Airs and Graces

by Roz Southey

  ‘My maids know better than to listen to any plausible rogues.’ Heron sounded totally confident of that fact; perhaps there was a little threat in his voice too. The butler returned. Heron said, ‘You were telling me about some untoward occurrence last night. Repeat what you said for Mr Patterson.’

  The butler glanced at me. ‘It was a small incident, sir. Someone tried to force the garden gate.’

  ‘I take it he was unsuccessful.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Heron poured himself more coffee. ‘I want a watch kept. Someone sitting at the scullery door all night. And let the dogs loose in the garden.’ He dismissed the butler. ‘Who is this man from Kent?’

  Was Kane’s story true? Best to work on that assumption for the moment. ‘A man called Hitchings. But that’s probably not the name he’s going under at the moment.’

  ‘And you think he seduced the Gregson girl to get into the house?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Heron nodded. He fingered the coins. Not quite circular, tarnished, and a little worn, that strange, almost barbaric monarch’s head slightly raised from the surface. ‘So old and so enduring. I never cease to be amazed at the beauty of such things.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean, no. Of course.’

  He drained the coffee. ‘I must sleep. Don’t worry, Patterson, no one is going to get into this house. You will keep me apprised if you find the coins stolen from Gregson?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He nodded.

  I left the house more worried than when I’d come. I’d never seen Heron in this state before. To dismiss the attempt to gain access to the house so easily when the villain had already got into the Gregsons’ shop and murdered the entire family!

  I didn’t want to see another death added to the list.

  Twenty-Seven

  It has to be said that no one particularly gives themselves up to philosophizing. They would all much rather drink.

  [Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

  Froidevaux, 22 January 1737]

  I was hardly out of the house when Fowler stepped out from behind a clump of bushes. He jerked his head for me to follow and led the way along the cleared path that led to the stables. Just under an arch, he drew me back into a corner by an old pump. He glanced round but the stable yard was silent except for the snuffling of a horse and a brief clatter of hooves. He had taken the surgeon’s bandages off his right hand, I saw, presumably so he could use the hand more easily, and the skin was red with cross-crossing scratches. One or two had bled again recently.

  ‘Seen his Lordship?’ he said sourly.

  ‘He looked appalling! I take it he hasn’t been to bed?’

  ‘Can’t get his mind off those bits and pieces of rubbish.’ Fowler bared his teeth. ‘Told me not to worry him. So I went off and had another word with Ned.’

  ‘There’s supposed to be a watchman on the shop at all times,’ I said dryly.

  ‘Watchmen drink, don’t they?’ Fowler sneered. ‘A word or two and a coin, and they fancy a few minutes in the warm tavern.’

  ‘What did Ned say?’

  Fowler’s face was white; I’d never seen him so angry. ‘Gregson’s spirit is terrorizing the household. Told the women he’ll make every minute of the day and night a misery if they don’t do as he says. And doing as he says means keeping quiet. He’s got them in the girls’ room and won’t let them out. Has the other room to himself. But he doesn’t much care about Ned.’ His voice was bitter. ‘Never cared much about him when he was alive, not going to change now.’

  A vicious breeze drifted around the stable yard. ‘Does Ned remember what happened on Saturday night?’

  ‘Not a thing, thank God. Everything as usual. Except everyone was in a bad mood because Alice was gone when she was wanted. Gregson was in a devil of a state, evidently. When Ned got back after seeing me, he was telling his wife they should pack Alice off to London. But the moment the girl said she’d go gladly, he refused her! Couldn’t bear not to have his own way.’ He added grudgingly, ‘Ned says he knows about the coins in the cellar. I told him he should talk to you about them.’

  I recognized this for a peace offering. ‘I’d very much like to talk to him.’

  Fowler gave me a long hard stare. ‘He’s worried about what might happen if Gregson gets wind of it.’

  The lad was dead; there wasn’t much more that could happen. But I suspected he wasn’t thinking about himself.

  ‘Didn’t want me to go back,’ Fowler said, his mind apparently running on the same track. ‘Said people would start asking questions about why I’m there.’

