Sword and Song (20 page)

“The clock struck eleven a little while ago – ”

I composed myself and walked into the inn. They were all in the passageway to the yard. Heron and Esther had their backs to me and I saw, with surprise and considerable regret, that Esther was
wearing not her breeches but a dark riding habit whose long skirts she was holding up off the dusty floor. Hugh was looking sorely tried but was wisely keeping silent as Heron and Alyson, both
greatcoated, argued some point or other. Alyson must have caught some hint of movement for his gaze slid over Heron’s shoulder and settled on me.

I saw his eyes widen slightly and wondered again how dishevelled I looked. I walked up the passageway towards them, the violin bag banging against my shoulder. Heron and Esther turned. I gave
them a smile. Hugh jerked his head, smoothed the shoulders of his coat meaningfully. I glanced down at white mortar dust, brushed it off.

“We cannot talk out here,” Heron said sharply. “We must go in.”

We trooped into a room off the passageway. It appeared to be the room Alyson had bespoken for himself. A newspaper, neatly ironed, lay unopened, on the table, together with an untouched jug of
ale. Wearily, I pulled off the violin bag, put it down on a chair, caught Alyson looking at me and it. Well, no doubt we were both looking shabby. I decided to take the battle to Heron
straightaway. “I didn’t know you had business in town, sir.”

Hugh choked, turned away to call for a serving girl. Esther said quickly, “Have you caught him – the girl’s murderer?”

“Alas, no. Though we came to close quarters.”

“During which encounter you were stabbed,” Heron said. He was standing in front of the unlit fire, looking like a father about to punish a recalcitrant son.

“I admit I should have remembered the knife,” I agreed.

Hugh was in the doorway ordering food and drink from the landlord; Catherine came back in to murmur to Esther. Heron met my gaze implacably.

“A mere scratch,” I said.

“What I don’t understand,” Alyson said, frowning, “is why you’re here at all. Did you come into town specifically in pursuit of us?”

“Yes,” Heron said, uncompromisingly.

“My fault entirely.” Esther smiled. “I simply could not sit at Long End and worry about Charles, so I persuaded Mr Heron to accompany me into town.”

Charles
, I thought, alarm bells ringing. I darted a glance at Alyson. He was frowning.

Esther put her hand on my arm. “Forgive me, Charles, it was foolish I know but this apprentice seems to be particularly vicious – ”

I was still off-balance, distracted by the unexpectedly warm smile she cast on me, the softness of her tone. She was playing a game and I was uncertain as to what it all meant.

“But indeed,” she said, “we have puzzled Mr Alyson. From the moment he came back from his walk and found us here, he has been trying to make sense of it.” She turned to
Alyson. “You must forgive a woman’s weakness, sir, but I could not sit quietly by while my betrothed was in danger.”

A silence. Heron was impassive, although I thought I glimpsed the faintest hint of a wry smile on his lips. Catherine was trying to control her grin. Hugh said brightly, “Breakfast will be
here at any moment.”

Alyson said incredulously, “Betrothed?!”

Heron took charge at once and Esther let him – after all she’d achieved her object; if others knew about the betrothal, it would be more difficult to call it off. Heron acted as if
it was an everyday occurrence for a lady of quality to become betrothed to a mere tradesman. “Though I’m sure I needn’t tell you, Alyson, that the matter is to be kept
private.”

“Until my relatives can travel from Norfolk,” Esther said. “Family always come first, do you not agree?”

Alyson, as off-balance as I’d been, blustered. I let Heron deal with him, glanced at Hugh. He was finding great interest in the pattern of the upholstery on an armchair but he looked up
and gave me a wicked grin. He said, “And have you named the day yet?”

It was a very good job I hadn’t taken his bet.

Esther had the quietly satisfied air of a woman who has won the day; she said merely, “In a month or so, when the legal niceties have been dealt with.”

The landlord swept in with serving girls in his wake and half a dozen trays of food. In the confusion that followed, Esther and Catherine went quietly out, to rearrange their hair or whatever
else women do; Heron spoke to Hugh; from the few words I heard, he seemed to be gleaning the details of our abortive attempt to detain the apprentice.

Alyson came across to me. If he was attempting to emulate Heron’s stern look, he was failing – he looked merely mulish, like a boy being forced to do something he doesn’t want
to.

