Chords and Discords (17 page)

Former? I wondered.

“She’ll not be the same again,” the girl said and, in reply to my frown of puzzlement, “The fisher lass. And the brother loves her – the one thing in this world he
loves, apart from himself.”

She was watching me carefully and I knew she was trying to be helpful. “He likes you,” she said. “He says you treat him like the good man he is.” I knew she wasn’t
referring to Richard Softly any more but to Bedwalters. “One good turn demands another,” she said.

I was a trifle depressed as I left her and went out through the alley into the street, musing on the sight of good men and women trapped by fate or circumstance. The night was pitch black, and
sparkling with stars, the moon hidden by a trail of cloud. Glancing along the street I saw only one torch burning, on a house opposite All Hallows Church. I stepped out into the road, drawing my
coat more tightly around me against the cold, and stopped.

Something was wrong. I could not quite place where or why. There was no sound, nothing moved in the dark night, not even a dog or cat. I stood, hearing only the sound of my own breathing. No, I
heard something else too – a faint scratching noise. But where –

All Hallows’ churchyard.

A stone clattered on to the cobbles at my feet.

Only a fool ventures into a graveyard at night. We don’t suffer much from graverobbers in this town, but there is always a chance you’ll find thieves sharing the
spoils of the day, or plotting tomorrow’s depredations. Or drunks commiserating with each other. Even an adulterous couple, although a cold March is not the usual time of year for such
sights. So sensible men walk past. Only fools venture in.

Fools, and men who already know what, or who, they’ll find.

I pushed open the gate, whispered, “Hugh?”

It was damnably dark in here; the one torch burning in Silver Street hardly reached this far and served only to make the shadows darker still. The moon hid behind a cloud. Gravestones were pale
tilted blurs; I tripped over two or three low wooden crosses of the type used by the poorer sort of people. There was a path leading round the church but I was damned if I could find it. I was
oddly disorientated, reminded of the vision I had had in Bairstowe’s manufactory, of the graveyard in the other world.

A figure rose up out of the dark; I gasped in alarm. A face gleamed, pale hands waved.

“For God’s sake, be quiet!” Hugh Demsey hissed.

He retreated and I followed. A dark hole yawned behind him then I was on sloping ground, walking down into a low-ceilinged passage that echoed our heavy breathing and thudding footfalls. The air
smelt earthy and damp. We must be in the entrance to the undercrypt; at the far end of the passage would be a vaulted room, supported by ancient pillars.

We did not get so far. I stubbed my toe against something hard and yelped. Hugh hushed me again. I explored the something hard with my hands. Several wooden boxes. “Hugh, this must be
stolen property. What if the thieves come back for it?”

“Then you’d better let me talk, hadn’t you?” he retorted. I saw his pale face move in the darkness; he seemed to sit down. On one of the boxes, presumably.
“I’m glad I didn’t go to Paris,” he said, with some enthusiasm.

“Hugh,” I said, with foreboding. “What have you been doing?”

“Watching the maid.”

I felt for a box, sat down cautiously and resigned myself to a long tale. “So what did she do after seeing Holloway?”

“She was in there nigh on an hour. Then she comes out again, goes down to the Key to the chandlers and buys some candles, then goes to the Printing Office for the
Courant
, then to
half a dozen other places before going home. Charles, I can tell you what the Bairstowes ate tonight, every last bone of it. Mutton...”

“What happened in the yard?” I asked hurriedly.

“I wish I knew.”

“Hugh!” I said, outraged. “You bring me to this damp miserable place, for nothing!”

“I grew impatient,” he admitted.

“You surprise me.”

“No need to be rude, Charles. I waited in the churchyard here for hours, keeping my eye on that alley. Bairstowe went off somewhere just as it was getting dark but the other two
didn’t stir. So I crept into the yard to see what was going on in the house.”

“And?”

“Nothing was going on. The lights were all out, except for the maid’s in the attic. I was just about to go off home when I saw a flickering.”

“Someone with a candle?”

