Airs and Graces (7 page)

Heron’s a gentleman born and bred, in his forties, and he looked on the general populace crowding the inn stairs with a jaundiced eye. He jerked his head at me, and I followed him back out into the yard, stood shivering on the cobbles as Heron seemed to breathe more deeply away from the
hoi polloi
. He’s fair-haired, and this morning the cold had turned his pale skin to pure white.

‘Not a pleasant business,’ he said. ‘I hear you are directing the search for the girl.’

I shook my head. ‘The watchmen have that in hand. She’s hiding well.’

‘She will long since have left the town.’

‘If she has,’ I said, looking at the scratched paintwork of the coach, ‘she’ll be frozen in the snow by now.’ I wondered if I could tactfully steer Heron inside again, out of the cold.

‘Not a mystery then?’

‘Not at all. Except for her motive in killing them.’

A faint smile touched his lips. ‘I know better than to think it will be that simple when you are involved.’

Heron has intimate knowledge of my recent adventures – he’s been involved in one or two of them himself.

There was a stir in the inn; someone called out that the jury were returning from the Gregsons’ shop. ‘I suppose you give evidence?’ Heron said, turning for the inn again. ‘I thought I might call in to see what was decided. I was sorry not to make the meeting with the architect this morning. I had an appointment with other shipowners.’

‘You missed very little,’ I said, as we came into the crowded passageway. ‘Except for a great deal of measuring.’

‘I have heard good things of Balfour. He has extensive experience in this type of building and his correspondence makes him sound a sensible man. I was glad he changed his mind and came after all. Though I did not expect it – he was quite adamant when he wrote that his health was not good enough.’

‘He was greatly incommoded by the journey.’

‘I think it is a more deep-seated matter than that,’ Heron said.

We were back in the crush of bodies again, but Heron has an effortless way of cutting through crowds. Something to do with his look – his raised eyebrow, particularly. The crowds parted before him and we climbed the stairs unobstructed. In the Long Room above, a table and chair had been set out for Armstrong the coroner, and a few seats for the elderly and infirm around the walls. A thick press of people milled about.

‘Do you have time to give me a violin lesson?’ Heron said, surveying the crowd. ‘I would be obliged if you could come up to the house, tomorrow morning.’

I bowed my agreement; I had little choice – patrons must be kept sweet. Heron nodded and went off to exchange a few words with an acquaintance.

Lawyer Armstrong strode into the room.

Eight

They are proud of their law – all the questions and enquirings. But oddly, the people with the final say as to whether this person is guilty or that, have no qualifications in the law whatsoever!

[Letter from Louis de Glabre to his friend Philippe

Froidevaux, 18 January 1737]

All eyes were on the members of the jury who filed into the room behind Armstrong. Everybody knew they must have come direct from viewing the bodies, and were on the lookout for signs of horror. They were not disappointed; the eight men, all sensible no-nonsense tradesmen, were white-faced and plainly shocked. It cannot have helped that they were all neighbours of the Gregsons and must have known them well.

The jury shuffled into their chairs and Armstrong spread out his papers on his table. I glanced round for people I knew. Fleming was on the jury, of course, and his wife was sitting comfortably on a sofa in a window embrasure, with the little Gregson girl beside her, playing with a rag doll. Just in front of her was Heron, talking to his manservant, Fowler, who was bowing deferentially. Not even Heron can think it necessary to bring his manservant to an inquest, so I presumed Fowler must have come on his own account, out of mere interest. Gregson’s surviving daughter, Mrs Fletcher, stood alone at the back, severe as ever.

Armstrong sat down. He has the lined face of a man, but is lanky as a boy; when he folded himself under the table, his knees knocked against the underside of it.

Formalities over, the first witness was called. Myself. ‘Mr Patterson?’ Armstrong said. ‘Could you tell us what happened on Saturday night? Sunday morning, I should say.’

I told them, omitting the snowball fight, saying merely I’d been walking on the Keyside with my wife and friend. The story of the figure climbing down the makeshift rope caused great excitement, as did our discovery of the bodies and the blood – I’ve never had such a gratifying audience reaction in the concert hall. Armstrong wanted to know if I’d seen the escaping girl carrying anything and I said I had not, although she might have had something in her pocket, but nothing very heavy.