  ‘Say you’re helping me look into the murders.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Maybe that would ease his mind. But once you’ve got the girl, there’s no excuse left, is there?’

  I didn’t think he’d find it a consolation if I said I didn’t anticipate catching Alice soon. ‘We’ll deal with that situation when we get to it. When can we speak to him?’

  He contemplated me long and hard, said finally, ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘In daylight?’

  ‘If people can see you,’ he said, ‘they always reckon you can’t be doing anything wrong. Besides, if we’re seen, it’ll convince people we’re working together, won’t it?’

  I thought of what his life must be like, always hiding his true self, always thinking of what people might see, or do. ‘I’ll mention it to one or two people, to add credence to the tale.’

  He nodded. ‘Sometimes I wonder why we’re any of us here at all.’ He gave me a sour look. ‘We’re all just getting through our days somehow, making the time pass. His Lordship has his coins, and you’ve got your music, and I press clothes and fold ’em and store ’em, and kill a bit of time with a handsome lad with a keen sense of fun and a way of making you forget yourself. But it’s all pretty nothings to distract us from the truth. It comes down to one thing – we’re all looking for some way to get ourselves from the cradle to the grave in the least painful way we can think of.’ He leered at me. ‘And you know, I can’t see the point.’

  I hesitated to speak, alarmed. I didn’t want to patronize Fowler, but I certainly wanted to discourage this kind of thinking. ‘I don’t know what the point is,’ I said at last. ‘But whatever you think, Sarah Gregson no doubt thought differently, and your lad – they wanted to go on living and weren’t allowed to. You don’t have to believe in some higher purpose to life to know that killing them’s wrong.’

  He laughed harshly. ‘That’s what I like about you, Patterson. You see things so clearly.’ And he walked off, back to the house.

  I had to rush to my first lesson of the day and found my pupil impatiently pacing up and down the drawing room floor as if she’d never been late. She tossed the music on to the music stand with a great display of hauteur and started playing a jig at top speed with a good many wrong notes. I sat down and reconciled myself to being ignored for half an hour while the young lady played the pieces exactly as she chose. My next two pupils were more cooperative but neither had much interest in music for its own sake; one preferred to tell me, at length, about the young man she had in mind for a husband. I didn’t think her parents would be happy to know she’d set her eye on a mere clerk from the Printing Office.

  And all the while, this business was running in my head. Alice Gregson, surely now in that other world. An unknown lover or accomplice, perhaps the man from Kent, perhaps Kane himself. Fowler – devil take it, did all that talk mean anything? He’d certainly do nothing until Alice was caught, then the problem would be to stop him killing her. Heron, obsessed with those coins; I’d never seen him so heedless of everyday niceties. And there was something else – someone else I’d forgotten. Who?

  I escaped at last and made my way home, anxious to have a bite to eat and some of Esther’s soothing presence before hurrying on to my next lesson. Esther was at the harpsichord in the music room again, going over a phrase she always plays wro
ngly. The winter afternoon was so gloomy she’d lit a branch of candles; I stood for a moment in the doorway, admiring her slender figure in the pale gown, the graceful curves of arms and neck. Looking at the pale eyelashes lying on her cheeks as she glanced down at the keys of the harpsichord, the way she pursed her lips in concentration . . .

  She said irritably, ‘Yes, I know it is bad, Charles. There is no need to grin like that!’

  ‘I wasn’t grinning at your playing, but at you.’ I kissed those lips which is exactly what I’d been thinking of. If I hadn’t had to go out again, I would have lingered a lot longer on that kiss. I leant on the harpsichord. ‘You’re trying to put too many ornaments in the piece, too many grace notes.’

  ‘Too many?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, Charles, the length of time I have practised those trills and now you tell me they are unnecessary!’

  ‘You’re distracting attention from the melody. It’s the air itself that’s important – the graces are merely an additional pleasure.’

  She sighed. ‘I would not mind so much if it was not such a dull piece of music.’ She took my hand lovingly. ‘Write me something of your own, Charles.’

