The Anatomy of Ghosts

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘No, no.’ Archdale waved at the books and papers in front of him. ‘Upon my honour, once I’ve disposed of this, I shall think of nothing else. They sent me the suit of clothes this afternoon. I’ve tried it on already and it looks most handsome. Sans souci, eh?’ He smacked his lips. ‘That’s me. All the preparations are made? The – sacrifice awaits?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. You need not trouble yourself on that score.’

  Archdale wiped the sleeve of his shirt across his forehead. ‘Damn me if it ain’t growing hotter.’

  ‘I shall leave you to your labours.’ Whichcote began to move away but stopped, as if a thought had suddenly struck him. ‘By the way, a word in your ear about Mulgrave. I’ve discharged the fellow.’

  Archdale’s mouth fell open. ‘I thought – I mean, you’ve employed him for years.’

  ‘I don’t choose to any more. I caught him thieving – I’ve suspected it for some time. I advise you to consider very seriously whether you wish to continue using him.’

  ‘Good God.’ Archdale sat back in his chair. ‘That’s a bit of a facer. He’s a most obliging fellow – seems to know where to get anything one wants.’

  ‘But he’s not to be trusted,’ Whichcote said. ‘And there’s an end to it.’

  Archdale was following his own line of thought. ‘Ah – I wonder if Ricky’s heard something too?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Since Frank’s been away, Mulgrave’s been in and out of his rooms, fetching what he needs. Frank must have let him have a key. But Ricky went in there with Lady Anne’s man just before dinner today, and they found Mulgrave there. There was hell to pay. He took Mulgrave’s key away.’

  Whichcote frowned. ‘Lady Anne’s man?’

  ‘I met him in Ricky’s rooms this afternoon. Name of Holdsworth.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He probably works under that old steward of theirs – what’s his name? You know – the one who looks as if he’s almost dead.’

  ‘Cross,’ Whichcote said. ‘Holdsworth’s been to see Frank. Did you know that?’

  Archdale glanced at him. ‘And?’ Alarm flared in his eyes. ‘Have they heard something, do you think?’

  Whichcote laughed, though he was privately concerned about that himself; Archdale didn’t know the half of what had happened during that night in February. ‘How could an old lady in London know anything? But enough of this – I’ll leave you to your labours. Until Wednesday, then. And mind you are in the pink of condition. You cannot be half-hearted when you make such a sacrifice to the gods.’

  The entrance to the Angel’s yard was off the Corn Market. Holdsworth went into the coffee room, where a waiter directed him to a porter, who, with the encouragement of a sixpence, was willing to conduct him to an outhouse beyond the kitchens. The shed stank like the midden in the stable yard. A man lay snoring on a heap of sacks in the corner.

  ‘There you are, sir,’ the porter said. ‘Tom Turdman at your service.’

  He seized the shoulder of the sleeping man and gave him a shake that would have unsettled a sack of coal. The night-soil man groaned, opened his eyes, rolled on to his side and vomited on to the floor.

  ‘Easy come, easy go,’ said the porter. ‘Dined on beer and a drop or two of spirits by the smell of him.’ He gripped Tom’s ear between finger and thumb and hauled him into a sitting position. ‘Gentleman to see you. Look sharp.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Holdsworth said to the porter. ‘That will be all.’ He waited until the man had gone and turned back to Tom Turdman, who was wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Mr Mepal at Jerusalem sent me.’

  ‘I done nothing wrong, sir. I told Mr Mepal, I have to do my job, and I can’t help the noise the wheels –’

  Holdsworth took a shilling from his waistcoat pocket and held it up. The words stopped as if the tail of the sentence had been chopped off with an axe. Tom’s mouth hung open. In one smooth movement, his hand swooped on the coin, scooped it up and slipped it into the pocket of his breeches. He swayed on his feet and almost overbalanced. He was a small, bent man, probably ten or twenty years younger than he looked. He still wore his long brown coat. His Fen accent was thick and murky, like mud, and at first Holdsworth could make out barely one word in three.

  Holdsworth took him into the yard, where the relatively fresh air revived him a little.

  ‘Done nothing wrong, sir,’ Tom repeated, ‘just my job.’

