Broken Harmony (21 page)

“He will never leave,” I said, recalling that night on the Side when Le Sac had threatened to force me out. “He’ll not give in. He’s too obstinate.”

Heron nodded again. “I have told them so. But they are set upon the idea and they are the last men in the world to yield to a counsel of caution.”

I gave him a direct look. “And your part in this, sir?”

“Nothing.” Again that grimace of distaste.

“Then may I ask why you are here? You advised me nothing could be done.”

I could not keep the anger from my voice and my tone was far from respectful. Heron lifted his head.

“Because,” he said, “I have a higher opinion of your perspicacity than they do. I guessed you would fathom their plans and come here to stop them.”

“You are right, sir,” I said and made to push past him. He took hold of my arm again. When I tried to pull free, he bore me back against the wall, gripping my flesh with those lean
fingers.

“You must not be associated with this, Patterson. No, hear me out.” I had made to free myself. “If you take sides in this matter,
whichever
side you take, half the
gentlemen of the town will shun you. How then will you make a living?”

“You take great care of my reputation, sir,” I said sarcastically. I had had enough of being told what to do: Lady Anne, Esther Jerdoun, now Heron...

His grip upon my arm was fierce. “I am trying to ensure that as little damage as possible is done to all concerned.”

I hardly heard him. “I am already associated with the matter. The boy is my apprentice.”

“The boy is not here.”

“Not here?” I echoed. “Then where –”

“I sent him home.” He seemed to realise he still held my arm, let me go and stepped back, flexing his fingers. “I intercepted him at the top of the Fleshmarket and told him the
contest was postponed. He seemed... disappointed.”

A little, a very little, of my anger was dissipating. If George was out of the way (at least for the time being), the matter might yet be mended. I murmured thanks but Heron was not listening to
me. He stood under the unlit lamps of the tavern rubbing his fingers together and staring into some private thought. A strand of his fair hair had escaped from the bow at the nape of his neck and
curled on the shoulder of his dark coat.

“I abominate these petty intrigues,” he said. “They are set afoot by men with nothing better to occupy them than small jealousies and their own pride.” That sharp gaze
settled on my face. “Do not, I pray, Patterson, force me to lodge you in their company.”

“I never wanted this,” I said vehemently. “Everything in this matter has been forced upon me from the beginning. Even the boy.”

“Then go home, Patterson. I certainly intend to.”

“You do not go in?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Sometimes my fellow men disgust me, Patterson. While I deal politely with them, drink wine with them, discuss trade and politics with them, ride with them, play
music with them, go to church with them, their breath is stinking on my neck. My stomach turns with it all.” His mouth twisted. “Sometimes even my son disgusts me. I was never so glad
as the day my wife died, for that event absolved me of the need to act the kind hypocrite every day. No, I shall not go in.”

And, brushing past me, he pushed into the mob in the street and was lost from sight.

I admitted the wisdom of all he said; I knew I could not afford to alienate any of the men on whom my living depended. But I knew too that I must see what went on inside the inn. I waited a
moment or two, to be sure Heron had gone, then pushed my way into the inn-yard.

The door leading to the stairs to the Long Room was open. I leant my weight upon the bottom step cautiously, knowing the stairs creaked. A murmur of voices was audible from the upper room. I
heard Ord’s shrill tones and the measured low rumble of Jenison. And was that Nichols?

On the top stair, I eased myself to one side to look into the room without being seen. Mrs Hill’s Long Room was not as spacious as that of the Turk’s Head and there were no
glittering chandeliers here, merely a branch or two of unlit candles upon the windowsills. The room was laid out for a supper; the long tables down the centre of the room were covered with white
cloths and servants at the far end were clattering cutlery and uneasily tiptoeing in and out.

At the near end of the room, under windows that looked down into the street, a cluster of men were gesticulating and shouting. In their centre stood Le Sac, stocky yet elegant in his suit of
midnight blue, a cravat of purest white at his throat, disordered by the imprint of his violin. That black fiddle was gripped in his left hand, the bow stick held like a cudgel in the other. He was
red-faced, and I have never seen such a look of malice on any man.

