Sword and Song Read online

  “Where were you?”

  “In the kitchen having a bite to eat. Back of the house.”

  “And they were...”

  “Outside her door.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Another shrug. “A man.”

  “Young, old? Tall, short? Dark, fair?”

  Eventually she decided he was youngish, shortish, dark. “He spoke nice,” she said. “Reckon he was an apprentice.” She waxed lyrical briefly. “Had a lovely waistcoat, embroidered, bright colours. Roses.”

  “God help us!” Hugh said horrified. “Apprentices never have any taste.”

  “Did you hear him say anything?”

  Maggie pondered a good while then looked genuinely puzzled. “Well now, there’s a strange thing. He asked her if she had the book.”

  “The book?” I echoed, startled.

  “Aye. The book he’d given her to keep safe. And she said she had it and she’d be glad if he took it away with him. So he said he would.”

  “What kind of book?”

  “Never said ought about that.”

  “Did they say anything else?”

  She shrugged. “Never heard ought.”

  “Did the man see you?”

  “Nah, never looked my way.” She looked alarmed. “You think he might come for me next?”

  “Not if he didn’t notice you. But best keep quiet about what you saw just in case.”

  She nodded. “Think that’s why she got killed – so she couldn’t say nothing?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Then you’re looking for a fool,” she said. “You learn to keep your mouth shut in this business. Nell knew that. She’d never have said ought.”

  “Presumably he didn’t know that.”

  “Didn’t want to know, more like,” she said. She seemed to be looking at Nell’s body without much emotion. I said: “Doesn’t it distress you?”

  She shrugged again. “We all come to it. And the likes of us faster than anyone else.”

  “That doesn’t mean to say the murderer shouldn’t be brought to book.”

  She laughed. “For killing one of us? That’ll be the day!”

  “Very likely,” I said. “I’d be grateful if you could ask the other girls if they saw or heard anything.”

  “Yeah, all right,” she said. But I fancied she wouldn’t bother.

  I got up and looked about more carefully, watched curiously by Hugh and Mrs McDonald, and hopefully by Bedwalters. In an ironic sort of way, despite her poor station in life Nell had retained some pride. She had taken care of the home that was also her place of work. It was ordered and tidy; she must have dusted regularly – there were no visible footprints on the bare boards, no hand prints on the scarred table that held only a candle. A rag rug on the far side of the bed was rucked up as if someone had tripped over it. The bedclothes on the far side of the body bore a depression as if someone had knelt there. Nell’s shift was pulled up above her knees and had slipped down from one of her shoulders.

  With so little to go on, it was only possible to guess what had happened. Nell had brought her customer here, they’d lain together and he’d then stabbed her. She’d clearly put up no struggle – she must have been taken entirely by surprise.

  “Would Nell have had a knife?” I asked Mrs McDonald.

  “Maybe. Or maybe she borrowed one from the kitchen.”

  “Could you check if one’s missing?”

  She cackled. “Wouldn’t do no good. God knows what’s in there. There are twenty women in this house go in there to cut themselves a wedge of bread or cheese, or get a drink of ale. Stuff’s always coming and going.”

  I sighed. “It doesn’t matter. He almost certainly brought the knife with him, anyway.”

  Hugh frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “Because he took it away again. Maybe it could be identified as his – some people put their initials on their cutlery, or their coat of arms.”

  “Are you saying this is a man of family?”

  “I’m not saying anything at the moment. Many men carry a knife with them – butchers for instance, or some other trades. Or – ” I hesitated and Hugh raised his eyebrows. “Maybe he came prepared,” I said. “Maybe he always intended to kill Nell.” I looked down on the girl’s body. One stab – a cold calculating gesture rather than a frenzied, impulsive attack. This looked carefully planned.

  “But why, for heaven’s sake!” Hugh demanded. “Because of a book!”

  I looked down at Bedwalters. “Had she mentioned a book to you?”

  He shook his head.

  “He did take the book, I suppose?” Hugh asked.

  There were few places in the room where a book might have been put away. A small clutter of feminine things – a gap-toothed comb, a few hairpins, a ribbon – lay on a table and, on a chair, a neat pile of clean clothes. With great reluctance I slipped my hand beneath the mattress on which Nell lay, feeling for a book and finding only a purse, a poor cloth thing. When I emptied it into my palm, I came up with three pennies, two farthings and a small but beautiful brooch in the shape of a red rose.

  “I gave her that,” Bedwalters said. I put it into his hand. “Last year, on her birthday. She used to wear it when we were together.” He stared down at the small thing on his palm, then closed his fist around it.

  “Look,” Hugh said. “There’s no difficulty about this. In three days or so, Nell’s spirit will disembody and she’ll be able to tell us what happened. She’ll tell us all about the book and who her customer was.”

  He was right, of course. The spirit, once it disembodies, always lingers in its place of death; poor Nell would be confined to this house for eighty or a hundred years before her spirit’s final dissolution. And it’s a rare murder victim who won’t accuse its killer. But Nell’s murderer must surely have taken that into account.

  “He may not have given her his real name,” I said.

  Silence.

