Secret Lament

by Roz Southey

  “She was pregnant,” I said.

  He straightened sharply, stared at me as I drank the dregs of his beer. “Devil take it, the little… ” He laughed again, unwillingly. “And she called me immoral. I don’t fall into bed with anyone who asks, Charlie. It’s Richard or no one. And that girl wanted to foist a bastard on me! Who’s the father?”

  Ord’s letters hung heavy in my pocket. “I have a good idea but I don’t want to say before I’m sure.”

  A woman with a toddler on her hip climbed wearily past the entrance to the alley, wiping her sweating face; a boy of thirteen or so came running down the steps and leapt past us. We let them get out of earshot.

  “So,” I said, “to cut a long story short: Mazzanti forbade the marriage, Julia insisted, you had no choice and you arranged to elope.”

  “Elope?” Ned echoed blankly. “No.”

  “You didn’t arrange to meet her outside the lodging house at midnight?”

  “Devil take it, no!”

  I’d swear he was telling me the truth. It must have been Ord after all, for all his denials. What in heaven’s name had Julia been playing at? Engaging herself to one man then promising to elope with another?

  “When did you last see her?”

  “At the theatre in the afternoon.”

  “Was she as insistent on the wedding as ever?”

  He thought for a moment, staring out at the Side where the shadows lengthened, and the last sun touched the upper windows of the houses. “As far as I can tell,” he said finally.

  “You were her last resort,” I said. “She had someone else in mind, someone, I’m afraid to say, rather richer than yourself, and probably the father of her child. But if he didn’t come up to scratch, you were there to fall back on.”

  He swore, took the tankard from my hands and drained it.

  “Where were you last night?” I asked. “I have a vague memory of seeing you in Mrs Hill’s.”

  “I probably was,” he agreed. “And a dozen other places. We drank the night away. My way of pretending everything’s all right, Charlie.”

  “You’re not the only one who does that,” I said. “Were you alone – just the two of you?”

  He shook his head. “We met an old friend of mine, a fellow from London in service somewhere. And no, I won’t name him, Charlie. How the hell do you think I originally met him? We have certain tastes in common.”

  I nodded. “And you don’t remember much of the night?” I knew that feeling myself.

  Ned grimaced. “Almost nothing. I was in a rage, I remember that. Wanting Richard and knowing I was the reason he was in this mess…”

  “If you’re going to be self-pitying,” I said, “I’ll leave you to sort it out yourself!”

  He laughed shakily. “I could have done it, Charlie. Killed her, I mean. I don’t remember. Not after leaving the Golden Fleece and God knows what time that was!”

  “But Richard would remember, and this friend of yours. Either they would have been with you and seen you do it, or they would know you’d gone off on your own and could have done it. And neither of them has said anything?”

  He stared at me. “Richard would never be party to anything like that! And he couldn’t keep it a secret either. And this morning, he said we were together the whole time. He said they had practically to drag me home.”

  “Then you’re worrying about nothing,” I said.

  I was far from certain this was the case. Not that there was any point in talking to Richard; true or not, he would insist Ned couldn’t have done it. In any case, there was no way anything he said could be used as evidence in Ned’s favour. Nor the other fellow for that matter. Their inclinations would immediately make them unreliable witnesses in the eyes of any court. Still, I believed him, which meant that I could continue looking in other directions without worrying about Ned.

  His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Not out of the woods yet, Charlie. Not yet.”

  A cold dread took hold of me. “What do you mean?”

  “The constable, Bedwalters. Came round to our lodgings this morning and was asking for me. That’s why I slipped out. He’d got wind of the fact Julia and I wanted to marry – her father told him evidently. Bedwalters wanted to know if Julia and I had an argument. That’s a roundabout way of saying he thought I’d killed her in a temper, I suppose. But I didn’t talk to him. One of the other fellows saw him and sent him off in the wrong direction. Luckily, Richard wasn’t there – he’d already gone to the theatre. But now he’s saying that if I get arrested, he’ll go off to the constable and tell him we were together. All night.”

