Secret Lament

by Roz Southey

  “Go home.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble. If you help me, Bedwalters will be after you too.”

  “I won’t go.”

  More shouting. Someone appeared at the far end of the street.

  Hugh shoved me in the opposite direction. “Run!” We ran, stumbling on cobbles, to the end of the street. Hugh gasped for breath. “Go right. I’ll decoy them.”

  “Hugh – ”

  “Go!” he yelled.

  I went right, dived into an alley and ran like the devil. Behind me, I could hear the shouts of the men dying away. They must be following Hugh. I prayed they did not catch him.

  At the junction with the next street, I stopped and bent over, trying to recover my breath. I needed help. It was easy enough to outrun a couple of Bedwalters’s men but I could not hide from the constable forever. I needed to be able to move around and find the murderer, and I couldn’t do that if Bedwalters clapped me in prison to await the next Assizes. And all this because of this wretched ability to step through to another world. It was a skill that was like to get me hanged.

  There was only one person who could help me. I couldn’t get Esther involved in this mess and any attempt to explain what had really happened would met with derision. Except from one person.

  Claudius Heron.

  29

  The houses on Northumberland Street are those of the gentry and are fine monuments to history and good taste.

  [Visit to the town of Newcastle upon Tine by Harriet Brown (Edinburgh: published for the Author, 1703)]

  Beyond the town wall, Northumberland Street is a great straight stretch of road that dawdles eventually into the country around Barras Bridge. Houses here are large and sit back from the street in extensive gardens; they always make me nervous – they look aloof and intimidating, reminding me that I am, after all, only a tradesman.

  Claudius Heron’s house is larger than most and older, a splendid ancient house with generations of Herons at the back of it. Hordes of Herons have died here; there is one room so full of spirits that it is shut up and left unused – no one could possibly get a wink of sleep in the old bed in which so many Herons have died.

  I hauled myself up over the garden wall and dropped down the other side on to the soft earth of a flowerbed. My footprints were no doubt emblazoned there for all to see, so when I stepped out on to grass, I scuffed a toe across the place where I had landed.

  The house was in darkness but the high-riding full moon cast an unearthly glow across it, glinting off glass. The windows have eyebrows in the old-fashioned style – stone decorations that make the windows look permanently astonished. A couple of weathered statues on the roof represent some indistinguishable deities.

  My heart began to sink. The place was plainly entirely shut up for the night. No chance of a wayward servant rolling home late and half-drunk; any such servant would be dismissed within days of entering Heron’s employment – or never get into his employment in the first place.

  I went softly across the grass towards the square bulk of the house. As I neared, the shape resolved itself into a multi-gabled façade hinting at the many rooms behind. I knew Heron had in effect divided up the house into two parts – one where his own rooms were situated, a second where his young son’s retinue lodged. I even thought I knew which part was which but precisely which window gave on to Heron’s private rooms, I didn’t have the least idea.

  As I hovered indecisively on the dark path that ran round the house, a spirit said: “Can I help you, sir?” The spirit had been a pert young woman by the sound of it, deferential but with just a hint of sauciness.

  I tried for a confident tone. “I have an important message for Mr Heron.”

  “If you’ll just wait here, sir,” she said, as polite as if she was answering the door. “I’ll see if he’s in. Who shall I say is calling?”

  Nervously, I gave her my name.

  I stood on the dark path for what seemed to be an age. Spirits are usually so swift in passing messages. Then, on an upper floor, I saw the flicker of candlelight. Another long wait. Candlelight in a second room. What the devil was going on? Then the spirit said close by my ear: “He’ll see you sir. Go round to the door by the kitchen.”

  I felt my way to the back of the house. The moonlight was deceiving, casting impenetrable pools of shadow just where I wanted to step. An archway in a wall led to a stable yard; I heard horses snuffling, hoofs clattering against stone. I nearly fell over a mounting block, eased my way round a pump with a full trough below it. Candlelight flickered behind windows in one corner of the yard. I found a door and waited until I heard bolts shifting. The door was pulled open. I saw in the candlelight a shadowy figure; a voice said deferentially, “If you would enter, sir.”

