The Salisbury Manuscript

by Philip Gooden

  ‘You say that the railwayman didn’t believe you?’

  ‘From his attitude, no. He probably thought I’d been drinking or that the fog was making me see things.’

  ‘It might be worth reporting this to the authorities,’ said the cleric. ‘The police are not up to very much in this place but there is at least one good man in the force. Inspector Foster can be relied on.’

  ‘I am not sure there’s anything to be reported,’ said Tom. ‘No harm has been done. There was no sign of a body on the tracks – or of any assailant either.’

  ‘Well then, it might be better to leave it, I suppose. But remember Foster is the man to go to.’

  As they’d been talking the cab had entered a more densely populated area of the town. There were passers-by, singly or in muffled groups, shifting shapes in the fog, as well as other carriages. There were glimpses of shop-fronts and chop houses and inns.

  ‘You are going to the Poultry Cross?’ said Canon Selby.

  ‘To an inn nearby. The Side of Beef, it’s called.’

  ‘One of the town’s oldest hostelries. We have had an establishment called The Haunch of Venison since medieval times and the common belief is that The Side of Beef was set up in opposition to it by a disgruntled pot-man from the Haunch. Jenkins is the proprietor now. He chatters away. Well, we are all but there.’

  The old man rapped on the side of the cab and they slowed. As if on cue, an inn sign proclaimed itself as The Side of Beef in light thrown from the parlour window.

  ‘I will not ask you your business here, Mr Ansell, but perhaps we shall meet again. Salisbury is not a large place.’

  Tom was about to say that he had an appointment at a house in the close the next morning, but some lawyerly caution prevented him from doing more than returning Canon Selby’s wish and thanking him for his company and advice. The cleric lifted a hand in acknowledgement before adjusting his shovel-hat and settling back into the corner of the cab. Tom climbed down, retrieved his case and paid the driver. He watched while the cab pulled away into the fog. He looked up at the inn sign as if there might be some question whether he had come to the right place. The image of a bloodied carcass of beef hanging on a frame looked more like a sacrifice than an invitation to dine. The inn was a timber-frame building with a lopsided look and first-floor windows that projected slightly over the street.

  While his attention was elsewhere, a woman walking briskly along the pavement banged into him. She was of middle height, was wearing a large hat and had her head down. Taken by suprise, Tom found himself thrown into her shoulder and well-padded collar. ‘Oops,’ she said. The word was curiously drawn out: ‘ooops’. Tom mumbled his apologies, expecting the woman to walk on, but she took a pace back. Quick dark eyes looked him up and down. She was well dressed, a little garishly too with a red band round her hat and a billow of yellow skirt showing beneath her coat, and though not young she was not so far into middle age either.

  ‘My fault, madam,’ said Tom quickly. ‘I was, er, looking at the inn sign.’

  ‘I thought perhaps you wanted to sniff at my nosegay,’ said the woman. She sounded amused.

  ‘Nosegay?’

  ‘Yes. To sniff at it.’

  She raised a gloved hand towards a bunch of flowers attached to her coat collar. Tom couldn’t make out what they were, violets perhaps with a sprig of green. The woman wasn’t English, had a slight accent (almost saying ‘per’aps’, ‘sneef’), although he was unable to place it. Her voice was attractively low. Now, if such a remark about ‘sniffing nosegays’ had come from a woman in parts of central London – round Haymarket, say, or in Leicester Square in the early evening – Tom Ansell wouldn’t have had any doubts about the nature of such a meeting. Nor would the woman’s colliding with him have been an accident. But he was in a strange town on a foggy night and did not know his way round. The woman continued to assess him by the faint light from The Side of Beef. She glanced at the case he was holding and then at the inn sign. She might have been in a hurry before but seemed reluctant to move now.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No nosegays tonight. It’s too foggy.’