  “In heaven’s name!”

  “Might as well be hanged for a true crime, than a false one, eh, Charlie?”

  “Keep Richard’s mouth shut,” I said forcibly. “Tell him I know who the murderer is and he’s only got to have patience and I’ll prove it.”

  Ned frowned. “Is that true?”

  “Not yet but it will be.” I pushed myself to my feet, looked down at him. “Ned,” I said. “Go home, keep your eye on Richard and don’t let him do anything stupid. If Bedwalters comes to see you, tell him you were simply after Julia’s money – that means you wanted her alive not dead. You are broke, aren’t you?”

  “Always.” He pulled out his pockets and showed me his wayward, charming, feckless smile. “Charlie, you can make this all right, can’t you? All of it?”

  “That might be too much to ask,” I said dryly. “But for you and Richard, yes, probably. Just don’t do anything rash!”

  21

  Modern fashions are extraordinary; women seem to trick themselves out in the most ridiculous of finery. But there is no arguing with them.

  [Letter of Sir John Hubert to his brother-in-law, May 1732]

  In the darkness of Esther’s kitchen, I sat and restlessly smoothed my fingers along the edge of the table. That wild promise to Ned weighed heavily on me. Make everything all right for him? I could only do that if I found the real murderer and just at the moment, I realised, I had no idea who it might be. Ord was my only suspect now and I couldn’t convince myself of his guilt.

  The cook had put out a tankard of beer for me and a plate of cold pie which I hadn’t touched after my meal with Mrs Baker. I drank the beer, though, cautiously; drinking in the dark is surprisingly difficult.

  Esther had been all business-like when I arrived. I had crept up the back alley and into the garden as if I was the intruder; Esther had met me at the gate, her perfume drifting over me like honeysuckle, and had brushed past me as she bent to latch and lock the gate behind me. She was wearing breeches and a loose shirt over which a waistcoat hung unfastened: “I’m not getting caught out again, Charles. No more tripping over skirts!” I knew from her mischievous gaze that she knew exactly what effect her appearance was having on me.

  She led the way through the garden to the house, the light from the open back door of the house showing us the path. Esther’s long pale hair had been loosely twisted back and pinned up to keep it out of her way; wisps danced in the lantern light.

  Inside the house, a pair of duelling pistols lay on a small table by the door. They were loaded, Esther told me, and extra ammunition and powder lay beside them. I didn’t want to touch them; I am incompetent with guns – I never had the opportunity or desire to become proficient. But Esther took one up and offered it to me. “Tom will take the other. I have another pair of pistols upstairs.”

  I took it with distaste. It was heavy and warm in my hands.

  Esther had locked up the house in my presence and taken her maid Catherine upstairs; the window in Esther’s bedchamber looked down upon the garden and would give advance warning of someone entering that way. I had detailed the spirit of my former apprentice, George, to watch the front of the house, looking out on to the square, more to keep him out of the way than because I thought the intruder would come that way; George still had the ebullience and bad judgement of youth and would do something rash if not wat
ched carefully.

  In the butler’s pantry, Tom was snoring. He was allegedly keeping watch from his window for movement in the garden; the view from the kitchen window was obscured by lavender and rosemary bushes. Restlessly, I got up, felt my way around the table, looked out into the garden. Nothing more than a gleam of moonlight; otherwise the darkness was impenetrable.

  My mind wandered inevitably back to Julia Mazzanti’s death. Ord’s letters were still heavy in my pocket. If he was guilty, would he have asked a third party to recover the letters? Would I dare to accuse him if I did find evidence against him? There would be plenty of people who would point out that Ord was a man with hundreds of acres of land and several coal mines and shares and many families relying on him for a living, and Julia was only an actress, a young woman who was immodest enough to perform in public and therefore had invited undesirable behaviour.

