by Roz Southey
Behind the coffin and the choristers came the chief mourners. John Mazzanti was impressive in a very new black coat, pressing a black silk handkerchief to his eyes and occasionally letting out a sob, horribly embarrassing Mr Jenison and the other directors of the concerts who had turned out to lend their support. No doubt Mrs Jenison and the ladies were having an equally difficult time coping with the abandoned grief of Signora Mazzanti. They say of course that foreigners are more demonstrative than the English, but nevertheless there was something that seemed staged about the whole affair. The Mazzantis were weeping for the loss of their own future rather than the loss of a daughter.
Mrs Baker materialised beside me, watching in amused contempt. “All the gentlemen of the concerts are here, I see,” she said, admiring the solemn posse immediately behind the carriage. About tenth in line was Philip Ord, pale and respectful; he saw me, looked arrogantly away. None of the theatre company were there, I noted. “They haven’t found her spirit then?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” I agreed. “I’m told Bedwalters has had men out, scouring the streets.”
“It happens,” Mrs Baker said. “Sometimes they just don’t want to talk.”
Sometimes, I’ve even heard it suggested, a spirit never disembodies at all. I’ve never known that happen myself – perhaps it’s just a tale.
“I knew a fellow once,” Mrs Baker said. “When I was a girl, oh, nine years old. A vagabond who killed another in a drunken stupor. He thought he’d hide the deed by carrying the body off somewhere else.”
On the principle of course that the spirit remains in the place of death; move the body and the law may never discover the spirit, and thus never know what has happened. That was what the murderer had done with Julia’s body, of course, in moving it to Amen Corner. I had an uneasy picture of Proctor staggering along under Julia Mazzanti’s weight; she had been a slim thing but he was not particularly large himself.
“What happened?” I asked, half-distracted.
“Silly fool never made sure his victim was dead. Came round and started shouting for vengeance – right outside our front door!”
I laughed dutifully. Proctor must have managed it somehow because that was what had happened.
Mrs Baker nodded at the singers. “I’d have thought Mr Proctor would be there – he was so gone on the child.”
“He had an engagement in Carlisle,” I said hurriedly.
It was time I went off to the church; I turned away just as the singers started on another ornate anthem. Then I heard my name called and turned to see Ned Reynolds hurrying up behind me.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said breathlessly. “I’ve remembered!”
“Remembered what?” I asked blankly.
“What I had meant to tell you. Remember, I told you last night? Something Julia said puzzled me – I thought it might be of use to you in solving this puzzle.”
I opened my mouth to tell him it was too late, that the matter was settled. Then I thought better of it. As far as Ned was concerned, Julia’s murderer and Esther’s intruder was still at large.
“Go on.”
“It was that time Julia made it clear she knew about Richard and me,” Ned said. He glanced round but the crowd were all intent on the funeral procession; nevertheless he drew me aside, and looked round closely for spirits who might overhear us. “The time she said I had to marry her. We were in the theatre – in a back corner where no one could hear. She’d just put her deal to me and I didn’t know what to say or do. And as I was staring about, I saw Mazzanti come in from the timber yard. I was hoping he’d see us and come across to separate us. To rescue me.” His mouth twisted unpleasantly. “I told you, Charlie, I’ve always been one to hope trouble will go away if you ignore it.”
What did that remind me of? I wanted to stop him, to grasp at that fleeting memory, but he went on. “But he didn’t see us. He spotted Proctor, the psalm teacher. The poor fellow was doing nothing much, just hanging around in hope of a word with Julia, but Mazzanti went across to him straightaway and began to berate him.”
The memory would not return. “What did he say?”
“Don’t have the least idea – they were too far away. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.” He shifted to allow a gaggle of excited children to rush past. “Julia saw me looking and turned to see what was interesting me so much. She said – ” He frowned, obviously trying to remember the exact words. “Look at them both. Two bullocks fighting over the same heifer.”