Armstrong moved from the musical profession to the medical, calling Gale the barber-surgeon. Gale, an unprepossessing figure, slight in stature and round in face, is a man who likes to think he is master of all things medicinal, and has offended both the apothecaries of the town and the physicians by his wide-ranging activities. There is no questioning his competence, however, and he made an even bigger impact than I had, with his detailed description of the wounds. ‘All but the apprentice had been stabbed many times,’ he said. ‘Mr Gregson five times.’

Someone made a play of fainting noisily in the crowd and was borne up and helped to a chair. Heron watched in grim contempt; his servant, standing behind him, caught my gaze. Fowler’s lean sardonic face was harsh and angry. Whatever had Heron said to him?

Armstrong asked for the little girl, Judith Gregson. In the sensation caused by the appearance of the child, Balfour slipped into the room. He reddened when he saw I’d noticed him and, under cover of the noise, said awkwardly, ‘I thought I’d just see how things were going.’ A pity; I thought he’d have been much better keeping away.

Mrs Fleming brought up the child and she stood in front of Armstrong’s table, clutching her rag doll to her thin chest. Armstrong has no children but he does have a kind way with them and he coaxed her delicately. ‘You sleep in the attics, I hear. Is it warm and cosy up there?’

She nodded dumbly.

‘And your doll lives up there too? Does everyone else sleep downstairs?’

Another nod.

‘Including your Aunt Alice? Did you like your Aunt Alice?’

She said nothing, which was eloquent in its own way.

‘Do you like your Aunt Sarah?’

‘She plays shops with me,’ she said shyly.

‘I’m sure she does.’ Armstrong twinkled. ‘Now, I’m very sorry, Judith, but I’m going to have to ask you about last Saturday. Do you remember going downstairs in the middle of the night?’

She started crying.

In the end, with the exercise of a great deal of patience, he got the information from her. She’d thought she heard her grandfather calling and went down to see him. But he’d been in bed and she couldn’t wake him. She couldn’t wake her grandmother either nor Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Alice wasn’t there. And the shop door was open. And she was scared, and wanted someone to come. So she screamed.

Several ladies openly wept.

Armstrong thanked her, said she’d done very well and he was very pleased to have met her, and Mrs Fleming bore her out of the room talking of lemonade.

Two watchmen gave evidence, which interested me rather more. Abraham McLintoch told of discovering the knife that had obviously done the dreadful deed, near the body of the apprentice, in the shop. A hubbub followed this revelation and McLintoch had to wait for it to subside. The knife was probably from the kitchen, he added, a very sharp knife, more than capable of inflicting severe damage.

The second watchman told how he’d searched the house. He couldn’t see that anything had been stolen, at least the house hadn’t been ransacked or turned over. Most of it looked undisturbed. There was jewellery upstairs and some nice candlesticks. But in the cellar he’d found a money box, open but not forced – the key was still in the lock. There was nothing left in the box except a receipt for some money Gregson had been paid. He’d searched everywhere, he said, but found no more money.

Fleming then heaved himself up from the jury chairs. His description of how he’d woken to screams on the night told me nothing new, but I was interested in his information on Alice Gregson. Her father had evidently sent his apprentice, Ned, down to meet her at the Fleece on the Tuesday evening before the murders; Fleming had seen them walk up the bridge together. ‘She was a little thing,’ he said, ‘dolled up in the London fashions – all thin petticoats, and feathers in her hair. And her nose in the air, as if she smelt something she didn’t like. Looked like she couldn’t make the effort to put one foot in front of another. One of your city girls who’s never done a stroke of work in her life.’

Heron shifted impatiently; he glanced at me and raised his eyebrows.

Alice Gregson had been in Newcastle only four days but Fleming had seen a great deal of her, in more senses than one. The assembled crowd muttered in shock when he described her flimsy London dresses, how low they were cut, how many ribbons and how much expensive lace she had on them. She’d usually stood staring out of the window, as if looking for someone, or hoping for some diversion. She’d yawned a lot, and said she wanted to go back to London. She’d even said she thought Newcastle
barbaric.
This produced outraged gasps of horror.

