‘Not there,’ Richardson said. ‘The other side.’
Soresby’s hand wriggled invisibly, changing position. Then, at last, he brought out a leather-bound quarto. Wide-eyed, he sat back on his heels and stared at it.
‘Pray give it me, sir,’ Richardson prompted.
Barely a yard separated the two men. Still on his knees, like a supplicant, Soresby held out the book to Richardson. The tutor took it and opened it, turning to the title-page. He angled the volume so Holdsworth could see it too. The Massacre at Paris.
‘I swear,’ Soresby said in a hoarse whisper, ‘I swear I –’
‘Pray do not add perjury to your other sins, sir. Well, we shall take our leave for the moment. You will stay in your room until I send for you.’ The tutor turned to Holdsworth. ‘It distresses me that you should have had to witness such a disagreeable interview. But may I trespass further on your good nature and ask you to accompany me to the Master’s Lodge?’
He gave Soresby the slightest of bows and left the room with his nose in the air, as if trying to raise it as far as possible above the stench of moral corruption in the atmosphere.
Holdsworth followed. In the doorway he turned back. Soresby was still on his knees. His face was a dirty white colour, almost grey. His eyes were wide and blank. Only his hands were moving. A finger joint cracked.
34
Philip Whichcote dismounted from the hack and opened the gate. He led the horse into the yard, and the sound of its hooves sent a dozen doves fluttering into the air. When he released the reins, the horse walked to the trough and lowered its head over the water.
Whichcote tried the heavy door of the mill. It was locked. He had found the place easily enough. The ostlers at the livery stable had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the surrounding countryside, and one of them had once worked for Mr Smedley, the college’s tenant at Whitebeach. Whichcote knew that the next hour could settle the direction of his future life. Prudence pointed one way. His instincts urged him in the opposite direction.
There were footsteps behind him.
Mulgrave appeared at the corner of the thatched cottage on one side of the yard. He marched unsteadily forward, tilting to and fro as he shifted his weight between the shorter leg and the longer. He stopped a few paces from Whichcote. The two men stared in silence at each other.
‘Thought I heard hooves,’ the gyp said at last with the gloomy satisfaction of one who feared the worst and now at least has the comfort of knowing he was right.
‘I’m come to call on Mr Oldershaw. Where is he?’
Mulgrave spat on the cobbles, scarcely a foot away from Whichcote’s boot. ‘He ain’t at home to visitors.’
‘Damn your impudence,’ Whichcote snapped.
Suddenly furious, he drew himself up to his full height. All the worry and frustration of the last few months flooded together and funnelled into a glorious surge of rage. Without pausing for thought, he swept up his right arm and slashed the whip across Mulgrave’s face.
Taken unawares, the gyp tried too late to step back from the blow, putting his weight on his bad leg. He missed his footing and fell to the ground. Whichcote cut him again with the whip, this time sending the tip curling around the angle between Mulgrave’s neck and shoulder.
The gyp howled and scrambled to his feet. He had lost his hat and wig. He ran back the way he had come, staggering, but moving surprisingly fast. Whichcote stalked after him, swinging the whip, his riding boots clattering and slipping on the cobbles. His anger had found a safe target. He felt almost grateful to Mulgrave.
He rounded the end of the cottage and found himself in a neglected garden.
Mulgrave was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had taken refuge in the cottage, or even in the mill beyond. Whichcote caught sight of a figure by the water, barely visible beyond the unpruned fruit trees at the bottom of the garden.
A whipping, then a ducking. That would teach the knave a lesson.
He realized his mistake before he reached the trees. It was Frank himself down there, quite alone, and sitting with his back to the cottage. His coat and hat lay beside him on the grass. There was a rod in his hand and the line trailed limply into the water, shifting with the current. He did not turn as Whichcote drew nearer, though he must have heard the approaching footsteps.
Prudence, Whichcote told himself. He felt unusually calm now. He would play the long game.
‘Frank!’ Whichcote drew level and smiled down at him, knowing that now he must dissemble as never before. He shifted the whip to his left hand, ready to shake Frank’s hand with his right. ‘I give you good day. I am rejoiced to see you.’
