by Roz Southey
“It will not be,” I said. And in that moment I determined to discover the truth of the affair. George had been an innocent child – offensive and unattractive, yes, but he had not deserved to die.
I accepted, without reluctance, Demsey’s insistence that I stay the night with him, though I anticipated lying awake tormented by dark thoughts. But I fell asleep quickly, waking only once to wonder why the ceiling was so low. Then I heard Demsey’s breathing steady beside me, and the soft patter of hailstones outside, and I remembered where I was. I turned over and slept again.
In the morning, we heard that Le Sac had disappeared.
28
SONGS AND AIRS
As I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, I heard a murmur of noise from the street, like a multitude of soft voices.
“What in heaven’s name’s that?”
“Rain, you fool,” Demsey said, his voice muffled by the bedding.
“Rain!” I crawled over him to peer from the narrow window; Demsey muttered and tried to push me away, dragging the blankets about his ears. The glass was speckled with water and, outside, rain drove in visible sheets across the houses; a small stream trickled along the centre of the earthen street.
“Damn!”
“Go back to sleep,” Demsey said indistinctly.
I collapsed back upon the bed in despair. I had dreamt in a curiously logical fashion. In my dream, I had followed George as he crept to the end of the street to check that Demsey had gone; from there, I had seen him hurrying back to Mrs Hill’s, determined to take part in the duel. And from some dark alley, Le Sac had stepped out, pulled George into the darkness and slit his throat. Blood had sprayed out, soaking the walls, the earth, the rubbish lying in the alley.
Waking, I had imagined I dreamed the truth. City streets are an eminently sensible place to commit a murder. Slit a man’s throat in a house or even a public building and his blood and his spirit will remain to condemn you. Use some anonymous alley in a lawless part of town where respectable men refuse to go, and it will be much harder to discover the scene of the murder.
So I had decided to make a start in looking for George’s spirit by walking back from my own lodgings towards the Fleshmarket, investigating every alley for blood. But the rain would stir the streets into mud, wash the walls of the buildings and drench the rubbish in the gutters. All I could hope to do now was to repeatedly call out George’s name. And the spirits of children are notoriously slow to appear; two or three days perhaps might pass before George’s spirit came to itself. In the meantime, if Demsey was right and the murderer hoped to kill me as well...
In a soft, drenching drizzle we set out, an hour later. Demsey was bound for lawyer Armstrong’s office with the papers that might help clear his name, I for the Fleshmarket. I called first at my own house and spoke to Mrs Foxton, who informed me that the jury had viewed the body in my room and it had now been carried to a neighbouring inn where I was expected to attend the inquest that afternoon. She said also that Claudius Heron had called and had insisted on walking up to my room and looking about as if for some clue. I went up and looked about the room myself, but nothing was out of place or changed.
I promised my attendance at the inquest and set off again, following what I thought to be George’s most likely route, walking into every dank, muddy alley, calling for the boy’s spirit. To no avail. Then I went to Hoult’s tavern to request old Hoult to ask the other spirits if they knew where George’s spirit was. But the spirit demurred.
“Much too early, Mr Patterson, sir,” he said soothingly. “You know children never disembody quickly. Ask again in a day or three.”
It was what I had expected but the outcome depressed me nonetheless. I went on to Mrs Hill’s, tired and discouraged, ready to snap even at good-humoured Dick Kell.
“What a to-do,” he said cheerfully, accosting me the moment I emerged by the back lane into the courtyard of Mrs Hill’s. “Never heard anything like it.”
I leaned against the wall of the yard morosely. Rain dripped upon my head from the eaves; the yard was covered with a slick, greasy patina of silver upon the cobbles. Above me, Dick Kell hung on a torch bracket, chuckling rustily.
“Read the broadsides,” he advised, almost giggling. “There’s one on the front wall. One of Jenison’s men put it up an hour ago.”
“I am not interested.”
“You know what they say: if you win, rub it in.”
“I can imagine.”
“Read it!”
“Damn it! A boy died last night because of that duel!”
