Chords and Discords (8 page)

On the other side of the woman was the Bairstowes’ maid, head demurely bowed. As if she sensed my gaze on her, the girl glanced round, caught my eye, glanced away again. A timid, scared
look, I thought. Well, that was hardly surprising. Anyone living with William Bairstowe would be cowed.

I got through the service. The curate’s voice trembled in the prayers, Strolger played another voluntary, based on an air from the latest opera at the theatre, and the parish clerk took
the rest of the psalms even more slowly than I had imagined possible. The sermon lasted an hour and a half.

As the congregation began to file from the church, I contrived to edge against the flow and work my way up towards the choir and high altar. It is the peculiarity of the church that the organ is
over the west door but the stairs to the organ loft are in the middle of the church; one must climb narrow steps, work one’s way along the ornately painted Sailors’ Gallery and thus
come to the west end. The last of the charity school children were eagerly slipping from their special pews in the loft, and Solomon Strolger played on, and on, and on, flourishing fugal entries
here, teasing the listener with hints of familiar tunes then dashing off into wild improvisation again. It was all very cleverly done, I had to admit, but not devout.

At last, the organ ceased; there was a murmur of voices and out came the bellows blower, a burly fellow with huge red hands. Now Strolger climbed down from his stool like a hesitant stork, all
legs and no body. He started when he saw me and peered short-sightedly. He is a young man, or youngish, being in his mid-thirties. “Oh, it’s you, Patterson. Want a lesson, do
you?” He has an engaging grin that allows you – almost – to forgive him his pretentious playing.

“I wanted to talk to you, if I may.”

“Gossip, Patterson?” He chuckled. “Nothing better!”

“About Mr William Bairstowe.”

Now he stared at me. “You’re not a friend of his, are you?”

“Not until he mends his language,” I said dryly.

He grinned again. “Good,” he said, then, “Heard that cipher?”

“On the flute stop?”

“Bairstowe put that right.”

“But it’s still there.”

“That’s what I said. But no, Mr Bairstowe says it’s entirely my imagination.” Strolger grinned impishly.

“You don’t like him?” I said, stating the obvious.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said cheerfully. “He doesn’t like me.”

He darted to one side to pick his coat off a hook driven into the organ case. Down in the body of the church below, I heard the last of the congregation leaving.

“Why doesn’t he like you?”

Strolger grinned. “He didn’t like my comments on one of his organs.”

“And you said?”

He wriggled into the coat. “I said it squealed like a new-born piglet and sounded as devout as a hedgehog.”

“I can see why he might be annoyed.”

Strolger was a picture of innocence as he smoothed down his sleeves. “But it was true!” He cocked his head to consider me. “What’s your business with him,
Patterson?”

“He’s employing me.”

He chortled. “Wants you to play his organs, does he? Show ’em off to their best advantage? Take it from me, Patterson, they don’t have a best advantage. Rubbishy things.
There’s one exhibited at the Cordwainers’ Hall next week.”

“I know. But it’s nothing of that sort. He’s being threatened and wants me to find the fellow doing it.”

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, melodramatically. “Someone’s putting the fear of God into him? Patterson, find the fellow and send him to me so I may congratulate
him!”

He was outrageously offensive yet an oddly likeable fellow. There were no hidden depths to him; he was all on the surface and you would never be deceived by him, unless you deceived yourself.
“I wondered, sir, since you are so often about the church and the street, whether you had seen something – or someone – ”

He crowed with laughter. “Confess it – he has accused me!”

“He has named you as one of his enemies,” I admitted.

He chuckled, bent across the organ stool to gather his music together. I heard the chaplain below calling a nervous farewell to a parishioner.

“A lad died,” I said quietly.

Strolger paused, glanced round at me. “I was told that was an accident.”

“Possibly,” I said. “But what if he was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Mistaken for Bairstowe, you mean?” He was quick, no doubt of that. He stared at the decorative organ pipes at the front of the case, as if for inspiration. “Come, come,
Patterson, the lad was scarcely twenty, slightly-built – no one would mistake him for good friend William.”

