Secret Lament (24 page)

“The ruffians caught me,” I said, wiping away the blood with my handkerchief. “Why the flap, Hugh?”

“Bedwalters,” Mrs Foxton said grimly.

“He’s after you.”

“What!?”

“I went down to the Printing Office this morning,” Hugh said, “I overheard Bedwalters and Mazzanti talking. Mazzanti said you’d been making advances to Julia; he told
Bedwalters that Julia was frightened of you.”

I swore. I remembered that Mazzanti had accused me of something of the sort in his own drawing room but we had both known the accusations weren’t true – he had been defending himself
by attacking someone else. But to go as far as to take the tale to Bedwalters!

“And,” Hugh pressed, “Ord’s told him he saw you talking to Julia –
intimately
.”

“Ord!” I said in outrage. That devil! To accuse me when he’d asked a favour of me! And such a favour too! He must be desperate to divert suspicion from himself but why in
heaven’s name did he not see the consequences for himself? What was to prevent me telling Bedwalters about the letters?

There was a hammering at the door.

“Oh God,” Hugh said. Mrs Foxton’s spirit disappeared.

“Bedwalters is talking of arresting you!” Hugh said frantically. “This is all your own fault!”

“
My
fault?”

“He only wanted to
talk
to you until he realised you’d left town.”

“I did not leave town!”

“Of all the times to disappear!” Hugh said in despair. “Couldn’t you see how suspicious it would look?”

“It wasn’t my fault!”

Mrs Foxton’s spirit came back, sliding between the door and the frame.

“Quick, Mr Patterson, out of the back and over the wall. Mr Demsey, help him. I’ll delay the constable.”

And she disappeared again.

“This is preposterous,” I said, trying to dig the letters out of my coat pocket. “Look, I’ll talk to Bedwalters. I’ve got evidence.” I waved the letters.

“Not now!”

“But they’ll give the lie to Ord’s story.”

“Do you
want
to end up in gaol?!” Hugh demanded, bundling me towards the door.

“No, no!” I dug my heels in. “If I must go, there’s something I must take.” I pushed Hugh on to the landing. “Check that the way is clear.”

Hugh was right; I had to go. But I had one crucially incriminating piece of evidence in my possession: Julia Mazzanti’s ribbon. If Bedwalters searched the room and found it, I’d be
in trouble for sure. I snatched up the mattress, retrieved the ribbon and stuffed it into a pocket. I also slid two guineas out of my store from the sale of the organ.

By the time I was finished, Hugh was in the room again, snatching at my sleeve. We ran for the servants’ stairs, were only just on them when we heard footsteps pounding up the front
stairs. Bedwalters must have brought helpers – he himself was not capable of such speed.

At the foot of the servants’ stair, Hugh threw his weight against the door to the yard and it flew open. Across the moonlit yard, the back gate was bolted and locked. Hugh made a cradle of
his hands, I stepped in them and scrambled over the wall, then reached down to help Hugh up. There were sounds of banging from the house, and shouting.

We dropped down into the cobbled street. I seized Hugh’s arm.

“Go home.”

“No.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble. If you help me, Bedwalters will be after you too.”

“I won’t go.”

More shouting. Someone appeared at the far end of the street.

Hugh shoved me in the opposite direction. “Run!” We ran, stumbling on cobbles, to the end of the street. Hugh gasped for breath. “Go right. I’ll decoy them.”

“Hugh – ”

“Go!” he yelled.

I went right, dived into an alley and ran like the devil. Behind me, I could hear the shouts of the men dying away. They must be following Hugh. I prayed they did not catch him.

At the junction with the next street, I stopped and bent over, trying to recover my breath. I needed help. It was easy enough to outrun a couple of Bedwalters’s men but I could not hide
from the constable forever. I needed to be able to move around and find the murderer, and I couldn’t do that if Bedwalters clapped me in prison to await the next Assizes. And all this because
of this wretched ability to step through to another world. It was a skill that was like to get me hanged.

There was only one person who could help me. I couldn’t get Esther involved in this mess and any attempt to explain what had really happened would met with derision. Except from one
person.

Claudius Heron.