“That brat,” Dick said, still good-humoured. “Couldn’t play the fiddle for love nor money.”
I pushed myself from the wall. If he had been alive, I would have punched his face to a pulp. “He was twelve years old,” I said. “And he could have outplayed you any day!”
“Rubbish music,” Dick Kell snapped. “He couldn’t have played a decent tune to save his life.”
I flung pebbles at the wall-bracket. Dick Kell slid higher up the wall, taunting me with childish noises.
“Jigs and reels, a good strathspey, a proper country dance,” he said. “That’s your decent music. Not that la-de-da, ever so po-lite music you play, all die-away airs and scraping to see how high you can play, and setting people’s teeth on edge with the screech of it. Kill a pig and you’ll get the same noise.”
“You can’t even read music,” I said contemptuously.
“Who needs to? Music’s in your hands, and in your head, and in your heart!” He was yelling at the top of his voice now, for I had walked away from him, out across the slippery yard, dodging a carter who clattered in under the arch as I reached it. The horse was blowing and sweating, steam rising from its flanks in hot gusts; the clop of its hooves drowned Dick Kell’s last shouted taunts.
The broadsheet was short and extremely nasty. It purported to be an account of Le Sac’s ‘defeat’ at the duel and had been written in a gloating frame of mind by one of Le Sac’s detractors (Mr Ord?). It was in the form of a mock obituary – surely penned before George’s death was known, for no one could have been callous enough to have written it afterwards. We write to tell of the death of a cholerick little fiddler, a nimble-finger’d Swiss...
No, I would not read it. I walked away, heading down the Fleshmarket, through the air that smelled of rain, somehow accentuating the smells of the blood and offal. Le Sac, I thought, was as much a victim as George – manipulated by Ord and Jenison, idolised and humoured so long as inclination lasted and occasion demanded, then humiliated as soon as he became inconveniently demanding, even though the gentlemen’s flattery had encouraged those demands.
Yet, I reflected as I walked through the last of the rain on to the Sandhill, the gentlemen might have been too clever for their own good. Once they succeeded in being rid of Le Sac, I became their only recourse if they wanted the Concerts to continue. In disposing of Le Sac, they had strengthened not their hand but mine. And I would not give in to them. Brave words, I know, but I had no doubt of adhering to them. I had such contempt at that moment for Ord and Jenison that I could not have lived with myself had I yielded to them.
I had engaged to meet Demsey again at Nellie’s but I was early for our appointment and paused in thought, staring absently across the Sandhill to the ugly mass of the Guildhall and its double staircase. Claudius Heron was standing at the foot of one of the stairs; he seemed to be staring across at me. When he saw I had recognised him, he crossed the Sandhill towards me. He seemed ill at ease.
“I called to see you earlier, Patterson.”
“So my landlady informed me. You wanted to see where the boy died?”
“I feel some responsibility,” he said. “That I did not talk some sense into him that day at Mrs Hill’s.”
“You think the matters are connected? The duel and the boy’s death?”
His lean face hardened. “Do you not suspect Le Sac of this?”
“I cannot imagine him a murderer
. What danger was George to him?”
His fingers tapped the edge of his thigh. “Could he not rather have seen a danger in you?”
He and Demsey were thinking alike. “No one could mistake George for myself!” I said, exasperated.
“Give the man some credit for subtlety, Patterson,” he said with a trace of sarcasm. “Perhaps he intended a warning – a suggestion of what might happen if you did not mind your own business. Perhaps he did not intend to kill the boy, only to frighten both him and you. You were yourself attacked only a few days ago – was that not for that very same purpose?”
He leant closer. “Someone is after you, Patterson. I think it is Le Sac; if you choose to believe otherwise, so be it. But I would advise you to be careful, very careful.”
And he walked away.
Devil take it, was that a warning from a genuinely concerned well-wisher? It had sounded almost a threat. What in heaven’s name was Heron doing – first searching my room, then this? For God’s sake, where was the truth in all this?