Frank laid down the rod and stood up. He ignored Whichcote’s outstretched hand and bowed stiffly.
‘And looking so well,’ Whichcote went on, placing the spurned hand negligently on his hip as if that had been his intention all along. ‘Why, you are a positive advertisement for the beneficial effects of rural pursuits. I declare you tempt me to come and live in seclusion with you. We shall do nothing but fish and shoot and ride, and be happy the livelong day. Are you quite alone?’
Frank said nothing, but Whichcote fancied he nodded. It was difficult to be sure because the sun was low in the sky. It was behind Frank, obscuring his face and shining into Whichcote’s eyes. The heavy golden light caught the ends of Frank’s hair, which he was wearing loose and unpowdered for all the world as though he were a ploughboy.
‘I am sorry to say I was obliged to discipline your servant as I came in,’ Whichcote went on. ‘That man Mulgrave – damn the fellow, he’s old enough to know better. He was downright impudent. You should turn him out of your service, you really should.’
He paused but Frank said nothing.
‘Your friends are anxious for news. May I tell them you are fully restored? When will you be back among us?’
He heard sounds behind him, and turned. Mulgrave was limping down the path. The gyp stopped beside the trees, keeping a safe distance between himself and Whichcote. There was already a weal burning across his left cheek, and another cut like a red furrow around his neck, just below the jaw.
‘He took a whip to me, sir,’ Mulgrave called. ‘Ain’t right. I’m not his servant. And he owes me money, too.’
‘Hold your tongue,’ Frank snapped, his sense of propriety outraged by Mulgrave’s daring to speak so rudely of his betters.
‘You’ll chastise him yourself, I hope,’ Whichcote said. ‘Good God, what is the world coming to?’
Frank turned his eyes back to Whichcote. With sudden violence, he leaped forward and seized the older man around the waist. Whichcote, taken entirely by surprise, at first made no attempt to defend himself. Frank pulled him down the slope of the bank. Whichcote struggled, and briefly succeeded in breaking Frank’s hold. But Frank was younger, larger and stronger than him. He embraced Whichcote and squeezed, pinning the latter’s arms to his side.
‘Damn you, let me –’
Frank dragged him further down the slope. The ground near the water was soft. Whichcote’s riding boots slipped in the mud. He butted Frank’s face with his forehead as viciously as he could. Frank swore and shifted his grip. He raised the older man off his feet.
‘For God’s sake –’
Frank pivoted, lifting his victim higher. Gathering momentum with the force of the swing, he flung Whichcote away from him. For an instant Whichcote hung in the air, limbs flailing. There was a great splash as he hit the water.
‘Quack,’ Frank said, smiling. ‘Quack, quack.’
*
Holdsworth loped swiftly out of Cambridge, climbing the long hill from the river as though the Furies were pursuing him. As he walked, two faces constantly flashed before him in the inner theatre of his mind: one was Tobias Soresby’s, white, bony and full of fear; and the other was Elinor Carbury’s, turned up to him with those lovely eyes trained on him – those eyes, so unexpected and indeed ravishing in that stern, thin, heavy-browed face.
Why do we think only
the dead haunt us, he wondered, for the living are just as good at it?
The town dropped away behind him. As the light began to fade, the clouds were coming in from the west and it grew noticeably cooler. Holdsworth slowed his pace. He remembered how, on his first night at Jerusalem, Richardson had taken him out into the gardens and had talked of the place as a fortress, enclosed and inviolate. But there was another way of looking at it, namely that the walls kept people in as much as they kept others out. The place was a trap, and animals caught in traps cannot escape one another. Once, in the days of his prosperity, Holdsworth had employed a journeyman who delighted in collecting rats and placing them together in a cage. The rats would fight until only one was left, bloody, victorious and often dying. It was such sport to watch them, the journeyman used to say, and he would take bets on who would be the winner.
