Broken Harmony (30 page)

“Remember what I told you,” Lady Anne said. “There are few spirits in this world. Perhaps you will follow the general custom here and go straight to some heavenly
paradise.” I caught the glint of amusement in her eyes. “Or perhaps, like the boy, you will find yourself alone and unheard.” She lifted her hand, the light gleaming on the
knife.

The dog barked.

Startled, Lady Anne cast the dog a quick glance. In that instant I brought up my arm violently, knocking her hand away. The knife clattered to the ground. I threw myself against her, and my
weight sent us crashing to the cobbles. The fall knocked the breath out of me, and as the dog skittered away in alarm I gasped for air.

In the flare of the lanterns I saw Lady Anne, on hands and knees, scrabbling for the knife. I struggled up, threw myself at her again. But she had the knife in her hand and swung her arm wildly.
I staggered back out of reach.

I needed a weapon. My eyes set on the litter surrounding the derelict printing office. The dog was standing, legs braced, barking its loudest. Gasping still, I ran towards the building. Behind
me, I heard Lady Anne swear.

Nothing. No weapon. Just a clutter of roof slates and tumbled stone. I swung round the corner of the printing office – into darkness. No lamps, only the glimmer of the river in the thin
moonlight. I saw enigmatic humps of debris, rotting coils of rope, a haphazard pile – of baskets? I heard Lady Anne swear again. I flattened myself against the wall in a deep shadow and tried
to still my breathing. The dog must have run off; I heard its barking in the distance.

Lady Anne lingered at the corner. Was she conscious that the outline of her body was visible against the faint moonlit shimmer of the river? She moved against the wall, into darkness. She was
coming towards me. I strained to see her, to catch the glint of the knife…

Metal flashed in the moonlight. I flung out an arm to fend off the blow, felt pain, the warmth of blood. I stumbled, twisting away from her second lunge. My foot caught in something – a
twist of rope? An unravelled basket? I staggered, threw out my arms to keep my balance, heard her laugh. Then I went down, landing upon my injured arm and crying out.

Rolling over, I tried to crawl away, knocked against something, heard boxes clatter down. My foot was caught fast and when I tried to pull away, pain near blinded me. Lady Anne lunged, stabbing
down like a bird from a great darkness. Her ragged breath was loud in my ears…

Out of the darkness a second figure loomed above me. I felt a rush of air and over my head swung a thick plank of wood. The sharp ends of nails glinted in the moonlight. The plank struck Lady
Anne in the stomach; a rib crunched and she screamed, flinging up her hands. The knife clattered on to stone as she staggered backwards, doubled over, screaming. And the plank swung again, crashing
into her shoulder as she tried to turn away from the blow, then again upon her back as she went down in a crumpled heap.

Over her, vengeful hate flaring in his wild face, stood Claudius Heron.

38

FINALE

He leaned down to help me up. I grasped a hand that was cold and dry, and left it stained with the blood that ran down my own arm. He steadied me, said urgently,
“Patterson? Are you hurt?”

I was in no mood to be polite. “How the devil did you come here?”

“That boy of yours. His spirit told me the woman was taking you out of the servants’ door and I managed to catch sight of you as you walked off.” The wildness was dying out of
his face but there was a darkness in his eyes still, an anger that burned deep. “I would have reached you sooner but I was accosted upon the Side by a man who claimed he knew me, and kept
talking of people I had never heard of. Patterson, where in heaven’s name is this place?”

“How did you reach it?”

His lean cheeks reddened. “I have been following you, whenever I could, since the boy’s inquest. I was close behind you in the square and somehow… Damn it, will you believe
now
that you are in danger!”

His hand was upon my shoulder and his cool voice quite returned. “We must get you to a surgeon.” He tore off his cravat and wrapped it around the wound in my arm. “I could have
prevented this.”

A cool voice and cool hands, yet the vengeful look upon his face as he hit out at Lady Anne haunted me. I had not imagined he could feel so strongly. What had caused that rage?

But at that moment I glimpsed movement behind him, shouted, pulled myself from his hands. Lady Anne had dragged herself up and was stumbling round the corner of the derelict building, back to
the Key. I ran after her, heart thumping, head reeling, arm aching abominably. Behind me, Heron cried out.

