Dead, Mr Mozart

by Bernard Bastable

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Didn’t think as you was so thick wi’ the likes of them.’

  I looked at him pityingly, the veil now removed from my eyes.

  ‘My living depends on “the likes of them”, Davy. In a crisis I am bound to do what they demand of me. I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t use music paper, which was probably the only other sort you could find.’

  ‘Didn’t think that would be right … But it’s a tip-top scheme, Mr Mozart!’

  ‘It’s a wicked scheme, Davy.’

  ‘It is not. When you think what they did with my Jenny! Even a dog deserves a better end! He should pay for it, that Lord Hertford, and he will. You and I could be in it together, Mr Mozart. Go halves. We wouldn’t put the screws on too often. Just enough to live comfortable, like.’

  I took a big draught of brandy, trying not to get angry. I had to tell myself the boy was poor and ignorant.

  ‘Davy, I am not a criminal, not a sharper, not a blackmailer. I am a respectable musician, far, far removed from that sort of person and his activities.’

  ‘Then you seem to have got involved in some downright funny business!’

  I swallowed.

  ‘Very well. My judgment is not always what it should be, I admit that. Including my judgment of you … Very well, if I can’t convince you of the immorality of your scheme, let me try to convince you of the folly of it.’

  ‘Nay, it was a clever plan.’

  ‘And the danger of it.’

  ‘I can take care of myself.’

  He squared his shoulders, as if taking on the world.

  ‘Davy, in your ordinary sphere of life I have no doubt you can. But I’ve told you before: you have no idea of the resources of a man like Lord Hertford. If you cross him, he can have you rotting away the rest of your life in a filthy prison. He can have you transported. He can have you hanged. Or, what is even more likely, he can have you done away with quietly. What is more he would. I wouldn’t give a ha’penny for your life if he found out you were trying to blackmail him.’

  ‘Nay, you’re exaggerating, Mr Mozart. Together we can put it over him.’

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘There is no question of “together”, Davy. I would never get involved in a wicked plot like that.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should, Mr Mozart. Going by what I hear from you you’ve knocked at their doors for handouts often enough. All your dignity as a respectable musician hasn’t stopped you doing that, has it? A plan like mine has a lot more dignity to it, to my way of thinking – aye, and independence too. And there’s a lot more to be got out of him in future, I’d guess.’

  ‘Criminal folly has no dignity or independence to it, Davy. And folly it was. Who did you get to write your note for you? How do you know you could trust him? There’s no trust among thieves, you know.’

  He looked up at me, and as he did so an extremely unpleasant smile spread over his face. I was seized by foreboding. The voice that had spoken Davy’s last speech had not been the voice of the Davy I knew. The Davy who smiled this smile was a hundred miles from the Davy I knew. I – I, so old in the ways of the theatre! – had been gulled by a performance, by an impersonation, similar to that Lord Hertford had been planning to put on for the benefit of the House of Lords.

  ‘Oh, Mr Mozart,’ this new Davy said, in this new voice that was not the voice of a yokel, ‘you think me such a bumpkin, don’t you? The boy from the country who can hardly spell out simple words.’

  ‘You told me—’

  He laughed unpleasantly.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to believe everything I told you, Mr Mozart. There’s no honour among thieves, as you said.’

  ‘I am not a thief.’

  ‘A borrower, though, who never repays unless forced. We have more than you think in common. And I can read and write with my betters. I went to the grammar school in Colchester. They beat Latin into me, and a bit of Greek. More than Shakespeare had, if what they say about him is true. Oh, I got an education all right, back there in Essex!’

  ‘You should go back there – out of danger and harm’s way.’

  He stretched himself lazily.

  ‘Now that wouldn’t be convenient, Mr Mozart. The fact is, there was an agreement between me and a certain clergyman, the details of which I needn’t go into. But the upshot was that for a price I agreed to stay away from Colchester, for the length of his lifetime.’

  ‘You disgust me! You are a hardened criminal!’

  ‘Wise to the ways of the world, more like.’

  ‘You have deceived me entirely.’