  I ducked through the low door into a room with a deep chill in it. A sink in one corner, a washing tub in another. A night light stood on an old scarred table in the middle of the room.

  The servant was bolting and locking the door; he came across to pick up the light. One of the reasons for the delay was that he had taken the trouble to dress – in shirt and breeches at least; he hadn’t bothered to put on his wig and his scalp was covered by a dark stubble. He was tall, his face a trifle harsh though perfectly neutral in expression; he was in his mid-thirties, perhaps – Ned Reynolds’s age. He gave every sign of being a personal manservant, although I had always imagined Heron’s valet would be an elderly man, meek and silent.

  “This way, sir.” He was a Londoner by his accent. He led the way through the kitchens, past the butler’s pantry, through the servants’ door and out into the main part of the house. Dark rooms flickered around me in the candlelight; ghostly painted faces winked and leered. Then a staircase. I had seen the main stairs of the house and this was nothing like as large but it was far from being a servants’ stair.

  In the shifting candlelight we negotiated two flights of stairs without mishap. At a closed door, we stopped and the servant scraped his fingernail on the wood. Heron’s voice called, “Enter!”

  The opening door showed me an opulent room lit by a single branch of candles. Even in the flickering light, I could see the rich colours of the curtains around the disordered bed, the deep comfortable chairs by the unlit fire, a small Roman statue on an occasional table. Heron himself was dressed in a brocade gown hastily flung over a nightrobe; he had tied his fair hair back out of his eyes. He was clearly one of those men who can snap back into alertness whenever he chooses; it was the small hours of the morning but he looked as if he had had an undisturbed night’s sleep. Beside him, in this elegant expensive room, I felt shabby, grubby and disreputable.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” I murmured awkwardly. Heron was looking at me with an enigmatic expression that I took a moment or two to decipher. Surely he was not amused? What in heaven’s name was there to be amused about? I suddenly perceived the enormity of what I was about to ask. I wanted Heron to shelter me against the law, to lie, if necessary, and to run the risk of whatever penalties the law chose to impose should it find out his complicity.

  I shook my head. “No, no. I should not have come. I will go.”

  He did not stir, merely pointed a finger at one of the chairs. “You will not.” He dismissed the servant. “Sit down and tell me what has happened.”

  It is impossible to argue with Heron when he uses that tone of voice. I sat down. He strolled to a table in a corner and poured brandy into two large glasses, held one out to me.

  I gathered my wits and told him what had happened. It was a long tale for I could only explain properly by detailing my visits to the other world. Heron was the only man I could confide in, for half a year ago he and I found ourselves stranded in that world with a murderer intent on killing us. He lit another branch of candles to improve the light, sat down opposite me and listened in silence. I hesitated to speak ill of Philip Ord for gentlemen tend to stick together clannishly against outside attacks but since
he had spoken against me to Bedwalters, I felt I had no choice.

  Heron did not defend Ord; his lip merely curled contemptuously.

  Mazzanti was a different matter; when I told Heron that Mazzanti had regaled Bedwalters with the imagined tale of my advances to Julia, he said some very sharp things about fools and foreigners. When I told him about Bedwalters’s visit to my lodgings, his anger boiled over.

  “What the devil does the man think he’s doing?”

  I have a great esteem for Bedwalters. Even in these circumstances I felt obliged to defend him. “He is duty bound to investigate any information that comes to his attention.”

  “Nonsense,” Heron snapped. “Why should he suspect you any more than this Corelli fellow? You discovered the body together, and he is an unknown quantity where you are not!”

  “Corelli is probably at sea by now.” I told him of Hugh’s encounter with Corelli at Houghton-le-Spring.

  “He wanted to warn you?” Heron demanded, going straight for the most interesting part of the puzzle. “Why should he care what happens to you?”