A rider appeared a quarter of a mile away. His horse was moving at a walk, so the man was in no hurry. Slowly he and Holdsworth drew together. There was something strange about the figure slumped in the saddle. His head was down. His coat looked limp and bedraggled. He wore neither hat nor wig.
The distance between them decreased. The coat was more than bedraggled – it was wet, and so were the rest of the man’s clothes. When they were no more than twenty yards apart, the rider raised his head. His eyes met Holdsworth’s but slid away as the head bowed again over the horse’s neck. But there had been time enough for Holdsworth to recognize him.
‘Mr Whichcote,’ he said. ‘Good evening, sir. Have you met with an accident?’
Ignoring Holdsworth, Whichcote urged the horse into a trot and passed him. Holdsworth turned to watch his retreating figure. Once he was safely past, Whichcote allowed his horse to slow to a swaying, ambling walk.
Holdsworth went on as quickly as he could, trying to ignore a blister developing on his right foot. He passed through the little village, where the dogs barked at him and the smith, smoking his evening pipe outside the forge, watched him curiously. Holdsworth turned into the track to the mill.
Mulgrave was in the yard, also smoking. He stood up with obvious reluctance when he saw Holdsworth and made only a token effort to hide his pipe. There was a mark on his left cheek, a long, angry weal, and another on his neck partly concealed by his necktie and collar.
‘Thank God it’s you, sir,’ the gyp said, casting his eyes piously towards heaven. ‘I thought for a moment you was that devil again.’
‘Mr Whichcote?’
‘Who else, sir? The devil incarnate.’
‘I passed him on the road.’
‘He took his riding crop to me. In this very yard. I’m as free a citizen of this country as he is, sir, and maybe I’ll have the law on him for it. It’s assault and battery, that’s what it is. And there’s the money he owes me, too, the villain, he’s as good as stolen it.’
‘What happened? Where’s Mr Frank? Did Mr Whichcote talk to him?’
Mulgrave wriggled, as though the questions were bullets and he was trying to avoid them. It took Holdsworth an instant to realize that the gyp was laughing silently.
‘Mr Frank gave him a ducking in the millpond.’
‘What?’
The silent wriggling began again. ‘Gave him a ducking, he did, that’ll teach the devil a lesson.’
‘But where’s Mr Frank?’ Holdsworth repeated, raising his voice.
Mulgrave jerked a thumb. ‘In the parlour, if you can call it that.’
Before the gyp had finished speaking, Holdsworth was walking away. Mulgrave’s lack of respect could wait until later. He found Frank sitting on the elbow-chair by the table in the parlour, with a dish of tea beside him. His hair was combed and lightly powdered, and he was neatly and soberly dressed. He could have attended divine service in Great St Mary’s without causing anyone to raise an eyebrow. He was so absorbed in his book, Night Thoughts, that he appeared not to notice Holdsworth’s entry.
‘Mr Oldershaw – I am heartily sorry for the intrusion you suffered this afternoon. I hope you are not harmed?’
Frank laid the book carefully on the table and, with great condescension, rose and bowed to Holdsworth.
‘I should not have left you unprotected,’ Holdsworth went on. ‘I have been racking my brains how Whichcote found out your direction –’
‘I am perfectly well, sir, as you see, so it don’t signify.’
‘Why did he come? What happened?’
Frank smiled. ‘Quack,’ he said. ‘Quack.’
That evening it rained, not heavily but a steady drizzle that kept Elinor indoors. She sat by the window and turned over the familiar pages of Rasselas. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. She was aware of almost constant movements in the house around her – footsteps on the stairs, doors closing, comings and goings in the hall beneath and the murmuring of servants.
At eight o’clock, she rang for Susan, ostensibly to have her bring the tea things. But while she was in the room, Elinor asked her maid about the movements below.
‘It’s Mr Richardson, ma’am, he’s been in and out all evening. And we’ve had Mr Holdsworth and young Mr Archdale, too, and Mepal. And now Master’s sent Ben to fetch Mr Soresby.’
