The Ladder Dancer Read online

  Esther sighed, just audibly. George, who died in this house a year ago, at the age of twelve, had been in life my apprentice, and in some ways, I felt responsible for his death. Which adds a degree of guilt to my feelings towards his spirit. I gritted my teeth. ‘You’re dead, George,’ I pointed out. ‘You can’t play in concerts and earn me money any more.’

  ‘You don’t need another apprentice,’ he said obstinately, like the sullen boy he’d been when he died. ‘You don’t, you don’t!’

  ‘This is a private conversation, George,’ Esther said. ‘Please leave us.’

  The gleam flickered uncertainly; the green colour faded slightly. George adores Esther with the intensity of a boy’s first crush; he told me only a few days ago he was pleased he died in her house so he could stay with her ‘for ever and ever’. From the moment I moved in, he’s been annoyingly offensive, giving me directions to rooms I already know, introducing me to servants I’ve been acquainted with for a year or more, and generally trying to give the impression he’s the man of the house. In short, showing every sign of jealousy.

  Fortunately, mixed in with his adoration of Esther is a healthy dash of adolescent bashfulness which means one disapproving word from her is enough to send him into agonies of guilt. That alone, thankfully, has kept him out of our bedroom at nights.

  ‘Now, George,’ Esther said.

  He mumbled, ‘Yes, mistress,’ and shot off. I watched until the gleam slid out of the room under the door.

  Esther said quietly, ‘You are still distressed by that incident on the Key.’

  Reluctantly I sat back. ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Constable and the coroner both concluded it was an accident.’

  ‘Tell that to the mother.’

  She nodded. ‘But no blame can attach to her. She was very drunk, admittedly, but there was no way she could have kept hold of the child.’

  ‘It was intentional,’ I said. ‘He deliberately ran into her.’

  ‘Charles—’

  ‘I don’t say he intended to kill her, or the child, but he did intend to hurt them. He was venting his anger on them.’

  Esther plainly chose her words carefully. ‘I was wondering if perhaps—’

  ‘Yes?’ That came out rather more belligerently than I’d intended.

  She continued more decisively. ‘Over the past year, Charles, you have been involved in four puzzles, and you have proved yourself expert in unravelling the truth. But I am beginning to wonder if that has led you to start seeing mysteries where none exist.’

  I took a deep breath. I would not argue with Esther over yet another matter. ‘You’re not the only person to say so,’ I admitted. ‘The coroner plainly thought so, and the new constable. But I’m not imagining this, Esther.’

  She sat back. ‘Very well. Then why not see if you can find any trace of the fellow? Would it not set your mind at rest?’

  I saw that leather bag again, jolting at the back of the saddle. The intertwined initials: CR. I’ve always hated leaving puzzles unsolved. Of course, why hadn’t I thought of that before? I drained my coffee dish and pushed back my chair. ‘You’re right. And if I can find nothing, at least I’ll feel I’ve tried.’

  She hesitated. ‘You will not forget you have to see lawyer Armstrong in the next few days. About the Norfolk estates, that business with the tenant of the Home Farm.’

  I dipped to plant a kiss on her forehead. ‘You deal with it.’

  ‘Charles, I can’t. Not any longer. It’s your property now.’

  ‘I’ll sign the papers when you’ve sorted it out.’

  ‘Mr Armstrong will expect to see you!’

  But like a coward I was already at the door.

  Three

  Clothes bespeak the man.

  [A Gentleman’s Companion, February 1732]

  Walking across town towards the Key, my conscience pricked me horribly. I was behaving like a boor, and Esther’s forbearance only made matters worse. At least she wasn’t trying to insist I wear a wig; I find them abominably itchy and much prefer wearing my own hair.

  I hesitated, then steeled myself and detoured to the shop of Mr Watson the tailor, at the foot of the Side, where that winding street opens out a little. It was a cramped shop in one of the oldest, most creaking houses in town, but it was elegantly done out. I fancied I smelt money the moment I walked in.

  I was served by the man himself, who was dressed in the height of fashion: a reddish-brown coat with huge cuffs and bright buttons. He irritated me before two minutes were out by revealing he’d been expecting me. ‘Sooner or later,’ he said, with a smirk. ‘How is Mrs Patterson?’

