Chapter 9: The tallest robe in the choir sings a short note

Look closely at the robe on the bell rope. Heavy green wool, faded at the shoulders, a deep hood folded flat at the back. The hem has been let down so many times that the old stitch lines run round it like the rings of a tree. It is long. Absurdly long.

Why was it hanging there, dripping onto the stones? Because every May the Market Choir washes its twelve robes for the spring concert, and every May they hang wherever there is a hook. Eleven fit on the coat pegs in the Flower Hall. The twelfth will not.

“Jory's,” said Pim, when you asked him the next morning. “Made for him the year they regilded the clock. On Jory the hem sits at his ankles, and Jory ducks under the Fish Hall arch. Hang it anywhere else and it drags on the wet floor. My bell rope is the only hook in the market high enough.” He gave the rope a fond tug. “Twenty Mays now.”

First: The last spring concert fills the Flower Hall

This was the last spring concert the Old Market would ever hold, and the Flower Hall was packed to the iron pillars. Buckets of lilac stood along the walls. The café had sold out of buns by six. Even the porters came, scrubbed and awkward in clean shirts.

The choirmaster, Isaak Penrose, made an announcement before the first song. Petra Lund, whose voice could carry from the Fish Hall to the Clock Gallery, had lost it entirely; she sat in the front row with a scarf up to her ears. Ines Morrow, from a choir across the river, would sing Petra's solo tonight, in Petra's robe.

A murmur went round. A stranger in the choir, in the very last year! But Ines smiled at the front row, and the hall forgave her before she had sung a note.

The choir keeps two old customs. It sings with hoods up from the first note to the last, so that the market hears voices and not faces. And the candle song, the oldest song the market owns, is sung with the hall lights out, each singer holding a single candle.

The candle song ends on one low note from Jory Keel, held for eight slow counts. Pim counts them every year with his foot. Half the hall counts with him, under its breath, the way a crowd counts down the last seconds of a cup final.

The places never change either. Front row, the sopranos, Ines in the middle. Second row, the altos. Back row, the tall men: Owen Pask at the left end, right beside the little table that held the collection tin for the market's farewell party, and Jory in the middle, where he has stood for twenty years.

Jory has one more habit, famous among the stallholders. He dresses at home and comes in last, through the alley door beside the table, hood already up, a minute before the first song, like a footballer who always runs out of the tunnel behind the rest of the team.

The alley door stays open during concerts so that the singers can come and go.

Second: Twelve candles and an empty table

He came in last that night too, a long green shape in the doorway, and took his place. The first songs went by in a warm blur of lilac and applause. Then the lights went out, twelve candles were lit one by one, and the candle song began.

Inspector Elena Dorn, beside you at the back, murmured, “Watch hands, not faces. In the dark, hands are all anybody has.” So you counted candles. Twelve. They stayed twelve, and they stayed in their places, through every verse.

You noticed two small things, and you did not know yet what they were worth. In the middle of the back row, the candle was held lower than the candles on either side of it. And below it, where the light reached the riser, the hem of that robe lay folded on the boards like a sleeping cat.

Then came the last note. Pim's foot began to tap beside you. One. Two. Three. Four. The note stopped. Pim's foot stopped too, in the air, and he frowned. Somebody behind you whispered that Jory was getting old. In the front row, Petra Lund turned round in her scarf and held up four fingers, outraged, as if a referee had blown the whistle halfway through a penalty.

The lights came up to warm applause. Isaak Penrose turned to thank the hall, glanced at the little table behind the back row, and went pale. The collection tin was gone.

Third: Dorn's list behind the risers

The audience wanted it to be the stranger. Nobody knew Ines; she had come from across the river. The porters wanted it to be Owen Pask, who stood nearest the table and still owed two of them money from a darts match.

Dorn walked once round the risers, looked out of the alley door into the dark, and then gave you her list, quietly, while the choir filed off to the back room.

Check who could reach the table. It stood behind the back row, beside the alley door; nobody in the audience could get there without crossing a stage full of candles.

Check what each singer's hands were doing. Twelve candles stayed in twelve places, so nobody on the risers stepped down.

Check every voice you could hear. A singer whose voice you heard the whole time was standing where you heard it.

Check whether every robe held the person it was made for. A robe with a hood is the easiest disguise there is, because a choir is meant to look alike.

That cleared the obvious suspects at a stroke. Ines's solo rang out through the whole candle song from the front row; you heard every word. Owen's candle never moved from the left end of the back row. Neither could have reached a tin behind the risers.

So whoever took it came in from the alley. And an ordinary thief from the alley would not have needed anybody on the risers at all. Somebody, though, had arranged for a place to be kept warm. Now stop and think. Whose place, and why?

Fourth: The first way, by the hem on the riser

Go back to the bell rope. Jory's robe was made for Jory, and on Jory the hem sits at his ankles. That is why it needed the highest hook in the market; that is the whole reason it was hanging from Pim's rope.

On the night, the robe in the middle of the back row did not sit at anybody's ankles. Its hem lay folded on the riser, and its candle was held lower than its neighbours'. Somebody a head shorter than Jory was wearing Jory's robe, the way a boy in his father's football shirt wears it down to his knees.

The long green shape in the doorway had not been Jory.

Fifth: The second way, by the eight slow counts

Now forget the robe and simply listen again. For twenty years Jory has held the last note of the candle song for eight slow counts, and Pim has counted every one of them. It is the market's oldest unbroken record, and nobody has ever challenged it, least of all its holder.

Tonight it stopped at four. A man does not lose half his breath in a week. But a singer who knows the tune and not the custom stops exactly where the music on the page stops. The voice in the middle of the back row was not Jory's.

Two roads, one finish. Jory was not on the risers, and someone had taken pains to make the hall believe he was. A man who simply wanted to miss a concert would have stayed at home. Only a man who needed to be seen in one place while he stood in another needs a stand-in.

Sixth: Two brothers share one robe

The long green shape was Kit Keel, Jory's younger brother, who sings in a church choir and stands a full head shorter. Jory had asked him that afternoon to stand in for one concert, hood up, saying nothing. “Nerves,” Jory had said. “The last one. Can't face it.” Kit, who adores his brother, asked no more.

He had put the robe on in the alley, hood up, and walked in last, as Jory always did. On the risers he sang the bass line he had learned from the music, every note of it, and stopped the last one where the page told him to.

Jory had waited in the alley, stepped in during the candle song while every eye was on twelve small flames, and lifted the tin. Dorn found him two streets away, sitting on a step with it on his knees, unopened. He had debts nobody knew about, and he had not been able to make himself open it.

He gave it back to Isaak Penrose in the café, in front of everyone, which was harder than any note he had ever held.

Mrs. Fenn brought him tea without being asked, and Pim said gruffly that eight counts or four, the rope would be ready for his robe next May, if there was a next May.

It was there, at Mrs. Fenn's counter, that you saw the other odd thing of the evening and thought nothing of it for weeks. And who had left a basket of ripe red strawberries on that counter in May, when every grower in the market swore their first berries were still hard and green?