“Damn it, Patterson,” he said sharply. “You can’t go ahead with this. It’s simply not – ”

I refused to help him out. I was pretty certain he was passing his mistress off as his wife and not in any position to lecture on morality.

“It’s impossible,” he said. “I cannot pay a man to entertain me when he’s betrothed to one of my guests!”

To do him justice, this was clearly genuine outrage. I said, “You can rest assured that none of your guests need know the true situation. We’ve every intention of keeping the matter
secret until after the wedding.”

Was there any point in placating Alyson any longer, I wondered? The prospect of marrying Esther was becoming more and more inevitable, and in that case, did I really need to concern myself over
a mere fifteen guineas? Mere, that is, compared to Esther’s wealth.

Alyson seemed to be calming down. “You will undertake to guarantee secrecy.”

I thought I could. I started, “I believe – ” But we were interrupted by a bright gleam that shot across our sight and hovered on the topmost point of a branch of candlesticks.
“Mr Demsey?”

I gestured at Hugh, on the other side of the table. The spirit shot off towards him. “Aurelia Robinson,” she introduced herself, a rather unusual proceeding for a spirit.
“Daughter of Sir Matthew Robinson.”

“Oh yes,” Hugh said, obviously nonplussed.

“I have a message for you.”

“Oh?”

“From Mr Bedwalters, the constable.”

“Ex-constable,” Heron said.

“He would be grateful, sir, if you were to go to Dog Bank.”

“I’ve just come that way,” I said, surprised. Alyson was looking puzzled; I said, “It’s above All Hallows church – a respectable street.”

“There’s someone asking for you,” the spirit said, single-mindedly concentrating on its message. “A dying man’s last request.”

“Who?” I demanded. “Who’s dying?”

The spirit said, “Someone of the lower orders, I understand. A chapman – ”

If Bedwalters was startled to see all four of us walking up the street towards him, he did not show it. He got up from his bench and waited calmly for us to reach him. Neatly
dressed, ink on his fingertips as ever, thinner than previously, and with a look of peace about him I’d never seen before.

I was breathing heavily from climbing the hill. Edward Alyson was right to think he would not enjoy accompanying us; Dog Bank was respectable but it was poor, and stank. And this would probably
be another of those dull ‘talking’ sessions; Alyson, I’d noticed, preferred occasions when there was running and shouting to be done.

He made me feel staid and middle-aged.

Heron and Esther greeted Bedwalters civilly; Bedwalters was polite in return, although Heron had treated him abominably on their last meeting. Hugh was anxious for news. “The chapman.
He’s been attacked?”

Bedwalters nodded. “Hit by a slate as he walked through an alley early this morning.”

“A slate?” I said, startled. “One that fell from a roof?”

“Apparently so,” Bedwalters said. I knew him well enough to know that he meant what he said, nothing less, and certainly nothing more.
Apparently
. “He was carried home
but there was nothing to be done for him. The apothecary gave him something to dull the pain, and I was sent for. I did, of course, make it plain that I was no longer constable but they insisted.
When I arrived, he was very weak, but I heard him mention your name, sir – ” He glanced at Hugh. “And I understood him to mean he wanted to talk to you.”

“Right,” Hugh said. “Where is he?”

I took his arm. “I don’t think there’s any rush, Hugh.” I held Bedwalters’s gaze. “You said there
was
nothing more to be done.”

He nodded. “He died a few minutes ago.”

“Damn,” Hugh said. “Damn, damn, damn...”

I went into the house, ducking through a door so low I suspected the house must have subsided at some point in the past. A smoky dark room held two or three ancient chairs, an unsteady table and
a pot simmering over an open hearth. A ladder at the back of the room led up to what I presumed must be a bedroom, but they’d clearly been unable to get the sick man up there and had laid him
instead on a mattress behind the table.

A woman sat on the floor beside the mattress, dry-eyed and still. She did not look at me, or move. I leant on the unsteady table and lowered myself to one knee beside the mattress.

The body lay on its back. He’d been a man in his late thirties or early forties, blond hair receding, leaving only a few wisps on his forehead. A weather-beaten man. A spare, lean fit man.
The sharp end of the falling slate had laid his face open from temple to mouth, cutting over the bridge of his nose, down the length of his left cheek and ending just below his bottom lip. It was
the kind of cut a butcher might make when cleaving meat from the bone. The smashed white skull was visible inside. Blood masked his face and drenched the front of his clothes.

