Broken Harmony (25 page)

Suddenly he dipped, his hands splashing into the water as if he dived for a fish. But there was no silver flash of scales, no desperate flap of tail – merely a widening spread of ripples.
He straightened and signalled to his friends on shore. He had left the second rope attached to something underwater. Another two fellows waded out to join him and together they dragged at the rope.
It came up with a rush, water flooded away, and I saw hair hanging in rat’s tails from a lolling head.

“We were too late,” Demsey said laconically, touching the bruise on his temple where he had struck a branch during his horse’s mad flight the previous evening. “Is it
just as well, I wonder?”

“Where is his horse?”

Demsey shrugged. “Gone back to its stable?”

“Nonsense. It would have been back before we set out.”

Hawks was calling to us; we went across to where the men were dragging the body on to boggy ground. The constable was bending over the body, turning the head this way and that, checking arms and
legs for injuries. He, and I, saw none. Saw nothing but a parody of a man, a stocky figure hardened for ever into death, fashionable clothes torn and muddied, elegant clever fingers like claws. The
constable heaved the body over; water dribbled out of the mouth.

“Drowned,” said one of the men.

“Never ride on dark nights,” said another, shaking his head philosophically.

Hawks nodded me to one side. He was a lean hard whip of a man, long past sixty but not looking a day beyond his prime. Every inch the gentleman.

“I have heard the rumours, Patterson.” Weak sunlight glinted off the silver buttons of his coat. “I saw Heron yesterday and he told me everything that has happened – the
duel, the death of the boy, the suspicions of Le Sac. Do you think he was fleeing?”

I was conscious of Demsey hovering behind me. “I cannot believe him guilty of murder, sir.”

“Then what the devil was he doing out here?”

“I think he was on his way to Durham to speak with the organist there, to ask if he had anything to do with the duel.”

Hawks guffawed. “Hesletine? A miracle if he could get any sense out of Old Fusspot. Still, he might have thought to try. Don’t know when he left Newcastle, do you?”

“Late Wednesday afternoon, the ostler said.”

He pursed his lips. “Looks like an accident, then. Lost his way. Didn’t know the fell, I daresay.”

“I would have thought he did, sir,” I protested. “He gave lessons in several houses in the country.”

But it was plain he had already made up his mind. I glanced at Hugh; I was certain an accident was much too fortuitous, and Hugh seemed to agree. But what evidence did I have to prove it?

“I’ll have his body taken down into the town,” Hawks said, “and we can hold the inquest this afternoon. Might as well get it over and done with.”

My heart sank. The prospect of attending two inquests in two days was not enticing and would hardly do my reputation much good. But Hawks, scowling down at the body, went on. “Shan’t
need you, Patterson. My men will bear witness to finding him.”

He strode off. Demsey came to my shoulder and together we watched the men struggle through the wet grass with their sodden burden. The body’s long fingers hung almost to the ground, the
head drooped grotesquely. And at the end of the short trip, only an ignominious toss on to the back of a cart, which then bumped off across the fell.

“If Le Sac was killed on Wednesday afternoon, on his way to Durham,” Demsey said, “where’s his spirit? A day and a half is quite long enough for it to
disembody.”

“He could have died on his way back – sometime yesterday. In which case, it may yet be a few hours before his spirit makes an appearance.”

“Do we still go to Durham, to find out if he was there?”

“We do,” I said.

We rode into the cathedral city two or three hours later, both tired and exhilarated by the ride. The horses were fresh and willing to gallop along the safer stretches of the
road, and I almost – almost – rode out the frustrations in my mind and body.

Demsey insisted upon going to the Star and Rummer straightaway, for some of the famous beef, and the ride had stirred up my appetite to such a pitch that I was willing to fall in with his
wishes. Durham is a tiny dirty town, full of colliers pushing through narrow streets, not troubling at all to get out of the way of the fastidious clerics who look down their noses at them. And
above the thin houses crammed into their few streets looms the great church with its fortress-like towers, and the crenellations of the castle beside it.