  ‘And yet if you’d thought, you might have had your suspicions, you know. Did it never seem odd to you that a bright, nice-looking, well-set-up lad like me should have as his sweetheart a snivelling little wretch like Jenny? Didn’t it ever occur to you that I could have done a lot better?’

  ‘I didn’t even think of it.’

  The laziness left the body as he leaned forward tensely. ‘No, because you regarded us as yokels and servants and outdoor labourers and you thought we didn’t run our lives by the same sort of rules that you and your kind go by. You were above noticing our private affairs, weren’t you?’

  ‘I was very sorry for you when I thought you were in danger, God help me.’

  He ignored this, to harp on his grievance.

  ‘I’d be sorry for myself if I couldn’t have done better for myself than Jenny!’

  ‘You disgust me. You simply used her.’

  ‘She was the one who had the information, so she was the one I used.’

  ‘How did you come to assume this role as gardener’s boy?’

  He looked at me, smiling, wondering whether to tell. In the end his conceit made him, and he told it to bear witness to his own cleverness and resourcefulness, knowing that he had involved me so deeply his secrets were safe with me.

  ‘Well, Mr Mozart, when I came to London last summer, in consequence of this agreement with the reverend gentleman, I was on the look out for where things were happening. Because where they were happening was where the opportunities for a bright young chap like me were. And what was happening was that the Queen was coming back, and the King was wild to rid himself of her. Well, I thought, there was no way I could get close to the King—’

  ‘Unusually modest of you.’

  ‘Don’t get sarcastic with me, Mr Mozart!’ he said sharply.

  ‘You’d regret it. Well, the talk was that the Queen would be staying at Alderman Wood’s until she could get somewhere suitable of her own. Now that seemed more promising. So I sniffed around, found that they’d improved the house no end in the hopes of having her lodge there, and were just starting to do similar to the garden. So I put on my Essex accent, dressed rough, and went along looking simple and willing, and it worked like a charm.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said bitterly. ‘It worked on me.’

  ‘Oh, you were a pushover compared to Alderman Wood’s head gardener. Once I’d started work I wormed my way into the house as much as I could: charmed cups of tea out of Cook, chatted to the maids and bedded them one by one in the garden at night. They all knew they were to come to me with anything they could learn about the Queen.’

  I couldn’t forbear asking, in spite of the repellent nature of his tale, what I had for so long itched to know: ‘So the stories about the Queen weren’t just made up?’

  ‘’Course they weren’t. True in every respect – that was their strength. Jenny was going back in after a session with me in the garden that should have made her grateful to me for life – stupid cow! – and she heard everything she said she heard. Not that she understood all of it: I had to explain a lot next day, and even then I don’t think she really understood. She had the brains of a rabbit.’

  Poor, frightened, ignorant, despised Jenny!

  ‘She did, I’m afraid, poor creature. If you’d been wise you’d have said you overheard all this yourself.’

  �
��I know!’ He banged his forehead. ‘I’m a damned fool! But the reason I didn’t was that it sounded so much better coming from a simple girl than from a man. I thought she’d just have to tell her story once, or twice at most. The possibility of her having to tell it to the House of Lords never occurred to me. Absurd thought! Impossible! As for me, I’d have enjoyed it. But the other thing was, I didn’t want my background investigated. There are things there that, as soon as I was named, could have come out. So I preferred to remain as a sort of honest bystander.’

  ‘How did you get the information to Lord Hertford? That’s something I’ve never heard the details of.’

  ‘We sent him a note. Jenny wrote at my dictation – she took hours! He was to reply to a stationer’s in the vicinity. Naturally I’d heard of Lord Hertford as the King’s cuckold. Anyway, we didn’t hurry things.We didn’t write till some weeks after the Queen’s stay at Alderman Wood’s: I was happy to give the impression that we were slow, rather stupid folk. By then I’d promised Jenny marriage – said we’d get the money out of Lord Hertford and set up a business, maybe a tavern, somewhere.’

  ‘Which you wouldn’t have done, I take it?’

