Broken Harmony

by Roz Southey

  ... it is good to see a publisher investing in fresh work that, although definitely contemporary in mood and content, falls four-square within the genre’s traditions.

  - Martin Edwards, author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries

  Creme de la Crime… so far have not put a foot wrong.

  - Reviewing the Evidence

  First published in 2007 by Crème de la Crime P O Box 523, Chesterfield, S40 9AT

  Copyright © 2007 Roz Southey

  The moral right of Roz Southey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Typesetting by Yvette Warren Cover design by Yvette Warren Front cover image by Peter Roman

  Printed and bound in Germany by Bercker.

  ISBN 978-0-9551589-3-3

  A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library

  www.cremedelacrime.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  About the author:

  Roz Southey is a musicologist and historian, and lives in the North East of England.

  My thanks …

  … to Lynne Patrick and Crème de la Crime for allowing me to achieve a lifelong ambition, and to my editor, Douglas Hill, for his insightful and patient advice, and unfailing encouragement.

  … to Jackie, Jenny, Laura, Anuradha and Sandra for their support during rejections and disappointments. Without their insistence, I would never have dusted off the manuscript of Broken Harmony and put it in the post.

  … to all the staff of many libraries who over the years have hunted out old newspapers, diaries, tradesmen’s accounts and music manuscripts for me, particularly the staff of Newcastle Central Library’s Local Studies Department.

  … and to all my family, especially my husband Chris who has listened to the same stories again and again without complaint, and brewed untold cups of Yellow Label tea …

  For Chris

  Wind sweeps across the fell, shivering the reeds and cotton grass at the pond’s edge. The water is misty in the early morning light. Cold drills into my bones; a thin drizzle chills my face. I am talking to a dead man, trying to persuade him to give up the name of his murderer. Trying to persuade him that justice is more than private vengeance. And getting nowhere.

  His spirit is as secretive as the man himself ever was. It is infuriating, especially when spirits, as everyone knows, are generally eager to tell the whole world exactly how they died.

  I have never even liked the fellow. Over these past few months he has done everything he can to drive me out of the town. He has been rude to my face and disparaging behind my back. He has belittled my abilities and looked down that long nose of his as if he smelt something unpleasant every time he looked at me. Why should I care who killed him?

  Because, of course, there is more at stake here than ‘mere’ justice. Because there has been more than one attack already, and who knows who may be the next victim? It may be me. Or someone close to me.

  The cold air chills my bones. A sheen lies upon the water.

  “Tell me,” I say again to the spirit.

  He is silent.

  1

  OVERTURE

  The harpsichord is a reticent instrument, chiming delicately in the background of the music. For an audience (at the rehearsal in which we were engaged, for instance) the sound would be as variable as the candlelight flickering among the cobwebby roof timbers of the ancient ale-house that sheltered us, the Turk’s Head. Among the violins and basses the harpsichord could no doubt be heard only as a hint of sound – a metallic ping-ping – and perhaps even that would be suggested more by the energetic movement of my hands than by any actual sound. If the instrument was heard clearly, it would be because the band had faltered or lost its place. (Which with this band happened all too frequently.)

  I am not fond of playing the harpsichord. I am not a reticent man. Give me a church organ any day, filling the stone vaults with a thunder of noise.

  But there were no vacancies for a church organist in the town, so I was forced to be content with my engagement in the Concerts. And I did not take kindly to sitting at the back of the band rather than in the harpsichord’s usual place at the front. I had been relegated to that position by the enmity of, as the papers say, a certain person. So there I was, sitting in semi-darkness even in the light of midday, gazing between the bobbing figures of my excellent-hearted but musically deficient gentlemen employers and the all-too-few professional players they employed to keep them in time and tune, biting my tongue and restraining an impulse to lean forward and whisper in a few ears. (I am not a silent man, either.) The ear of Mr Ord in the second violins, for instance, who persisted in trilling every held note and looking about him with a sly smile as if for compliments. Or the ear of young Henry Wright, our only player of the tenor violin, who bit his lip in concentration as he carefully played every note just fractionally flat. No, I knew my place – though a certain person would allege otherwise.

  As the harpsichordist to the Concerts, I was charged with ensuring that, no matter what happened among the gentlemen amateurs who sawed away at their violins, the harmony would continue. I must bring down the chords decisively so that every man could pick up his place again when he lost it. Should the violins, playing an air, collapse completely, I must play the tune – and smile when an elegant gentleman murmured, with raised eyebrows, “I didn’t know the harpsichord part had that melody, Patterson.” I must not say, “Only since you have given up playing it for its difficulty, sir.” Not if I wanted to keep my wages.