Yet he was stock-still and silent. It was Nichols who made the noise, arguing his principal’s case with near-incoherent rage. One of the gentlemen of the concert band stood nearby,
awkwardly clasping his cello – Le Sac’s accompanist, I presumed. And, standing in the full glare of the daylight from the windows was Jenison, hands behind his back, head raised, feet
planted apart in a stance of stern implacability. Behind him, sly Mr Ord bobbed and grinned.

I went back down the stairs, careless of the creaking, knowing that none would hear me. Le Sac had brought the confrontation upon himself, yet of all the men gathered in that window it was he
who sparked my compassion. For his dignity in fury, if nothing else.

And Ord and Jenison were the men whom Claudius Heron would have me placate, men who had decided to be rid of someone they found difficult to control and instead to put in his place another man
of more pliability. And I knew I had no choice but to accept the situation. Jenison and Ord held the key not only to my successful future as a musician but to my very survival. A man must eat and
thus must earn money in his chosen profession.

But it sickened me. Walking up the Fleshmarket, ignoring the children that bumped me and the carriers that barged the corners of their boxes into my legs, I felt disgusted at myself. And when a
tavern presented itself with open doors, I turned into it, regardless of the urine-damp straw upon the floor and the stink of sour ale. And there, for some hours, I proceeded to drink as much as
Tom Mountier ever did, and to become progressively more and more sober and morose. Who was Claudius Heron to lecture me on my behaviour? He was a gentleman with an inheritance and coal mines
aplenty, stocks and shares by the hundreds, money to drop into a working man’s outstretched hands. What did he know of earning a living?

Eventually I went home, walking straight, with a mind sharpened still further by the cold night air. As I let myself into the house, I could hear voices, miners arguing in the back rooms; on the
first floor, Mrs Foxton called to one of the lodgers. I was in no mood to speak to anyone; I climbed the stairs wearily, searching my pockets for my key.

My gaze was arrested by the door to my room. Wood showed pale and raw where the lock had been broken. I touched the door; it swung silently open. I listened for the quick rush of footsteps,
tensed myself for an attack.

None came. The door swung on, opening wide.

And showed me the boy, sprawled upon the floor amid the smashed fragments of his violin. In his right hand was clutched, not the Corelli that I had insisted upon, but the Vivaldi. And the pages
were soaked with blood.

26

ELEGY

I leaned over the banister and called down to Mrs Foxton. The muffled voices from the first floor ceased; Mrs Foxton’s voice came from the landing below.

“Can I help you, Mr Patterson?”

“I would be obliged if you would send for Bedwalters,” I said, amazed at the calmness of my voice. “There has been an accident.”

But as I stood over George’s crumpled body again, I knew it had been no accident. There was nothing to explain the blood upon the music – no broken glass or fallen knife. Nor would
George have been so careless as to fool around with his violin in his hand; his livelihood depended upon that instrument. And the violin itself lay oddly beneath the boy – face up, the bridge
sprung free as the tension of the strings was released. The curved back had been smashed and the neck broken. I could not imagine how it might have fallen thus: because of the grip with which the
player holds the neck, the violin should surely have fallen face down when George fell.

Bedwalters came up, the street girl who seemed to be so often with him treading behind. The girl carried a candle, its light flickering across her curious composed features. The intake of breath
I heard did not come from her but from Bedwalters. From the door jamb, Mrs Foxton muttered.

“I have not touched him,” I said.

Bedwalters nodded. He shifted forward, cautiously trod to the other side of the body and lifted an unlit branch of candles from the table. As the girl tilted the flame of her candle to them the
room grew brighter and the hunched shape upon the floor more awful.

“Not much blood,” Bedwalters said, looking down. “Perhaps he broke his neck in falling. But then why should there be any blood at all?”

I explained my reservations about the violin; Bedwalters nodded again. “You’ll know that better than me, Mr Patterson. Since you were good enough not to touch the body, perhaps you
were good enough not to touch anything else in the room? A knife, perhaps?” He must have seen my puzzlement. “Some people prefer not to be associated with suicide.”

