The Ladder Dancer Read Free Page A

with a smirk. ‘How is Mrs Patterson?’
    ‘I want a new coat,’ I said shortly.
    He seemed almost gratified by my rudeness, bowing much lower than he had on my first entrance. If he’d not been the best tailor in town, I’d have walked out there and then. My fingers were itching; a voice in the back of my mind was repeating endlessly, You can’t afford this. You can’t afford this!
    Watson reached up to the highest shelves and brought down the most expensive, and impractical, satins and silks. ‘If I might venture to guide you—’ He unrolled a bolt of silk with a flourish. ‘With your colouring, sir, you would look very well in puce.’
    ‘I would not,’ I said shortly. ‘I want a light-brown coat with green cuffs, exactly like the one I’m wearing.’ The voice in my head was saying that puce was a dreadful colour but surely there was nothing wrong with that nice dark plum over there . . .
    ‘And a waistcoat?’ Watson suggested, unrolling another bolt.
    That picture of going out with Esther in her splendid best and me in frayed cuffs came back to haunt me. I took a deep breath to steady myself.
    ‘In dark green, to match the coat.’
    ‘And embroidery?’ he asked brightly, his smile a trifle relieved, as if he thought he was winning a battle against a difficult customer. ‘We have some very fine embroideresses—’
    ‘Plain.’
    ‘Bumble bees are the latest fashion . . .’
    ‘Plain,’ I said. ‘With the smallest buttons you have.’
    I left the shop having ordered two coats and the waistcoat, with the prospect of a bill larger than any I’d ever received in my life. To be paid out of Esther’s money.
    Preoccupied, unhappy, I turned towards the Key.
    There was no fog today. Sun glinted on the metal fittings of the pulleys, on the iron bands of barrels piled outside a tavern. Few ships were moored, and there was a lazy, desultory air about the place. The ship involved in the rescue of the woman had been allowed to depart, delayed by only a day. I couldn’t even be sure I could identify the spot where a child had lost its life before it was aware enough to know the world.
    I walked through groups of aged sailors swapping tall tales of peril and audacity, passed Jas Williams’ chandlers’ shop, which was doing good business. That was where George had grown up, wheezing over every flour barrel and pestering his father for a fiddle. Not that George had ever grown up of course; he’d been murdered while in my charge, and it was only that thought, and the guilt that accompanied it, that gave me any patience with him at all.
    On the corner of one of the most disreputable chares, I found the lodging house next to the Old Man Inn, and called for a spirit I knew that had died there. It came, a faint gleam on a windowsill, apparently pleased to meet me again. ‘Mr Patterson, sir! You’re keeping well, I hope?’
    ‘Alas,’ I said with mock sadness, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. ‘Married.’
    The spirit burst out laughing. He’d been the landlord of the neighbouring inn in life, and he had a landlord’s laugh, round and from the belly. ‘Cheer up, sir. There’s good things about marriage as well as bad!’
    ‘Yes,’ I agreed ruefully. ‘You’re right.’ And I ought to remember, I thought, that there were more good things than bad.
    ‘For one thing,’ said the spirit. ‘You’ll never have to pay for another whore!’
    I went on, hurriedly. ‘I confess I came for information.’
    ‘One of your mysteries?’ The spirit had helped me with another only a month ago. Then it said, more sombrely, ‘Not the child?’
    I nodded. ‘Something about that affair strikes me as not quite right.’
    ‘Didn’t see it,’ the spirit said, with a note of regret. ‘But there were plenty in the inn that did. Went rushing out as soon as they heard the screams.’
    Which meant, I reflected, that they’d not seen it and probably only had their information at second hand. ‘What do