  ‘I want a new coat,’ I said shortly.

  He seemed almost gratified by my rudeness, bowing much lower than he had on my first entrance. If he’d not been the best tailor in town, I’d have walked out there and then. My fingers were itching; a voice in the back of my mind was repeating endlessly, You can’t afford this. You can’t afford this!

  Watson reached up to the highest shelves and brought down the most expensive, and impractical, satins and silks. ‘If I might venture to guide you—’ He unrolled a bolt of silk with a flourish. ‘With your colouring, sir, you would look very well in puce.’

  ‘I would not,’ I said shortly. ‘I want a light-brown coat with green cuffs, exactly like the one I’m wearing.’ The voice in my head was saying that puce was a dreadful colour but surely there was nothing wrong with that nice dark plum over there . . .

  ‘And a waistcoat?’ Watson suggested, unrolling another bolt.

  That picture of going out with Esther in her splendid best and me in frayed cuffs came back to haunt me. I took a deep breath to steady myself.

  ‘In dark green, to match the coat.’

  ‘And embroidery?’ he asked brightly, his smile a trifle relieved, as if he thought he was winning a battle against a difficult customer. ‘We have some very fine embroideresses—’

  ‘Plain.’

  ‘Bumble bees are the latest fashion . . .’

  ‘Plain,’ I said. ‘With the smallest buttons you have.’

  I left the shop having ordered two coats and the waistcoat, with the prospect of a bill larger than any I’d ever received in my life. To be paid out of Esther’s money.

  Preoccupied, unhappy, I turned towards the Key.

  There was no fog today. Sun glinted on the metal fittings of the pulleys, on the iron bands of barrels piled outside a tavern. Few ships were moored, and there was a lazy, desultory air about the place. The ship involved in the rescue of the woman had been allowed to depart, delayed by only a day. I couldn’t even be sure I could identify the spot where a child had lost its life before it was aware enough to know the world.

  I walked through groups of aged sailors swapping tall tales of peril and audacity, passed Jas Williams’ chandlers’ shop, which was doing good business. That was where George had grown up, wheezing over every flour barrel and pestering his father for a fiddle. Not that George had ever grown up of course; he’d been murdered while in my charge, and it was only that thought, and the guilt that accompanied it, that gave me any patience with him at all.

  On the corner of one of the most disreputable chares, I found the lodging house next to the Old Man Inn, and called for a spirit I knew that had died there. It came, a faint gleam on a windowsill, apparently pleased to meet me again. ‘Mr Patterson, sir! You’re keeping well, I hope?’

  ‘Alas,’ I said with mock sadness, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. ‘Married.’

  The spirit burst out laughing. He’d been the landlord of the neighbouring inn in life, and he had a landlord’s laugh, round and from the belly. ‘Cheer up, sir. There’s good things about marriage as well as bad!’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed ruefully. ‘You’re right.’ And I ought to remember, I thought, that there were more good things than bad.

  ‘For one thing,’ said the spirit. ‘You’ll never have to pay for another whore!’

  I went
on, hurriedly. ‘I confess I came for information.’

  ‘One of your mysteries?’ The spirit had helped me with another only a month ago. Then it said, more sombrely, ‘Not the child?’

  I nodded. ‘Something about that affair strikes me as not quite right.’

  ‘Didn’t see it,’ the spirit said, with a note of regret. ‘But there were plenty in the inn that did. Went rushing out as soon as they heard the screams.’

  Which meant, I reflected, that they’d not seen it and probably only had their information at second hand. ‘What do they say?’

  He chuckled. ‘Every possible story under the sun, sir! But I hear you were there. Did you not give evidence at the inquest?’

  I did. And I said unequivocally that the horseman rode straight for the woman. Everyone else had said the fog was so thick no one could see an inch in front of their faces and the fellow was likely not to blame. Anyway, the woman had been drunk and had probably staggered into the path of the horse. The coroner, who’d been in the comfort of his own home at the time and hadn’t the slightest idea how foggy it had been, but did know the poor drank too much, had implied it had been the woman’s own fault and said that in future she’d do better if she kept out of the way of gentlemen in a hurry.

