreement and we turned our horses into the fury of the rain. Then came another streak of brightness, simultaneous with the clatter of thunder, and Demsey’s horse reared up.
He cried out, hauled back on the reins, fought the frightened brute. But it bolted away into the darkness, running like a pale wraith into the black moor.

I urged my horse after them, praying there were no hidden obstacles, no rabbit holes or abandoned mine workings. I could hardly see the ground beneath the horse’s hooves, reined him back
to a canter. I felt him quiver as the thunder cracked overhead.

Then to my right, I saw a patch of even greater darkness. It puzzled me, even as the horse veered away from it. It was a pond, I realised, folded into a dip in the fell. Lightning flared over
our heads again. A few bushes rimmed the edge of the dark water – and I glimpsed something clinging to one of the bushes.

I dragged the unwilling horse towards the pond; reluctantly it stood shivering at the water’s edge. The object blown by the wind against the bushes was only part of an old sack, after all.
I was turning away when the lightning showed me another object floating near the edge of the pond.

I dismounted, groped among the bushes for a fallen branch. Pushing the branch out into the dark water, I snagged the object, pulled it ashore. So familiar an object: a little box, of the type
that violinists keep their resin in. And beneath the bushes that overhung the water’s edge bobbed a larger object, which came out only after a struggle.

Torn cloth, the dark edge of curved polished wood. A heavy object in which water sloshed. I tugged back the cloth and exposed the blackness within.

A black violin.

30

SYMPHONY

It was a dishevelled group that gathered at the pond the following morning. The day itself was bedraggled, overlaid by a blanket of grey cloud, damp with a drizzle that soaked
our hair and clothes. The night before, we had ridden into Gateshead to David Hawks’s house and he had generously offered us shelter; we went to bed to the rumbling accompaniment of the
thunder. In the morning we woke to find that Hawks had called out the constable, and we all rode back to the pond with a handful of Hawks’s servants.

Now one of the servants was venturing cautiously into the middle of the pond, testing his footing as he went, edging out until he was almost waist-deep. A thick rope about his waist was held by
three men on the bank among the reeds; he clasped a second rope in one hand.