  The woman’s mouth, wide and mobile, flickered with renewed humour. ‘Ah, no nosegays tonight because it is too foggy,’ she said, mimicking him. She dipped her head slightly and moved off down the road. Tom wanted to watch her retreating back but he was afraid she might turn round to look at him and did not want to show that much interest. Was she a judy or what his friends might have half-mockingly called a fille de joie? Was that her profession? He couldn’t tell. After the incident at the railway station, this encounter left him not so much unsettled as feeling a bit foolish. Why had he made such a nonsensical comment about the foggy night?

  Shrugging, he climbed the steps to the porticoed entrance to the inn and pushed at the door. A small man hovering in the lobby whom he at first took for a servant turned out to be Mr Jenkins, the proprietor. Jenkins had slicked-back grey hair and a full moustache which was, incongruously, jet black. The landlord was expecting Tom, who had written on the previous day to reserve a room.

  ‘Ah, the gentleman from Messrs Scott, Lye & Mackenzie in London,’ said Jenkins, rolling the names round his tongue. ‘You had a pleasant journey from London, sir? I expect you’ll want to warm up. There’s a good fire in your room. And there’s hot water upstairs too. A bathroom with a geyser, no less. Nasty night out, isn’t it. Goes to one’s chest, this weather, I find. Let me show you to your quarters. Can I take your case? No, rather carry it yourself, would you? Quite understand. On business here? But then you must be on business, coming from Messrs Scott, Lye & Mackenzie in London.’

  Tom regretted having made the reservation on the firm’s notepaper and wondered whether the landlord was about to ask him exactly what his business was in Salisbury. But, without pausing for a reply, Jenkins continued his monologue as they ascended stairs which twisted and tilted in every direction. He prattled on about the antiquity of his hostelry and the snugness of its parlour and the quality of the food and the attentiveness of the servants until they reached a landing on the first floor. A plain young woman, a servant, stood to one side to let them pass. She sneezed and the landlord said, ‘Bless you, Jenny,’ sounding as though he meant the opposite. Then he led Tom along a passageway to a door which he opened with a flourish. ‘There, sir!’ he said, with as much pride as if he’d finished decorating the room himself that very morning.

  Once he’d got rid of the landlord with the assurance that, yes, everything was fine and that, yes, he’d be down to supper as soon as he’d settled himself and unpacked, Tom surveyed the room. The walls were covered with linen-fold panelling and the uncarpeted floor sloped towards an oriel window below which ran a seat so that one could watch what was happening in the street in comfort. There was a large old-fashioned bed, a four-poster with hangings, and furniture so dark and cumbersome that it might have dated from the Middle Ages. A fire was burning in an elaborate grate. It was the kind of room which should have been illuminated with candles or flaming torches but, in a concession to modernity, there was a gasolier hanging from the centre of the carved ceiling.

  It would do, thought Tom, for a couple of days. In fact it was more spacious than his lodgings in Islington and, since he was here on his firm’s business, he would not have to pay for his stay. He put down his case and took off his coat. He walked across to the window recess. The curtains had been drawn to keep the warmth in. Tom parted them and could almost feel the damp fog nuzzling at the diamond-shaped panes. The covered porch of The Side of Beef was to his left and the pavement where he had encountered the woman was directly below him. There was a single figure standing there now, a woman. She was gazing up at this very window. Tom drew back sharply. Despite the fog, he was almost sure that it was the same woman, unless there happened to be two females in Salisbury who were wearing large hats decorated with a band, and trolling in the same area of town.

  He tugged the curtains together with more force t
han necessary. He wondered if she’d recognized him as he, almost certainly, had recognized her. He thought that, with the gas light behind him, he probably appeared as no more than a shadow. He could be any newly arrived traveller at the inn. Then Tom grew irritated with himself. What did it matter if she had seen him? Why shouldn’t he be looking out of the window in his room? And if she was what he supposed her to be, then there was nothing more natural than that she would be hanging around in the neighbourhood of the town centre looking for customers. Though, he knew, such activities in provincial towns tended to be confined to run-down areas and the lodging houses called padding-kens where less reputable travellers and even tramps would put up for the night.

  Putting all such considerations to the back of his mind, Tom unpacked his case, visited the bathroom at the end of the passageway and descended the twisting, uneven stairs to the supper room on the ground floor.

