Sword and Song (11 page)

After the noise outside the shop was eerily quiet, a dim place where old books stood regimented on older bookcases, ordered by some mysterious system no outside observer could hope to fathom.
Prints filled any spare space on the walls depicting religious subjects: the killing of the Innocents, the Crucifixion, the harrowing of hell. I wondered if anyone had ever engraved the more
cheerful moments of scriptural history, like the wedding at Cana. If they had, Charnley didn’t have them.

A spirit said, “Can I help you, sir?”

I don’t generally patronise Charnley’s shop; I looked around the gloomy interior for a moment or two before I saw the spirit gleaming on an inkpot.

“I was hoping to see Mr Charnley.”

“I generally deal with customers, sir.”

The elderly, rather fussy voice suggested the living man had once been Charnley’s shopman, still performing his duties long after death. It must be invaluable to have all that expertise on
call – not to mention the savings from not having to pay him.

“I’m trying to trace a book that was once in the library of Mr William Hodgson,” I said. “A manuscript of psalm tunes.”

“Ah,” said the spirit, oozing unctuousness. “And you wish to purchase this book?”

“I’m acting as agent for a man who wishes to do so, yes.”

The spirit shot away into the back of the shop.

After a few minutes, Charnley himself came out to talk to me, a bitter-looking man in his late forties, wearing a grey wig and black coat. Most of the religious tracts distributed on the Key
come from his printing presses. He boasts there is nothing in his pamphlets to offend the most delicate of sensibilities.

He remembered the book but didn’t think much of it. “The tunes were just the usual popular rubbish.”

“My interest isn’t musical,” I said. “I believe it had a German inscription at the front?”

“To my beloved son, Luther,” the spirit said. “Signed by Melchior Friedric Fischer, Shotley Bridge, 1722.”

“It was bequeathed to a Philadelphian gentleman of my acquaintance,” I said, “but it never reached him. I was wondering if you still had it.”

There was a heavy pause. A thin smile curved Charnley’s lips.

“Stolen. I had a shopboy who left it lying around instead of putting it aside for the gentleman who requested it. The book was purloined. I dismissed the boy, of course.”

“Young people nowadays are so lazy,” the elderly spirit said.

“Disrespectful,” Charnley said. “Caring only for the pleasures of the world.”

“Indeed,” said the spirit comfortably.

“Did you report the theft to the constable?”

Charnley’s smile turned into a sneer. “You mean Bedwalters the writing master? The one who has abandoned his duties and responsibilities for a dead whore?”

The spirit tut-tutted.

“Well,” I said, deciding to go before I lost my temper. “If you no longer have the book I want, I can keep my money in my pocket, can’t I?”

And I turned on my heels and walked out, feeling self-righteous in my indignation.

Outside, I hesitated in the drizzle, wondering if it was time to meet Hugh – we’d arranged to meet in Nellie’s coffee house before going back to Mrs McDonald’s. The
female spirit slid down the wall and settled on the corner of a shelf built on the front of the shop to house a dozen very old, very damaged books.

“I saw him,” she said primly.

“Who?”

“The fellow who stole the book!”

I stared at the virulent gleam of spirit. “The book of tunes?”

“The lad put it outside on the shelf,” she said. “This shelf. Charnley told him to. Said it wasn’t worth waiting – the gentleman might never send to America at all.
Get a penny or two for it
, he said.
Put it with all the other rubbishy stuff
.”

The worst thing, I thought, was that Charnley had been happy to blame an innocent lad for his own misdeeds. “And someone stole it?”

“Young man, dark hair, dreadful clothes.” She sniffed. “An apprentice, I warrant. Just came along whistling, glanced round, picked up the book and walked off with it. I did
call out
thief
,” she added, “But the street was busy and no one heard. And then I decided not to call again. About time Charnley was on the wrong end of life, even in a small
way.”

“You didn’t know the apprentice?”

“Never seen him before. Nothing more I can tell you.”

“I’m very grateful.”