  He smiled his unpleasant smile of male pride.

  ‘Ha! Set up anything with Jenny? Small chance! I’d have used it as I shall use what I get out of Lord Hertford now: to rise in the world. You don’t rise from a tavern.’

  ‘Not often.’

  ‘Anyway, the notes went backwards and forwards to Mr de Fries – you know Mr de Fries?—’

  ‘Yes, I know him.’

  ‘Probably hands over His Lordship’s meagre gifts to you now and then, does he? Well, the notes took more time, I got them interested, then finally I took Jenny by appointment to Hertford House and left her there. Goodness she was in a shake! After that – well, you know about the next few weeks.’

  ‘Not about you and her. I only know what you told me about that.’

  He smiled sardonically. He was feeling very superior to me.

  ‘Well, of course what I told you wasn’t entirely true. You’re not as sharp in the ways of the world as you think you are, Mr Mozart. I got a note from her after she’d only been in the theatre a night or two. It was one of those who wait around in the Haymarket who brought it. I’d never have been able to decipher it if I hadn’t got so used to her horrible scrawl. That night I was on watch there, and about midnight she let me in. After that I was there every night. It was better than sleeping with Sam the gardener’s boy at Simon Mullins’s – just! She was such a bore.’

  ‘And you are such a cad.’

  He bent forward in mock deference, then handed me his glass to refill.

  ‘I take your word for it, Mr Mozart – from one who has mixed in gentlemanly circles. Oh, but she was such a bore. The first few nights I heard nothing but how frightened she was. Over and over she said it: “I’m so frightened.” I kept pressing her for details of what Lord Hertford had promised, and she said he’d promised to set us up in business. I kept telling her to insist we wanted cash or there was no deal, and she’d go on again about how frightened she was, and how could she insist to someone like that? Then, after a bit, a change came over her…’

  ‘Oh? Did she go off you?’

  He shook his head pityingly.

  ‘Not a bit. She was besotted. No, the change was that she got less frightened. I was pleased for a bit, since she’d got on my nerves. I thought she was acquiring a bit of confidence, which was fine. Then she let slip that she might not have to testify before the House of Lords.’

  ‘I don’t see why that should worry you.’

  He looked aggravated by my slowness.

  ‘Oh, Mr Mozart, you really don’t understand, do you? The bigger the service she did His Lordship, the more we had on him and the bigger the claim we could make. I’d have reckoned on at least a thousand.’

  ‘You seem to like that nice round sum.’

  His tongue flicked round his lips.

  ‘I do. I regard it as a stepping stone to ten thousand. Anyway, when I got it out of her what was actually proposed I was livid. If that was what was going to happen, the bulk would go to this Ackroyd whore, and he’d be paying us off with fifty guineas. That’s how noblemen work.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said; ‘that’s how noblemen work.’

  ‘You see?’ he said, excited and angry. ‘You know, but you don’t fight it. They walk all over the likes of you. Anyway that was two days before … before she was killed. I really exploded, I can tell you. I told her if this went ahead we’d lose everything – be thrown aside like a glove with a hole in it. I told her she had to tell Mr de Fries that he couldn’t do that: that unless it was she who went and testified at the trial she’d expose the impersonation.’

  ‘That could have been dangerous.’

  ‘Not for me. Anyway, the next night came. She had no guile – couldn’t lie. Can you imagine, not being able to lie? Just like an animal. She admitted she hadn’t done it. This time I had to use a bit of physical persuasion. By the time I was done with her she’d promised to do it.’

  ‘I suppose you’re proud?’

  ‘No I’m not, because it didn’t work. The next night I was on tenterhooks. I couldn’t wait. I had to know if she’d done it. That was that special night at the theatre – lots of nobs, and all in their finest. I watched, thinking one day I’d be among them. But like I say I was getting desperate. After the interval I slipped through the stage door—’

  ‘You came in?’ I said, knowing in my heart what was coming.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, with his superior smile. ‘No problem to that. The keeper often went to see the play during the later parts of the pieces – I knew that by watching, and by what Jenny told me. By then the Queen’s was a second home to me. I ran up the stairs and made it to the Ackroyd cow’s dressing-room. Jenny was there, just sitting, her hands tearing at a wet handkerchief. Just seeing her I knew she hadn’t done it. She got up and ran over to me, crying stuff about she couldn’t, and she was sure there was another way, and I was so clever I could surely find it. I was mad with rage. I took out the pruning knife I had on me—’

  ‘You came meaning to kill her!’

