Mr Corbett's Ghost

by Leon Garfield

  ‘No more to him than that?’ whispered Benjamin wonderingly to the old man. There was no answer. Benjamin turned. The road was quiet; the coach had gone. So absorbed had he been in the emptying of Mister Corbett, that all sound must have escaped him. Once more he was alone with the perished apothecary.

  But the difference—oh, the difference! Beside him now, with both feet almost on the ground, stood the apothecary’s ghost.

  Gone was the gloomy weight, the listless, damning sack of flesh and bone and halted blood. In its place was a Mister Corbett better than new. Not the sharpest eye could have told he was not what he seemed. This fellow could be passed off anywhere as the genuine apothecary.

  Down to the same blueness about the chin and the same mole on the side of his nose, it was Mister Corbett. Even Benjamin, though he’d seen every inch rise up uncannily, was momentarily deceived.

  ‘Mister Corbett, sir—’ he said uneasily.

  But the ghost did not reply. It stood and stared at the boy in a manner most timidly solemn, like a child on its first day in school.

  Now triumph, joy, and amazement struggled in Benjamin’s breast. His misery was at an end. He felt—yes, he felt in that moment almost pleased to see the luckless man looking so much like himself.

  ‘Mister Corbett!’ he cried, and took a pace forward.

  The ghost shrank back.

  ‘Mister Corbett!’ repeated Benjamin, advancing another step.

  The ghost shuddered and put up its imitation arms as if to defend itself.

  ‘Mister Corbett,’ said Benjamin for a third time, with much of the triumph gone from his voice. The ghost’s aspect was not encouraging to it: its face expressed terror.

  A cold discomfort entered the boy. He thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of defiance.

  ‘What are you staring at, Mister Corbett?’

  The terror in the phantom’s eyes grew extreme. Mister Corbett was staring at the apprentice who had hated him.

  ‘I . . . I never touched you, you know,’ said Benjamin, and wondered if Mister Corbett had any notion of what had befallen him: if he knew of the house and the black ribbon and the desolate murderers’ walk.

  Being a spirit, no doubt such knowledge was possible to it. Benjamin shivered. Was it likewise possible that it knew now—for the first time—the scope of the apprentice’s hate?

  ‘You brought it on yourself, Mister Corbett. You were as hard as iron,’ said Benjamin unhappily.

  The ghost’s lips moved. Benjamin strained to hear. The voice was all but withered away, having no solid organ at its origin to give it resonance and substance.

  ‘I—am—in—hell . . .’

  ‘No you ain’t!’ cried Benjamin indignantly, for he was frightened beyond measure at such a striking notion. ‘You’re on Hampstead Heath, Mister Corbett, as well you must know!’

  But the news did not seem to cheer the apothecary’s ghost tremendously, and its dread of its murderer did not seem much abated.

  ‘Cold. I am so cold,’ it moaned, and plucked at its scarf in that mean and finicky way Mister Corbett had so often plucked at it when he’d been alive.

  ‘It’s a cold night, Mister Corbett, so there’s nothing unnatural in your feeling it. If—’

  He stopped. There was someone coming. A horseman. He whipped round the bend in the road too quick for Benjamin to hide.

  ‘Happy New Year to the pair of you!’ shouted the rider, and galloped on.

  Benjamin wiped the sweat from his brow.

  ‘The Lord be praised, Mister Corbett! He took you for a living man!’

  Sadly, the phantom nodded.

  ‘A living man, Mister Corbett! Think of it! It’s only me that knows you’re not!’

  Filled now with a fine, nervous determination to make the best of his situation, he began to walk back towards the turnpike.

  Then a grim thought struck him. What if the ghost should seek revenge? What if it should accuse him? Was that not the proper office of ghosts?

  Several times he turned, longing desperately to ask, ‘Would you betray me, Mister Corbett?’ But each time the question stuck in his throat and the ghost came on, bent-shouldered, stooping, with that aggravating spying air he’d ever had in life.

  ‘I’m so cold!’ it moaned. ‘So very cold!’ And it continued to spy and peer as if for a warm corner somewhere.

  ‘So it’s you again, lad!’ said the turnpike keeper, hanging his head out of his window like a battered sign. Then he saw the apothecary’s ghost. He stared.

