Chords and Discords (5 page)

“I’m enquiring about Tom Eade.”

The lad stopped in mid-sentence; the man in the back of the shop turned to stare at me.

“He’s dead,” said the lanky lad.

I was irritated at not knowing his name and said carelessly, “You must be Ned.”

“Richard, sir. Richard Softly.” His voice copied his name, a
sotto-voce
respectfulness that set my teeth on edge.

“His mother was hoping to obtain his effects.”

The lad looked blank.

“His clothes, books – ”

That provoked an explosion of laughter from the back room. The aproned man strolled through into the shop, a man of twenty, open-faced and smiling. “Forgive me, sir, but if you were a
friend of Tom, you’d know reading wasn’t his favourite occupation. Except accounts – he was very fond of money!”

“Damned miser,” Richard Softly said, sourly. He turned away and made a great play of tidying up the walking canes. The aproned man winked and mouthed at me, “Argued. About a
girl.”

The shop door opened; the man retreated to the back of the shop before I had time to turn round. Richard Softly said, very respectfully, “This gentleman was enquiring for Tom,
sir.”

The newcomer, hesitating in the shop doorway, was a slight man, in his mid-forties perhaps, though his face, beneath a ridiculously small wig, was creased with lines, his eyes rimmed by dark
circles. He was dressed up to and beyond the fashion, in a coat that that could only have come straight from London. He was, I deduced from Softly’s respectful manner, the owner of this shop,
John Holloway.

He smiled at me benignly. “And you are, sir?”

He was not musically inclined or he would have recognised me from concerts. “Charles Patterson, sir. At your service.”

I bowed. He bowed back. And, as I straightened, I saw that the smile on his face had disappeared. He might not know my face, but he certainly recognised my name.

The stairs up to the second floor were not level, leaning into the wall and throwing me off balance as I climbed behind John Holloway’s well-dressed figure. Each step
creaked. It was a very old house, not particularly well cared-for; plaster was crumbling from the walls, holes in the floorboards carried the voices of the men below up to me. And all around, other
voices were murmuring, a disconcerting flow of barely audible sound; light flickered on window panes, on polished wood, on ceiling beams. The place was infested by spirits.

Upstairs, Holloway’s private room was small and dark, lit only by a small window whose frame was irritatingly askew. There was a great deal of old-fashioned furniture in it – big
heavy sideboards and chairs; and too many ornaments – a vase with dead flowers, a bowl stamped with patriotic slogans to commemorate the King’s Coronation, eight years ago. An engraving
of the Queen propped against the wall was curling with damp.

“Wine?” Holloway asked. He smiled beneficently at me. “Not often I get a visitor, Mr Patterson. No, pray go away.”

Bewildered, I stared at him as he poured wine into glasses that did not look clean.

“No, no, not now,” he said, without looking at me. I heard a low murmur; and realised that Holloway was talking to a spirit, a very reticent one. “Your wine, Mr Patterson.
Leave us alone if you don’t mind.”

I assumed his last irritable comment was meant for the spirit and settled into the chair he offered me. Its tapestry upholstery was fraying and dusty, and even as I sat down I saw something
crawl upon the arm. The room was airless, and I was afraid to move for fear of knocking over one of the ornaments. Damn Bairstowe for getting me into this!

“Poor Tom,” Holloway said, with a big sigh. “Such a tragedy.”

“A good worker, was he?”

“Oh, the best.” Holloway sipped at his wine and I followed suit, just preventing myself wincing at its sourness. “Excellent, excellent,” Holloway said, then, in an aside
to a gleam of light on the window glass, “No, we will discuss the matter later.” He smiled at me again. “Good wine always ages well, don’t you agree, Mr
Patterson?”

His habit of chatting to spirits while conducting a conversation with me was beginning to grate; I restrained my irritation, said, “You never had any trouble with the lad?”

“Far from it,” he said with obvious sincerity. “For one so young, he had an excellent head for business. Very good with figures.” He sighed. “I shall be hard
pressed to replace him.”