  “Right,” Mrs McDonald said. “So I can shut up the room and get on with business, till she comes back to us, can I? About time.”

  “I’m staying here,” Bedwalters said.

  For a moment he sounded remarkably like his old self, calm, confident, a man of business and standing in the community. He looked haggard still, but I felt a sudden hope that after all he’d be all right, that he’d come through this tragedy and build up the pieces of his life again.

  “I won’t leave her,” he said firmly. “Someone must keep her company.”

  “The undertaker,” Hugh murmured.

  “I’ll deal with her,” Bedwalters said. “Mrs McDonald and I will lay her out decently, and deal with her body and spirit.” He caught my hand. “You catch him, Patterson.”

  “Of course,” I said soothingly.

  Hugh and I went out into the chill warmth of the August night, stood looking up and down the cobbled street. I felt like a traitor, assuring Bedwalters that I could achieve something I was already convinced was well-nigh impossible.

  “The fellow will have left town,” Hugh said. “Long since. Obvious thing to do.”

  “Yes.”

  “And given a false name to the girl, anyway.”

  “If he had any sense.”

  “There’s not the slightest chance of catching him.”

  “The book, Hugh,” I said. “What the devil was that all about?”

  “God knows.”

  “But it’s at the heart of the matter. It must be! Why else should he kill her? For want of something better to do?”

  “The girl’ll tell us in three days’ time.”

  “I’ll be in the country entertaining lords and ladies who don’t even know people like Nell exist.”

  Hugh gave a bark of laughter. “I bet the gentlemen do!” He slapped me on the shoulder. “You can come back, Charles. Long End’s only an hour out of town on a tolerably fast horse. Don’t worry about this one – this isn’t going to puzzle you for long.”

  We p
arted in Amen Corner by St Nicholas’s church, Hugh to go to his lodgings on Westgate and I to cross town by the High Bridge to reach my rooms in All Hallows parish. I needed sleep if I was to be fit to flatter the ladies and gentlemen tomorrow. Today. The streets were dark and I walked in a brooding silence, haunted by thoughts of the dead girl, by the memory of Bedwalters’s face, by a longing to be able to turn back the clock and prevent this dreadful thing happening.

  And killed for such a small cause too. How could a book be so valuable that it was worth a life?

  I heard an owl moan and glanced up to see it swooping low across the dark street in front of me, rising up again towards the tower of All Hallows church –

  Towards the rosy glow of dawn...

  I held my breath, stepped cautiously forward. A moment’s shiver of cold and I was standing in morning sunlight.

  There is a world that runs alongside our own, as near as two pages in a closed book. The other world looks much the same as our own; there is no difference between All Hallows church and its counterpart in the other world, no difference in many of the houses, the streets, the trees and gardens. We living men have our counterparts there too, sometimes uncannily like ourselves, sometimes unnervingly different. My own self lives there – a much wealthier man than I; Hugh’s counterpart is twenty years older. There seem to be, as far as I have been able to tell, two main differences between the worlds: there are no spirits there; and time does not run at quite the same pace. Sometimes, as now, it is night in our own world, day in the other. Sometimes the seasons seem to change at a different rate.

  Worlds like pages in a book. Separate, self-sufficient. But at times it’s possible to step from one world into the other. Not everyone can do so but I seem to have that ability. I have been to that world a number of times now, knowing my stepping through from one world to the other by a faint sensation of cold.

  And I have learnt that it is only at times of crisis that the passageway between the worlds opens up. Principally, when I am searching for answers to a death.

  I walked down the street in that other world. I heard a servant talking, a distant fiddler strike up a tune. The gate to All Hallows churchyard stood invitingly open. I put my hand on it, intending to go in, to walk among the sunlit graves, to look for whatever had brought me here...

  But the owl swooped down again, bringing darkness back with it. I shivered, stood in the darkness of my own world, a hand on the closed gate of the graveyard.

  3

  There are few fine country homes in this region; the gentry here are much decayed.

  [A Frenchman’s guide to England, Retif de Vincennes

  (Paris; published for the author, 1734)]

  The residents of the entire street turned out when Claudius Heron’s travelling coach drew up at my door. As my patron and, I strongly suspected, the man who’d put my name forward for the houseparty, Heron had not unnaturally offered to transport me. I’d expected to be travelling in his servants’ coach but it was Heron’s own equipage that stopped up at my door, drawn by glossy black horses, the bodywork of the carriage polished to shining perfection, and notable by the lack of a coat of arms on the door, though Heron was perfectly entitled to bear one.

  I was watching for him from the window of my room and hurried down with my bags, battling through crowds of children to the carriage. One footman took the bags from me, another flung open the door and let down the steps; I went up them in a hurry and the carriage was in motion almost as soon as I was in it. I jolted back in my seat and caught a glimpse of the cheesemonger’s disapproving face as the carriage passed.

  Heron, in the opposite seat, was dressed in his usual pale colours, and the noon sunshine glinted on his fair hair. A man in his early forties, he considers himself immune to fashion but even his practical travelling clothes were several degrees smarter than my best coat. I saw his gaze flicker over me with a gleam of amusement.

  “New clothes, Patterson?”

  “I felt nothing else would do.”