  ‘I want to ask you about the body you found.’

  Tom looked cunning. ‘Which one?’

  ‘Don’t gammon me, not if you value Mr Mepal’s kindness. Tell me about the lady at Jerusalem. In the pond.’

  ‘Thought it was a sheet or a gown in the water, sir.’

  ‘Why? Was it dark?’

  ‘Near enough. Just before dawn. I fell in the water. God’s death, the cold. And – and I touched her hand –’ He broke off again, his face working. ‘Thought it was t’other one.’

  ‘What other one?’ Holdsworth asked, bewildered.

  ‘His honour’s lady, sir.’

  ‘The Master’s wife, Mrs Carbury?’

  Tom nodded. ‘But it weren’t her abroad, not this time. Were the pretty one.’

  ‘You knew her face, then?’

  The night-soil man’s face cracked into a toothless smile. ‘Wouldn’t forget her, sir, once you seen her. Used to come visiting the other one. I knew who she was soon as we laid her out on the bank. Looked stark staring mad, she did, like she seen a ghost. Lot of ghosts at Jerusalem, they say, and they walk at night, like that other one, other ghost –’

  ‘Nonsense. Ghosts have no existence outside the minds of fools and children. But I shall not argue the point with you.’ Holdsworth fought down his rising anger, aware of its absurdity and disconcerted by its very existence. Something in his mind surfaced briefly and then vanished. He struggled to retrieve it but failed. ‘Go back to the point where you fell in the water, when you discovered the thing was a body. Was it face up?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Tom closed his eyes. ‘It was cold, sir, mortal cold. I yelled, and I screamed, and I thought I was drowning. But then I was standing on the bottom and the mud and weeds were clinging to me like they wanted to drag me down.’

  ‘Stop this nonsense. Even if there were mud and weeds, they did not want to drag you down. They have no feelings in the matter either way.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Ask your pardon, sir. I was a-hauling myself on to the shore, when Mr Mepal came running up and he dragged me out.’ An expression of pride settled on the man’s face. ‘And I fainted quite away with the horror of it, sir.’

  ‘You damned fool,’ Holdsworth said.

  ‘Yes, sir, but I came round in a flash. And Mr Richardson came, and we got the poor lady out of the water and laid her on the bank. That’s when I see who it was. Mr Richardson told Mr Mepal to get some men and bring back a door so we could lay her on it.’ The man hesitated, looking warily at Holdsworth. ‘Queer thing was her face. She did look terrible afraid. God’s truth.’

  ‘What did you think had happened?’

  ‘I thought the lady had been staying with Mrs Carbury, like she did sometimes. And she come out for a breath of air, and maybe tripped. Fell and hit her head, sir, that’s it, then she tumbled in the water.’

  ‘Hit her head? What’s this?’

  ‘Because of the wound, your honour.’

  Holdsworth stared at him, and Tom Turdman looked guilelessly back at him. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  ‘The wound?’ Holdsworth said casually. ‘And what wound was that?’

  ‘On her head, sir.’ Tom touched his own head in front of the left ear.

  Despite the warmth of the evening, Holdsworth shivered. ‘A fresh one?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We was waiting for the door to lay her on, see, and Mr Richardson was looking to see if there was any life left in her. And I was sitting on the bank near him. He saw it too.’

  ‘B
ut you said it was before dawn,’ Holdworth said. ‘How can you have noticed all this?’

  ‘It was growing light all the time,’ Tom said with a note of reproach in his voice. ‘Saw that wound plain as I see you.’

  ‘A bruise or a wound? Was the skin broken?’

  ‘Both maybe, your honour. The skin was cut, for certain.’

  ‘Was it bleeding?’

  ‘No, sir. The blood must have washed away.’

  Holdsworth stared at him. He saw with hideous clarity the little parlour in Bankside, where Maria used to pray, and where they had carried her dripping body. No one had commented on the broken window overlooking the river or the broken chair or the spots of blood on the floor. Someone had closed Maria’s eyes, and he had been glad of that. Even dead eyes accuse. The side of her head was grazed. The wound had been on the left temple, half masked by strands of wet hair.