She cackled with laughter. “Don’t worry – you’re doing me a favour. I’ve been waiting years to get my own back on Charnley and that shopman of his.” And she
whizzed back up towards the eaves, calling back, “He’s a liar, sir. A sneaking snivelling liar!”

Around midday, I found Hugh in the coffee-house on the Sandhill, sitting in a corner with a newspaper open in front of him; he was chortling over the latest sensational London
trial.

“Listen to this, Charles!” He waved me to a seat. “Lady Monro told the court that she had never been in company with the gentleman in question except with several other persons
present. Mr Elder asked if she had not on one occasion sat her maid behind a screen while she and the gentleman engaged in intimate activities on a drawing room chair...”

“Hugh,” I said, wearily. “Just at the moment, Lady Monro can go to the devil as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been talking to Charnley.”

“The devil you have.” He threw the paper aside. “Then you need something stronger than coffee!” He signalled to a serving girl to bring some ale. “Was he his usual
dreadful self?”

“Why did you not warn me his shopman was a spirit?”

“Is he? Well, I’m not surprised. No living man would put up with him. Do you know, he stood outside the Assembly Rooms for every dancing assembly last year distributing tracts
railing against
trivial amusements
? It’s not trivial to me, I can tell you – it’s my living he’s trying to abolish. Did he have the book?”

“He had once.” I told him the gist of what I had learnt. “What I don’t know is where the book is now, what it has to do with poor Nell’s death and even if
there’s any point in running after it!”

The girl brought the ale and Hugh waved away my offer to pay. We sat in silence for a minute or two, which Hugh occupied by folding the paper and neatly smoothing it out. I drank my ale. Around
us, gentlemen debated Mr Walpole’s misdeeds, or the price of coal, or the advantages of investing in government stock.

“Ready?” Hugh asked eventually.

Just at that moment I wanted to be anywhere but in Mrs McDonald’s house, waiting for the spirit of a murdered girl to disembody, facing Bedwalters’s grief.

I finished my ale. “As much as I’ll ever be.”

The empty bed, with its linen freshly washed and folded, dominated the room. If I looked at it out of the corner of my eye, I half-thought I could see a body there still. But
Bedwalters’s razor was on the table now, and a copy of the latest
Courant.
The women’s clothes had been put away; Bedwalters’s second-best coat hung over the back of the
chair. He brought a bottle of wine and three mismatched glasses from the kitchen; the wine was cheap but not unpalatable.

We sat for three hours, making desultory polite conversation. Beyond the closed door, we could hear the women coming and going, laughter, men’s voices... We talked about the political
situation, the weather, the cracks recently found in All Hallows church. We managed to work up some righteous indignation on this latter topic – the building has been known to be insecure for
years and nothing has yet been done. I thought Walpole’s latest doings would probably occupy a good few minutes but since we were unanimous in condemning the government entirely, that
conversation petered out quicker than all the rest.

Our ingenuity failed us at last. We sat in embarrassed silence until, luckily, someone knocked on the door. Bedwalters opened it to reveal a middle-aged woman of respectable appearance, a letter
in her hand. She looked from one to the other of us in nervous apprehension then her gaze settled on Bedwalters. “I’ve had a note from the landlord, sir, and I was
wondering...”

“Of course I’ll read it to you,” Bedwalters said. “Do come in.”

“I can pay, sir – ”

“We’ll get some food,” Hugh said brightly and dragged me out of the house. Behind we heard the woman explaining how her husband was in the navy and she had four children;
Bedwalters murmured in sympathetic understanding.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Hugh said. “I could swear he’s almost happy.”

We had to go some distance before we could find a shop whose wares we felt happy eating. “All Hallows vestry have elected a new constable,” Hugh said, as we rejected a dark hole of a
house with a few loaves on a dusty table in the window. “Philips the shoemaker.”

“His sons sing in church. Nice voices.”

“His daughter’s one of my pupils. One of those girls who always whine.”

“Philips himself is decent enough.” I squinted against the lowering afternoon sun. “A trifle strict, perhaps.”

