Secret Lament

by Roz Southey

  Hugh was silent for a moment at that. “As a matter of fact – ”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s owing to Corelli I’m here. I met the fellow.”

  “What!”

  “In Houghton-le-Spring. In a tavern last night when I was having a nice quiet chop. Said he was a friend of yours.”

  I snorted.

  “Then he said – Wait!” Hugh rose up off the bed and crawled to shut the window again – in case someone passing in the street overheard us, I presumed. In the darkness, he was an outline against the faint lantern light outside. “He said he was a government agent, looking for spies. Is that true, Charles?”

  “The devil it is,” I retorted. Then honesty reared its head. “He says Mazzanti is a spy. God knows he might be – the situation in Europe’s complicated enough. And in America. And if Mazzanti is a spy, it might explain why someone is trying to kill him.”

  “He has stolen secrets that must never be allowed to get into the wrong hands!” Hugh said melodramatically, then came back down to earth. “Corelli’s no government agent, Charles. I’ve met one or two of those in Paris and they’re a different sort of men altogether. If you ask me, Corelli’s a thief, trying to gull honest men out of their guineas.”

  I nodded. “I’d come to that conclusion myself. Did he try anything of the sort on you?”

  “No.” Hugh shifted uneasily. “He came straight up to me, said I’d been pointed out to him and that he knew you. He said he was worried about you.”

  “Worried?” I said, startled. “Why?”

  “Said you’d tangled with some ruffians and they were after you. Well, I know what that is all about – don’t forget I was there during that business in March when you offended them, Charles. Though you didn’t say they were still after you. I’d wager he was genuinely concerned, you know.”

  “I can’t imagine why. I still haven’t completely ruled him out as Julia’s murderer. Or the accomplice of someone else who was.”

  “Never said a word to me about the Mazzanti girl.” Hugh was silent for a moment, the only sound in the dark room our quiet breathing. “He wasn’t a happy man, Charles. Kept a sharp lookout for strangers, insisted on sitting with his back to the wall, wouldn’t stay longer than he had to. And I fancy…” he hesitated. “I fancy he was in a rage, Charles. He was having to bite his lip all the time, stop himself bursting out in a fury.”

  “At what?”

  I dimly saw Hugh shrug.

  We mused over Corelli’s behaviour a while longer. He had told Hugh he intended to catch a ship at Sunderland, so either he had changed his mind or his intimation to Mrs Hill that he intended to go to Shields had been a deliberate misdirection. But at the back of my mind all the time we talked was the question of how honest I could be with Hugh. I had Ord’s letters on me, and the ribbon I had found in the herb bushes outside Esther’s kitchen window; I would happily sacrifice Ord’s infatuation but Esther’s reputation was a different matter.

  I told him about Ord. Hugh condemned me for taking the letters but not for any reason of morality; he thought I should have left them for Bedwalters to find and let Ord take the consequences.

  “He’s the most supercilious, patronising fellow I know. Have you read them yet?”

  “They’re private correspondence, Hugh!”

  “And he could be a murderer.”

  I shuffled a little uneasily. “That’s what I was going home to do as a matter of fact.”

  I saw his teeth gleam as he grinned.

  “And the other matter, Charles? What else are you not telling me?”

  I sighed and told him about Esther’s intruder. It was a relief to talk about it, to express my concern. Hugh listened without comment. He probably would have guessed that Esther and I were comfortable enough with each other for her to turn to me for help, for we had all taken a part in that fracas in March that led to my disagreement with the ruffians; he had seen us together then and had cautiously uttered one or two warnings a day or two afterwards. Which, of course, I had ignored, even while I realised I was foolish to do so.

  When I had finished, Hugh was silent for a moment. Finally he said, “You’re taking a devilish risk, Charles. The town is full of people who think they know exactly how society should be, and they have the power to get what they want. And to ostracise people who won’t do as they say. And then she’ll have no reputation, and you’ll have no living.”