  The amusement turned a little sour. “Yes, I hear our host is always well turned out.”

  I’d never met the gentleman whose house I was about to visit but I did know that Edward Edmund Alyson was barely twenty-three, four years younger than myself – I’d just passed my twenty-seventh birthday. He had very recently inherited his uncle’s estates and was celebrating his good fortune with a summer houseparty for his friends. My part in providing the entertainment would earn me fifteen guineas – about as much as I got for an entire year’s playing as deputy organist of All Hallows church.

  “Am I to thank you for a recommendation to Mr Alyson?” I asked Heron.

  He shook his head. “Lawyer Armstrong has arranged it all. Alyson apparently wrote to him from London asking him to hire new servants and draw up a guest list.”

  I stared. “Does that mean Alyson knows none of his guests?”

  “Apparently not. But he is eager to make a place for himself and his wife in Newcastle society and wants to meet all the local notables. And of course few people are going to turn down the chance to eat and drink at someone else’s expense for an entire month.”

  Heron’s cynicism is familiar to me; I nodded and reserved judgement.

  “His uncle and I had part shares in three ships,” he went on. “I have been deputed by my fellow shareholders to ascertain Alyson’s views on the management of the vessels. And he has inherited at least two mines – there is the question of how he intends to transport the coal.”

  “Did you know his uncle well?”

  Heron nodded. “A very decent man. Very strict – he would not tolerate the least dishonesty, or immoral behaviour.”

  In my experience, that usually means maids turned off the moment they’re seen to be with child.

  “He was sadly reduced at the end,” Heron said. “Not entirely sure what was going on around him. The nephew I don’t know at all. His parents lived in London and on the continent in his early years. I fancy they were not on particularly good terms with the old man.”

  We looked out at the passing streets. Heron nodded to one or two acquaintances, made light conversation, commented on the pleasures of travelling in such good weather. But as we moved north, into the countryside around Barras Bridge, I could not drag my thoughts away from Nell. She’d been a mere girl, but in Bedwalters she’d found a man who would protect and care for her, and whom she could respect. And he’d found a refuge from a shrewish wife and the burden of everyday cares. What would he do now?

  “You’re thinking of the constable,” Heron said quietly.

  Startled, I said: “You’ve heard what happened?”

  “The servants were all talking of it this morning.” He looked out into the warm sunshine, on haystacks and shorn fields. “Is there any hint who did it?”

  “A customer. Of medium height and build, medium dark. We’re hoping Nell’s spirit will be able to identify him.”

  He hesitated then said, “If there’s any difficulty in finding him, I could offer a reward. Five guineas, do you think?”

  I stared at him astounded. The last time he’d met Bedwalters, he’d bullied him mercilessly, with the hauteur of a gentleman born and bred, in order to get what he wanted. A mere constable – even one as resolute as Bedwalters – cannot hold out against a determined gentleman. As Heron’s actions had saved me from a charge of murder, I’d been in no position to object, but I hadn’t liked it. Was Heron feeling just the slightest twinge of remorse?

  Somehow I doubted it.

  “I think that might not be wise,” I said reluctantly. “I suspect a reward will simply attract a whole host of undesirables ready to spin you whatever tale they think you want to hear.”

  He nodded. “So I suspected. But the offer stands.”

  I thanked him, stared out at a boy and a dog shepherding five sheep. “There was a book,” I said absently. “Nell was keeping it for this man.”

  Heron raised an eyebrow. “Stolen, do you think?”
r />   “Almost certainly. But who would kill for a book?”

  Heron’s lean, handsome face was cynical. “Last winter, a traveller on the Carlisle road was killed for his cravat.”

  “It had lace on it,” I said tartly. “Worth a fortune, they say.”

  Heron’s own cravat was plain. He smiled.

  We travelled for perhaps an hour or two. Alyson’s house, Long End, stands seven miles north of Newcastle; our way lay along narrow lanes not entirely suitable for carriages and our progress was at times slow. Fields gave way to woods then to fields again. We clattered through hamlets, scattering hens and geese; a dozen dogs leapt out of hedges to bark at us. The countryside hereabouts is not particularly fertile; the gently rolling hills verge on bleakness and the living is poor. The few people we saw tended to give our expensive retinue sour looks.

  But the village we came to eventually, around the end of the afternoon, was well-kept, the houses all of the same type and apparently all built at the same time. An estate village. Beyond the church, a stone bridge curved over a fast-flowing river; we turned sharp left and plunged through pillars topped with extravagant lions, into a drive that led deep into a wood.

  The drive was atrociously potholed. An attempt to fill in the holes had met with singular lack of success. The coachman slowed the horses. Heron swore as we bounced along, and held on to the strap beside the door. “Damned place has been neglected for years.”

  I craned from the window to catch a first sight of the house; naïve and callow of me, I know, but I’ve not so far moved in the sort of circles where country houses are a commonplace. I looked at it for a full three minutes before realising what it was; it was so small, I thought at first it must be a dower house or even a lodge. It was Jacobean, an old-fashioned building of red brick, with a tower at each corner and more gable ends than any house should ever have. The formal gardens that surrounded it were bedraggled and weed-choked.