  ‘Do you know the woman who was knocked down?’

  The spirit sniffed. ‘I know her kind. She’s a whore.’

  ‘She lost a child,’ I said. ‘I don’t know a woman, whore or lady, who’d not be distressed about that.’

  The spirit sounded good-humoured. ‘With respect, sir, I’ve known a good many whores in my time. Plenty of them drink in the Old Man. And there’s none of them that don’t find children a burden.’

  I stifled my irritation; annoying him would do no good. Spirits have a tendency to brood on offences and to bear grudges; they have little else to occupy them. ‘But the child was an innocent victim,’ I pointed out.

  ‘True, true,’ he said with an air of philosophy.

  I was beginning to think there was nothing to be gained here. ‘Do you know of anyone who saw the incident but didn’t speak at the inquest?’

  ‘There’s Brewer,’ the spirit said. ‘The pig man. He’d just brought the animal for the ship’s crew and was having a beer with them before going home again.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘Up by St Ann’s chapel somewhere.’

  ‘And he didn’t testify? Do you know why not?’

  ‘He’s dumb, sir. And none too bright, either.’

  I sighed.

  ‘There were some whores,’ the spirit said. ‘One of them had a customer in the alley.’ It laughed. ‘Couldn’t get it up, poor devil. Drunk out of his mind.’

  ‘Did you know him? Or the women?’

  ‘Never saw much,’ the spirit said. ‘Not in that fog. I heard ’em, but no one used names. No call for it in that kind of transaction.’

  I bid him goodbye and wandered across the Key to stare at the river and Gateshead Bank on the other side, with the tower of St Mary’s church peeking above the trees. There seemed only one thing to do. I needed to speak to the woman herself. Perhaps she’d known the man on the horse. Perhaps he’d been a customer; some whores are not above threatening a respectable man they’ll tell his wife about his activities. Most men are sensible and know the threat can be averted with a shilling or two; to kill the woman seemed a ridiculous over-reaction. But perhaps she’d unluckily picked on a man with a vicious temper. The horseman had been very angry; I’d felt the fury coming off him in waves, caught that brief glimpse of furious mouth and set jaw.

  So it might pay to talk to her. Which was not a pleasant prospect as, according to the evidence at the inquest, she lived on the Sandgate, just outside the town wall: one of the poorest, and most dangerous, areas of town.

  Four

  A gentleman is known by the company he keeps.

  [A Gentleman’s Companion, July 1732]

  The Sandgate lies at the far end of the Key, beyond the ruins of the old town walls. Hovels cluster at the river’s edge, dwarfed by the tall ships that moor here. Almost every accent you hear is Scotch and the whole place reeks of gin.

  They have their own watchmen here but none of them are elected or paid. They’re purely self-appointed but they put the watchmen in the more respectable parts of town to shame. One was following me from the first step I took beyond the ruins of the town wall: a thin young man with a coat so torn and grimy it looked as if it was about to fall off his back. Where I walked, he walked; when I stopped, he stopped.

  I looked about in some trepidation. I was unarmed and outnumbered. All around were little knots of people: sailors for the most part, of the worst sort, shouting and laughing together. Women slouched in doorways, watching the street apathetically; children played dully with sticks and stones. All, all stinking of gin.

  And not one friendly face amongst them.

  Except for one young man hurrying from an alley, who stopped when he saw me and blinked in surprise. A young man so nervous, he clasped his hands together to stop them shaking; he had to clear his throat before he spoke to bring his voice above a whisper. Edward Orrick, curate of All Hallows, who’d married Esther and myself only a month ago.

  ‘Mr—’ (The little cough.) ‘Mr Patterson. Are you here— Do you come to see—’

  ‘The mother of the baby that died.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said eagerly. His face fell. ‘She is, sadly, that is, I’m sure you realize—’

  ‘Distressed.’

  ‘Indeed. And— er—’

  ‘Drunk.’

  He looked embarrassed, glanced round, realized we were the centre of curiosity. ‘Did you wish to, if you want—’ He gestured back into the alley.