The houses on Northumberland Street are those of the gentry and are fine monuments to history and good taste.

[
Visit to the town of Newcastle upon Tine
by Harriet Brown (Edinburgh: published for the Author, 1703)]

Beyond the town wall, Northumberland Street is a great straight stretch of road that dawdles eventually into the country around Barras Bridge. Houses here are large and sit
back from the street in extensive gardens; they always make me nervous – they look aloof and intimidating, reminding me that I am, after all, only a tradesman.

Claudius Heron’s house is larger than most and older, a splendid ancient house with generations of Herons at the back of it. Hordes of Herons have died here; there is one room so full of
spirits that it is shut up and left unused – no one could possibly get a wink of sleep in the old bed in which so many Herons have died.

I hauled myself up over the garden wall and dropped down the other side on to the soft earth of a flowerbed. My footprints were no doubt emblazoned there for all to see, so when I stepped out on
to grass, I scuffed a toe across the place where I had landed.

The house was in darkness but the high-riding full moon cast an unearthly glow across it, glinting off glass. The windows have eyebrows in the old-fashioned style – stone decorations that
make the windows look permanently astonished. A couple of weathered statues on the roof represent some indistinguishable deities.

My heart began to sink. The place was plainly entirely shut up for the night. No chance of a wayward servant rolling home late and half-drunk; any such servant would be dismissed within days of
entering Heron’s employment – or never get into his employment in the first place.

I went softly across the grass towards the square bulk of the house. As I neared, the shape resolved itself into a multi-gabled façade hinting at the many rooms behind. I knew Heron had
in effect divided up the house into two parts – one where his own rooms were situated, a second where his young son’s retinue lodged. I even thought I knew which part was which but
precisely which window gave on to Heron’s private rooms, I didn’t have the least idea.

As I hovered indecisively on the dark path that ran round the house, a spirit said: “Can I help you, sir?” The spirit had been a pert young woman by the sound of it, deferential but
with just a hint of sauciness.

I tried for a confident tone. “I have an important message for Mr Heron.”

“If you’ll just wait here, sir,” she said, as polite as if she was answering the door. “I’ll see if he’s in. Who shall I say is calling?”

Nervously, I gave her my name.

I stood on the dark path for what seemed to be an age. Spirits are usually so swift in passing messages. Then, on an upper floor, I saw the flicker of candlelight. Another long wait. Candlelight
in a second room. What the devil was going on? Then the spirit said close by my ear: “He’ll see you sir. Go round to the door by the kitchen.”

I felt my way to the back of the house. The moonlight was deceiving, casting impenetrable pools of shadow just where I wanted to step. An archway in a wall led to a stable yard; I heard horses
snuffling, hoofs clattering against stone. I nearly fell over a mounting block, eased my way round a pump with a full trough below it. Candlelight flickered behind windows in one corner of the
yard. I found a door and waited until I heard bolts shifting. The door was pulled open. I saw in the candlelight a shadowy figure; a voice said deferentially, “If you would enter,
sir.”

I ducked through the low door into a room with a deep chill in it. A sink in one corner, a washing tub in another. A night light stood on an old scarred table in the middle of the room.

The servant was bolting and locking the door; he came across to pick up the light. One of the reasons for the delay was that he had taken the trouble to dress – in shirt and breeches at
least; he hadn’t bothered to put on his wig and his scalp was covered by a dark stubble. He was tall, his face a trifle harsh though perfectly neutral in expression; he was in his
mid-thirties, perhaps – Ned Reynolds’s age. He gave every sign of being a personal manservant, although I had always imagined Heron’s valet would be an elderly man, meek and
silent.

“This way, sir.” He was a Londoner by his accent. He led the way through the kitchens, past the butler’s pantry, through the servants’ door and out into the main part of
the house. Dark rooms flickered around me in the candlelight; ghostly painted faces winked and leered. Then a staircase. I had seen the main stairs of the house and this was nothing like as large
but it was far from being a servants’ stair.

In the shifting candlelight we negotiated two flights of stairs without mishap. At a closed door, we stopped and the servant scraped his fingernail on the wood. Heron’s voice called,
“Enter!”