  “I don’t have the least idea. I think he may be back in town too.” I told him of the spirit’s testimony, how it had seen a man keeping watch outside Mrs Baker’s house.

  Heron pushed himself to his feet, the draught setting the candles flaring; he reached for the bell to summon the servant back. “Then Bedwalters has a far better suspect close at hand. And why the devil has he discounted the idea that the girl was attacked by a passer by? Fowler!”

  The servant had appeared in the doorway so swiftly that I suspected he had been outside the door, indulging in the usual pastime of servants – eavesdropping. “Fetch my clothes,” Heron said brusquely. “And wake one of the footmen. The tallest. I want him to accompany me through the town. Tell him to bring a cudgel.”

  “You’re going to rouse Bedwalters?” I asked, incredulously as the servant looked out Heron’s clothes.

  “If you can rouse me, I can rouse him,” he said tartly. “Have you told me everything, Patterson?”

  I had not, of course. I had not mentioned Esther and her intruder. Nor the ribbon I had found in the bushes. “Everything I can think of that is useful,” I said.

  He looked at me for a moment, clearly suspicious. But he said nothing, merely nodding when the servant held up a coat for his approval. “There are rumours,” he said, “that the murderer has killed before.”

  “There are always such rumours.” But I mused over the possibility as the servant helped Heron dress. I could still not fathom how the attacks on Mazzanti fitted in with Julia’s death or indeed if they had any relevance at all. And all this talk of spies – I saw the servant, Fowler, grin when I outlined this theory.

  Heron pursed his lips as he leant close to a mirror to arrange his cravat. “Do you think that all this might simply be a smokescreen to cover up some other crime? Did Julia perhaps have something the murderer wanted?” He frowned as Fowler brushed down his coat. “Or perhaps Mazzanti possesses something. The girl was wooed and the villain persuaded her to bring this something with her, then killed her so she could not talk.”

  I thought of Ord’s letters and could see that Heron was thinking of them too. They sat in my pocket still, as did the ribbon.

  “But that would not work,” I said. “Once the girl’s spirit disembodies, she will tell all she knows. She will certainly reveal if someone has been trying to persuade her to some such plan.”

  I tried to work out days and dates. Spirits usually disembody three or four days after death, although it has been known to take longer. My trips between the worlds and the lapse in time caused by them confused me, but Julia’s spirit must surely disembody soon.

  “Bedwalters thinks that she may not have been killed in Amen Corner,” Heron said. “He has found some more spirits there and they know nothing of it.”

  “Damn,” I said. The spirit clings to the place of death, not to the body; were we to be reduced to wandering the local streets looking for the girl’s spirit? It would not be the first time I had done something of the sort. I wondered what these spirits in Amen Corner had been doing when I was searching for help after finding Julia’s body. Minding their own business, no doubt.

  “Then the body was moved deliberately to confuse us.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But a man carrying a dead body is hardly inconspicuous! What if he was seen?”

  “He was not,” Heron pointed out.

  He turned on his heels so Fowler could help him into his coat. “Bedwalters also told me that the murderer took a souvenir – one of the girl’s ribbons. As a kind of memento of the occasion, I suppose. Logically, if we can find the murderer, he will have the ribbon in his possession, so we may be sure of his identity.”

  The ribbon was almost burning a hole in my pocket. “It could have been taken by a passer by,” I pointed out. “The man I surprised bending over the body, for instance.”

  The servant smoothed the coat on Heron’s shoulders. Heron stared into the air. “Possibly. But I don’t like coincidences.”

  Nor did I.

  And neither would Bedwalters.

  30

  The law must be respected!

  [Letter from JUSTICIA to Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne, printed in the Newcastle Courant, 15 May 1736.]

  Only an hour earlier I had come alone through the night, with my heart in my mouth every time I saw a shadow move. Now I walked back with Heron and a footman tall enough to bang his head against every door in town. The footman carried a cudgel in one beefy hand; Heron himself, slight and lean, walked with his hand on his sword.