  ‘I thought—’ he began. ‘I could have sworn—’ he began again. ‘I could have taken my oath that—’

  ‘It turned out that he was only poorly,’ said Benjamin, his heart beating furiously. ‘And now he’s as good as new.’

  ‘I’d have gone bail for his being dead as mutton!’ muttered the keeper, shaking his head, while the ghost of Mister Corbett returned his stare in a chilly, melancholy fashion, but spoke not a word.

  ‘Poorly, you said? Now you come to mention it, he does look a bit pale around the chops. And, no offence, it don’t improve him any.’

  ‘I’m so cold!’ whispered the ghost at last.

  ‘Cold, is he? Not surprised. He ain’t dressed over warm. If you’ve any Christian charity in you, lad (as I hopes is in every mortal soul!) take him into the Spaniards’ Inn for a tot of brandy and rum. Half and half, with a sprig of rosemary. That’ll put roses in his cheeks! Go on, lad! Be a Christian on this New Year’s Eve and warm your freezing friend!’

  With all his heart the boy longed to go into the inn, for it was a cheerful place. Its windows shone and there was a smell of roast and onions in the air. But he feared the ghost’s accusing finger . . . and cry of ‘Murderer!’

  ‘Go on, lad!’ urged the keeper, a powerful minder of the world’s business.

  ‘Directly! Directly!’ cried Benjamin, backing towards the inn and wondering how best he could escape. God knew whether the warmth of a parlour might not give the ghost strength for his damaging cry!

  ‘Would you betray me?’ he whispered desperately.

  ‘Betray you?’ echoed the apothecary’s ghost.

  ‘Accuse me for . . . for revenge—?’

  ‘What would I want with revenge? I am in hell and want for—’

  But what the phantom wanted for was drowned out by the keeper’s impatient cries of ‘Hurry, there!’ for his kindliness was of an interfering, bullying sort.

  ‘Directly! Directly!’ answered Benjamin.

  ‘D’you want help with your friend?’

  ‘No! No!’

  He took the spectre’s hand. An unpleasant moment, that. Not so much the chill (as of a piece of cold air), but the lack of substance. There was nothing to grasp. His fingers closed in on themselves. Horrible.

  He glanced back to see if the keeper had noticed. But for once that nosy fellow had seen nothing.

  ‘A near thing, Mister Corbett,’ breathed Benjamin. ‘We must be careful. Though you look as good as new, there’s less to you than meets the eye.’

  They had entered the inn yard where tall coaches stood upon the moon-washed cobbles like dark ships becalmed on a silver sea.

  Once more Benjamin stopped. The inn beckoned—but he was afraid. He stared back. The keeper was watching them all the way.

  ‘Give you a hand?’ he bellowed.

  God forbid! Benjamin shook his head and hurried on. Abruptly, a horseboy scuttled from the stables back to the warmth of the inn. He saw the wayfarers—even crossed their path—and briefly waved. He never noticed the uncanny circumstance of two figures approaching with but the sound of a single pair of feet.

  This gave Benjamin a touch of confidence, but not very much of it. He glanced sideways at his murdered master, shuffling stoop-shouldered as though his overlong scarf was weighing him down.

  He’s bound to betray me, thought Benjamin gloomily, no matter what he says. It’s in his nature to betray me.

  But the ghost only shuddered and
moaned: ‘I’m so cold. Who would have thought hell to be so cold?’

  Benjamin Partridge bit his lip till the blood came.

  ‘You’re no more in hell than I am, Mister Corbett. And well you must know it! It’s a cold night—’

  ‘What’s keeping you now, lad?’ came the keeper’s voice, surly with charitable intent.

  A lamp swung gently in the inn’s porch. To mark the New Year and good resolutions, someone had polished it and the landlord had bought clean oil. It burned brightly and set off the timber work to advantage.

  Benjamin sighed. Sooner or later there was a world to be mingled with. Was not here and now as good a place and time as any?

  ‘You’ll not betray me, Mister Corbett? You swear you’ll not betray me?’

  The ghost looked at him in terror and grief.

  ‘Not I! Not I!’

  ‘All right, Mister Corbett. We’ll go into the warm, then.’