“Coming downstairs, by the look of it. So I ducked down behind a pile of wood. I heard the door open and a woman call, as if she expected someone to be there. I didn’t dare poke my
head up in case she saw me but it was Mrs Bairstowe – I recognised the voice.”

“And then?” I put a hand on a splinter and muttered a curse.

“Footsteps coming from the alley. And a man. I heard him talking with the Bairstowe woman though they were quiet – I couldn’t make out a damned word. Then there was a thud and
a clatter and I heard him running. The woman was shouting – God, she can yell when she chooses, Charles.”

“What did you do?” I thought I heard movement outside – were the thieves returning for the booty on which I was sitting?

“I ran for it myself,” Hugh said. “Only it was pitch-black of course and I fell over in that filthy alley. This coat is probably ruined!”

“You shouldn’t have come out in anything so fine. You didn’t get a glimpse of this fellow?”

“I didn’t see so much as his foot.”

“Or recognise his voice?”

“He spoke too low.” He paused. “You think this is the villain who is threatening Bairstowe?”

“Who else?” At least, I thought, considering the matter carefully, the attacker had plainly come from our world. From the alley, Hugh had said, and therefore from the street. Anyone
from the other world would have come from the direction of the workshop. I felt an immense relief. I had visited that other world once before in search of a murderer – I did not wish to have
to do so again.

“She knew him,” Hugh said. “I’d lay odds Mrs Bairstowe knew him.”

I contemplated the darkness and the pale blur of Hugh’s face. “She told me she saw no one, that the attacker took her by surprise,” I said, thoughtfully. “She also swore
she went out without a candle but I saw one under a pile of wood in the yard. She must have dropped it and it rolled under the wood. I tried to retrieve it but they were watching me too
closely.”

“So what now?” Hugh asked. “Do you have any idea who the attacker was?”

“No,” I said. “But I mean to find out.”

And at that moment, we heard voices in the churchyard.

Hugh clutched at my arm and cursed. We rose together, holding on to each other. Trailing our hands along the walls of the narrow undercrypt, we edged towards the entrance. Hugh whispered.
“Do you have a weapon with you?”

“Yes,” I whispered back. “I wear a sword day and night.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Charles,” he hissed. “It doesn’t suit you.”

We crept forward, more nervously than I would have openly admitted. The voices were louder now, but they seemed to have stopped a few yards away. At the entrance to the undercrypt, we peered out
into the darkness. Nothing could be heard. I glanced up; heavy cloud was rolling in, obscuring the moon.

A shifting in the darkness.

“They’re going towards the church,” I whispered.

“Thieves?”

“How do I know? Let’s get to the churchyard wall. Then we can work our way round to the street gate.”

We edged into the open. And at that moment, I heard a woman’s voice, sharp, decisive. I knew that voice.

“Wait here!” I said.

Hugh grabbed at me but I was away, creeping on all fours from one dimly-seen gravestone to another. I could just make out two shapes at the side of the church and the outline of a man’s
pale coat. The fellow had on white stockings too, much too fine for a night’s dalliance in a churchyard.

I caught the woman’s words now, spoken fiercely. “It’s no use trying to stop me – you can’t do it.”

The fisher girl.

“Don’t be a fool,” the man hissed. “He’s dead.”

Richard Softly. This was brother and sister arguing – but why for heaven’s sake in a churchyard? Why not talk in the warmth of their own rooms?

“You don’t stop loving someone because they’re dead,” she said. “There’s no one else to match him. There never could be.”

“For God’s sake! He betrayed you – he was courting that Scotch maid!”

“Richard,” she said. “You know nothing. Go home.”

“He’s lucky he died before I laid my hands on him.” Softly’s voice held a trace of sulkiness that made him sound very young. Well, I thought, that was one of my suspects
eliminated.

“I asked you not to interfere,” she said. “And I’m asking again. Leave me be.”

“You’ll get yourself into trouble!”

“What can be worse than Tom’s death?”

She was coming back towards me. I flattened myself behind a gravestone, and she passed so close I felt the breath of her skirts moving. She was rough and harsh-voiced, badly-dressed and poor,
whereas her brother had smoothed out the rough vowels in his speech and dressed in the smartest clothes he could afford, but I would wager that she would be the one to do better in life. Then she
was out of the churchyard and running lightly up the street, keeping to the shadows. Behind me, I heard her brother swear.

