Chords and Discords (30 page)

I hesitated but got up to do as he directed. “They will ask why the spirit should lie,” I pointed out.

“You were hired to find the deed and did not. She thought you were cheating her husband and is therefore intent on revenge.”

“There is a problem with that story,” I said, and showed him what was in the pocket of my coat. “I have found the deed.”

He stared at the stiff parchment now for ever curled into a cylinder then took it from me, unrolling it with difficulty and angling the parchment to catch the candlelight. “I’m no
expert in these matters but it looks in order.” He examined the seal. “Gale says Bairstowe may well recover. With this, he can sell the land and live in tolerable comfort.”

“Half paralysed,” I said. “I’d not choose that kind of life.”

“I daresay,” Heron said, “he will derive much enjoyment from raging about his lot.” He rolled up the deed and handed it back to me. “Thank God this matter is
finished.”

“No,” I said. “It is not quite finished yet.”

I waited, through the shrieking of the churchwarden who discovered the body in the morning, through the sending for the surgeon and through his pronouncement that the woman was
dead. Through the confusion and the urgent discussion as to whether the church could still be used as a place of worship or whether it had been desecrated, whether the bishop should be sent for or
the archbishop, whether the church should be closed up, and if so, for how long. Solomon Strolger began to look hopeful at this and talked of taking his family off to London to visit his mother. He
asked if I would look after the cat while they were away. I was feeling favourably disposed towards it for finding Hugh on the Key, and said I would.

I occupied some of this time by going back to Thomas Saint’s printing office and reading through his archives once more. The account of Edward Bairstowe’s death made more sense now,
though I wondered how Mary and Edward had ever thought they could succeed in killing William. He was the sort of man who frustrates all plans, out of sheer obstinacy. As he did now, lying halfway
between life and death and coming back to the world slowly, his grunts and groans at times beginning to sound almost like speech again.

I went several times to the yard, hoping for some gap in reality through which I could see the starlit sky and the pale gravestones in that other world. Had Bairstowe glimpsed them too and
perhaps interpreted them as an augury, as an omen of Doom. I did not suppose I would ever know.

I saw nothing.

Thomas Saint’s boy came every day to report how many tickets had been sold for the organ. In the usual rush of charity with which the rich placate the gods for their good fortune, there
had been a surge of ticket buying by ladies and gentlemen who had no interest in music; nearly two hundred tickets had been sold and Heron told the boy to continue showing the organ until Monday
when the draw would be made. Bairstowe would need as much money as possible if he was not to live in destitution. I thought he was receiving a great deal more generosity than he deserved.

Early on Saturday morning, Mary Bairstowe’s spirit disembodied and was interviewed. Lawyer Armstrong came into the organ manufactory afterwards to tell us what had happened. It was a
strange meeting; Armstrong was surprised to find us all there, frowned at Heron, at Mrs Jerdoun and at Hugh in turn, and was half-distracted throughout by the rants of the drunken nurse upstairs.
But he accepted Heron’s offer of a glass of claret and sat down with a satisfied sigh. We were in the kitchen; the fire was still unlit and it was as cold as the grave.

“It’s quite clear.” He eased himself on the hard kitchen chair. “Though how the maid got possession of a pistol, I cannot understand.”

“The maid?” I echoed, startled.

Mrs Bairstowe had told a coherent, lucid tale – I should have guessed she would not be a spirit that suffered from the usual initial disorientation. She had said that she’d had
trouble with the maid ever since William’s seizure; the girl had been reluctant to work, she said, had rebelled at every order. She had always been trouble, Mrs Bairstowe said, but William
had disciplined her; once that discipline was removed, she seemed to think she could do what she liked. And nursing a sick man and cleaning his soiled bed was not what she liked. She’d run
off and Mrs Bairstowe had discovered she had taken the silver spoons with her. (These were indeed missing, Heron said.) So Mrs Bairstowe had gone after her and found her in the church.

“Though why the girl should have gone into the church I don’t know.” Armstrong sipped his claret with distinct appreciation. It was one of Heron’s and excellent.
“If she’d run off to her kin in the chares, she could probably have sold the spoons without anyone being the wiser.”

