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Authors: Roz Southey
Roz Southey
Praise for
Broken Harmony
, Roz Southey’s inventive debut historical mystery:
... points for originality... different, absorbing, and with an unhackneyed setting...
- Alan Fisk, Historical Novels Review
paints a wonderful background... a complex plot which intrigues, teases and cajoles the reader into a complete suspension of disbelief, and the
quality of the writing hurtles one along until the end.
- Amazon
Southey’s sure-handed use of period detail...
- Publishers Weekly, USA
what really makes the novel come alive is its setting... she seamlessly incorporates the historical information into the novel... The dialogue, too,
rings true: just ornamented enough to feel right for its time... A charming novel...
- Booklist, USA
A fascinating read, and certainly different.
- Jean Currie, Round the Campfire
... it is good to see a publisher investing in fresh work that... falls four-square within the genre’s traditions.
- Martin Edwards, author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries
Creme de la Crime... so far have not put a foot wrong.
- Reviewing the Evidence
First published in 2008
by Crème de la Crime
P O Box 523, Chesterfield, S40 9AT
Copyright © 2008 Roz Southey
The moral right of Roz Southey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any
information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Typesetting by Yvette Warren
Cover design by Yvette Warren
Front cover image by Peter Roman
ISBN 978-0-9557078-2-7
A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library
Printed and bound in Germany by Bercker.
About the author:
Roz Southey is a musicologist and historian, and lives in the North East of England.
My thanks ...
... to Lynne Patrick at Crème de la Crime for her unfailing patience and generous help, and to Lesley Horton for her expert editorial guidance.
... to my sisters, Jennifer and Wendy, and to my brother-in-law John, who have given me endless moral support throughout the years, and to my husband, Chris, who never stopped
believing I really could write a publishable novel.
... and especially to my parents, Charles and Edna Williams. Many years of sitting in village church choirs listening to my father playing pipe organs taught me to appreciate
the largest of musical instruments and the way its music seemed to be born out of the air; my mother’s wide-ranging reading habits amazed librarians everywhere. Although it’s fair to
say she would have preferred me to have written a good saga ...
For my mum
Edna May Williams
1918-2008
‘the loveliest person in the world’
The present high winds have done much damage in the town...
[Newcastle Courant, 28 February 1736]
It was cold, it was wet, and it was windy. Freezing rain splattered against my face and spotted the cobbles at my feet. Wind swirled, tugging at the skirts of my coat and
threatening to bowl my tricorne all the way down Silver Street into the Tyne below. In short, it was March, and no one dawdles on streets in March unless there is a very good reason. So why were
those fellows fidgeting at the entrance to an alley near All Hallows Church?
I am as curious as the next man, even when shivering and damp. Besides, what better had I to do? I’d just come from the first cancelled lesson of the day. The family had evidently removed
from the town for Lent. With no public amusements – no theatre, no dancing or card assemblies, no concerts – one might as well withdraw to the yawning boredom of a country house. And if
a few bills have been forgotten, belonging to say, the odd musician, well, these things can’t be helped. Never mind if the musician in question (your obedient servant, Chas Patterson) is down
to the last guinea in his pocket.
I accosted a fellow with a grubby bagwig and asked what had happened. He squinted at me. “Someone’s dead.”
And I had been hoping for something to cheer me up.
“Murdered,” he said, with relish. “Blood everywhere.”
I should have turned my back and walked away. Just before Christmas I’d got myself involved in murder, and I didn’t much like the consequences. But I had nothing to do and one way of
passing the time seemed as good as any other. I peered through a gap in the crowd and glimpsed a yard at the other end of the alley. A middle-aged woman was glowering at a weeping girl; Bedwalters,
the parish constable, was staring down at something I could not see. This was the alley leading to the organ manufactory – perhaps the dead body belonged to William Bairstowe, the organ
builder. Someone must have taken violent exception to his rudeness at last.
“All this fuss!” said a voice behind me, scornfully. I glanced round. The voice came from a door on the other side of the street; when I looked closely, I saw the gleam of a spirit
lodged on a stone bunch of grapes carved into the door lintel. The spirit slid round the carvings towards me; the living man must have died on the doorstep and his spirit, like all spirits, could
not leave the place of his dying.
The spirit sniffed. “No one made a fuss like this when
I
died.”
“But this is murder.”
“No such thing!”
“No?”
“I have the true tale.”
“Oh yes?”
“From Mrs Forbes’s spirit, who lives opposite, who had it from Mr Ross’s spirit on the churchyard wall, who had it from the girl’s spirit in the alley.”