  ‘Not me. I carried that knife all the time. You need a weapon in London. She was clinging to me. My eyes seemed to be swimming in blood. I plunged it into her, and then again. The next thing I knew she was lying at my feet.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. A minute ticked by. Finally I said: ‘You monster. You murderer.’ Even as I said it, it sounded not merely feeble but ridiculous.

  ‘The girl was a ball and chain on my leg,’ he said, shrugging, not a trace of compunction on his face. ‘She was no use to me by then. We’d had the chance of making a thousand, and she’d thrown it away. I had to free myself of her.’

  ‘Why didn’t you run for it when you’d killed her?’

  ‘I did. I got out of that theatre and then ran across Haymarket and into the backstreets. Then suddenly I thought: why am I running? I’m not an obvious suspect. I ought to go back there and see what happens. And when the play ended, the audience went home, then the actors, and nothing did happen – well then, Mr Mozart, I really started thinking.’

  ‘And when you saw the body being removed, you knew.

  And all you could think of was the opportunities for blackmail.’

  ‘Right! I’d done something stupid and unnecessary, out of pure rage, but I’d been given the chance of getting into something even better. Something really juicy! Someone up there likes me, that’s certain. Oh dear, I laughed inside when you spun me that tale of removing properties from theatre to theatre. You must have thought me a booby!’

  ‘You were playing a booby!’

  He agreed complacently.

  ‘I was. I’ve known enough of them in my time. And it paid off. You played right into my hands. As soon as you said Jenny had probably gone to another theatre I knew the death was being covered up.’ He eyed me craftily. �
�And as soon as you warned me I might be in danger I knew your fate and mine were intertwined.’

  ‘They are not!’

  He shook his head confidently.

  ‘Oh but they are, Mr Mozart. You’ve been concealing a murderer and a blackmailer in your apartment for the last three weeks and more. How is that going to look to the authorities? How is it going to look to Lord Hertford?’

  ‘I was duped. There is no shame in being duped.’

  He laughed scornfully.

  ‘You think not? I’d be ashamed of being such a gull. And Lord Hertford is at the very least going to be very unimpressed. What are you hoping for from him at the moment? You must be hoping for something, to let yourself get involved with his schemes as you have done. What is it? Support for your new opera?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Ah, that’s it. Well, the world mustn’t be denied a new opera by Mr Mozart, must it? If I were you I’d do my best to keep in his favour. And you won’t do that by admitting that you’ve been concealing Jenny’s murderer in your living quarters – particularly if Lord Hertford realises that what you were hiding him from was assassination by a gang of bravos hired by His Lordship himself. That was what you feared, wasn’t it?’

  The boy was so sharp! He had understood my every move. I nodded miserably.

  ‘I thought that, when you first warned me of danger. There you are, then: your credit with His Lordship is gone for ever. Now, I suggest you’ve got two possibilities.’ He leaned forward, as if explaining to a backward child. ‘The first is that you keep quiet about what I’m up to and let me get on with it. That way you keep your lily-white hands clean, or as clean as possible. It’s a fine thing to have a clear conscience, I’m sure of that.’ He laughed sardonically, and got down on his haunches in front of me, his evil face inches from mine, looking me in the eye. ‘But the second alternative is what you’ll choose if you’ve an ounce of brains or gumption. You come in this with me – and not just this, but any similar scheme in the future. Your connections and your knowledge of the nobs, even the royals, will be invaluable to me. We’d make a fine team. And you could teach me things – etiquette, forms of address, how to mingle with my betters like you’ve done. I’ll learn fast – you’ll admit I’m a fast learner?’