The Anatomy of Ghosts

by Andrew Taylor

  Later, when the nurse told Elinor that her husband was awake, she went into his room. They were alone, for the nurse was downstairs. The curtains were drawn against the glare of the day. Dr Carbury was lying on his back with the covers wrapped around him like a straitjacket. He stared at her with his huge doglike eyes.

  ‘How are you, sir? Do you feel rested?’

  He ignored the questions. ‘Is there news?’

  ‘Mr Oldershaw is returned, and Mr Richardson says he is fully restored.’

  ‘Good. But what of Soresby?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. I hope no harm has come to the poor young man.’

  ‘Aye, that is certainly a possibility.’ Carbury’s head reared up from the pillows in a sudden access of energy. ‘Self-murder. Now I think of it, it is not at all unlikely.’

  ‘I hope it’s not so.’

  Her husband appeared not to have heard her. His head fell back heavily on the pillows. ‘Soresby dead?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Yes, very likely. Quite, quite dead. But is it too much to hope for?’

  ‘That devil has brought the club archives with him,’ Frank said to Holdsworth as soon as he came back from the Jericho. ‘They are in his rooms, and he will blackmail me with them. Dear God, to think I esteemed him once. I thought him a man of breeding. What’s to be done?’

  ‘Nothing in haste, Mr Oldershaw.’

  Frank glared at him. ‘That’s all very well for you to say, sir, but –’

  There was a knock at the door and Harry Archdale bounced into the room like a cheerful cherub.

  ‘My dear Frank, how do you do!’ He seized Frank’s hand and pumped it up and down. ‘You’re back at last, safe and sound. I give you joy of it. A happy return indeed.’

  Holdsworth bowed and drew back, looking for an excuse to withdraw.

  ‘Have you heard our latest excitement?’ Archdale said after the first greetings were over. ‘Soresby has disappeared.’

  ‘Ricky told us just now. Bit of a scrub, eh? Always cracking his knuckles, like a regular fusillade.’

  Archdale wrinkled his nose. ‘There’s been hell to pay. I can’t understand it myself – he was Carbury’s pet. The old man had even reserved a fellowship for him.’

  ‘I thought Soresby was Ricky’s man. By the way, have you been down to the stables lately? My horses have been –’

  ‘Wait, Frank – this Soresby business – you haven’t heard to the end of it. I was coming into college just now and Mepal runs up with a parcel. Somebody left it in the box last night – he didn’t see who. And it turns out it’s from Soresby.’ Archdale took a small, slim volume from his pocket. ‘Look here.’

  Frank took the book and opened it to the title-page. ‘Euclid? What on earth’s this?’

  ‘I am become quite the reading man since you last saw me. But that’s not the point. This was inside. See here.’

  Archdale held out a scrap of paper, which looked as if it had been torn from a pocketbook. Holdsworth drew nearer and read the few words it contained over Frank’s shoulder.

  Mr Archdale – here is the book. Mr Dow’s second paragraph on page 41 must be mastered if one is to grasp Proposition 47 (the Pythagorean Theorem). Pray do not believe this terrible lie about me. I swear I did not steal anything. T. S.

  40

  Dinner was still an hour and a half away. Holdsworth made his excuses and left the two young gentlemen to talk among themselves. It was as well that he had agreed to stay with Frank for a day or two longer, now there was the new danger from Whichcote. Besides, what did he have in London to go back to?

  In his heart, he knew there were other and more powerful reasons for him to stay, though he could barely admit some of them to himself and certainly not to Frank. The unexplained deaths of Sylvia Whichcote and Tabitha Skinner irritated him like a stone in his shoe. They were none of his business now Frank was himself again. But still they rankled. Moreover, the matter of Sylvia’s ghost was unresolved. If he did not lay the poor woman to rest, his failure would pique him for the rest of his life. Would it not leave open the possibility that Maria had been right all along, and that she had indeed been visited by Georgie’s ghost?

  The hardest reason to admit, and the most powerful, was the living woman, not fifty yards away in the Master’s Lodge, who had the power to do far worse than pique him. I am shameful, he told himself, immoral, foolish and mad. If I were a superstitious man I would say she is a witch who has put me under a curse. But in truth the fault is entirely mine.