“Suicide!” I echoed incredulously. “George would not do that!”

“I only meant that it must always be considered, sir. You would be surprised how many people in this town live in quiet despair.”

I glanced at him in surprise, for he had spoken with a kind of passion. And I saw too a shift in the girl’s stance; she had for a moment lost her composure. But she was still again in a
moment. I looked down upon the body with Bedwalters silent beside me.

“It cannot have been suicide,” I pointed out. “He has the violin in one hand and music in the other. How could he also have handled a knife?”

Bedwalters nodded. “If you don’t object, sir, I’d like to turn him on his back.”

With considerable reluctance, I bent to help him. The movement set the candle flames leaping and the shadows moving, and for one dreadful moment I thought I saw the boy move too. But his flesh
was already cold and passive under my hands; he seemed extraordinarily heavy. As we turned him, the violin slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. Then his head fell back against my
shoulder and Mrs Foxton said faintly, “God have mercy.”

His throat had been cut.

I turned my head away from the gaping maw of flesh, sinew and bone, and helped Bedwalters lay George down again. I brushed at the shoulder of my coat. There was no blood there
but I fancied I could see the imprint of that bloody gaping hole, that it would be there for ever.

“Not suicide,” Bedwalters said. “No boy could do that to himself.”

“Murder?” Mrs Foxton said in shocked tones.

I forced my mind to work. “He would have made an easy victim – small, not very strong. Both his hands were occupied. He would have been fearful of dropping the violin
too...”

I stopped. Bedwalters and I both stared at the ruined instrument that had slipped from George’s limp fingers. Bedwalter’s large hands hovered over the fragments of wood.

“He wasn’t holding the violin,” he said. “The dead don’t let go of what they were holding when they died. Not at once, at any rate. Look how he grips that paper. He
held that when he died. But the violin – no.” He reached down to George’s left hand and, to my extreme discomfort, shifted the fingers. I heard the rasp of broken bones.

“His hand was broken to force the violin into it.” Bedwalters stood up, tapping his teeth thoughtfully. “And another thing. A cut throat should have covered the floor with
blood.”

“Yet there is hardly any at all,” I agreed, still rubbing at my shoulder. “And all of it on the music.”

Bedwalters bent and set his palm flat against the floor as if feeling for moisture. He brought it up dry. “A spot or two, nothing more. So...” He gave a heavy sigh. “He
wasn’t killed here.”

We looked unhappily at one another, but it was Mrs Foxton who spoke the words aloud. “If you don’t know where he was killed, you’ll not find his spirit. And if you can’t
find his spirit, you won’t be able to ask who killed him. The murderer will get away with it!”

Bedwalters departed to inform the Justice of the death; he managed to lock the damaged door again and took the key with him. I did not wish to go back into the room, but as I
stood at the door, looking out at the chill starry night, I wondered where I was to spend the night.

“Mrs Foxton, I will stay with – with friends. If I am asked after, by Bedwalters or the Justice, tell them I will return tomorrow before ten.” I turned to go, then paused.
“Did you not hear anyone come in?”

“Of course I heard someone come in,” she said sharply. “Twenty-five people live in this house. People are always coming in.”

“Thank you,” I said, and stepped into the street to prevent myself snapping at her.

The cold air made me reel, or perhaps it was the lingering effects of the ale I had consumed that afternoon. I was tempted to head back to the inn but I needed rest and quiet thought, not ale.
For one thing, I must be clear-headed on the morrow for the inquest. I would have to explain not only how I had found George but also when I had last seen him, and that would entail awkward
questions about the duel.

A cold realisation gripped me. If Claudius Heron had sent George home, he could have been the last to see him alive. I stopped in the middle of the street, appalled by the thought that had crept
into my mind. I had only Heron’s word that he had sent George home. And the man had been unusually bitter, unusually discomposed when I spoke to him.

Heron
?

I needed to think, in quiet, on my own. I might find a room for the night at Mrs Hill’s, but there I would have Dick Kell to deal with. I turned my footsteps towards Westgate Road.