  They passed under the porch lamp. As they did so, Benjamin’s confidence suffered a sharp decline. He had made a detestable discovery. He had seen the lamp through the phantom’s head! In the light—in a good light—the apothecary’s ghost was transparent!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ONCE WITHIN THE inn, a thousand fears had invaded him. Every flicker of flame had terrified him; every sudden leap of the fire, every glow of a lighted pipe had given him such dread as only the deepest shadows could partly dispel.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mister Corbett—keep out of the light!’

  Desolately the phantom had returned his frantic looks, as if unaware of its own infirmity. It hung its head, ashamed of it knew not what . . . and followed its murderer close by the darkest wall of the candlelit parlour.

  It was now half after eleven and the parlour was filled with travellers and their servants, briefly united in the fellowship of the hour. The New Year drew nigh and, as the wine flowed down, good resolutions flowed out, tempered with a rosy whiff of claret.

  ‘Merciful heaven, Mister Corbett! Draw in your shoulder! Oh God! I can see that gentleman’s face as plain as day through you!’

  The phantom exposed its ugly teeth in a semblance of Mister Corbett’s unpleasant smile . . . and drew back against the wall with a pitiful air of shame.

  ‘Thank you, Mister Corbett. That was uncommon obliging of you!’

  A dozen times already, he’d had occasion to thank Mister Corbett with such urgent gratitude. Not that the phantom had put itself in the way of discovery, but there were a terrible number of tapers and candles going about the parlour like fireflies, to light extinguished pipes, read letters, admire trifles of lace, even to search for a dropped half-penny.

  And each time, Benjamin’s heart chilled as he glimpsed the flame through the phantom’s substance. It seemed not possible that such an eerie thing had passed unnoticed. Yet neighbours in the room—good, respectable folk—continued to smile at him and murdered Mister Corbett and raise their tankards politely whenever their eyes turned that way. He believed he’d collected enough ‘Happy New Years’ to see him out at a hundred; and each one provoked more anguish than the last.

  With all manner of twistings and turnings and leanings forward, he struggled to cast Mister Corbett into the shadows. An evil moment came when a pair of tankards were passed along the line, one for him and one for the pallid gentleman by his side—’with the compliments of the House’.

  Frantic was his reaching to keep a hold on the second tankard: yet with deep caution lest he poke his arm, hand, tankard and all clean through Mister Corbett. And all the while, that murdered man sat silent by his side, with never a look nor a sound that was not obligingly lifelike; never a reproach on his murderer save in the deathly chill that came from his person and chilled Benjamin’s shoulder, arm, and thigh.

  But what was he doing now, that cold, cold ghost? In fear and anger, Benjamin suddenly became aware of the phantom’s singular behaviour.

  First a hand, then a foot, then a hand again it was slyly holding up before the fire. It was charmed by its own transparency! On its face was that self-same look that Benjamin had known so well in life—a deep, absorbed and searching look . . .

  ‘Good God, Mister Corbett! What are you at? You will betray us!’

  Guiltily the ghost snatched back its hand and shrank once more into the shade. Piteous were its eyes as it peered at Benjamin, and its thin lips moved unhappily: ‘I’ll not betray . . . only, give me warmth . . . forgive—’

  Gloomily, Benjamin nodded. Unthinking and even childish as the ghost’s action had been, he was, after all, lately only human.

  Strangeness must still have interested him; company still pleased him; a fire still warmed him. And though he still had Mister Corbett’s ugly smile, and Mister Corbett’s spying stoop, and Mister Corbett’s mean and furtive air, there was a sharp sadness in it all.

  ‘You are a poor soul,’ whispered Benjamin impulsively, but the ghost shuddered as if in profound dismay.

  ‘I’ll not betray . . . not I!’

  ‘That’s uncommon obliging of you, Mister Corbett, sir . . . and I believe you with all my heart.’

  Suddenly there was a cry of ‘Make way! Make way!’ and two servants attended by the landlord and his lady came grandly in with a silver bowl of punch. The room was filled with the hot sweet odours of brandy, spice, and the Lord knew what else besides. The Spaniards’ punch was a deep secret, and, though many a man had been told it, the cunning spirit fuddled him too much to remember its recipe and carry it home on New Year’s Day in the morning.