Round the corner of the printing office I was suddenly in the middle of a gaggle of women, a crowd of whores in ragged gowns with bared breasts and hooked-up skirts showing grimy legs. They
pawed at me, dragged at my clothes, tugged at my hair. I yelled, tried to pull away, swung my fist and connected with the face of one of the women. Her head snapped sideways; she crumpled, dragging
down her neighbour. I hooked a foot under a dirty ankle and uptipped another, who went down in a flurry of skirts and curses. Heron was close behind me, swinging wildly so that the whores scattered
in alarm and we were free and running.

But Lady Anne was nowhere to be seen. Her whores had protected their protectress.

“The house,” I yelled as we raced along the Key. “We must get back to the house.” That house, and that house alone, could afford us passage back to our own world. If we
did not catch Lady Anne, and she
stepped through
to our world, Demsey and Esther Jerdoun were at her mercy.

I came to the Sandhill, glimpsed a movement, glanced up the hill into Butcher Bank. A woman was loading up a cart. I ran up to the cart, snatched up the reins and urged the horse into action.
The woman shrieked and the horse damn near bolted. But I got the cart turned and back on to the Sandhill where Heron was waiting. He leapt for the box and clambered up. The cart was filled with
offal and stank of blood and urine; livers, hearts and guts spilled from a great pile and hung down behind us.

Pain throbbed in my arm as the horse galloped on; we raced across the Sandhill, scattering a group of drunken sailors. On to the Side, where I flogged the labouring horse mercilessly up the
steep road. At St Nicholas’s Church, the horse got a second wind and galloped off again. The cart bumped and jolted, throwing us from side to side so that Heron gripped tight hold of the
seat.

“We must stop Lady Anne getting back to our world,” I shouted. “She will kill Demsey and Mrs Jerdoun.”

“I understand none of this!” Heron shouted back. “But I trust your judgment, Patterson.”

I hoped he was right to do so. We turned up a new street and only then did I recognise our surroundings. A slow-moving brewer’s dray blocked the street halfway down; I vaulted from the
cart and ran for the house.

As I came up to the front door, it opened and a gentleman came out. Young, well-dressed, self-assured, laughing at something. Meeting on the doorstep we stared at one another – and I saw
my own face, astonished and startled, perhaps even fearful…

Heron seized my arm and pulled me past him, up the steps. We barged into the house, stumbled to a halt in the hallway with servants hurrying forward to intercept us. I raised my voice.
“George!”

A distant cry. “The attic, master!”

We ran for the stairs. The servants caught at us. “Get rid of them!” I cried to Heron. He tripped one footman, shouldered another as they seized him. One caught at the skirts of my
coat; I swung a fist, pulled free.

I took the stairs two at a time, leaping round the angles in the flights, slipping on the blood that was dripping from my arm, trying to work out where the servants’ stair was – for
this public stair would certainly not go up to the attics. Below, I heard shouting and a call for the watch. Had Heron been overcome? I ran on.

George’s voice, close by, said, “The second door, master.” An elegant sitting room. “Under the picture of the lady.” I flung open a door on to the shabby
servants’ stair.

As I scrambled up the wooden steps, I could hear movement above. George’s voice urged me on. “Quick, master, quick!” Up ever narrower stairs. Surely Lady Anne must have gone by
now? Why should she delay? A last flight; giddy and exhausted, I fell into a large room, scattered with low beds…

Lady Anne was crouched over a bucket on the floor, spewing out vomit mixed with blood. She stared at me with lips stained scarlet and hands clutching at her stomach. I stumbled to a halt.
Claudius Heron had done more damage than he had anticipated, with the nails in that plank he had wielded.

She screeched at me in a spray of blood. “I’ll kill you, damn you!”