There had been an argument; according to Mary Bairstowe’s spirit; the maid had brandished a pistol defiantly. When Mrs Bairstowe had seized the girl to drag her off to the constable, and
after that the jail in Newgate, the girl had screamed and fired.

It was all a farrago of nonsense and the only thing that reconciled me to it was the fact that Hugh and Esther and I were left out of it.

Armstrong took me aside as he left, hesitating at the entrance from the yard into the alley. It was a cold day but dry and still, as if the wind had blown itself out. “There’s a
spirit round here, I think, the oldest in the town,” Armstrong mused. “From the siege.”

“She dissolved,” I said. “The other night. I saw it.”

He nodded. “We all come to that, sooner or later.” He wedged his tricorne on his head and turned a sombre look on me. “The deed is valid – I have had it thoroughly
examined.” (I had given it to him the day after Mrs Bairstowe’s death and he had promised to let me know the outcome of his study of it.) “Though much good it will do
Bairstowe.” He glanced up at the window of the house; the nurse’s ranting could be heard along with Heron’s more moderate remonstrations. “Gale the surgeon tells me
he’ll live, though in what state I know not.”

“He cannot use his left arm or leg.”

He sighed. “Well, he will have money enough to buy help if he sells the land. And the proceeds from the organ sale will help, of course.” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat
and pulled out a small bag of coins. “Your ten guineas, Patterson, with my thanks. Perhaps we can do business again?”

I grimaced. “I doubt it, sir. I have come to the conclusion that I prefer a quiet life.”

He chuckled. “You weren’t born for it, sir.”

And he bade me good day and walked sombrely down the alley into the street.

I waited until he was out of sight and turned to go towards the church. But I heard a voice behind me and glanced round to see Esther Jerdoun come out of the house. She was dressed particularly
finely, I thought, in a pale blue gown with tiny embroidery, and a warm cloak of a darker blue. She studied me for a moment before speaking.

“I haven’t yet thanked you, Mr Patterson. For rescuing me.”

“Or I you,” I said, smiling. “For attempting to do the same.”

She gave me the ghost of a smile in return and sighed. “Alas, I was too credulous. I should at the least have gone to your lodgings to see if their claim to have kidnapped you was
true.”

“And roused my landlady and all the neighbours? It would not have been good for your reputation.”

“Oh, yes,” she said with some acerbity. “My reputation. Sometimes, I am so impatient with the prohibitions respectable society places on women.”

I could have said I had realised this; I kept silent diplomatically.

“So we will meet for my lesson tomorrow at the Assembly Rooms as usual.”

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” I reminded her.

“Then on Monday?”

I bowed.

She looked at me a moment or two longer. “I do not ask what you will do now, sir. I can guess. You want to talk to Mary Bairstowe – to find out why she gave Armstrong a false
tale.”

I nodded. She smiled, put a finger to my lips. A warm, feather-light touch. I was astonished.

“Do what you must in this matter, Charles, and I will consider how best to order our affairs elsewhere.”

Elsewhere
? What in heaven’s name did she intend to do?

But she was gone, drawing her cloak closer about her and casting me an impish smile over her shoulder.

The nave floor had been scrubbed but there was still a faint stain on the worn stones as if it had not been possible to remove all the blood. I had hardly come up to the place
when the spirit said sourly, “I was expecting ye.”

I sat down in the front pew; the lock, I saw, was broken and hung loose on the door. I was thankful for it; it had saved my life and Esther’s. The church was dark and chill as always.

“Why throw all the blame on the girl?” I said.

The spirit was a faint gleam on a flagstone scored with writing so ancient it was worn to illegibility.

“She betrayed me. Ran off the moment I was dead. Raided the house for the money and the silver, and ran off to London. That was all she cared for – to get to London by any means she
could.”

I began to suspect why Mrs Bairstowe had been so lucid in her tales with Armstrong and the others. She must have disembodied earlier than they had expected. “You have already spoken to
your brother? He told you what happened?”