I stared at him. A host of disparate facts suddenly flooded in on me. Corelli’s mother – a young servant girl; Ciara Mazzanti’s aging, plump helplessness. Her dependence on her husband to manage her career and their joint reliance on Julia’s income. Proctor’s repeated protestations that he had not killed Julia. Someone else who like Ned dealt with troubles by pretending they did not exist. Julia’s desperation to find a husband; Ord’s sarcastic comments about her lover – Married, I suppose. And the living Julia’s last comment. Are you going to keep silent too? Like my mother.
Her mother. Dear God.
44
Marriage, my dear, is only a means to an end. It is our way to comfort and to security and, if we let it, it can be our way to happiness and even joy too.
[Lady Hubert to her eldest daughter on her wedding day, 12 October 1730]
St Nicholas’s church clock was striking two in the morning as I came up to the door of Mrs Baker’s lodging house. The lanterns in the street had almost all burnt out and the full moon was drifting in and out of gathering clouds. The night was as hot and stifling as ever.
I didn’t think it mattered that Julia Mazzanti’s spirit had not been found. I knew what she would say. She would tell us that she had met with Proctor in the street, that he had been mad, he had claimed to be already her lover and had then attempted to assault her. She had fallen as she struggled and hit her head on the cobbles. She had been dazed, perhaps even unconscious, so she had known nothing more. Everything would point to Proctor as a killer. And given that the innocent Proctor of this world would sooner or later return to the town, it was just as well Julia could not accuse him.
Everything seemed plain. Julia’s killer had been tragically confused and deluded; we had caught him and he had died. Yet one thing could not be denied. Proctor had said he had not killed Julia. He had admitted to raping her and to running off scared, leaving her unconscious. Then, he said, his conscience had prompted him to go back and he had done so. And he had found her dead. That was what he had said: I found her dead.
Proctor had not killed Julia. Someone else had come along and taken advantage of Julia’s unconscious state to strangle her. But I didn’t think for one moment that the murderer had been an opportunist thief or a casual passer by. Like Heron, I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in a wily man keeping an eye open for an opportunity to solve a problem that is beginning to threaten all too urgently.
The knocker on Mrs Baker’s door was still shrouded in crepe; I lifted my hand to knock then changed my mind. The last thing I wanted was to raise the whole household. Let Mrs Baker sleep on. The spirit of the maid was reclusive and would not leave the attics. Good – I had business I didn’t want interrupted. With one last glance back at the corner of the street where Hugh and Esther lingered, I peered in at the drawing room window. The shutters had been drawn and barred but there was enough space where they met to allow a thin gleam of candlelight to shine out. Mazzanti must still be up. I tapped on the glass.
It took four attempts to rouse him. At the last attempt, one of the shutters folded back and I saw his face, grotesque in the candlelight. He looked haggard, which was hardly surprising in a man who had lost a daughter and his only source of income in one fell swoop. He was not wearing his wig and the grey stubble on his head shadowed all the bumps and hollows of his skull.
I gestured towards the front door. He mouthed obscenities and waved to me to go away. I mimed banging on the front door. He swore again, hesitat
ed, then dragged himself towards the door of the room. He was far more drunk than Ned Reynolds had ever been.
After what seemed an age, I heard the bolts being drawn on the front door. He turned the key with such a clatter that I thought Mrs Baker would come down anyway. She did not – perhaps she was used to Mazzanti’s clatterings during the night. The door was dragged open and I confronted him face to face; he was hollow-cheeked, red-eyed and slack-mouthed.
He stank of brandy.
He dragged himself back towards the drawing room, leaving me to shut the door; when I went into the room after him, he was pouring himself another brandy. The stench in the room almost made me gag.
“Despise me, eh, Patterson?” he said. He turned and pointed a wavering finger at me. “Yes, I know you do. I’ve always known it. That’s why I set that constable after you.”
“A little contempt hardly seems sufficient motive to do something that might send a man to the gallows.”