  ‘Mr Scarlatti,’ I said severely, sitting down beside her on the harpsichord stool and putting an arm round her waist, ‘is considered the best composer of harpsichord music now living. And I am decidedly not a great composer.’

  ‘But your music is fun to play,’ she protested. ‘Always full of delightfully unexpected Scotch tunes. Surely music should be entertaining?’

  ‘Don’t start on that topic again!’ Last time we had dinner with Claudius Heron, we spent three hours discussing whether music should be mere entertainment, whether it had an educational purpose or, as Heron insisted, a moral imperative. It had been a stimulating discussion, but at one point Heron had become so heated, I thought we’d come to blows. Which reminded me . . .

  ‘I forgot to ask Heron to dinner,’ I confessed. She sighed. I protested and told her the tale of my encounter with the gentleman.

  ‘It is not like him to be so preoccupied with trifles,’ she said, frowning.

  I laughed. ‘He’d be horrified to hear you call them that!’

  She made a dismissive gesture and the lace on her sleeve tickled my hand. ‘There’s nothing important about ancient coins or half-broken statuettes with neither grace nor beauty, whose only virtue is that they are old.’

  I’d have loved to see Heron’s reaction to such heresy. I kissed her again. She emerged a little ruffled. ‘I take it you have been teaching all morning. Have you heard what is going on at the shop?’

  ‘Gregson’s not causing trouble again?’

  ‘You have to remember I have not ventured out of the house yet,’ she said, ‘and the tales have been brought to me by George, which means they will have been slightly embellished—’

  ‘Only slightly?’

  She gave me a mischievous grin. ‘Apparently Mr Bell the vicar went down to talk to Gregson and the spirit threw the tiles off the roof at him.’ She leant close to my ear and whispered, ‘I am afraid all this is setting George a very bad example – he has been trying to lift the candlesticks on the mantelpiece!’

  The prospect of George’s spirit tossing household furniture around appalled me. ‘He didn’t succeed?’

  ‘Thankfully, no. Charles—’

  I heard a certain note in her voice and knew we were coming to what she really wanted to say. She said carefully, ‘You surely do not need to go back to that house?’

  I remembered my appointment with Fowler and winced.

  ‘Charles!’ She drew back, exasperated.

  ‘I want to talk to the apprentice,’ I said apologetically. ‘But there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t intend to disturb Gregson’s spirit.’

  ‘I know you don’t intend to.’

  She spoke lightly enough but I saw real anxiety in her eyes. That decided me. This affair was going on much too long; it was time I put an end to it, before anyone else got hurt. ‘George!’ I called, and the spirit slid between the door and the jamb. ‘I need you to take some messages. I’m cancelling all my lessons this afternoon.’

  Whoever had murdered the Gregsons, I was going to catch them. And very soon.

  Twenty-Eight

  Have I already said? I adore the women!

  [Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

  Froidevaux, 22 January 1737]

  My first visit was to Balfour. The servants told me he was in his room, and gave me the sort of useless instructions – up the stairs, turn left and it’s straight in front of you – that people who are used to a house think are sufficient for strangers to find their way. I insisted on one of the maids taking me up and paid her a penny for doing so. Following her through the twists and turns and odd corners, I thought wryly that the thief had been lucky to find his way. Which, of course, suggested he was familiar with the inn.

  ‘I suppose you’re happy working here?’ I asked.

  The maid dimpled at me. ‘Mustn’t complain, sir!’

  ‘No awkward souls amongst the other servants?’

  ‘Not here!’ she said, shocked. ‘It’s a good place, this.’

  ‘I can tell you know your business,’ I said admiringly. ‘Have you worked here long?’

  ‘Five years last Monday,’ she said promptly.

  ‘You’ll know everyone here then, I daresay. You wouldn’t have noticed any strangers hanging around?’

  ‘Look,’ she said, stopping dead in the middle of a passageway. ‘If you’re going to suggest I robbed the gent, then just say it! And I’ll tell you what I told the gent himself. I wouldn’t risk my job for his silly little trinkets, and neither would anyone else here!’

  And she flounced off, leaving me stranded which, I supposed, was what I deserved.