  Of course there was one gentleman who might be able to say such things. That certain person, the leader of the band, ought to have been using the rehearsal to say – diplomatically – certain things that needed to be said. Why did he not turn to the enthusiastic gentlemen on the cellos and murmur, as I would, that he admired them most when they played their most delicate pianissimo? (To put it in other words, would they please, sirs, play more quietly!). Why did he not make it clear to Mr Ord that the only player who may ornament the melody is the leader of the band?

  Ladies and Gentlemen of Newcastle upon Tyne and its Environs in this year of our Lord 1735, behold our leader, our adored, exquisite, po
sturing leader, that damned black violin in his hand, waving his bow-stick as enthusiastically as sly Mr Ord, then plunging into a morass of passage-work of the sort that gentlemen amateurs love to gape at. Trills here, mordents there, a cascade of notes from top to bottom of the strings, a sawing away in alt like a pig squealing at slaughter. I once heard Mr Ord say admiringly that if our esteemed leader played any higher, he would be off the strings altogether. But, damn it, what was it for? Did such scraping engage our passions? Our pity? Our piety? Not at all. It engaged only, as it intended, our admiration.

  Monsieur Henri Le Sac’s playing succeeded, of course, in quietening the music lovers who had come to gossip knowledgeably over our scratchings. (Those who attended rehearsals were generally those who did not choose to mix with the common sort at concerts, or who liked to know the pieces in advance so that they could talk learnedly of them later.) In the front, Lady Anne, elegant as always despite her plainness, had naturally been silent all along; she could hardly chatter while her protégé displayed his skills. Her cousin too, by her side, had been coolly restrained throughout; she looked so bored I wondered why she had come at all. Others were more animated. The ladies Brown, coming out of duty to papa on the cello, fluttered their fans to cool their flushed and adoring faces; and Fleming the stationer, in his massive old-fashioned periwig, listened attentively to the sound of the fiddle strings he supplied at cost price. My friend Demsey at the back scowled through the entire rehearsal; he of course had had a prejudice against Le Sac and his cronies ever since that unfortunate contretemps over the newspaper advertisement.

  In truth (and it is a truth that made me sigh heavily) our esteemed leader was an excellent technician. Somewhere in his youth in Switzerland, Le Sac had an careful master who trained his nimble fingers and taught him to draw an excellent tone from his violin. A pity he did not also teach him manners. Or morals.

  Of course, from where I sat, I could only see his back. A dark-coated back – dark blue, I fancied. Le Sac had excellent taste in clothes and, for all his squat, stocky figure, set them off well. I sighed over that further injustice. I am not a plain man, but no matter how hard I tried I never quite seemed to be in fashion. I did not have the money for it. Le Sac’s hair was dark and his own – wigs are the very devil to wear when you bob about as much as he does in performance. Occasionally, as he dipped into a phrase, I could see his profile, the sharp nose, the distant gaze, the high forehead. Some even called him handsome. I did not think so, but then I daresay I was prejudiced.

  A final flurry of notes and we were set at liberty for a few minutes while Le Sac received the tribute of his patroness. I slipped out of the room and rattled down the back stairs into the tavern yard. The sunlight startled me – I am always so wrapt up in the music that I forget the time. An ostler led a horse clip-clop across the yard and nodded at me as I pissed against the wall. A voice behind me said: “Bloody ale. Lousy stuff.”

  The spirit of old Hoult, the former landlord, inhabits the scene of his death as all spirits must do. One dark night five or six years ago, Hoult crept out to add a few coins to his secret hoard and was found dead in the frost the next morning. Mrs Hoult, his unbeloved wife, went some while later to look for the hiding place, argued with the spirit of her husband (who refused to give up his treasure), and dropped down dead on almost the same spot. They bicker in death as they did in life.

  I laced myself up again. “Lousy ale? I thought you passed the recipe on to your son.”

  Hoult’s spirit had lodged itself temporarily in the wall by the door. “He’s never had the knack, Mr Patterson, sir. Always messes things up. Why d’you think I never let him touch the business while I lived?”

  His wife cackled from the lamp-bracket. “And you were better?”

  Demsey clattered out to me, grabbed my coat sleeve. “Charles! That damned fellow – looked straight through me!” His round face was red with fury. “Pretended he knew nothing about it.”

  “About what?”

  “That latest advertisement,” Hoult said. He had moved to a stray shaft of sunshine on the wall and added apologetically, “One of the maids overheard you talking about it. The gossipy maid – the one that died two years back.” The communication of spirits is legendary; it is said they can pass a message from one end of the town to the other before a man can draw a breath.

  “Oh, shut up, Hoult!” Demsey cried. “Go and intrude on someone else’s private conversation!”

  Old Hoult sniffed, and the stones in the wall lost a certain sheen just as young Hoult emerged and blinked at the sunlit yard in happy complacence, as his late father did many a time before him.

  “What has Le Sac to do with the advertisement?” I said tolerantly and prepared myself to pretend to listen.