I glimpsed metal in her hand. That damned knife again. As she lunged at me I snatched at the blanket on the nearest bed, swung it through the air. The knife sliced into it, her hand tangling in
the folds. She screamed as I seized her wrist, felt the flesh chill and bloodless, took hold of her other hand to restrain her…

I saw a light in her eyes, an expression in her face. She seemed to dim, to become momentarily translucent. In astonishment, I almost let her go.
She was stepping through
. And then I saw
my own hand, stained with blood, begin also to become thin and transparent. I heard George cry out, and Heron too from just behind me, and felt a great dizziness…

I came to myself upon cold damp cobbles. A thin drizzle dampened my face. Raising myself, I saw with relief the familiar shape of Caroline Square around me, the darkness-shrouded gardens, a thin
curve of moon behind the leaves.

Above, on the open door of the house, I saw a sheen of light. George, excitedly calling to the servants within for help.

Upon the doorstep, Claudius Heron sat and stared out into the night.

39

TRIO AFTER THE CONCERT

The clamour of the coffee-house folded around us. Heron sat back in his chair, one arm stretched out to the dish upon the table, his eyes fixed upon the design. He wore still
the neat sober clothes he had worn for the inquest when he had sat in charge of the inquiry into the death of Lady Anne, whose fatal injuries he had himself inflicted.

He had looked upon his own handiwork with, as far as I could judge, no emotion, either of horror or remorse. The eight jurymen had heard how Mrs Jerdoun had heard her cousin call out and hurried
upstairs to find her dead of … Of what? Claudius Heron had listened to the evidence, persuaded the jury it would be immodest to look upon the body of Lady Anne, informed them there were no
visible wounds, suggested to the few witnesses – the cousin, the surgeon, the servants – the word
apoplexy
. And the eight reputable and honest tradesmen had decided that the lady
had been struck down by the hand of God.

So the matter was ended. There was nothing to connect Lady Anne’s death to the murder of George and the suicide of Le Sac, nor to the attack on Demsey and myself on Gateshead Fell. That
had no doubt been the work of unknown criminals, perhaps those who had robbed the postboy, and everyone marvelled at Demsey’s luck in surviving so vicious an attack. Lady Anne’s death
had been bloody, but most of that blood had been shed in that strange other world, and Mrs Jerdoun’s discreet maid had dealt with the little that had stained our own world. And if no one knew
exactly what had happened to Light-Heels Nichols after he was seen walking through Amen Corner with Lady Anne – well, there were more important things to be concerned about than the
whereabouts of a mere dancing-master, particularly one so universally disliked.

In the clamour of the coffee house, I was still pondering another meeting I had had, only an hour or two earlier, with Mrs Jerdoun. She had drawn me aside after the inquest and to my
astonishment, had apologised to me. “I knew my cousin was a scheming woman …”

“You tried to warn me, madam.”

“That was not enough,” she said. She was dressed in black, as custom demanded on the death of her cousin, but the colour did not suit her; it made her skin seem sallow and her
gleaming hair dull.

“I knew,” she went on, “or suspected at least, that she had a hand in Le Sac’s death. That was why I was at the pond, to see if I could persuade him to talk. And I had
some suspicions that she received money from sources she was not willing to reveal, which could only be discreditable.” Her eyes met mine steadily. “I could make the excuse, sir, that I
had no evidence against her, but in truth I acted from pride, not wishing our family name to be dragged in the mud. And more than that – I have always been a woman to take care of my own
business.”

“I cannot blame you for keeping silent, madam,” I said. “No one would have believed accusations against your cousin.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “I should have made the attempt. If I had, Mr Demsey would not have been injured, and – more importantly – your life would not have been
endangered.”

More importantly
? My breath caught in my throat. And we stood looking at each other for a moment in a stillness so complete, so excluding the rest of the world, that I could hardly
breathe.

Mrs Jerdoun smiled faintly. “I trust you forgive me, sir?”

I hardly knew what I was saying. “Indeed, madam, I –” I took my courage in both hands. “And I trust, madam, that this wretched business will not give you a distaste for
my company?”

She laughed softly. “Oh, no, sir. You may count on that. You will see me again.” And she turned and walked away into the last of the crowds dawdling from the inquest.

In the coffee-house I looked at Claudius Heron beside me, still silent, still preoccupied. I said, “I have not yet properly thanked you for your help.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I was singularly inept. I was not there when you were attacked on the fell, nor when the woman trapped you in that house –”

“You were, I think,” I interrupted diplomatically, “always suspicious of Lady Anne’s activities?”