In the Star and Rummer, Demsey was greeted like an old friend, shown to his favourite place by the window and supplied with beef before he had had time to ask for it. And before
I
could
sit down, my name was shouted across the room and Mountier hurtled towards me, making the tavern seem half the size it had before. Behind him came a small man, dwarfed by Mountier but beaming. I
had seen the small man once before, at a distance in the cathedral; the fellow was all nose, and I recalled that his voice came down that nose like a sheep bleating.

“Is all of Newcastle here?” Mountier cried. “We are overrun by you! Setting yourself up in competition, eh?” He ranted on while the small man smiled and raised his eyes
to the ceiling.

“Friend of mine,” Demsey said to me, indicating the small man as Mountier rambled on unregarded. “Met, have you? No? Charles, this is our host, Peter Blenkinsop.
Blenkinsop’s the best brewer of ale this side of York, you know. And the best singer in the cathedral choir.”

Blenkinsop hooted with laughter. Mountier flung his arms around him. “S’right. Sing, pretty Peter, sing.” And he launched into a rendering of
Te Deum, Laudamus
that was
decidedly secular in spirit. Blenkinsop obligingly opened his mouth and good-humouredly joined in. I stared at Demsey, who was grinning; I had remembered correctly, for the man hooted through his
nose like a penny trumpet.

“We are looking for someone,” I said.

Mountier stopped in the middle of an out-of-place
Amen
and looked reproachfully at me. “You mean you seek company other than mine, Patterson? You distress me beyond all
measure.”

I recoiled from his breath. “Le Sac.”

“Oh, the French fellow.”

“Swiss,” Demsey said through a mouthful of beef.

“Seen enough of
him
.”

“He was here, then?”

“Yesterday,” Blenkinsop said in his reedy voice. A girl slid a plate of beef in front of me. “At least, turned up late Wednesday night and was off again yesterday. And I
don’t care if he never comes again. Upset the Lord and Master no end. Right after Evensong when he was looking forward to a quiet evening to himself.”

“Hesletine,” Mountier said in confidential explanation. “Deep in the throes of that Ode still and Le Sac bursts in and accuses him of some plot.”

Blenkinsop frowned. “There was talk of a duel.”

“A musical duel,” Demsey said, gulping ale. Mountier leapt up and pranced about the crowded room, in blundering imitation of swordplay. The serving girls fended him off
irritably.

“Fiddlesticks at dawn!”

“The duel never took place,” I said. “And now both parties are dead.”

They were silenced, staring at me. The clatter of crockery and the raucous laughter of a party across the room seemed incongruously disrespectful.

“Who was the other fellow?” Blenkinsop asked, curiously.

“My apprentice.”

“The boy?” Mountier cried. “Alas, poor Richard.”

“George.”

“Did they stab each other with their fiddlesticks?”’

Blenkinsop, with a quick frown, tried to sober him but he was too drunk to take notice. Demsey speared meat with his knife. “The boy was murdered. Throat cut. Le Sac was found last night
in a pond on Gateshead Fell.”

“Did he lose his way?” Blenkinsop asked. “There have been some devilish storms the last two nights.”

“That is the commonly believed explanation,” I said, exchanging a glance with Hugh.

“Poor fellow.”

We did not trouble ourselves to go up to Hesletine’s lodgings in the North Bailey. With the skill born of long practice, Blenkinsop banished Mountier to another party in the room and gave
us a round account of what had happened on Wednesday.

Despite his voice, Blenkinsop was a sensible man. It had been his turn, evidently, to chant the psalms at evensong in the cathedral that night, and he had done so to a near-empty church, the
Dean and prebendaries being at their other livings in more salubrious climes nearer London. Only the one prebendary required by statute was there, with a couple of the minor canons and Hesletine,
who for all his argumentative nature was pious. On leaving the church, Hesletine had delayed Blenkinsop on some matter or other when Le Sac burst upon the scene, accusing Hesletine of all kinds of
villainy.

It had taken both minor canons to separate the two but, to cut a long story short, Hesletine had said enough to convince Le Sac he had not known a duel was to take place, let alone that he was
supposed to judge it. So Blenkinsop had talked the Swiss into calmness, put him up in the Star and Rummer, and with his own eyes seen him mount his horse and head northward on Thursday morning.

Soon we were riding north again ourselves. “It would have been around midday when Le Sac reached Gateshead,” Demsey protested as we came close to Chester le Street. “I know the
fell is a wild spot but a
daylight
attack?”