  I looked for Balfour’s room by scratching on every door I thought might be his, disturbing in the process a middle-aged couple reading their Bible aloud, and a whore who turned on me with a winning look until she saw I wasn’t the person she was expecting. ‘And tell him to hurry up!’ she yelled after me.

  I eventually scratched on the right door. Balfour called entry and I found him sitting over the plans for the Assembly Rooms, which lay unrolled on the table with tankards and dirty plates weighing down the corners; he’d apparently been scrawling notes for changes on a scrap of paper. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept, but was cheerful.

  He tossed down his pen. ‘Patterson!’ he said with open-faced pleasure. ‘I’m glad to see you! Or anyone,’ he added, which was less than complimentary. ‘I’m beyond caring about all these alterations!’

  ‘You look as if you’ve been up half the night with them.’

  ‘Working till the small hours.’ He pushed the scrap of paper on to the plans, released the weights and let the plans roll up. ‘And nothing to show for it but a headache and sore eyes.’ He leapt up. ‘Come for a bite to eat.’

  ‘I’ve just eaten. To be honest, I wanted to ask about that burglary you had.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not worth spending time on! Nothing but a minor irritation.’ He tucked his arm through mine and turned me to the door. ‘At the very least, have a drink with me and tell me what’s been going on. They’re saying the spirit tried to kill the vicar!’

  He led the way through the maze of corridors as I detailed what I knew of the vicar’s adventures.

  ‘Gregson’s behaving abominably,’ Balfour said, laughing. ‘But then I’d be furious if my daughter had killed me and stolen all my wealth.’ He sobered. ‘I don’t mean to treat the business lightly. Do you still have no idea where Alice Gregson is?’

  ‘I was wondering,’ I said, determined to get out the question I’d come to ask, ‘whether you saw anyone suspicious hanging around the George in the day or so before you were burgled.’

  We’d come to the head of the stairs down to the yard; Balfour stared at me in some perplexity. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think your burg
lary may be connected to the murders.’

  ‘But how?’

  Reluctantly, I explained. ‘It’s possible someone is collecting antiquities and it was the coin he really wanted from you.’

  Balfour silently assimilated this.

  ‘Who knew you had the coin?’ I said. ‘Did anyone see you take it from the ruins?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And you put it on the mantelpiece?’

  ‘The servants knew it was there,’ he said. ‘It must have been one of them.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Did you see anyone acting suspiciously?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Yes. And no. For heaven’s sake, there are always odd people around inns! You never know whether they should be there or not. Most of them are drunk.’

  I described Kane’s exciseman to him. ‘Did you see anyone of that description?’

  He shook his head dubiously. ‘Is he significant?’

  ‘He’s committed some burglaries in Kent. A thief-taker’s looking for him.’

  He looked shocked. ‘Do you mean— Did he kill in Kent too?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  For a moment he plainly didn’t know what to say. He paced up and down, his face bright red, his fists clenched. ‘Everything’s wrong!’ he burst out. ‘The whole world! Just like my father! Everyone at each other’s throats . . .’

  ‘Not at all . . .’

  But he was clattering down the stairs ahead of me; I heard an ostler call to him to take care on the slippery cobbles. By the time I reached the yard, he was out of sight.

  I dawdled around the ostlers, and the stable boy, and the maids, asking if they’d seen anyone suspicious. As far as the ostler was concerned, anyone who wasn’t a horse was suspicious; to the stable boy, all women were suspicious – and he loved the idea of finding out more. The maids were mostly too busy to spare me much time; I suspected they’d been warned off by the one who’d escorted me upstairs.

  I abandoned Balfour’s burglar and tackled Hugh’s. There was plainly no prospect of getting any more useful information out of the widow, but I wandered into the clockmakers on the ground floor of the building and found two talkative apprentices. One lived off the premises, but the other slept in the shop and had heard Hugh’s burglar leaving. He’d even peered out through the shutters to see who it was. But there wasn’t a lantern burning nearby – all he’d seen was a man wearing a greatcoat. Tallish, thinnish and darkish, he said. That description didn’t sound like Kane’s exciseman.