  Poor Julia. I had disliked her greatly – most people had, it seemed. Did it all turn on her character? She had conformed to the general expectation of actresses, and fallen into bed with some casual suitor and then found herself in predictable difficulties. Or had I done her an injustice? Had she been forced to give her favours? I wondered what that other Julia would have done – the Julia in the other world.

  And, as if I had conjured her up, in she walked, with a candlestick in one hand, and her gaze fixed carefully on the obscured flags of the kitchen floor. I must have moved for she started and looked up quickly. For a moment, I thought she might flee but then she clearly decided to brazen the situation out. She set the candle on the kitchen table and I saw there were now two glasses on the table, set beside a bottle of wine, as if waiting for guests.

  Julia was shivering. She was dressed in the flimsiest of gowns with a cobweb-thin shawl thrown over it. Jewels glittered at her throat, in her ears, in her hair. Was she about to go out? Or had she just come back from a party? It had not occurred to me that she might be lodging in this house – surely she could not, it was much too shabby. So was she visiting someone here?

  She gave me a flirtatious smile. She was remarkably like her counterpart in my world; her face was a little broader, perhaps, her hair a little darker and straighter. But she had the same wild, self-centred look as the murdered girl – and an added hardness, an added determination. “What are you doing here, Mr Patterson?”

  I was still unsettled by having stepped though into the other world so easily, without any of the forewarnings I had previously received. As if I had willed it myself. But I rallied. “I could ask the same of you.”

  Even in the flickering candlelight, I saw her flush. She leant across the table to pour wine into one of the glasses, looked at me provocatively across the top of the glass. “Forgive me for not inviting you to share, Mr Patterson, but I am waiting for… someone…”

  There was no mistaking her meaning. The boldness of it took me aback. I thought that there was a trace of bitterness in her voice; was she deliberately inviting me to judge her by common prejudices?

  “And you,” she said. “Are you visiting someone? One of the ladies upstairs, perhaps?”

  The house must be the haunt of prostitutes. That’s what she meant. I surprised myself by saying: “I would not condemn you for doing something I myself would do.” Oh Lord, that sounded as if I meant I was visiting the women upstairs. “I mean,” I corrected myself, “there is a great deal of hypocrisy in the world which I deplore. Men may apparently do as they please but women must do as they are told.”

  Her head lifted slightly. “I had not thought you so advanced in your thinking, Mr Patterson. Of course it is easy to talk.”

  I found myself disturbingly anxious to appear in a good light to her. “I am not visiting prostitutes,” I said. “In truth, I hardly know why I am here.”

  “You should take greater care.” She pulled the shawl more tightly about her, still shivering. “You are so well known in this town, Mr Patterson, that your movements cannot go unnoticed.”

  “Nor yours, I think.”

  She laughed softly. “Mr Patterson, I have ceased to care.” She regarded the wine in the candlelight; she had not drunk any, I noted, but merely held the glass in her hands as if for want of something to do. “I have appeared on the public stage since I was six, and I have heard every proposition and proposal men can make. And yes, I have agreed to some of them.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “You are right, Mr Patterson, a woman never has any choice about what she will do. Except in the choice of jewels.” She fingered her necklace. “And ribbons.”

  I began to wonder how she was so sane and sensible. Had her counterpart in my world led the same kind of life?

  “And then I did something really foolish,” she said. “I fell in love.”

  She laughed again, more loudly. “Your face, Mr Patterson, tells everything. You never can disguise your feelings. You don’t believe me? Very well, an infatuation only, of course.”

  “I’ve fallen in love a good few times myself,” I said lightly, more distressed by her confidences than I had expected to be. “Particularly as a youth. And with the most unsuitable of women.”

  “Actresses?”

  I reddened. “Servants – ” But that was just as bad.

  “Oh, chambermaids,” she said. “Or the milkmaid? The fishmonger’s daughter?”

  “And I fell out of love again very quickly,” I said steadily. “It seems to be the common lot.”

  “So all I must do is wait a little and all will be well?”

  “Possibly.”