“Aye. He didn’t betray me. He waited here, day and night he waited, until I came. And he told me what she’d done. But I have her now. She’s branded as a murderer.”
She laughed softly. “You’re not going to tell them otherwise, are you?”

I shifted on the hard pew. I could not give the lie to Mrs Bairstowe’s story without threatening not only myself, but Hugh and Esther too. The spirit knew it had my silence.

“They’ll not do anything about the girl,” I said. “Oh, they’ll raise the hue and cry, and send a description of her to the London papers, but she’ll not be
found. Not in London. Plenty of places to lose herself.”

“She’ll be found,” she said, confidently, with chilling malice. “John’ll find her.”

“Holloway?”

“I’ve sent him after her,” she said. “He’ll find her, wherever she is, however long it takes.”

I stared at the faint gleam on the front of the pew, astounded by her venom. “But she did not kill you! Your brother killed you – though it was an accident.”

“She abandoned me,” Mrs Bairstowe said. “And showed her true colours. All those protestations of loyalty, of love. They meant nothing.”

A noise at the door. I rose, turned to see Solomon Strolger enter the church, followed by the cat and two toddling children. Strolger had his arms full of music books; the two infants carried
one small book each with some pride. Strolger beamed on me.

“You’ve come to talk to our new spirit, Patterson? We’re getting quite crowded in here. Two spirits – very unusual for a church!”

“You’ll hear no more of me,” Mary Bairstowe said contemptuously. “What have I got worth saying?”

“Two quiet spirits,” Strolger said, mischievously. “I’m happy with that. Nothing to spoil my nap during the sermons.”

I took some of the books from his arms; he took the psalm books from the children and told them to play for a few minutes then climbed the steps to the Sailors’ Gallery ahead of me. He had
neat fussy steps and pattered on ahead without a care in the world.

The clerestory windows lit the gallery rather better than the church; glancing over the gallery railing, I saw the cat sniffing at the pew where Mary Bairstowe’s gleam showed. The gleam
shifted rapidly out of sight; the cat, bored, yawned and started to wash itself. It was already looking much plumper than before.

I should have trusted that cat. I knew how curious cats are about spirits, sniffing them out as if they are a potentially delicious mouse or bird. I remembered how the cat had come up to the
organ loft with us when we found Bairstowe, how it had sniffed around the corner of the organ case. I even remembered seeing some movement and dismissing it as a spider scuttling about.

“You know about the spirit in the organ loft then?” I asked Strolger as we reached the charity children’s pews. He edged past towards the organ.

“Heavens yes! But he’s no trouble. I thought at the beginning that he might disturb my rest during the sermons but he doesn’t. Doesn’t talk much at all.” Strolger
lowered his voice to a whisper. “Sour individual.”

I stared at the corner where the cat had sniffed. There was no sign of a spirit there now. Nor anywhere here. But he might hide in the depths of the organ, even inside a pipe, totally
unseen.

“How did he die up here?”

“He was trying to steal the organ pipes – for the lead you know. There were three villains.” Wheezing, Strolger dropped the books on the organ stool and gestured to me to do
likewise. “They had an argument, he says, and a bit of a fight, and he fell over and hit his head on the corner of the soundboard. Dead before he hit the ground. The others fled in panic,
which saved the organ pipes, thank goodness.”

“I hadn’t heard of it.”

He considered. “You were in London, I fancy.” He started to push the music books on to the shelves beside the organ, musing over their rightful places then making sure the books were
straight. “Poor fellow. Quite educated, I’m told, but fallen low because of drink and debt. Got into bad company, you know the sort of thing.”

I thought of another man who had done the same thing.

“He’s a good singer, mind,” Strolger said reflectively. “Knows all the tunes.” I remembered the spirit intoning the funeral sentences over Mary Bairstowe’s
body. “And talking of London,” he beamed suddenly with pleasure. “I’m off there myself for a month or two.”

“They’re shutting up the church then?”

“Until they sort out all the formalities. A week or two, they say.”