Free Chords and Discords by Roz Southey

Many’s the time I’ve seen her creeping into a doorway to escape him. Still, persistence pays – he seems to
have won her in the end. Though much good it did either of them.”
    Below us, the church was almost empty. The curate, head bowed, hands gripped together, came out under the gallery and hurried up the nave to the vestry door. Strolger was chortling. “Wrote
her odes!”
    I brought my attention back to him, startled. “The lad?”
    “Reams of the stuff – verse after verse on Holloway’s best notepaper.” He leant forward conspiratorially. “Stolen, of course.”
    “The paper or the verse?”
    “Both!”
    “The maid showed you the verses?”
    “No, no – she dropped one in the porch.” He added scrupulously, “I gave it back to her, of course.”
    “But not before reading it.”
    “I read the first line. That was enough to tell me the rest wasn’t worth noticing.”
    I was thinking of the notes Bairstowe had received. “And the hand? Was the writing ill-formed? Childish?”
    He was surprised but answered readily enough. “Not at all. Very neat. I’d wager he was one of Bedwalters’ pupils.” He glanced around, was apparently satisfied that
everything was in order. “Care for ale, Patterson?”
    He went to the left side of the organ – the side nearest the charity pews – and lifted a curtain that hung over that side of the organ case. I ducked under it, and saw a very cosy
sight.
    The curtain enclosed an area of the organ loft from which the pews had been removed. On the right, the side of the organ case had also been taken away, exposing the inner workings – ranks
of dusty metal pipes on wooden soundboards, hung with cobwebs and scattered with mouse droppings. A chair had been placed for the bellows blower by the handle he had to pump, and an ancient
armchair, clearly for Strolger, stood by the side of a shelf screwed on to the wall. On the shelf was a large jug of ale, nearly empty, and two tankards, one close by the bellow blower’s
chair, the other by the armchair. London newspapers were piled on the floor.
    “Have to have something to occupy us during the sermons,” Strolger murmured impishly. Now I was close to him, I could smell the ale on his breath. “The chaplain’s a good
fellow, but so earnest.”
    I could not argue with that. Strolger took up the bellows blower’s tankard, wiped the top of it with the flat of his palm and poured ale into it for me. The floor was thick with dust
except in a narrow band well trampled by Strolger and the bellows blower to and from their respective chairs.
    I went across to look more closely at the innards of the organ. It was in a worse condition than I had anticipated. Some of the pipes stood drunkenly askew and part of one rank – six or
seven large flue pipes – had been taken from its soundboard and stacked against the wall. Judging by the dust, the pipes had been there some years. The soundboard on which they had stood was
warped and cracked.
    Strolger was watching me from his armchair. “Quite right, Patterson. Whole thing needs replacing. If it was just a case of dusting the sliders or something of the sort, I’d do it
myself. But I can’t put right something as serious as that.”
    “How long since you asked Bairstowe to deal with it?”
    “Five years or more.”
    “Call in Bridges,” I said, ducking out of the interior. “Or some other London organbuilder.”
    He threw up his hands in mock horror. “And pay all that expense when we have a perfectly good local builder? I quote the gentlemen of the vestry of course.”
    “But if Bairstowe doesn’t do the work – ”
    Strolger grinned. “My dear Patterson, you know perfectly well that all the gentlemen and ladies want is a loud noise. Who cares whether it is in tune or not?”
    I considered him for a moment. “You haven’t said yet, sir, whether you are to blame for the threats.”
    He chuckled. “No putting you off, Patterson! Very well, a straight