“You knew the lad then?”

“I’ve seen him.” He sorted the music on to a shelf set to the right of the organ. “He couldn’t find the manufactory the first time he came and asked my oldest boy.
Got a civil reply and the information he wanted, and couldn’t give the boy a farthing for his help.”

“Ungenerous,” I commented, remembering that both Eade’s mother and Richard Softly had called him a miser. “But the maid liked him well enough.”

Strolger grinned. “Only after he’d worked hard on her! Many’s the time I’ve seen her creeping into a doorway to escape him. Still, persistence pays – he seems to
have won her in the end. Though much good it did either of them.”

Below us, the church was almost empty. The curate, head bowed, hands gripped together, came out under the gallery and hurried up the nave to the vestry door. Strolger was chortling. “Wrote
her odes!”

I brought my attention back to him, startled. “The lad?”

“Reams of the stuff – verse after verse on Holloway’s best notepaper.” He leant forward conspiratorially. “Stolen, of course.”

“The paper or the verse?”

“Both!”

“The maid showed you the verses?”

“No, no – she dropped one in the porch.” He added scrupulously, “I gave it back to her, of course.”

“But not before reading it.”

“I read the first line. That was enough to tell me the rest wasn’t worth noticing.”

I was thinking of the notes Bairstowe had received. “And the hand? Was the writing ill-formed? Childish?”

He was surprised but answered readily enough. “Not at all. Very neat. I’d wager he was one of Bedwalters’ pupils.” He glanced around, was apparently satisfied that
everything was in order. “Care for ale, Patterson?”

He went to the left side of the organ – the side nearest the charity pews – and lifted a curtain that hung over that side of the organ case. I ducked under it, and saw a very cosy
sight.

The curtain enclosed an area of the organ loft from which the pews had been removed. On the right, the side of the organ case had also been taken away, exposing the inner workings – ranks
of dusty metal pipes on wooden soundboards, hung with cobwebs and scattered with mouse droppings. A chair had been placed for the bellows blower by the handle he had to pump, and an ancient
armchair, clearly for Strolger, stood by the side of a shelf screwed on to the wall. On the shelf was a large jug of ale, nearly empty, and two tankards, one close by the bellow blower’s
chair, the other by the armchair. London newspapers were piled on the floor.

“Have to have something to occupy us during the sermons,” Strolger murmured impishly. Now I was close to him, I could smell the ale on his breath. “The chaplain’s a good
fellow, but so earnest.”

I could not argue with that. Strolger took up the bellows blower’s tankard, wiped the top of it with the flat of his palm and poured ale into it for me. The floor was thick with dust
except in a narrow band well trampled by Strolger and the bellows blower to and from their respective chairs.

I went across to look more closely at the innards of the organ. It was in a worse condition than I had anticipated. Some of the pipes stood drunkenly askew and part of one rank – six or
seven large flue pipes – had been taken from its soundboard and stacked against the wall. Judging by the dust, the pipes had been there some years. The soundboard on which they had stood was
warped and cracked.

Strolger was watching me from his armchair. “Quite right, Patterson. Whole thing needs replacing. If it was just a case of dusting the sliders or something of the sort, I’d do it
myself. But I can’t put right something as serious as that.”

“How long since you asked Bairstowe to deal with it?”

“Five years or more.”

“Call in Bridges,” I said, ducking out of the interior. “Or some other London organbuilder.”

He threw up his hands in mock horror. “And pay all that expense when we have a perfectly good local builder? I quote the gentlemen of the vestry of course.”

“But if Bairstowe doesn’t do the work – ”

Strolger grinned. “My dear Patterson, you know perfectly well that all the gentlemen and ladies want is a loud noise. Who cares whether it is in tune or not?”

I considered him for a moment. “You haven’t said yet, sir, whether you are to blame for the threats.”

He chuckled. “No putting you off, Patterson! Very well, a straight answer. No. I wouldn’t give William so much of my attention. Try that wife of his. She’s distinctly odd.
I’d not want to take her to bed.”