Spirits can pass a tale from one end of the town to another in the time it takes a living man to cross the street. I wondered why the girl’s spirit had no name.
“So who’s died?”
“Bairstowe the organ builder. Hit on the head by one of his own pipes.”
I thought of the largest diapason pipes in the organs of my acquaintance. One such would have given him a nasty bump, I supposed, but could it have killed him?
“Blown over by the wind.” As if to corroborate the spirit’s evidence, the wind bowled an empty basket along the street.
“The wind was very strong last night,” I mused. It had blown against my window and the rattling had kept me awake several hours. “An accident, then?”
“Of sorts.”
I sighed. The spirit wanted to be encouraged. It’s always wise to keep on the good side of spirits – when spiteful, they don’t mind too much what they say. I hope that when I
am finally lodged in some place for the inevitable eighty or a hundred years after my death, I do not turn sour and vicious. “You don’t think so?”
“Well, have you seen the state that yard is in? Asking for trouble. Have you seen it?”
“No.”
A note of doubt crept into the spirit’s voice. “You are Patterson? Charles Patterson, the musical fellow.”
I stared uneasily at the gleam on the damp lintel. “I had no idea I was so well known.”
A chortle. “You are notorious, sir, after your exploits before Christmas!”
My heart sank. “I do know William Bairstowe,” I said, hoping to distract the spirit. “But I haven’t been in his yard since my childhood.” I hunted for a way out of
the conversation. Was I really that anxious to know how Bairstowe came by his death? Anxious enough to brave the wind and the splattering rain, and the lonely, garrulous spirit?
“Never seen such a mess,” the spirit said. “Wood everywhere, stone, lead. Pipes all over the place. Piles of rubbish. Don’t know how he works there.” It paused.
“Well, he doesn’t work much, does he? Or he didn’t. Anyhow, he’s paid the price now. Wind took the lead and hit him on the head with it and now he’s dead.”
Thankfully, as the spirit threatened to burst into verse, I saw the man with a grubby bagwig beckon from the crowd. I went back to him. “Bringing him out,” he said. “He’s
one of the lads in the leather merchant’s shop.”
“A lad?” I echoed, startled.
“Courting the maid,” the fellow said, with a wink. “Weeping fit to float a ship, she is.”
And out they came in procession: Bedwalters first, standing respectfully aside to let two labourers carry out a hurdle with a body on it, covered by a sheet. The crowd strained for a sight of
blood but there was none. Then came a girl, burying her face in her apron, then the middle-aged woman – that was Mrs Bairstowe no doubt. A second wife, if I remembered my gossip correctly.
And behind her, bracing himself in the narrow entrance to the alley, was William Bairstowe the organ builder, heavy and red-faced.
We doffed our hats, and stood getting windblown and wet as the procession turned out of the alley and made its way down the street. The crowd began to disperse and the spirit slid away to call
to someone else. I pushed my tricorne back on to my head and turned to go, then caught William Bairstowe’s gaze as he stared across the street. For a moment I thought he was about to call to
me, but his mouth twisted into a grimace instead and he swore at a child that bumped into him. The next moment he had swung back into the alley.
Not the sort of man I like to keep me company. Still, I thought, no need to worry myself over a fellow I’m likely to meet twice a year at most.
No one can predict the future.
The GENTLEMEN DIRECTORS of the SUBSCRIPTION CONCERTS are desired to meet at the Assembly Rooms, Westgate Road, on Friday the 5th Inst. March at 11 o’clock in the
Morning, to consider the next season’s concerts.
[Newcastle Courant, 20 February 1736]
The rain had blown up into a full-scale squall by the time I reached the Assembly Rooms on Westgate Road an hour or so later. I was wet and angry over yet another cancelled
lesson. This one had been on Butcher Bank, a place I always hate visiting. Rain had washed most of the blood and discarded offal down the gutters, but the street still stank. And all to hear the
servant telling me the family had left and wouldn’t be back until after Easter.
When would anyone pay me? At the end of the March quarter they would all be in the country; they might come back to town after Easter, but by the end of the June quarter they would be sweating
out the summer heat in their country houses again. September quarter? Perhaps, but is it worth coming up to town before the amusements start at the beginning of October? December quarter? Well, of
course bills are always paid in full at the end of the year. If one remembers. After all, it’s only the tradesman.
I’d be starving by December. I had hardly enough in my pockets to get to the end of the month. Damn it, what was I going to do?