  “I’m interested in a murderer,” I said, obstinately. “That’s the issue in hand.”

  “Meaning that you’re not going to listen to me. Again.”

  “You don’t – you can’t – understand fully.”

  “I do,” he retorted. “I understand that when people start saying, You can’t understand how I feel or some such thing, they’re just about to do something really stupid and don’t want to be talked out of it.”

  “The ribbon,” I said, between gritted teeth.

  He sighed. “Very well. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. You think Mrs Jerdoun’s would-be intruder is Julia Mazzanti’s murderer.”

  “In all probability, yes. The ribbon proves that.”

  “So he’s trying to murder Mrs Jerdoun too?”

  I winced. “It’s a possibility. But I can’t imagine why. I’m not sure that the two women ever met.”

  “They must have something in common.”

  I gestured helplessly. “Nothing.”

  Hugh swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “I’m exhausted, Charles.” He stripped off his coat. “I’m going to sleep. And if you’ve any sense you’ll bed down here until it’s light. Wandering the street at night is never a good idea, let alone when you’ve offended half the scum of the town. And give up all this traipsing about town in search of murderers. Leave it to Bedwalters.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t tell him about the ribbon. He’d ask where I found it and I’ll have to tell him about Esther.”

  “Bedwalters will keep his mouth shut.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t be certain of that.”

  “Then get Mrs Jerdoun to give him the ribbon.”

  “That wouldn’t work either! She’d have to tell him why she knows it’s significant, which would mean admitting to her – her – ”

  “Intimacy?” Hugh suggested.

  I ground my teeth. “Her friendship with me. Anyway, I haven’t told Esther about the ribbon.”

  Hugh collapsed back on to the bed with a groan. “Charles, Charles! How do you get yourself into such messes?”

  I took a deep breath. I’d never told Hugh about the world that ran alongside our own or my ability to step through into it. Only Claudius Heron knows about that. Should I tell Hugh? Or would he think me mad?

  He rolled over to the far side of the bed and curled into a ball. “Go to sleep, Charles.”

  I tugged off my coat and hung it neatly over the back of his chair, sat on the edge of the bed to tug off my shoes.

  “Corelli did say one odd thing,” Hugh said out of the darkness.

  “What?”

  “He said it was all his fault. That if he’d had any sense, none of this would ever have happened. Do you think he was complicit in Julia Mazzanti’s death?”

  I lay down and stared into the darkness. Corelli had been horrified to see Julia’s body. I was certain he had not had time to kill her himself but was her death a consequence of something he had done, a consequence that he had never intended? And if so, what?

  24

  The love between a woman and her daughters is one of the greatest blessings life has to offer.

  [Letter of Lady Hubert to her eldest daughter on the birth of the latter’s daughter, September 1731]

  Hugh was his usual sleepy self in the morning; he had once told me he never felt awake until midday. I found this almost more annoying about him than anything else; everything had to be said three times before he finally repeated it correctly. We established, eventually, that he intended going down to the pri
nting office to put a notice in this week’s Courant, announcing he was returned to town early and was available for lessons.

  I went down to Mrs Baker’s lodging house. It was time I spoke to Julia’s parents. I could not credit that they had no idea who had engaged their daughter’s interest, so much so that she had contemplated eloping. And Mazzanti had not yet properly explained those attacks on him. This preposterous tale of spies!

  I heard raised voices inside the house before I got to the door and had to knock several times before Mrs Baker herself answered it. She ushered me inside hurriedly. The hallway was stiflingly hot, the drawn curtains and shutters on the lower floor keeping in the heat of the previous day. Mrs Baker shut the door behind me and raised her eyebrows to heaven.

  “Dear God, Mr Patterson, but we could do with some sanity in the house!”

  Mazzanti’s voice drifted down from upstairs, quibbling over the cost of mourners and horses and black draped hearses.

  “Wants only the best,” Mrs Baker said, “but wants to pay nothing for it.”