  “Le Sac? Not him. You have the fellow on the brain!” Demsey was beside himself. I’ve seen him work himself into a frenzy this way and young Hoult must have too; he was looking our way in some concern.

  “Not Le Sac,” Demsey repeated. “That crony of his who has the nerve to call himself a dancing master.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Nichols.” It was the same old story, the one we have all heard a dozen times these past three years. Demsey, like the assiduous businessman he is, goes off to London every summer to learn the latest dances so he may bring them back to the eager young ladies and gentlemen of this town. Nichols, who is not so handsome nor so young and much more disapproving in his manner to his pupils, sees an opportunity to increase his meagre practice and sets in the paper an announcement, something of this sort:

  We hear from London, that a certain Mr D----y, dancing master in this Town, is not to return but has set up a School in Clerkenwell, where he teaches the Sons and Daughters of Lord A---- and Lady Y----.

  Some years Demsey is said to remain elsewhere (Bath last year, if I recall correctly) but the general purport of the announcement is the same. And every year Demsey must tour every rich house in the town to leave his card and say, yes, he is returned and yes, he will open School again next week.

  Demsey had stopped speaking and was glowering at the stairwell. The man himself stood there, staring at us over the bridge of his nose, imitating the haughty mien of the worst kind of gentleman. He kept his distance from young Hoult, I noticed.

  “Ah, Mr Light-Heels,” I said, then covered my mouth as if stricken by my faux-pas. “Forgive me, I cannot imagine what I was thinking. Mr Nichols. Am I wanted? Do we begin again?”

  “If you can tear yourself away from such riff-raff company,” he said. He has a voice like a turkey. Young Hoult smirked in my direction.

  So it was back to the shadows at the back of the band where I must know the music by rote for all the light there was to read it. Light-Heels Nichols stood where I could see his disdainful profile as he cradled his violin in his arm. Le Sac regretfully took his leave of his patroness and strode to the pile of music books at a side table. What were we to play now? Some concerto violino by Corelli, perhaps, or Geminiani? Or one of Le Sac’s own works, so that he could show off his skill in the solo passages?

  One thing was for certain; it would not be my music. I had the audacity to give him a piece for violins when I first came back from London, when I did not know him. He has not yet finished tearing it to pieces.

  The wainscoting to my left acquired a sudden sheen. “You know,” old Hoult said conversationally, “I never did like music. Or musicians. But I except you.”

  “Most generous.”

  “No airs about you,” he said. “Never look down on folk.” The room was full of murmuring; Le Sac was still searching through his books. He straightened with a face like fury. Old Hoult said, “O – ho,” and disappeared.

  The music, it seemed, had been stolen.

  2

  CONCERTO FOR SOLO HARPSICHORD

  Movement I

  It was midnight when I came at last to Mrs Hill’s in the Fleshmarket. When I pushed into the ale-room, it was almost deserted except for a few glum miners hunched
over their tankards, listening unwillingly to the raucous singing (a bawdy song I had not heard before, strophic with a distinctive Scotch snap). The spirits singing the tune were an oily patina across a table in a dark corner of the room and sounded drunk. Everyone who departs this life in an inn is drunk, except perhaps for the landlord. But I never encountered Mr Hill; he was killed, I understand, in a brawl among Scotch keelmen on the Key.

  Demsey glowered from a far corner, his eyes as bright as the brass buttons on his immaculate coat. His hands cupped a full tankard; another was set beside it for me.

  “Damn Light-Heels,” he said as I sat down. “Five pupils, damn it, five!” He added sourly, “What kept you? The concert must have been over hours ago.”

  “Not what, who.” I sighed. The memory was not one I wanted to dwell upon. We had filled in the gap in the concert with one of Mr Handel’s overtures (a fine piece of work for once) but our esteemed leader had not been inclined to let the matter of the missing music rest. He had steered clear of accusing me directly, but had indulged in many loud comments about his ‘enemies’ while casting significant glances at the harpsichord. I gulped down Mrs Hill’s excellent ale.

  “How in heaven’s name does he suppose I made off with his precious band-parts? Am I supposed to have tucked them beneath my coat-tails and smuggled them into some secret cache? I was never out of sight of half a dozen people!”

  Demsey was plainly having trouble thinking. “Why?” he managed at last.

  “The missing work is one of his own compositions. His favourite, he swears.”

  “No, no.” Demsey shook his head. “Why you?”

  “Oh, I am violently jealous of him, he supposes, and will seize every opportunity to do him down.” My face had burned at that hint, as it burned now. And Le Sac’s wide dark eyes had gleamed at me; he had known, oh yes, he’d known, how much I envied him his pre-eminence in the Concerts. I took up Mrs Hill’s ale again. “It is not important. Le Sac will have reached home and no doubt found the books still sitting on his table. Or his apprentice will say he took them to read upon his sickbed.”