Strolger’s own wife is a pretty young thing, and remarkably so because she has borne nine children in six years. And the fellow is known for his uxorious temperament, indulging her with
gifts and treats almost every week.

“Apart from Mrs Bairstowe,” I said doggedly, “did you see anyone else?”

“Plenty of fellows.” He shook his head at me. “You’re on a fool’s errand, Patterson. Half the town hates William Bairstowe – he never does his work, he never
pays his bills and he’s the rudest man in the county! Try finding someone without a grudge against him.”

I thought of Claudius Heron. “That kind of dislike rarely leads to threats.”

“Perhaps someone merely wants to frighten him?”

“Whoever it was, they killed a boy.”

“An accident,” he said firmly. “The wind took the wood. Stick to music, Patterson. Much less fuss.” He lifted his head at a call from below and hurried out to hang
alarmingly over the gallery rail. I followed him. A boy of not more than five years old stood below and shrieked up that dinner was ready. Strolger abandoned the ale and scampered down the stairs;
I saw him scoop up the boy and carry him laughing down the length of the nave to the door where an older boy waited solemnly to take his father’s hand.

There is nothing so insidious as envy.

I hesitated outside the church, surprised by bright sunshine. The churchyard was deserted, except for a single figure sitting on one of the benches by the gate. I put my
tricorne on my head then whipped it off again as the figure rose up and turned to face me. Esther Jerdoun.

We looked at each other for a moment then I was brought back to my senses by some noise in the street. I bowed; she inclined her head and smiled. My heart turned over.

“I like to see a devout man, Mr Patterson,” she said – a mischievous comment for she knows my views on church-going.

“I thought you attended St Nicholas’s church, madam.”

“Indeed I do. I have just come from there. The spirit in the church porch asked after you for me, and said you were here.”

It seemed she had sought me out; I was both pleased and humbled.

“You are walking up into town, are you not?” she said. “I would be glad of your company.” That faint smile again. “A woman is never quite safe alone.”

I would like to see anyone tackle Esther Jerdoun. I fancy they would have a shock.

I bowed my assent and opened the gate for her. As befitted a Sunday, the street was quiet. The chaplain hurried towards his rooms; a well-dressed couple in middle-age, a tradesman and his wife,
strolled arm in arm up the street in pleasurable and comfortable conversation.

We hesitated at the gate. I was acutely conscious of the difference between us; I was dressed in drab brown with buff facings; the lady was delicate in pale blue embroidered with flowers of
white, with a fall of lace at neck and sleeves. Her cloak was of velvet and she pulled it more closely about her.

“I have, as you know, sir, been much from home of late.”

“You have had a great deal to occupy you.”

“This wretched legal business.” She sighed. “Still, I have reason to believe the worst of it is over, at least for the time being. I am determined to stay at home the next
several months at least.”

“You will be glad to be settled,” I said, somewhat at random, distracted by her closeness. We took a step or two up the street; the warmth of the sun was unexpectedly strong.

“I have decided to take up the harpsichord again,” she said.

I looked sharply at her. Mrs Jerdoun’s interest in music is, by her own admission, tepid; she sees it, she says, as a pleasant way to pass an hour chatting with her friends.

“I have after all inherited a fine example of the instrument.”

“Indeed.”

“But I find myself dreadfully out of practice.”

There was no doubt now where this conversation was heading; I was at a loss to know whether to help it along, or merely to let the whole pleasure and fear of it break over my head unaided. We
strolled along in sunshine for another moment or two in silence.

“I feel I should take the whole matter more seriously.” She cast me a sideways glance.

I said: “Indeed, madam.”

“So I intend to take lessons,” she said, with a touch of exasperation.

Now the moment had come, I hardly knew whether to leap for joy or run away. Ridiculous. I took a firm grip on myself. “A wise move, madam.” Did she expect me to present her with my
terms:
half a guinea entrance, madam, and half a guinea tuition per quarter
?