  The colour of a damson. The size of a penny piece.

  He prayed that the river had given her that wound. Because if it hadn’t happened then, as she was falling into the water or just afterwards, then it must have happened earlier: when he hit her, when he sent her flying across the room.

  ‘Anyhow it don’t mean nothing,’ Tom said. ‘Mr Richardson said it don’t signify, it was dark, and the poor lady fell in the water and drowned herself.’

  ‘How big was it?’ Holdsworth demanded.

  ‘You what, sir?’

  ‘The wound on her head, damn you.’ Holdsworth seized the lapel of Tom’s coat. ‘For God’s sake, tell me how big?’

  Tom held up a trembling hand. He made a circle with thumb and forefinger.

  The size of a penny.

  17

  When Holdsworth had finished with Tom Turdman, he gave the little brown man another of her ladyship’s shillings and strolled up to the marketplace. He did not know what to do. He did not want to drink, for his head was already aching. He did not want to sit in the combination room at Jerusalem. Most of all he did not want to think about a wound the size of a penny on a woman’s temple.

  It was as if the weather in the hot, restless streets had transferred itself to the interior of his head. The marketplace was full of drunken people quarrelling, gambling, embracing, singing, vomiting and sleeping. At the corner of the Corn Market and the Garden Market, a vicious little fight was in progress between three townsmen and four undergraduates.

  He tried to conjure up Maria’s face but he could not remember what she looked like. She was reduced to an aching absence, like an amputated limb. But, in contrast, it was all too easy to visualize Elinor Carbury. Even thinking about the Master’s wife seemed a form of disloyalty to poor, drowned Maria.

  Holdsworth plunged into a dark and narrow street running to the south. Out of necessity he walked slowly. There were fewer people here and fewer lights, but the buildings pressed in on either side and the air seemed no cooler. The alley was cobbled, with a gully running down the middle. The stench was very bad. Heaps of refuse oozed across the footpath. There was a constant pattering and scuffling of rats, and every now and then he glimpsed their scurrying long-tailed shadows.

  The trouble was, he told himself, he had been sent to Cambridge to talk reason to Frank Oldershaw, and in the event he had failed to say anything at all to him. He had also been engaged to find a ghost and instead he had found a dead woman with a wound on her head.

  A wound like Maria’s?

  But the Jerusalem authorities, certainly Richardson and Mepal, had decided not to make public the injury to Mrs Whichcote. The most likely explanation was the merely venal one, that the college had decided for the sake of its own reputation that it would be better to minimize any gossip about Sylvia Whichcote’s death. It did not necessarily follow that her death had been anything other than suicide. The wound might have been caused by her plunging into the pond, and perhaps hitting her head on a stone. Or, in her journey towards the college through these ill-lit and ill-paved streets, she might have slipped and fallen; indeed, it would have been strange if she had not. Nor could the night-soil man be considered a reliable witness. It did not take long for a man to learn that the more sensational a story, the more attention the teller of it earned.

  A wound the size of a penny piece: the phrase repeated itself in his mind like a curse.

  More by luck than good judgement, Holdsworth discovered that he had navigated his way through the narrow lanes and emerged into an open space shaped like an axe-head. He recognized it from his walk earlier in the day as the Beast Market. Along its southern side ran Bird Bolt Lane. If he turned left, he would be back at Jerusalem within a few minutes.

  Dear God, even here the strange, unseasonable heat was terrible. It tampered with the very fibre of his being. It stripped away the defences of his reason. Now, in a sudden and hideous reversal, he could not stop his mind imagining the cool white skin of Elinor Carbury.

  The size of a penny piece, he muttered aloud, a penny piece. It was if that damned wound, whether Sylvia’s or Maria’s, was a key. The key unlocked a door inside him that was better left fastened for all eternity. If he let the door open, God alone knew what might come out.

  He wanted a woman now, for the first time in months, almost any woman, but he wanted Elinor most of all. She was no beauty, or not as the world estimated such things, but she had something stronger than beauty, a quality as much of mind as of body. God forgive him, but he did want her, and he could not deny it.