We found somewhere clean, bought a large bread pudding and a jug of ale and carried them back to Mrs McDonald’s.

We’d hardly set foot in the house when we realised something had happened.

The door to Nell’s room was shut. The entire population of the house stood in doorways, at the foot of the stairs, in the kitchen. All the women, young and old. A girl of sixteen or so was
trying to stifle tears; Mrs McDonald was patting her on the back. We heard low voices from Nell’s room.

“We’ll come back,” I said.

It was almost an hour before Bedwalters came out to us. We were sitting on the cobbles of the street sharing the ale and pudding when we heard footsteps and looked round to see him in the
doorway.

“She would like to talk to you, Mr Patterson.”

I scrambled up and shook the dirt from my coat skirts. When I went back into the house, the women were nowhere to be seen, clearly going about their business as usual. We ventured into
Bedwalters’s room in some trepidation. The spirit gleamed on the edge of a cheap print hung above the bed – an unsteady fluctuating brightness.

“Mr Patterson,” the spirit said.

“I’m sorry to meet you again under such circumstances.”

“No need to worry, sir,” she said softly. “It was going to happen some day.”

“It should
not
have happened,” Bedwalters said, with sudden vehemence. “I should have protected you.”

“I need to know as much as possible, Nell.” I spoke soothingly more for Bedwalters’s sake than the spirit’s. “We need to know what happened.”

She told us in a quiet voice so calm it was eerily out of place. Hugh, face set hard, sat down on the uneven chair, leaning his arms on his knees; I thrust my clenched fists in my pockets and
hunched into my damp greatcoat. To hear such a terrible tale told in such a tranquil voice was almost more than I could bear. Only Bedwalters seemed composed, watching the gleam with steady
dedication.

It had been like any other day, Nell said. She’d been working. She and two of the other girls enjoyed a gossip in a tavern then went out to ply their trade.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“Down on the Keyside, sir, as usual. But it was very quiet. Hardly anyone about. Not many ships in. The tide was running out, you see, and most of them had set sail.” The young voice
sounded almost amused. “You wouldn’t think there’d ever be a shortage of sailors, would you, sir? But when I went into the taverns they were all dead drunk, or already taken. So I
went into the Old Man Inn.”

“A very disreputable house,” Bedwalters said. “The watch have to break up fights there almost every night.”

“And I met the young gentleman there again.”

“Again?” I said. “You’d met him before?”

“Four or five times, sir. Though not always in the Old Man.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jem, sir.”

Hugh groaned. How many
Jems
were there in the world?

“Can you describe him?”

“A year or two younger than you,” the spirit said. “About your height, but a bit darker.”

“With his own hair?”

“Yes, sir. And a bit of a stutter, sir, except when he’s excited – if you know what I mean.”

I knew exactly what she meant. And anyone can feign a stutter. “Did he ever tell you what he does for a living?”

“I think he said he was an apprentice, sir.”

“In what trade?”

“He didn’t say.”

“When did you first meet him?”

“A year or more ago, sir. Usually in the street. He kept a lookout for me, he said. But I only came across him now and again. I – ” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I think maybe he wasn’t from here. Maybe he was from Shields or Sunderland or some other place. If he lived in Newcastle, I think I’d have seen him more often.”

Hugh swore. But I was heartened by the news. If the apprentice lived in some other local town, he might think himself safe there. He might not have run off to London after all.

“Did he ever threaten you?”

“Never,” the spirit said firmly. “I never imagined he might. He was always so full of himself, never thought of anyone else.” A hint of amusement. “Thought no woman
could resist him. Thought he was a heaven-sent lover. But he was nothing of the sort. No better than any of the men. No better, no worse.” Her voice softened. “Not the kind
I
like.”

Hugh shuffled his feet in embarrassment; Bedwalters kept his steadfast gaze on the spirit of his lover.

“So what was different this time?” I said. “What made him violent towards you?”

“The book,” she said simply. “It was the book. And I don’t know why, sir. Why should anyone kill for a book? And it wasn’t an expensive book, neither. Nothing but a
book of old tunes.”