I crept back to the wall where Hugh was crouching.

“She didn’t see you?” I asked.

“Didn’t look my way. What was all that about?”

“I think she must have come to speak to her dead lover and found Bedwalters here and the whole house roused. She’ll be back.”

Hugh hushed me. “The other one’s coming!”

We waited until Richard Softly had let himself out of the gate. He turned down the street towards the Key, muttering irritably. The one lantern in Silver Street illuminated his back.

“Good clothes for a shop lad,” Hugh commented.

“Claudius Heron thinks they rob Holloway – they take just enough not to be noticed.”

“Heron always thinks the worst but I’d say he was right in this case. Pity the lad has no taste.”

I cast my eye up and down Hugh’s well-clad figure. Despite a few mud stains here and there, he contrived, as always, to look both devil-may-care and respectable. The big buttons on his
coat gleamed in the lantern light.

We walked out into the street in our turn. I was intent on going home and sleeping well past dawn.

“You don’t think either of those two attacked Mrs Bairstowe?” Hugh asked.

“I don’t think anyone attacked her,” I said, grimly.

On my way home I crept down the alley into the manufactory. The yard was deserted, the house and workshop shut up. No gleam of spirit or hint of anything else not solidly of
this world. I ducked down to look under the pile of wood. The white candle had gone.

I did not wake until some miners made a rumpus in the street outside. The sun was as high in the sky as it ever gets in March, though it was blurred by a thin hazy cloud. At
least there was no rain. As I dressed, I considered the events of the previous night – I had no doubt that a charade had been played out for my benefit, that Mrs Bairstowe had been in no
danger at all. But why should they try to convince me she had been? And how did what Hugh had seen fit in?

One thing I was sure of, they’d not get the better of me. I was promised thirty guineas, Tom Eade demanded justice, and my lingering aches and pains spoke for my own grudge against whoever
was doing this to William Bairstowe. The bills the culprit would have to pay were mounting up, and I would make sure he paid them.

I went down to Nellie’s coffee-house and bought ale and a slice of game pie. I had broken into William Bairstowe’s guinea long since – God but I needed those guineas of
Bairstowe’s! And I still could not make head nor tail of the situation; I was merely accumulating questions.

It was, I discovered, mid-morning. William Bairstowe must have torn himself from the arms of his whore by now and dragged himself up to the Cordwainers’ Hall. I marched off, armed with a
dozen questions for the organ builder, along the lines of ‘where were you last night?’ and ‘is there any witness to your activities at the time your wife was attacked?’ But
when I reached the hall, I discovered Thomas Saint’s errand-boy, dressed in his Sunday best, being very grown-up in showing gentlemen the organ. I also discovered Claudius Heron standing at
the back of the hall impatiently tapping his thigh with his fingers.

He nodded at me, looked me up and down.

“No lasting ill effects,” I said, lightly. “The knee is healed.”

Heron watched the boy’s enthusiasm with some cynicism. “I take it you have come to see Bairstowe.”

“His wife was attacked last night.”

One eyebrow went up. “As a warning?”

“Possibly.” I did not want to commit myself to any theory at this moment. Nor, I discovered, did I want to tell Heron – the one man who might understand – about my new
encounter with the world lying next to our own. That must keep for later, when I could give the matter the consideration it deserved. I was tolerably certain now it had no connection with this
matter of Bairstowe’s.

“Well,” Heron said, “You will not find him here. He says he is otherwise occupied. As you can see, he is paying Saint’s boy to stand in for him. He also sent me word to
sell the timber and pipes in my possession in order to pay for the damage to the room. In short, he has abandoned the commission. Perhaps I should lay out a guinea or two on this instrument.”
He nodded at the chamber organ.

“A trifle too small for your gallery, I should think.”

“I could sell it. The song school at Durham Cathedral is in need of an organ and the prebendaries there are careless with their money. I might get a hundred guineas for it, maybe
more.”