  The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. To Tom’s slight surprise, the supper was good and the service as attentive as Jenkins the landlord had promised. He chose the lamb cutlets rather than the broiled fowl and was served by a motherly woman who fussed about him. There were a pair of clerics in close conference at a table in a corner, and a couple more men who were sitting, like Tom, with only themselves for company and reading newspapers while they ate. There was a larger group of men and women at the biggest table who, to judge by the laughter and raised voices, had already fed and drunk thoroughly. They had the plush, self-important look of burghers and burghers’ wives, of the town notables.

  The landlord appeared at the door of the room and seemed to be heading in Tom’s direction but he was waylaid by the large group who insisted that he help finish one of the several bottles which they’d ordered during their meal. Jenkins looked gratified. He tugged his moustache and smoothed his hair and took a spare chair from another table. At some point, Tom saw one of the diners in the large group looking at him with interest. He had arrived late, and had turned his head sharply as he passed Tom, who was sitting close to the door. Now Jenkins was whispering to this individual, a stout man who was leaning back in his chair and tapping the side of his nose.

  From their glances in his direction, Tom knew they were talking about him. The landlord had probably identified him as a notary from London, and no doubt made something of Messrs Scott, Lye & Mackenzie too. It was aggravating but there was nothing he could do about it except look displeased and turn his attention back to Baxter’s On Tort, which he’d brought down to occupy him during supper. The book was as unappetizing as it had been on the train. What had Canon Selby said? ‘No sane man would read Baxter for pleasure.’ Tom hoped that he’d meet Canon Selby again. He wished he’d brought a news-paper, like the other gentlemen dining by themselves. Or a novel. Though he wouldn’t have been quite comfortable to be seen reading a novel. Unless it was one written by Helen, of course. If she ever finished writing her sensation novel. And if she did finish writing it, then he suppposed that he’d have to read it.

  While he was eating, he noticed the same man, the nose-tapper, at the other table continuing to glance at him from time to time. The landlord had torn himself away from this elevated company but whatever he’d said had obviously been sufficient to provoke the diner’s curiosity. Tom could not think that visitors from London were so unusual but he shrugged off the attention. After he had finished, he considered taking a stroll outside by the Poultry Cross – whatever that was exactly – but the thought of the dank fog and an uneasy if ridiculous sense that he might find the mysterious woman still standing outside the hotel prevented him. Besides, it was getting late.

  Tom retreated up the twisty stairs to his first-floor room. He passed the plain young servant who bade him goodnight in a nasal voice. He noticed her mournful eyes. He was tired. He’d drunk more than he thought at supper. Either that or he was stupefied by Baxter. It was only as he lay in the darkness of the curtained four-poster that he remembered the scene at the railway station. The silhouette at the platform’s edge, the black figure creeping up on it. He hoped there’d be no more of that kind of thing in Salisbury. He did not sleep particularly well that night, whether on account of what he’d eaten and drunk or because, having thought of it again, he could not get the station scene out of his head.

  Mackenzie’s Castle

  If David Mackenzie hadn’t got a little too well-oiled after dinner at his club, he would most likely have made a safe descent from his cab after a night out and kept his leg in one piece. If he hadn’t broken his leg and been laid up for several weeks, then he would never have instructed Thomas Ansell to go to Salisbury in his place. And if Tom hadn’t gone to Salisbury, he would never have become involved in that fatal business over the manuscript.

  But the only active partner in Scott, Lye & Mackenzie did slip and break his leg as he was leaving the cab and Tom Ansell did have to go to the city of Salisbury, with everything else that followed. It was Mr Ashley the clerk who told Tom that Mr Mackenzie’s fall was probably the result of a half bottle of port too much. Tom must have looked surprised for Ashley said, ‘I suppose you think I’m talking out of turn, Mr Ansell, to refer to our employer in that way. To suggest that he might have over-indulged at his club.’

  ‘It’s not my place to comment on him – or on you,’ said Tom Ansell.

  ‘Spoken with the proper caution of a fledgling lawyer,’ said Ashley.