Time dragged on. After tea, Elinor found it necessary to go downstairs on two occasions, once to fetch a book from the dining room, and again, when the rain had stopped, to venture out for a turn in the Master’s Garden while it was still light. On both occasions she heard voices behind the closed door of Dr Carbury’s book room. Though sorely tempted, she could not bring herself to sink so low as to listen at the door; and besides the servants were to and fro so there was always the risk of discovery.
Outside, she strolled up and down the gravel walks and it was surprising how often she found herself passing the book-room window. Unfortunately it was closed. When she was near by, she heard voices, but could not distinguish what they were saying. There was one exception, however, when she heard Soresby saying, or rather shouting, ‘But I swear it, sir! By all that’s sacred!’
As the evening drew on, the mystery deepened. Soresby left the Master’s Lodge. Elinor, who happened to be in the dining room at the time, looked up and saw his lanky figure pass the window, his head bowed and his gown trailing along the ground.
The hour for supper arrived. Elinor ate alone in the dining room. There was no sign of Dr Carbury. He was still in the Lodge. His usual practice was to sup in hall or in the combination room, but if he remained at home, he would sup with his wife. Elinor discreetly interrogated Susan and learned that her husband had not even told Ben to bring him a tray in his book room. She discounted the possibility that Dr Carbury was feeling exceptionally unwell – for he would have made Elinor and the servants aware of it if he had been; he was not a man to suffer in silence.
His behaviour was inexplicable. But she dared not disturb him to satisfy her curiosity. He had laid it down as a rule of their marriage that she never went to him. He came to her if and when it pleased him to do so.
After supper, she returned to her sitting room and had the candles lighted and the curtains drawn. She had not been there long when she heard the familiar dragging step on the stairs. Her husband entered the room, leaning on his stick. His face was grey and seemed thinner than usual. The skin hung from his jowls like folds of stained and wrinkled canvas.
‘Why, there you are, sir.’ She rose and turned his chair towards him, so it would be easier for him to reach it. ‘I had almost given up hope of you.’
He gave her the briefest of bows and sank down heavily in the chair.
‘You have not had any supper. Are you unwell?’
He waved away the question with his hand. ‘Yes, I suppose I must peck at something, if only a trifle. I have sent Ben out for a mutton chop or two, and a slice of that pigeon pie we had last night, if there’s any left. I cannot face anything else.’
‘My dear sir, you’re not yourself.’
He grunted. ‘I hav
e received intelligence this evening that quite removed my appetite. I would not have believed it possible. Soresby of all people.’
‘What has happened to him?’
‘It is more a case of what he has done, ma’am. I had Richardson come to me an hour or two ago – oh, he was looking very glum but you could see the glee in his eyes. It appears that Soresby has stolen a valuable book from the library.’
‘Stolen? Not borrowed?’
‘One does not borrow a book by breaking into the cupboard where it is locked away, sneaking off with it and concealing it in one’s mattress. No, there’s no doubt. Soresby denies it, naturally, but the evidence against him is incontrovertible. He must have intended to sell the book, for I’m told it would fetch a few guineas in London. And God knows he must be in want of money. Sizars always are.’
‘But surely, with the promise of the Rosington –?’
‘Ah, but that does not become vacant for more than six months. Besides, he could not expect to enter directly into the fellowship in any case. In fact he would find it hard to borrow on the strength of the offer because he has not even taken his degree yet. Still, it is strange – he should have come to me, I would have advanced him the money if necessary. I can only hypothesize that the fool had a brainstorm and was seized by a desperate impulse. And after I had given him such a mark of favour, too.’
Elinor shifted in her chair so the glare of the candles was not on her face. ‘What will you do? Can the matter be dealt with quietly?’
Carbury shook his head. ‘It gives Richardson the perfect opportunity to have his revenge on me. I imagine the news is already halfway around Cambridge – he will have made sure of that. Had it rested on his word alone, it would have been easier. But unfortunately the theft was discovered by Mr Archdale. Soresby had left a penknife at the scene, and it was Mr Archdale himself who recognized it as Soresby’s. And then who should chance to come by but Mr Holdsworth.’
The Anatomy of Ghosts Page 28