I pushed through the crush of merchants and clergymen in Nellie’s in search of Hugh. As I reached the window, a figure rose up and seized at my arm; I turned to find Demsey mouthing words in my ear. I could not hear him in the noise and shook my head. We struggled through the crowds into the passageway at the back of the house and thence into the street at the rear.
“Le Sac has gone!”
“I am not surprised. Have you seen the latest broadsheets?”
“Not left. Disappeared!” Demsey ran his hand through his hair. “His clothes are still in his lodgings – most of them, at any rate – and his music books. And they found a bag of money under his mattress. But he himself is gone.”
“How do you know this?”
A carter turned into the end of the street; we pressed ourselves against the wall until he had passed. A trail of smoke from the Key seemed to drift after him, along with the smell of horse dung.
“They came to Lawyer Armstrong’s while I was there.”
“They?”
“Light-Heels Nichols and Le Sac’s landlady. It was damned awkward, I can tell you, in view of my conversation with Armstrong. Anyway, I hid in Armstrong’s office until they were gone – or, as the lawyer put it, I retired to allow him to consult with his clients. The landlady had the money and didn’t want it on her hands, afraid someone would rob the house and she’d be accused of stealing it. Made Armstrong’s clerk count it there and then.”
“How much?”
“One hundred and fifty guineas.”
“Good God!” I had not made a third of that these last five years, let alone saved it.
“And, of course, while they were counting, the whole story came out. Nichols was extravagantly wild. ‘Find my friend!’ he cries. ‘Find my friend!’ Armstrong told him to call out the watch.”
“Did Le Sac take his violin?” I said.
“It wasn’t in his rooms.” Demsey grimaced and kicked at a stray dog that came sniffing round his ankles. “Armstrong more or less said outright that the fellow had run off in panic. Threw out broad hints about George’s death.”
“What does Armstrong know about that?”
“He’s presiding over the inquest this afternoon.”
“So he thinks Le Sac murdered George, then ran off in fear of being taken for it.”
“Exactly. But he’s not right, is he?” Demsey snorted and thrust his hands into his pockets. “What fool flees for his life leaving a hundred and fifty guineas behind him? With that kind of money, he could be halfway to London or even St Petersburg by now.”
A flurry of soot settled upon my sleeve. Smoke blew across our faces. Demsey swore and waved it away ineffectually.
“So what say you?” I asked. “Is Le Sac murdered too?”
“Why? And by whom? Ord? Jenison? Can you think of anything more preposterous?”
“Nichols?”
Demsey screwed up his face. “I won’t deny I’d like to think so, but half of Light-Heels’ importance comes from his friendship with Le Sac. And you didn’t see him this morning, Charles. I would swear he was genuinely distressed.”
“And if Le Sac is dead, then it is likely his killer killed George too. Two murderers stretches credulity.”
“Nichols kill George?” Demsey snorted with laughter. “By cutting his throat? That prancing fool would probably faint at the sight of blood.”
“I agree it sounds unlikely.” I sighed. “But who else might do it? Heron?”
“He would have the coolness and wit for it. But why, Charles?”
I kicked through the mud; Demsey took my arm. “Charles,” he said, “stop blaming yourself for George’s death. Come back inside and take coffee with me.”
We went back into Nellie’s, to see Claudius Heron sitting in a corner, taking coffee and reading the London news in the latest edition of the Courant. He did not seem to see us. We sat and drank a dish of coffee in some despondency, offering each other fragments of ideas. Perhaps Le Sac had hired ruffians to kill George, then been killed in turn when he refused to pay them. Perhaps the two matters were unconnected, and Le Sac had met with an accident somewhere. Or he had ridden off into the country to give a lesson and been delayed in his return.
“You know...” Demsey sat up with an arrested look. “That last idea has a ring of truth to it. The weather was dreadful last night – hail, then heavy rain – and the fellow is vain about his appearance. Suppose he begged a bed for the night from a country gentleman rather than get wet? Especially after the last time he was out in a downpour, when he caught a chill from it.”
“But Nichols must surely have known if Le Sac was merely off giving a lesson.”