  I listened a moment longer. Mazzanti was clearly planning an extravagantly demonstrative funeral – a procession through the streets with half a dozen mourners, kettle drums and muffled trumpets. Where in heaven’s name did he think he’d get kettle drums in Newcastle!? And trumpets? He’d have to call in the band of one of the regiments at Tynemouth and they charged the earth.

  “Wants to make sure everyone sees how fond he was of the girl,” Mrs Baker said.

  “Was he?”

  “Never a bit. Just wanted to make money out of her.”

  There was a little silence upstairs, marred only by the calm sorrowful murmurs of the undertaker.

  “And Signora Mazzanti?”

  Another sigh. “I can’t do anything with her. And the maid won’t go near her. Or him. Or the body.”

  “You need a rest,” I said, eying her weary face.

  “It’ll all be over in a day or two,” she said, philosophically. “And at least I’ll have no spirits in the house. Thank God the girl got killed out in the street; I’d not want to put up with her whining the rest of my life.” She looked at me. “That sounds hard, doesn’t it? Uncharitable.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Well, I feel uncharitable,” she said. “They’re the hardest work I ever had. Comes of being foreigners, I daresay. She’s in the drawing room, Mr Patterson. Go on in.” She smiled mischievously. “Don’t worry, she prefers the gentlemen. That’s why you can’t hear her crying now. Mr Heron’s with her.”

  I went into the drawing room. In the plain room with its comfortable chairs and scatter of cushions and knickknacks, a vase of overblown white lilies struck an incongruous note. As did Signora Mazzanti, huddled in a chair in a froth of black satin, black plumes in her hair, black jewellery dripping over her bosom and wrists. She was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief as white as the lilies.

  Across the room, Claudius Heron turned and met my gaze. He had been straightening books on an occasional table, as if in need of something ordered to do. I fancied I saw a trace of relief in his eyes. They were the only people present; there was no maid, no chaperone; perhaps Mrs Baker had been sitting with them. If so, she did not come back in.

  “Signora.” I hesitated, then eased myself into the chair opposite her, so that I could look her in the eyes – if I could persuade her to look up. “Signora, forgive me, but I want to ask you some questions.”

  She raised limpid blue eyes, swimming with tears. Heavens, but she must have been beautiful twenty years ago.

  “About Julia,” I said.

  She gasped and buried her face in her damp handkerchief. Heron strode across to us. “Signora, you must answer. I assume you want to find the man who killed your daughter?”

  His tone was brutal in its matter-of-factness. I winced, but to my surprise, Signora Mazzanti straightened, murmured, whispered, finally said, just audibly, “Yes, yes, of course.”

  She turned those pleading eyes on me again. “Do you know who – who hurt her, sir?”

  “Not yet,” I said gently. “That’s why I need your help.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know anything,” she said with just a trace of – what? petulance? She glanced at Heron as if for approval.

  He said curtly, “Go on.”

  “I was asleep,” she protested.

  “Yes, yes, of course.” I did not like Heron’s manner but it was clear that Signora Mazzanti responded better to it than to my cautious sympathy, so I tried to cultivate a little directness myself. “Do you know who she was eloping with?”

  “No!” she said convulsively, then gathered her composure and spoke more firmly. “No, I’m sure you’re wrong. She wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  I fancied I heard Claudius Heron give the tiniest of exasperated sighs.

  “Julia would do nothing to give us pain,” Signora Mazzanti said. She dabbed at her moist eyes, stared fixedly at a point on the carpet. “You think me very foolish, no doubt, sir. But I know my daughter. She was a good girl. She knew – ” She faltered.

  “Yes?” I probed. The Signora glanced quickly up at Heron.

  “She knew we depended on her.”

  “Financially?”

  Her head jerked up; she sat a little straighter. “Yes, sir, financially,” she said bitterly. “The world seems to prefer vapid prettiness to true worth!”