  He saw Elinor’s hand on the gate of the Master’s Garden. He remembered how it had trembled slightly under his touch, and also the way she had caught her breath as if he had pricked her with a pin, just before she turned and walked away.

  But what if she had stayed? If she had allowed her hand to remain beneath his? And what if they met again in the garden, and by night. Tonight. He thought of Elinor’s smooth fingers running up his arm and then –

  Real footsteps destroyed the sweet illusion; the dream became instantly insubstantial and tawdry, revealed for what it was, a mere lubricious fancy.

  The size of a penny piece. Oh, Maria, forgive me.

  Someone was coming down the lane from the direction of Jerusalem. Holdsworth drew back into the shadow of a clump of trees and shrubs on the corner of the market. At this time of night, you never knew who might be abroad. And here, on the fringes of the town, the conditions were well suited to robbery. On the other side of the lane was the Leys, the stretch of unenclosed fields and marshy waste that bordered the town on the south.

  Forgive me.

  A lamp burned feebly above the doorway of a building on the opposite corner of the market, illuminating a few yards of the paved footpath. As Holdsworth watched, a small, stout man walked slowly into the patch of light and paused. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking towards the darkness on the other side of the road.

  Not looking? Showing himself?

  There were other, lighter footsteps. A woman crossed the road towards the man. She must have been sheltering in or near the Leys. She stood beside him, their heads close together. They had a short conversation, conducted in whispers. The man took the woman’s chin and tilted her face so he could see it in the light. Holdsworth felt a twinge of envy: it was quite clear what they were discussing. Coins chinked. Then the woman moved away from the lamplight. The man waited. He looked up and down the lane, turning his head, which allowed Holdsworth a glimpse of his profile.

  It was young Mr Archdale. Holdsworth’s envy turned to disgust. So that was how you found yourself a whore. You showed yourself under the light in the Beast Market and waited for one to come to you, a moth to your candle. If he stayed here, if he waited under the light, Holdsworth could find himself a whore of his own. Had he come to this, he wondered, that he lusted after such pleasures? A grieving widower at least retained a little dignity. But surely a man who paid to fornicate in the dark had none?

  Harry Archdale walked quickly over the road. In hot pursuit of the last favours, he plunged into the Leys, moving deeper
and deeper into the darkness that had already swallowed up his whore.

  Forgive me.

  Few people found it easy to sleep that night. There was a storm coming.

  When Mr Richardson left Sir Charles Archdale at the Blue Boar after supper, he could not bear to return immediately to college but walked aimlessly through the streets. The unnatural heat made him itchy, and he scratched himself as he walked, especially under his wig. The air was particularly bad – he sniffed and caught a trace of the foul and familiar stench of tanning hides.

  It had not been an agreeable evening – Sir Charles was overbearing by nature, and enjoyed the sound of his own voice. He also disliked what he had heard about a fatality at Jerusalem, and the tutor had been obliged to handle him carefully. But now it was over, Richardson still could not relax. He had much to occupy his mind and he could not see his way clear.

  As Richardson passed St Michael’s Church, he thought he heard someone murmur his name. Or rather, not his name but one like it. Richenda. He told himself he had taken too much wine, though now he felt suddenly and unpleasantly sober. He hurried on.

  Tobias Soresby was walking through the streets like Mr Richardson, though unlike the tutor he was perfectly sober. His loping progress was erratically punctuated with tiny cracking sounds, as he tugged at his finger joints. The sizar was trying with growing desperation to weigh up the pros and cons of a decision so complex and so momentous that it frightened him. He had heard today that Mr Miskin might soon resign the Rosington Fellowship. That was most unexpected. It might change everything.

  In his wanderings Soresby passed the little house in Trumpington Street where Mrs Phear was working by candlelight at her tapestry showing the destruction of Sodom, or possibly Gomorrah. When her eyes grew tired, she summoned Dorcas, checked the bolts and locks on doors and windows, and prepared herself for bed. But after she had blown out the candle, Mrs Phear could not sleep. She too had a great deal on her mind. Above all she was worried about Philip Whichcote. She did not want to worry about him but had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she had no choice in the matter. If she had had a child of her own it might have been different. She blamed Sylvia above all for Philip’s troubles.