  ‘I’d like to see her, yes.’

  The alley was narrow and filthy underfoot, littered with dog turds. A dead rat rotted against a wall. On the eaves above, spirits clustered, hanging from broken gutters and slates that teetered perilously on the verge of falling. Orrick was apparently oblivious to it all. He ducked under a low doorway on the right. I followed, hesitated on the threshold to let my eyes adjust to the gloom within.

  We’d walked directly into a downstairs room of average size, with one glassless window covered by newspaper, and a biting draught cutting through. A flickering candle was stuck by its own wax to a brick that protruded slightly from the wall; it made no impact on the dimness.

  At least fifteen people were crammed inside the gloomy hovel. There was a heap of clothes in the far corner that was probably an elderly man; a dazed-looking child of indeterminate sex leant against him. A woman of middle-age and a youth of about eighteen were lounging against one wall; the young man was idly kicking his toes into the back of a woman hunched on the floor. The rest were children, the youngest barely a year old. And the silence was terrible. So many children ought to be wailing, complaining, scrapping with each other. Instead, they looked at me in sullen dulled silence.

  Even a casual glance told me I’d made a pointless journey. No one here would give me any information, as a matter of honour.

  Orrick was saying in his soft, gentle voice, ‘Now, madam, I’ve brought you a visitor. Mr Patterson, the gentleman who saw what happened.’

  The woman cross-legged on the floor didn’t even raise her eyes.

  ‘Gin,’ Orrick whispered to me.

  ‘You going to do something useful,’ the young man said loudly. ‘Or have you just come to gawp?’

  The woman beside him said, ‘It’s a shilling to gawp.’

  ‘Now, now,’ Orrick said reprovingly.

  She ignored him. ‘Shilling to view or out you go.’

  ‘I came to help,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, in that case,’ the youth said, ‘it’s an extra sixpence. Cheap at the price. A nice clear conscience you’ll have afterwards. Ain’t that worth the money?’

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t to blame for the child’s death.’

  ‘Tel
l that to the crowner,’ he said.

  The woman on the floor spoke for the first time. ‘Gin,’ she said.

  ‘Two shillings,’ said the lad. ‘My last offer, sir.’ He sneered.

  I glanced round the assembled company. A girl of twelve or thirteen years old stared fixedly back. The old man in the corner broke into sobs.

  ‘I think we’d better,’ Orrick murmured. ‘Perhaps we should—’

  I nodded.

  We walked back through the narrow alley into the street. The self-appointed watchman was standing against a wall, still watching, still sneering.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Orrick said, gripping his hands together tightly, ‘I feel they don’t, they refuse—’

  I couldn’t guess what he wanted to say. I wasn’t sure he knew himself. Perhaps just an expression of helplessness or bewilderment.

  A noise behind us. I looked back to see the young girl had followed us out on to the street. Her brown hair was lank and unwashed; she was dressed in layer upon layer of rags, with a too-large pair of clogs bound to her bare feet with strips of cloth. She too was watching us, with a calculating smile.

  ‘They don’t want to be helped,’ Orrick said flatly.

  We walked back to the town wall together. Orrick’s head was bent; he stared at the cobbles under his feet as if examining them for some meaning. The young man still leaned against the wall, although he shifted his position to follow our progress. The girl kept pace with us, a few yards behind. Planning to dip her hand into one of our pockets, no doubt. I didn’t feel any inclination to criticize her; in fact, I was rather wishing I had one of Esther’s sovereigns in my pocket; the girl clearly needed it more than I did.

  Under the ruined town wall Orrick stopped, as if he wanted to say one more thing before he crossed the border into another country. He looked at me directly. ‘Was it an accident?’

  ‘No.’

  He nodded, slowly. ‘The world is very wicked,’ he said, and walked heavily on.

  I looked after him for a moment then glanced back. The girl stood in the middle of the road, head lifted, still with that calculating look. I wondered if she’d given up the idea of picking my pocket and was going to beg instead. It would be the height of folly to give her any money; it would all go on gin. But why not? There was probably little else in her life to please her.