  She drained the glass. “But I am the spawn of Satan, Mr Patterson. I have it on excellent authority – the best. Creatures like me are set on earth to tempt good men into sinfulness.”

  “Ord?” I suggested.

  She frowned. “Philip Ord? What is he to the purpose?”

  I was in danger of treating this world as if it was a mere reflection of my own, I realised, as if I could solve the mystery of Julia Mazzanti’s death in my own world by understanding the life of her counterpart in this world. I had had ample evidence in the past that, similar as the two worlds were, they were not identical. The woman standing before me was proof of that. She lived while her counterpart lay abused and murdered in my own world. And a little part of my mind was disturbingly pleased that it was the Julia in my world that had died, not this woman before me.

  Julia was still musing on her own difficulties. “Don’t you see, sir, that my reputation is already gone, simply because of my profession. So why should I not simply go my own way and do as I please? The world cannot think worse of me than it already does.”

  And yet, I thought, this second world seemed only to open up when there was a crisis in my own world, and it opened up to the same moment, the same situation. Surely that could not be coincidence? Surely there was something to be learnt here?

  “But don’t fret yourself, Mr Patterson,” Julia said with a knowing smile. “I am not one to give the world up for love. Marriage without money is not to my taste.” She fingered the jewels in one ear. “Your face, Mr Patterson, your face! Such contempt.”

  “No,” I protested, but she swept on, setting the empty glass neatly down on the table.

  “Well, I must get back to my wicked ways. You have not seen him, have you, Mr Patterson?”

  “Him? Who?”

  Her lip curled in contempt. “You are like the rest of them, sir. He’s beneath your notice, is that it? Because he’s poor and living in a place like this? Well, don’t condemn my morals, Mr Patterson, until your own are beyond reproach, or until you have learnt some Christian charity.”

  I was stung. I had only the greatest admiration and sympathy for her and she insulted me. “I do not think we need to prolong this conversation,” I said.

  And I was alone in the darkness of the kitchen again, hearing Tom’s rattling snores.

  A whisper in the darkness. I was still recovering from shock at the realisation that I could govern my entrance to and exit from the other world, and stood dazed unt
il a hand touched my arm. Then I knew Esther by her faint perfume. She leant close and I saw her face as a pale blur, her hand on my arm as a faint leavening of the darkness.

  “The spirit heard someone at the garden gate,” she breathed in my ear. “We must wake Tom.”

  “I’ll do it.” I thought about telling her to go back to her room, and leave Tom and me to deal with it. It’s what I would have said to any other woman. I did not say it to Esther. We felt our way to the butler’s pantry, and Esther waited outside while I went in to wake Tom. He had one candle burning and I blew it out before putting a hand on his shoulder. He came awake at once, said eagerly: “Is he here?”

  I heard the scratch of metal against wood as he picked something up. “I have the pistol,” he whispered excitedly. I pushed it aside with some trepidation.

  Esther was waiting for us impatiently, a slim shadow in the darkness. “Tom,” she whispered. “Get to the kitchen and keep watch there. We’ll stand by the door.”

  He looked disappointed but went without argument.

  Esther and I took up our station on either side of the door to the garden. I stood where I could be seen when the door opened; Esther hid behind the door where she had a good chance of taking the intruder by surprise if need be. All I could hear in the darkness was my own breathing. And all I could see in my mind’s eye was Julia Mazzanti – the woman from the other world, bejewelled, wrapped in her thin shawl, with an insolent tilt of her head and amused contempt in her eyes. She was a woman, that was the difference between the two Julias. She was a woman who had taken life into her own hands, and the Julia who had died had been a mere girl.

  Esther breathed: “Here he is.”

  I heard a faint crunch of footsteps, a pause, then a scratching on the other side of the door. The intruder was trying to pick the lock. No, it sounded as if he was trying to push a key into it, like a man who hasn’t yet realised it doesn’t fit. Surely after three attempts to get in, he must know he had the wrong key!