  Across town we went. The night had become unexpectedly chill – not a cloud in the sky and the stars sparking like diamonds. We didn’t see a single person though laughter echoed from behind tavern windows. An owl swooped along Pilgrim Street, a silent white shadow in the darkness.

  In Westgate Road there was no lantern left burning. The hulk of the West Gate itself blocked out the end of the road as we crossed to the tall row of narrow-faced houses just below it. Bedwalters’s writing school was shut up and in darkness. Heron thumped on the door. When there was no reply, he signalled to the footman, who used his fist. After a moment, a light flickered in an upstairs room. A window was pushed up. A woman’s voice, shrewish and sharp, snapped indistinguishable words; a man’s head ducked under the window sash.

  I had never seen Bedwalters without his wig before; I stared at the bald head for a moment without recognising him. Then his gaze rested on me; he said. “I will be down,” and ducked back inside. In the moment before the sash was pulled down, I heard him say, “Official business, dear.”

  When he pulled the door open for us, he was in nightgown and robe, but he had stopped to put on his wig and looked reassuringly more familiar. Heron pushed in without a word, cut me off when I started to explain our visit and said brusquely: “I am told you have been seeking to apprehend Mr Patterson in connection with the murder of Julia Mazzanti.”

  “Indeed,” Bedwalters said with composure. He shut the door, picked up a candle from a small table, and led the way into the schoolroom. We stood in the middle of low tables and chairs, the feeble light of the candle glinting on pictures and bookshelves. Bedwalters cast me a measuring glance. I felt horribly self-conscious. What must this look like to him? He must think I had brought Heron and the dominating footman to intimidate him.

  “Do you intend to charge Mr Patterson with this crime?” Heron demanded.

  Bedwalters blinked at the repetition of Mr. It was a warning and both of us knew it. It meant Heron was treating me as his equal in this, that he chose to take me under his protection. Bedwalters took his time to respond. “Mr Mazzanti has informed me of certain matters – ”

  “Such as?”

  “I understand that Mr Patterson had – if I may put it discreetly – ”

  “Come to the point, man!”

  “That he had formed a liking for Miss Mazzanti,” Bedwalt
ers finished calmly.

  I started to protest but Heron silenced me with a brusque gesture.

  “And that she did not return his regard.”

  “Good God, man. Are you suggesting Patterson killed the girl because his pride was offended!”

  “Mr Mazzanti says – ”

  “The man’s a fool.”

  Bedwalters tried again. “He says his daughter had expressed concern.”

  “She had more after her than Patterson,” Heron snapped. “Half the company wanted her.”

  I cursed silently. I did not want to point Bedwalters in Ned Reynolds’s direction.

  “And if she was concerned, she shouldn’t have led them on!”

  “I understand that Miss – ”

  “Devil take it, are you going to believe a silly girl above a man you’ve known for years?”

  And so it went on. Bedwalters began his sentences patiently; Heron snapped back with all the brusqueness and hauteur of a duke. Bedwalters’s suggestions were dismissed, Mazzanti’s information condemned, and Julia Mazzanti’s fears ridiculed. Everything Bedwalters tried to argue was quashed with a ruthlessness that made me feel sick. In the end, the bullying had its desired effect; Bedwalters ground to a halt, staring at Heron with flushed cheeks and a dull look in his eyes. I have never been so sorry to be involved with a matter.

  “There is no evidence against Mr Patterson,” Heron said.

  “No sir,” Bedwalters said dully.

  “And this Italian fellow, Corelli, is a far more likely suspect.”

  “Yes,” Bedwalters said.

  “Moreover, it is likely that the girl merely got caught up with whoever is mounting these attacks against her father. That it is all one matter.”

  Bedwalters hesitated. “Possibly.”

  “Well?” Heron demanded.

  “Yes,” Bedwalters said.

  “Very well,” Heron said. “Then we may all go our beds. Good night.”

  Bedwalters’s fists were clenched at his side. The candlelight flickered on his haggard face. “There is one matter left to clear up, sir.”