  At once there was a general shifting towards the table in the middle of the parlour—and consequently some space was left before the fire.

  The fire. Benjamin saw the phantom stare at it with longing. What with the cheerfulness of the parlour following so hard on his late adventure, and the general obligingness of the ghost, he was moved more deeply than he’d bargained for. He discovered he was not so inhuman as to hate Mister Corbett beyond the grave.

  ‘I’ll go stand before the fire, Mister Corbett,’ he whispered, ‘and then you may stand behind me and warm yourself. No one will see while they’re at the punch bowl. Come, sir, move as I move . . . exactly . . . but for mercy’s sake, be careful!’

  With extraordinary caution, Benjamin stood up and stepped sideways before the fire. He might have been a single figure, though a trifle rheumaticky, for his movements appeared peculiarly stiff and slow.

  At last, distinctly—most distinctly—Benjamin heard the phantom sigh and sensed that it rubbed its hands together in Mister Corbett’s old oily fashion.

  ‘Are you warm now, Mister Corbett?’

  ‘The fire burns bright,’ came the faint reply, and Benjamin smiled benevolently.

  In the middle of the room punch was being ladled out in a capacious silver spoon, ‘with the compliments of the House’. Much was the noise and entertainment there, and no one spared a glance towards the fire.

  ‘At last, Mister Corbett—a real piece of luck!’

  ‘I make it five minutes more!’ suddenly declared a gentleman, consulting his watch.

  ‘Eight,’ corrected the landlord. ‘It’s eight minutes in this house, sir.’

  Then someone else—most probably the landlord’s lady herself, a respectable, kindly woman—discovered it to be three minutes only to the New Year.

  Directly, there was an amiable commotion. Why? Nothing alarming, nothing dreadful—or even disquieting. So why did Benjamin Partridge turn white and glare horribly about him?

  ‘Hands, gents! Hands must be joined!’ shouted the landlord, and stretched out his portly arms like a well-fed signpost.

  ‘Come, sirs!’ cried his lady above the hubbub, and took one of her husband’s hands, ‘A circle, now! All join hands for the New Year! You, sir—and you—and you over there! No one must be left out! They say it’s bad luck—’

  Remorselessly the happy, laughing chain grew as more and more hands were joined. Nearer and nearer the fire it came.

 
Hands twisting, clutching, grasping, madly dancing, seemed everywhere. Frantically Benjamin stared to his right. A hand as gnarled as a gibbet reached out to complete its chain. He turned to the left. A hand with veins like a hangman’s rope reached likewise.

  ‘Got you, young man!’ shouted a voice in his ear. His right hand was seized!

  ‘The last link! The last link!’ came the cry—for Benjamin had been jerked aside to make way for the last link. Who was it? Why, that pale fellow behind.

  ‘Last link! Last—’

  Before the flaming fire, the last link stood pitilessly revealed. A weak link indeed!

  Stoop-shouldered, grinning dingily like the Death’s Head it was, stood the apothecary’s ghost. And the fire was seen burning—right through him!

  Hands felt hands tremble and sweat, then grip hard as iron . . . then withdraw from each other. Faces grew pale. In the midst of goodwill, in the midst of hope and merriment, what had stalked in?

  All began to draw away, shaking with horror at the sight of the phantom: all save the boy who had brought it in. Wretchedly and shamefully, he stood beside murdered Mister Corbett.

  ‘Not I! Not I!’ whispered the ghost.

  ‘Murderer!’ cried someone harshly and pointed to Benjamin Partridge.

  ‘It was him who brought the ghost! Murderer!’

  The cry was taken up in every corner of the room. Even the cheerful, spotty potboy by the punch bowl screamed, ‘Murderer!’ with his face screwed up in anger, fear, and disgust.

  ‘Be gone before the New Year strikes! Get out and take your damnation with you!’

  ‘Outcast! Wicked, hateful outcast! How dared you come among us?’

  ‘Break the glass he drank from!’

  ‘Scour the seat he sat on!’

  ‘Let out the air he breathed!’

  ‘Open the window! Open the door! For he’s—’

  In the misery of his shame, Benjamin Partridge put his hands to his ears and rushed for the open door. Close on his heels followed the apothecary’s ghost, whose chill and despairing aspect repelled all pursuit.