Armstrong cut through the noise and asked if Gregson had kept much money in the house.

‘His recent takings only, I believe,’ Fleming said.

‘But there might have been enough to take the girl back to London?’

Fleming nodded. ‘There might have been.’ He added scrupulously, ‘I don’t know for certain.’

‘But in view of the burglaries last year, Gregson might have
said
he had no money even if he had?’

‘I suppose so, yes,’ Fleming said, doubtfully.

There was never any doubt of the jury’s decision. The four deceased were pronounced to have been murdered by Alice Gregson, aged twenty-three. Heron was at my elbow seconds after the pronouncement. ‘Nellie’s coffee house,’ he said peremptorily.

‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Heron threw himself back in his chair. An acquaintance nodded to him in passing; half the town seemed to have repaired to the coffee-house once the inquest was over – the male half at least. ‘I don’t doubt the girl killed them, but the evidence is totally unsatisfactory. Armstrong should have asked more questions. For one thing, the neighbours say she was a slip of a girl, who did not have the strength to walk a hundred yards. But she apparently had the strength to stab four adults and then climb down a makeshift rope dangling above a deep river.’ He signalled to one of the serving girls. ‘It is not easy to stab a man.’

Heron’s a swordsman and not merely in the practice rooms. I’ve seen him fight in anger; I’d wager he knows from experience exactly how hard it is to kill someone.

He paused to order coffee from the girl. ‘Secondly,’ he continued, ‘there is the question of the knife.’

‘Found near the apprentice,’ I agreed. ‘Which logically means he must have been the last victim. Alice was in her room, probably pretending to sleep. She must have killed her sister first because she would have woken as Alice crept over her. Then she killed her parents, went downstairs, killed the apprentice. So far, so good. But then she made her way back upstairs in order to flee down the rope. That’s not logical. Why did she not simply walk out of the front door?’ I stopped to allow the girl to put the two dishes of coffee on the table. ‘And why leave the child unharmed?’

Two elderly gentlemen accosted Heron, enthusing about the price of coal. I hunted in my pocket for some money to pay the girl and nearly gave her the foreign coin I’d picked up from the snow. I waited until Heron extricated himself from the two gentlemen. ‘And why did she choose the dead of night to steal the money?’ I asked. ‘She could have taken it while everyone else was in church on Sunday. She’d have had a free run of the house, and been away several hours before they got home. She didn’t
need
to kill those people. Even if for some reason she
had
to steal the money at dead of night, they were asleep – they weren’t threatening her.’

Heron reached for his coffee but didn’t comment.

‘And what happened to the money?’ I worked through a possible sequence of events. ‘The box was opened with a key which presumably Samuel Gregson kept close. As an inmate of the house, Alice could have had easy access to that. But only the money was taken – the box was left. So she must have put the coins in a bag, or in her pocket. But that means she would have been carrying them when she climbed down the rope – and she wasn’t running like a woman with a heavy burden.’

‘Perhaps there wasn’t much in the box.’ Heron nodded at yet another acquaintance.

‘Then why murder for it? Surely she’d have made certain in advance it was worth the effort?’

‘Perhaps there was no money at all – perhaps it was government stocks? Or Mrs Gregson’s best jewellery.’

‘There’s no suggestion Mrs Gregson had expensive jewellery. Gregson was evidently not a generous man.’

Heron sipped coffee. ‘Then she moved the contents of the box
before
the crime.’

I thought of the rope of sheets. ‘If she moved the money earlier, and took her time to make the rope, as she must, then it was all planned in advance – though the theft would have to have been at the last moment, or Gregson might have missed the money. But if she already had the money, there was even less reason to kill them.’

Heron paused for a moment. ‘Then only one answer comes to mind.’

I nodded. ‘She
wanted
to kill them.’

We sat in silence as the noise of the coffee house raged around us. Almost everyone, it seemed, was discussing the murders. More than one gentleman bemoaned the fact he’d never set eyes on Alice Gregson. She was christened an Amazon, a doughty warrior. Gregson, it seemed, was not regarded with a great deal of sympathy; he’d apparently not been entirely aboveboard in some of his financial dealings. Several gentlemen mentioned grossly inflated bills they’d received from him.