I peered closer and reached for the wound. The woman, in a sudden convulsion, slapped my hand away. She stared at me with a fierce anger and possessiveness.

“Well?” Hugh asked.

I heaved myself to my feet, wincing against the twinge of pain in my side. “I can see traces of slate in the wound,” I said, “flecks of grey.”

“It must have been an accident, surely?” Hugh said. “A slate is hardly an effective murder weapon. To drop one on someone you’d have to climb up on the roof, push it down
on him – he’d hear you and get out of the way, surely. And you’d have to have a damn good aim.”

I hesitated over whether to give the woman a coin or two. Her fierce pride deterred me. It was the wrong moment. I went back out into the street. Bedwalters was just putting something into a
pocket with a dull red flush of embarrassment on his face; Esther had apparently persuaded him to accept a little charity. I gave him a coin of my own and asked him to give it to the widow when the
first shock of bereavement had died away. He said he would.

“Where was the chapman hurt?” I asked.

“Two or three streets away.”

We all traipsed off in a procession led by Bedwalters. Heron engaged him in a quiet word or two; Hugh skittered along behind them like a man desperate to get everything done as quickly as
possible.

Esther and I walked behind. It was the first time I’d had private conversation with her since our –
betrothal
. Good God, but we must talk about that! But instead, I found
myself saying: “Why are you not wearing your breeches?”

She was startled. Her pale hair had been disordered by the exercise, and trailed out from under her riding hat; a fine sheen of perspiration shone on her face. She smiled. “I thought that
if I am to be a respectable married woman, then I should behave respectably.”

“I don’t like it,” I said curtly, and inwardly cursed. I sounded like a man thirty years married already. Esther said nothing. When I looked at her, I saw she was apparently
idly regarding her riding gloves which she carried in one hand.
Apparently
.

The street in which the chapman had been attacked must be one of the narrowest in town, a mere cranny between houses, leading up from the Key in a series of steps separated by a yard or two of
uneven cobbles. It was not a salubrious place. The houses on either side were almost all unoccupied – windows were cracked or broken, some doors had been stoved in. In one or two houses, a
pile of rags suggested someone slept there. At the bottom, the street opened on to the Key; I saw a fragment of a boat, a few children running by, a stray pig snuffling at corners. Seagulls
screamed overhead; the clear air carried the clattering rush of coal being tipped into a hold.

And here there was only a dark stain on the cobbles where a man had fallen in his death agonies. Fragments of shattered slate lay all around; pieced together they must have formed a massive
whole.

“One of the biggest slates.” Hugh kicked angrily at one fragment. “From the bottom edge of the roof. And it’s my fault. I sent him to his death.”

“It’s the murderer’s fault, no one else’s,” I said. I picked up a small piece of wood, about an inch long. The wooden peg that had once nailed the slate to the
rafters. It looked undamaged.

Esther picked up another nail and handed it to me silently. I couldn’t read her mood; she seemed unconcerned, not upset in the least by my sharpness. Heron was talking to Bedwalters, Hugh
kicking about the cobbles. I risked a low “I’m sorry.”

She looked up at me. “I am not unaware of the difficulties of the situation,” she said. “But there is a natural law, Charles – the more unconventional the situation, the
more conventional your behaviour must be.”

“Damn it,” I said recklessly, “then I’d rather settle for the situation as it was.”

“You are calling off our betrothal?”

I felt like pointing out I’d never engaged in it in the first place. But a gentleman cannot call off a betrothal; only the lady can change her mind.

“Precisely,” Esther said calmly, as if she’d read my mind. “Perhaps we should discuss this at a better time.”

“I agree,” I said feelingly.

Bedwalters was telling Heron how the chapman had been found. Despite his horrible injury, he’d managed to stagger to the top of the stair where he’d been found by a neighbour. This
was probably a considerable time after the attack which, as far as I could judge, had happened while I was taking refuge in the other world. After the attack on me, therefore. The murderer had
failed to catch me and had gone at once to eliminate another threat; he could not risk me talking to the chapman. Which argued that the two men must have come very close as the apprentice ran from
Mrs McDonald’s house. Did he know Jas Williams and his customers had seen him too – were they also in danger? I thought not; they’d seen him in the shop, so they could probably
label him a thief, but they could not directly connect him with Nell’s murder.