“Your other lad, Richard Softly – ”

He made a contemptuous noise. “Poor stuff.” He waved away a near-inaudible spirit. “He has done very well to cast off his low origins. But he is not the same quality as poor
Tom.”

I forced myself to sip the vinegar he called wine. “You have a great number of spirits here.”

“A very old house,” he said with some pride. “Used to be a lodging house, you know, till fifty years back.”

Which explained the multiplicity of spirits. Lodging houses provide a floorboard or two for the poorest sort to lie on, and the poorest sort sicken and die with appalling ease.

“You haven’t asked me why I’m so interested in Tom Eade,” I said. I felt a twinge of pain in my arm and resisted the urge to scratch. Devil take Holloway if he had given
me fleas.

“My dear sir, I know! You are looking into the matter for William.”

“You know Bairstowe?”

He threw back his head and laughed to the ceiling. It was not a natural gesture. “My dear sir, William Bairstowe is my brother-in-law!”

Mrs Bairstowe, it transpired, was Holloway’s elder sister. “A second mother,” he said. “No, no, you are quite right,” he added in response to the very quiet spirit,
“my
only
mother.” Another huge sigh. “And William is of course a customer too,” he added. “Buys only the best quality leather for his organ-building.”

“They have no children?”

“Alas, no.”

“And there are no brothers and sisters in the house?”

“There was Edward, William’s elder brother. But he died five years ago.” He gave me a wink. “And the least said about him the better! Gambling and women, you
know.”

That at least made sense of what the spirit in the alley had told me. “Has Bairstowe told you about the notes he has received?”

Holloway snorted with derision. “Which notes? My dear sir.” He leant forward, wine dregs slopping in his glass. “My dear sir, William is a good man but a sad one. Weary with
life.”

I had started the interview in an irritable state; any more of Holloway’s sanctimonious sentiments would drive me to fury. I said: “What is this to the purpose?”

“He has, shall we say, permitted matters to overwhelm him.” Holloway gestured widely. “Have you seen that yard? The piles of rubbish allowed to accumulate in every corner,
instead of being carted away?” I thought he had audacity to complain of William’s rubbish, given the clutter around us. I had already knocked over an engraving of Westminster Abbey.
“He says as excuse that he hates the place, that the spirits there drive him mad.” He lowered his voice. “But William knows that if he had kept the yard in better order, there
would have been nothing for the wind to seize hold of and poor Tom Eade would not have died.”

“You think he feels responsible for the lad’s death and is seeking to remove the blame on to someone else?”

“Exactly!” Holloway sat back triumphantly. “Therefore he fabricates the story of the notes, tells everyone poor Tom was killed in his place.” He assumed a doleful
expression. “And the saddest thing of all, I do think he believes it all himself.”

I certainly agreed with that last statement. But could I credit Holloway’s theory? “Do you know what Eade was doing there?”

He winked at me, a great contorting of his face, from one man of the world to another. “Courting the maid.”

“At that time of night?”

He spread his hands. “They were betrothed, and not enough money to be married on. The young are so impatient.”

He allowed his voice to trail away meaningfully. I wondered if Holloway had ever felt that kind of impatience for a woman. He seemed too ordered in his person to become heated or
overwrought.

“Let me refill your glass,” he murmured, and did so before I could protest. “I don’t in the least seek to interfere, sir. But I do not wish to see you waste your time.
These threats are a figment of William’s imagination! In any case, he doesn’t have the money to pay you.” He straightened suddenly, swatting at the glass in his hand. “Go
away, sir, go away!” I caught a glimpse of brightness on the curve of the bowl before the spirit slid down the stem, across Holloway’s hand, up his elegant sleeve and on to the chair
back. Involuntarily, I shuddered. The touch of a spirit is like the slipperiness of a snail, yet ice cold.

“Who inherits your brother-in-law’s property should he die?”

Holloway looked taken aback.

“The person who has most reason to kill is the person who is most likely to profit from the death,” I pointed out. “Bairstowe has no children and his brother is dead. There is
no other male relative?”

“What are you saying, sir?”

“His property would descend to his wife?” I paused for effect. “Your sister.”