“If he
was
attacked,” I agreed, “someone was audacious.”

By the time we came to the bridge across the Tyne night was falling; the bridge was quiet and the town in a sleepy state. Demsey had composed a long indignant letter refuting all the accusations
against him and laying out his counter-claims against Nichols, which he intended to publish in the
Courant
. He therefore went off to the Printing Office while I took the reins of both horses
and walked them to the Fleece. I had hardly left the inn again when a voice spoke behind me.

“I have been waiting for you, sir.” Lady Anne laughed as I started. She was impeccably dressed as always, the ribbons of her cap dancing as she moved to face me. “I have been
hearing of your exploits on Gateshead Fell.”

Exploits? It was an odd word to use, I thought, for the discovery of a body. I was curt. Her constant meddling annoyed me. Moreover, two people were dead and she was smiling and amused by it
all. “The news has spread, then?”

“Claudius Heron came back from Gateshead with it. He is a friend of David Hawks.” Another smile. “How did you discover poor Henri?”

“Demsey and I were sheltering from the storm.”
Poor Henri
? I could not help but remember that she had been scheming against
poor Henri
behind his back quite as much as
Ord and Jenison, and probably for much the same reason. Le Sac’s greatest fault had been his failure to understand what constituted one demand too many.

“Whatever his failings,” I said sharply, “he should not have died.”

She opened her eyes wide in astonishment. “You call murder a
failing
?” Her look challenged me, those green eyes steady in the thin plain face. “Mr Patterson, do not tell
me you doubt that Henri killed the boy?”

“I can think of no convincing reason why he should have done so.”

“But surely it is clear – he murdered the poor boy, then drowned himself in remorse.”

Remorse was not an attribute I had ever associated with Le Sac. “Suicide, Lady Anne? When I last saw Mr Hawks he was of the opinion it was an accident.”

Lady Anne shook her head. “The verdict of the inquest was suicide.”

Claudius Heron had spoken to Hawks, she said. Had he persuaded Hawks to change his mind? But why?

“And Mr Heron also believes that Le Sac murdered George?”

“From what he says, yes.” She regarded me for a moment. “One should not gossip, Mr Patterson, but –”

I hated her for that
but
. She was teasing me with it, inviting me to encourage her to talk. And devil take it, I had to. I had to know what had happened to George. If there was the
remotest chance that I had been in some way, no matter how small, to blame for his death, I owed him the courtesy of discovering the truth. “
But
, my lady?”

“A suggestion, no more,” she said coyly, “that poor Henri knew one or two things about Heron that Heron might not wish known.”

Her lack of courtesy, the way she casually referred to Claudius Heron without his title, annoyed me. And the suggestion that
Mr
Heron had guilty secrets was beyond belief. Lady Anne was
playing games with me again.

No matter. The spirits on the river were whispering, calling. Tomorrow, I thought, I would speak to Le Sac’s spirit and find out the truth.

31

VIOLIN CADENZA

Demsey was waiting in the street when I stepped out into the cold misty drizzle of early morning; he was so wrapped up in his coat I hardly recognised him. And he was inclined
to grumble. “We’ll probably find half the town waiting to talk to Le Sac’s spirit.”

“No one else will be waiting,” I said. “Everybody thinks they know already what happened.”

We hired horses again from the Golden Fleece and rode out across the Tyne Bridge. Two or three countrywomen trudged in the opposite direction, bearing on each arm baskets heavy with straw-bedded
eggs or tiny black cheeses. I was tired; I had slept poorly, unable to ignore Lady Anne’s hints, remembering Claudius Heron’s constant coldness towards Le Sac, his refusal to play at
the benefit, his warnings at the inquest, his insistence on blaming Le Sac for George’s death. Had he persuaded David Hawks to regard Le Sac’s death as suicide?

I had waited on Heron at his house the previous night; but he was closeted at dinner with ship-owners and merchants, an official function that had no doubt continued well into the night. After
that, I had gone to old Hoult and insisted he ask the other spirits to find George’s spirit. They had not been able to. I could only conclude the spirit had not yet disembodied, although so
late a disembodiment was unheard of.