He laughed raucously. Yes, very drunk. “It’s because I’m Italian, isn’t it?” he said loudly. The drunk always misjudge how loudly they are speaking. “You English always despise foreigners.”
“You’re as English as I am,” I said. “And accusing an innocent man – however much you may dislike him – seems rather odd under the circumstances. It might have got the real murderer off scot-free.”
He said nothing, tried to find his mouth with the brandy glass.
“Don’t you want to find who killed your daughter?” I asked.
He sneered.
“Or even,” I added, “who has taken away your sole source of income and left you and your wife paupers?”
“We’ll manage.”
I shook my head. “Your wife has a year or two left. There are still some genuine music-lovers who know how good she is. But even that won’t last long.” I perched myself on the arm of a chair. “I know who Julia’s murderer is,” I said softly.
He turned, his gaze uncertain, meeting mine, then flickering away into some corner. “Long gone,” he mumbled into his brandy. “Left the town days ago. Some Italian fellow, Bedwalters says.”
“Corelli? No, he’s innocent of everything except family feeling.”
He did not seem to understand me; I pressed: “I refer of course to your son, Domenico.”
He snorted in derision.
“All he wanted,” I said, “was a little acknowledgement.”
“He wanted money,” Mazzanti said loudly.
“How much did you pay him for pretending to shoot at you?”
He said nothing; I suspected no money had passed at all. I let a few moments pass but either Mazzanti had nothing to say or he was incapable of saying anything. I wondered if I was going to get any sense out of him at all. He was a man who would be drunk, or on the verge of it, the rest of his life.
Outside, in the street, I heard a faint noise like footsteps. Damn Hugh and Esther. Could they not keep quiet?
“The real murderer is still in the town,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Devil he is,” he mumbled.
“Do you not want to know what happened?”
A long silence. He drank like a man who has a bottle or six to get through and must do so, as a duty.
“Well?” he said at last.
“Julia was pregnant.”
He said nothing. In the silence I thought I heard a noise upstairs; perhaps we had disturbed Mrs Baker after all. I prayed silently that she did not come down.
“She was desperate for a husband,” I pursued. “Desperate enough to keep at least two men in view. One was Ord.”
Mazzanti snorted in derision. “That fool.”
“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” I agreed. “He was in love with her, but I don’t know how she could imagine that would have lasted when she gave birth to a child that plainly could not be his. Then there was Ned, but he was a last resort – Julia had become used to a comfortable existence and Ned would never have the money to support her as she would like. The strange thing is that she never looked twice at the one man who would have married her as soon as he could get a licence. Matthew Proctor.”
Mazzanti laughed scornfully. “The psalm teacher! Devil take it, the man’s a weakling.”
“He was genuinely in love with her – that’s why he was so insistent in keeping watch over her. Too insistent. The night she died he tried to force his attentions on her, she resisted and he lost all control. He was the one who raped her!”
Mazzanti was slow to react but he lifted his head, turned on his heel and gave me the most astonishing look I had ever seen. It was a look of hope.
That look floored me. Abruptly I saw what he had been drinking away: despair. Not anxiety about the future, certainly not grief at the loss of a daughter, not even bitterness at a life gone hopelessly out of control. Despair. The absence of even the slightest spark of life. Until now. I had given him hope.
But how?
I felt I was walking through a fog. I was almost at my destination but not quite, yet I didn’t know which way to turn. One step might take me further away, not nearer. I went on more cautiously.
“There was a struggle. Julia was knocked unconscious. The one mercy in this whole business is that in all probability she was not aware of the attack that killed her.”
He ran his hand across his face. “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God.” He sounded as if he meant it.
I started to speak again then heard the faintest of creaks. I had left the front door slightly ajar so that Hugh and Esther could get in if necessary. This sound was closer however; I looked to the door of the room – it was open a crack. Through the gap I saw a pale blur, a gleam of gold. I called out: “Would you care to come in?”