  Vapid prettiness – was that how she had regarded her daughter? The vision of a contented, happy family that she had been trying to present was rapidly vanishing.

  “She was aware of her attractions, I think,” I said with a careful edge of contempt.

  “Oh, yes,” Signora Mazzanti said scornfully. “She knew she could attract the men and that they’d pay.”

  Was she suggesting that Julia had sold her body for money? Given Julia’s pregnancy, that was clearly not impossible.

  “But you don’t know of one particular man?”

  “One?” she snapped. Then she seemed to recollect herself, cast a fleeting look at Heron. In that look, I saw how similar mother and daughter had been – that was not a look pleading for help and support, but a quick assessment of the effect she was having on her audience.

  “Who?”

  She flushed. Yes, I thought, she certainly knew something.

  “That player. The one who performed the young hero.”

  “Reynolds?” Heron asked.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Half a dozen gentlemen,” she said contemptuously.

  It was no good; she knew very little in reality, I surmised, and was intent upon making a great deal of it.

  “She wouldn’t be told,” the Signora said. “She’d do anything to give me pain. None of it was accidental, you can be sure of that.”

  “What in particular?”

  “Always taking her father’s side. Always telling me how old I looked.” The Signora’s voice dripped scorn. “Telling me she’d teach me how to sing English opera instead of Italian. She – teach me!”

  “And her father did not reprimand her?”

  “Oh, yes,” Signora Mazzanti said. “He reprimanded her all right.”

  The bitterness of this remark bewildered me and I saw that it puzzled Heron too. Why should she be annoyed that her husband had disciplined the girl who had been so rude to her? Or did she mean it sarcastically?

  She was sitting bolt upright, an imperious figure, but then seemed to recollect herself. She looked up at Heron with watery eyes. “Please – I think – a little tea – would you be so good – ” And she was drooping again, wielding that damp handkerchief.

  Heron was still for a moment, then nodded. “I will go and find Mrs Baker.”

  He strode for the door, and I made my excuses and followed him; it would not do to be alone with the Signora, and in any case I fancied Heron wanted to talk. Why else should he go to the trouble of leaving the room when he could simply have rung the bell for the maid?

  I had hardly shut
the drawing room door behind me when he rounded on me. He kept his voice low and quiet but the venom in it took me aback.

  “God damn it, Patterson, what fiends women are!”

  I blinked at his fury, stuttered something incoherent.

  “She plays the loving mother when she hated the girl!”

  “Mazzanti was the same,” I pointed out. “It’s a household of enemies.”

  “And she sings so wonderfully.” There was a bitter twist to Heron’s mouth. “Tales of love and heroic sacrifice, of maternal selflessness and dutiful obedience. Oh, yes, Patterson, she knows how to act all the correct sentiments.”

  “Far from it,” I said, in that level calm tone I knew he appreciated. “You wouldn’t be raging at her now if she had not given herself away.”

  He was breathing deeply. The angry flush began to die out of his lean cheeks. I went on, to give him a little extra time to recover.

  “She cannot be the murderer,” I pointed out. “We know we are looking for a man – Julia was raped.”

  “If she had been a true mother, she would have known exactly who her daughter was seeing and would have prevented the elopement!”

  “The Signora sees only what concerns herself.”

  In the silence that followed, we could hear Mazzanti, upstairs, still laying down the law to the undertaker. Heron grimaced.

  “Hear that, Patterson? How much do you think a funeral like that will cost?”

  “More than the Mazzantis have, no doubt.”

  “There are plans on foot to hold a benefit for the family. A concert or a theatre performance perhaps – anything to raise money for them. And the concert directors are talking of increasing the amount to be paid to Signora Mazzanti for singing in the concerts this winter.”

  “They’ll bankrupt the series,” I said in horror. “We can hardly afford what they are paying now!”

  Heron sneered. “Don’t worry – nothing will come of that idea! When did you ever know the directors to give away money? You’ll no doubt find yourself playing in a benefit concert, however.”