  Tom grew slightly red in the face and shifted in his chair on the other side of the senior clerk’s desk. Ashley continued, ‘But, you see, when one has been with a firm as long as I have, one is allowed a certain latitude. I remember when Mr Lye was a young man and Mr Scott hardly grown into middle age.’

  Scott, who was Helen’s father, had been dead a good while now and although Mr Lye occasionally shuffled into the office his only activity was to scrawl his signature on correspondence placed in front of him. So Ashley’s memory stretched back to the early years of the Queen’s reign when these two men must have been in their prime. He had a fine memory too. Ansell had heard him correct Mr Mackenzie over some detail of a long-ago case. ‘I think you’ll find that the uncle’s name was Davenant, not Davenport, sir,’ or, to Tom Ansell himself soon after he joined the firm and went to him with a small problem, ‘If you look up Carstairs v. Smith in the archives, you will discover some helpful pointers to what you are dealing with in this situation, Mr Ansell. Carstairs was an impossible man even if he was our client. If my memory serves me right, it was the September of 1848. The early part of that month. We lost the case and I cannot say that I was altogether sorry we lost.’

  Ashley was a walking archive himself. He had a high, corrugated forehead to contain all that information. Tom Ansell visualized his brain as a honeycomb of pigeon-holes, not sweet but dry as dust. It was on account of this memory combined with his long service that he had the licence to comment on everybody, the firm’s clients and partners as well as junior members. Another mark of his status was that he had a separate office which no one would have dreamed of entering without tapping on the door first.

  ‘Well, Mr Ansell, however it happened, Mr Mackenzie has broken his leg and he will be out of commission for some time. This is unfortunate because he was due to visit a client – a clerical gentleman – later this week. The client lives outside London. He lives in Salisbury. Now he, that is Mr Mackenzie, has told me that he wishes you to go to Salisbury in his place. But he – that is Mr Mackenzie again – wants to see you in person first. He has written to me about this and other matters.’

  Tom wondered why the senior clerk couldn’t have passed on Mackenzie’s instructions himself. As if guessing his thoughts, Ashley picked up the top page of a letter from a neatly arranged pile on the desk. He put on his glasses and peered at it.

  ‘He says, ‘There are circumstances which are best conveyed to Ansell in conversation and not by letter. Accordingly, would you kindly request him to call on me at home this afternoon.’’

  ‘Does he say anything else?
’

  ‘Not to your purpose,’ said Ashley, putting the young man in his place. ‘You know where Mr Mackenzie lives?’

  ‘I have been to supper at his house.’

  ‘He does that with all the new employees, you know, Mr Ansell, invites them to supper. Well, if you’ve no more questions – and if you have I am not sure I should be able to answer them – then perhaps you’d better be on your way.’

  So a couple of hours later Tom Ansell was standing outside the door of David Mackenzie’s ample house in Highgate village. It was a November afternoon. Lower down the basin of the city was submerged in a grey-brown fog which would not shift before evening, if then. Up here the view was clearer but everything looked the more forlorn for being exposed. A few leaves clung by threads to trees and hedges. Passers-by scurried along, muffled up against the dank air. Tom opened the gate and walked up the gravelled path past low bushes of laurel. It was the first time he’d seen the house by daylight.

  There was something a touch baronial about the Mackenzies’ house and he mentally contrasted it with the less ornate house where Helen Scott lived with her mother, the dragon-lady. Tom knew that David Mackenzie had had it built soon after becoming a partner in what was then Scott & Lye. The red brickwork still looked raw. Perhaps he had instructed his architect to design a building that would remind him of a Scottish stronghold, for there was a miniature turret to one side which was surmounted with battlements and covered with tendrils of ivy. The front door had a Gothic solidity while the windows on either side in the vestibule were almost as narrow as arrowslits. Tom tugged at the bell and heard it echo inside. He waited. There was no sound except the dripping of the laurel bushes.

  The door opened and a maid, sourfaced, ageless, looked at him as warily as though he was a hawker or beggar. Tom explained that he was there to see the master of the house, by invitation. The maid continued to regard him with suspicion but said nothing.