Ciara Mazzanti was wrapped in a gauzy nightgown with a lace overwrap and a shawl of figured silk. Her golden hair was haloed around her head; the long plait in which she plainly dressed it for bed, hung over her shoulder almost to her waist. She was, even for her age and weight, a magnificent figure.
The ever-present handkerchief was clutched in her hand. “It’s his fault,” she said, convulsively. “If he had been a better father, none of this would ever have happened!”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “Very dramatic, Signora. If you wish to talk, pray sit down. I’m tired, very tired, and I don’t wish to watch one of Mr Handel’s operas at this time.”
She turned on me a look of pure hatred. I applauded. “You hated her, didn’t you,” I said. “Both of you?”
They said nothing. Mazzanti smiled into his brandy, his wife looked down at her hands and played with the fringe of her shawl. “To you, Signora,” I said, “she represented youth and beauty, and the success that was rapidly slipping through your fingers. And you, Signor, hated being reminded that you had never had any talent. You both hated being dependent on her. And there was no security in it – if she married or was courted by an admirer, you would lose your only source of income.”
“It is time,” Ciara Mazzanti announced, “to concentrate on my career.”
Mazzanti and I both looked at her. He was gripping his brandy and swaying slightly. The brandy gleamed in the candlelight and cast bright glints on the hand that held the glass. “You?” he said. “What good are you? Who wants a fat old woman?”
“Not you,” she retorted. “You were after fresher bait.”
“Damn you, woman!” he shouted. “If you’d been half the woman you should have been, none of this would ever have happened!”
“That’s enough,” I said sharply. “You took out your hatred on Julia in a way no father ever should.”
“Ask him how old she was!” Ciara Mazzanti said stridently. “Ask him!”
“But she was very like you, wasn’t she?” I said, trying to fix Mazzanti’s wavering gaze. “Devious, sly and manipulative. She hated what you did to her, but she enjoyed the power it gave her over you and made sure you knew it. And then she found out she was with child.”
“My poor lamb,” Ciara Mazzanti said,
stifling a sob with her handkerchief.
I lost my temper. “Don’t give me that hypocrisy! You knew exactly what was going on! And you decided to say nothing. Best to keep quiet, isn’t it? It might go away. And of course it gave you power too, didn’t it? It meant your husband had to keep negotiating deals like the one you have with the concerts here to make sure that you kept quiet.”
She put up a hand as if to brush my words away. Her hand went to her mouth to cover it. After a moment, she started to sob.
“Be quiet!” I said, furiously. “Playing the fond mother now won’t help!”
She sobbed noisily.
“You’re not a fool,” I said. “You knew she was pregnant.”
Mazzanti put down his brandy very carefully. “I see how it was.” He was pronouncing his words very precisely. “Ciara killed Julia.”
Ciara Mazzanti stopped crying, snatched her handkerchief from her mouth, snarled at him. “You wretch! First you humiliate me by bedding every actress in London – and the younger the better! Then you bed your own daughter, then you accuse me – me! – of killing her. Wretch, wretch, wretch!”
For one brief moment, I felt sorry for Mazzanti. Fury twisted Ciara Mazzanti’s face into the mask of a vicious, embittered woman. I tried to intervene but Mazzanti was laughing hysterically, wagging his finger at his wife. “Take her away!
“Be quiet!” I snapped. There was an unpleasant taste in my mouth. These people had been embittered by long years of uncertainty, by the condescending patronage of people like Jenison, and their state might, who knows, might in future years be mine too.
“Oh really,” I said, in disgust. “Think, man! Does your wife have the strength to strangle a young healthy girl? She wanted Julia to be married! Or at the very least to run off with someone. I’d wager she was relying on Philip Ord. He had surprisingly easy access to Julia in London – that must have been her doing.”
Ciara Mazzanti reddened.
Mazzanti stared at me, then started to laugh again, throwing back his head. He turned back to the brandy bottle. It was empty – he picked it up, looked at it, tossed it away. It hit the fire grate and shattered, showering the hem of Ciara Mazzanti’s night gown with tiny shards of glass.