The opening door showed me an opulent room lit by a single branch of candles. Even in the flickering light, I could see the rich colours of the curtains around the disordered bed, the deep
comfortable chairs by the unlit fire, a small Roman statue on an occasional table. Heron himself was dressed in a brocade gown hastily flung over a nightrobe; he had tied his fair hair back out of
his eyes. He was clearly one of those men who can snap back into alertness whenever he chooses; it was the small hours of the morning but he looked as if he had had an undisturbed night’s
sleep. Beside him, in this elegant expensive room, I felt shabby, grubby and disreputable.

“I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” I murmured awkwardly. Heron was looking at me with an enigmatic expression that I took a moment or two to decipher. Surely he was not
amused? What in heaven’s name was there to be amused about? I suddenly perceived the enormity of what I was about to ask. I wanted Heron to shelter me against the law, to lie, if necessary,
and to run the risk of whatever penalties the law chose to impose should it find out his complicity.

I shook my head. “No, no. I should not have come. I will go.”

He did not stir, merely pointed a finger at one of the chairs. “You will not.” He dismissed the servant. “Sit down and tell me what has happened.”

It is impossible to argue with Heron when he uses that tone of voice. I sat down. He strolled to a table in a corner and poured brandy into two large glasses, held one out to me.

I gathered my wits and told him what had happened. It was a long tale for I could only explain properly by detailing my visits to the other world. Heron was the only man I could confide in, for
half a year ago he and I found ourselves stranded in that world with a murderer intent on killing us. He lit another branch of candles to improve the light, sat down opposite me and listened in
silence. I hesitated to speak ill of Philip Ord for gentlemen tend to stick together clannishly against outside attacks but since he had spoken against me to Bedwalters, I felt I had no choice.

Heron did not defend Ord; his lip merely curled contemptuously.

Mazzanti was a different matter; when I told Heron that Mazzanti had regaled Bedwalters with the imagined tale of my advances to Julia, he said some very sharp things about fools and foreigners.
When I told him about Bedwalters’s visit to my lodgings, his anger boiled over.

“What the devil does the man think he’s doing?”

I have a great esteem for Bedwalters. Even in these circumstances I felt obliged to defend him. “He is duty bound to investigate any information that comes to his attention.”

“Nonsense,” Heron snapped. “Why should he suspect you any more than this Corelli fellow? You discovered the body together, and he is an unknown quantity where you are
not!”

“Corelli is probably at sea by now.” I told him of Hugh’s encounter with Corelli at Houghton-le-Spring.

“He wanted to warn you?” Heron demanded, going straight for the most interesting part of the puzzle. “Why should he care what happens to you?”

“I don’t have the least idea. I think he may be back in town too.” I told him of the spirit’s testimony, how it had seen a man keeping watch outside Mrs Baker’s
house.

Heron pushed himself to his feet, the draught setting the candles flaring; he reached for the bell to summon the servant back. “Then Bedwalters has a far better suspect close at hand. And
why the devil has he discounted the idea that the girl was attacked by a passer by? Fowler!”

The servant had appeared in the doorway so swiftly that I suspected he had been outside the door, indulging in the usual pastime of servants – eavesdropping. “Fetch my
clothes,” Heron said brusquely. “And wake one of the footmen. The tallest. I want him to accompany me through the town. Tell him to bring a cudgel.”

“You’re going to rouse Bedwalters?” I asked, incredulously as the servant looked out Heron’s clothes.

“If you can rouse me, I can rouse him,” he said tartly. “Have you told me everything, Patterson?”

I had not, of course. I had not mentioned Esther and her intruder. Nor the ribbon I had found in the bushes. “Everything I can think of that is useful,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, clearly suspicious. But he said nothing, merely nodding when the servant held up a coat for his approval. “There are rumours,” he said, “that the
murderer has killed before.”

“There are always such rumours.” But I mused over the possibility as the servant helped Heron dress. I could still not fathom how the attacks on Mazzanti fitted in with Julia’s
death or indeed if they had any relevance at all. And all this talk of spies – I saw the servant, Fowler, grin when I outlined this theory.