“I don’t know every lesson you intend to give. Where did the fellow hire his horse?”
Now I sat up too. “At the Golden Fleece, I should think.”
We got up together. From Nellie’s we hurried to the Fleece, scarcely a hundred yards away. When we came under the arch into the yard, an ostler was grooming a horse there and offered at once to help us. He remembered Le Sac very well.
“Yes, sir, indeed, sir. Came in here last night in a great rage. Wanted a horse straight away.”
“Had a violin with him, did he?”
The ostler looked doubtful; Demsey sketched a shape in the air.
“Oh yes, sir. He had a case that shape. Yes, sir. Strapped it very careful to the saddle. Struck me, that did, him being in so great a rage yet so careful with the case.”
“Did you see which way he went?”
“Off towards the bridge.” He jerked his head in that direction. “To Durham, he said.”
“Durham!” I exchanged a glance with Demsey. “To the city itself or somewhere in the country?”
The ostler shrugged.
“And has he come back?” Demsey demanded.
“Not yet, no sir. But the rain was so bad and he went so late, he probably stayed over. He’ll be back. Reliable gent, Mr Sac.”
“No one has ever before called Le Sac reliable in my hearing,” I commented as Demsey and I walked out onto the Key, “but I suppose he is. He has never missed a concert, never turned up late; I have seen him play – and play excellently – when he was streaming with cold. Odd how you never notice such things, or never give credit for them, at any rate.”
“Durham,” Demsey mused, staring up at the bulk of the bridge with its haphazard roofline of houses and shops. I heard a noise behind me, glanced round and saw Heron walking away from Nellie’s. “What’s so attractive in Durham, I wonder?”
“Hesletine, I daresay. The fellow’s touchy. If he thought Ord and Jenison had been taking his name in vain, he might support Le Sac out of spite.”
“A big fuss about nothing, then,” Demsey said.
“Looks like it.”
We were, of course, wrong.
29
CATCHES AND DUET
I came away from George’s inquest greatly depressed. To stand in the presence once more of
that small body, to see that head lolling at an odd angle and presenting the gaping slash in the throat to the ceiling of the inn and the fascinated horror of the eight jurymen – that was an experience I fervently hoped never to repeat.
Armstrong the lawyer was a gangling individual whose build suggested a boy growing too tall, which sat oddly with the weather-beaten face of a middle-aged man. He was the sort of man who uses silence to provoke witnesses into saying more than intended and into his silence I poured the story of George’s fear of Le Sac, the things he had said, those occasions the boy had seemed afraid to go out for fear of meeting the Swiss. Armstrong complimented me on my Christian behaviour to a sad child whose life had been so villainously cut short. Neither Demsey nor Heron was called to speak but Armstrong questioned Tommy the cheesemonger’s boy, who told him lurid tales of beatings and threats, and a thin woman who said she had seen Le Sac beat George. As Demsey said later, the verdict brought in by the jury – murder by Henri Le Sac – had been inevitable.
We both thought the verdict incorrect. Claudius Heron, who had sat silently through the inquest, apparently did not. He accosted me outside the tavern, stared Demsey into moving a step or two away. “The boy’s death was a warning, Patterson,” he said shortly. “Keep out of the affair. Leave it be.”
I shook my head. “I cannot, sir.”
He walked away.
In the Bigg Market, Demsey and I encountered Mr Ord hurrying down towards St Nicholas’s Church. “Well, well,” he cried, on seeing me. “You must be gratified, Patterson. Good news, good news indeed. I am hurrying to tell Jenison, you know. Good day, good day.”
“Gratified,” I repeated as we watched Ord’s plump figure disappear into the crowds in Amen Corner. “Gratified that a child has lost his life?”
“I hope I never make such efficient enemies,” Demsey said.
We passed Barber’s bookshop and were turning from the vestry door of St Nicholas’s when it opened and a man came hurrying out. Light-Heels Nichols. I bowed to him and made to pass, but he cried out shrilly, “I trust you’re satisfied!”