“Are you suggesting that my sister is threatening her husband?” He looked genuinely outraged. “She is a fine woman, a fine woman. Preposterous!”

His admiration seemed real.

“William has no property to leave,” he added, curtly.

“Oh, come!”

“He is well nigh bankrupt.” Holloway drained his glass. “He has done no work for months now. He drags himself about the yard all day, complaining he is being persecuted, then
disappears all night into the brothels on the Key. He has nothing!”

“He exhibits a chamber organ in the Cordwainers’ Hall next week,” I pointed out. “According to an advertisement in this week’s
Courant
, he hopes to obtain
one hundred guineas for it. He may pay me out of that. Leaving himself and his wife eighty guineas.”

He snorted. “A paltry amount.”

“Many a family survives on a quarter of that a year. Or less,” I added, thinking of the widow Eade.

“In London,” he said, “you couldn’t live a month on it.” There was an odd note in his voice, a kind of longing. I remembered how I had once felt like that,
travelling south wide-eyed, anticipating the streets of tall houses, the street traders, the glittering shops, longing to hear the cries of the picturesque sellers, the rattling of elegant
carriages, the squealing of sleek horses. And instead it had been all foul smells in the wide streets, and sour looks from handsome gentlemen, and amused contempt from fair ladies, empty seats at
my concerts, and tedious hours waiting for pupils who never came. And empty pockets.

But, to be fair, I have only a few pence in my pockets now, and Bairstowe’s guinea hidden under my mattress.

There was plainly nothing else to be gained and I had begun to hate this stuffy, cluttered room with its incessantly murmuring spirits. I pushed aside the sour wine and stood. One spirit was
gleaming at Holloway’s shoulder. And another, a sharp-voiced woman, spoke suddenly from the door: “Mind how you go on the stairs,” she said. She glittered on the hinge of the door
and it whipped open. “So easy to fall.”

Holloway smiled at me from his chair.

I was half-asleep. “Damn it, why does the coach have to go so early?”

And why did the rest of the world have to make such a noise? I had hardly slept and the clatter of horses’ hooves drummed into my aching head; the shouts of the ostlers made me wince.
Passengers hurried hither and thither. The only person who seemed calm was the driver, who stood on the Golden Fleece’s doorstep and contentedly worked his way through an enormous tankard of
ale.

This was no time to dwell on my affairs. There were more important matters to deal with. I took Demsey’s arm and ushered him to one side. There was a green tinge to his skin that I
didn’t like in the least.

“Hugh, for God’s sake, call this madness off.”

“No,” he said obstinately.

“You’ll never get to Paris. You’ll kill yourself first.”

“I’m doing it in easy stages, remember.” He rubbed at his shoulder – the one that had taken the shot four months back. Even after all this time it apparently still ached.
“I’ll stop at Darlington tonight then go on on Monday. You know me, Charles, too respectable for Sunday travelling.”

“It’ll still be too much for you.”

He seemed to grit his teeth, started to say something, then stopped. He said, with careful moderation, “My bags are already on the coach.”

“Then we’ll take them off again.” I shivered; a chill early-morning mist lay across the river, blurring the view of Gateshead.

“Charles, I must go. My reputation will be ruined if I don’t get the latest dances.”

“Rubbish. How will they ever know?”

I took his arm firmly. Hugh and I have been friends since we occupied the same bench in All Hallows’ Charity School. It was my fault he had been injured and his welfare was more important
to me than anyone else’s in the world. Bar one.

“Let me take you back home.”

“Charles,” he said calmly. “If you say something of that sort once more, I’ll throw you in the river!” He glanced round, then eased forward in a conspiratorial
fashion. “There is one thing – ”

“Yes?”

He nudged me. Glancing down, I saw a pile of coins in his palm. “Pay me back when I return,” he said.

I was embarrassed. “As a matter of fact – ”

He tried to press the money on me. Reluctantly, I told him about Bairstowe and the guinea he’d paid me, hurrying because the driver was climbing up on to the box of the coach and
passengers were making a scurry for the interior.

“Bairstowe?” Hugh echoed.

“You’ll miss the coach.”

“You’re working for that scoundrel!”