  As Holdsworth came out of Frank’s staircase, he saw Mr Whichcote’s footboy slipping through the gateway with a basket over his arm. Holdsworth set off in pursuit.

  Two sheriff’s officers were standing outside the paved area in front of the Jerusalem gate. They recognized the boy, and called out to him, but he scuttled past and darted into St Andrew’s Street.

  Holdsworth quickened his pace. The footboy turned into Petty Cury and threaded his way up to the market, where he bought fruit from one stall and cheese from another. Afterwards he drifted towards the Conduit, where there was always a little crowd. He helped himself to a strawberry. Next, he unwrapped a corner of the cheese with great care and examined it, as though looking for crumbs.

  The boy was no longer alone. A tall, thin girl, drably dressed, sidled up to him. Holdsworth recognized her as the girl he had seen with the footboy in college. As if she felt his eyes on her, she looked up and stared at him. She must have said something to the boy too, for he turned in Holdsworth’s direction.

  Holdsworth abandoned subtlety and made his way over to them. The two children backed away.

  ‘Pray do not alarm yourselves,’ Holdsworth said quickly. ‘I mean you no harm. You are Mr Whichcote’s boy, are you not? I have seen you at Lambourne House and just now out at Jerusalem.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Mr Whichcote’s waiting –’

  ‘It’s merely that you looked hungry and I wondered whether you would care to share a pie with me.’ Holdsworth gestured towards a nearby pie stall. ‘I should like a mouthful or two myself, but I do not have the appetite for an entire pie. And it would be a sin to waste what I cannot eat.’

  The boy looked at the girl. Some sort of signal passed between them.

  ‘And perhaps your friend would like some too. Will you be so good as to choose a pie, as large as you wish, and bring it to me?’

  Holdsworth held out his hand, palm upwards, and uncurled the fingers, revealing three pennies and a threepenny piece. The boy’s hand swooped on the money. He and the girl went over to the pie stall and negotiated with the woman who was serving. When they came back, the boy held out the pie to him. The girl held out the two remaining pennies.

  Holdsworth made no move to take either. ‘I wish to talk to you,’ he said.

  The boy took a step back and then another.

  ‘Stay,’ Holdsworth said, realizing he was about to lose him and that, to make matters worse, the lad might report Holdsworth’s blundering attempt to talk to him to his master. ‘Lisen to me, it is for your own good.’ He brought his head down to a level with the boy’s and lowered his voice. ‘I know what happened at the Holy Ghost Club.’

  Alarm flared in the boy’s eyes.

  ‘Does Mr Whichcote owe you money, sir?’ the girl said suddenly.

  ‘No. But I wager he owes this lad his wages.’ Holdsworth saw from her face that the shot had gone home and he pressed his advantage. ‘All I want is five minutes’ conversation with you,’ he said to the boy. ‘And your friend may stay with you and see that you come to no harm. And while we talk, you and she may eat the pie. Can we strike a bargain on it?’

  It was the pie that provided the clinching argument. Holdsworth had watched it in the boy’s hands. The small, grubby fingers were fiddling at the crust. The smell was rising to his nostrils. A piece of the pie lid came away from the rest and the boy crammed it into his mouth. He glanced at the girl and mutely offered the pie to her. She too broke off a fragment of the crust.

  ‘Come,�
� Holdsworth said. ‘You will not wish to eat and talk in the middle of a crowd. Is there somewhere near by?’

  They took him to the little churchyard attached to St Edward’s, where they found a corner in the sunshine and away from the gaze of passers-by. The boy broke the pie in two and offered the larger part to the girl. They ate swiftly and with concentration. Holdsworth made no attempt to talk while they ate. He leaned against the wall of the church and thought how like they were to small animals, only partly tamed.

  ‘Your friend will not mind moving a little aside while we talk,’ Holdsworth said to the boy when he had finished.

  ‘She knows as much as I do, sir.’

  ‘About the club?’

  ‘Indeed I do, sir.’ The girl’s voice was more Cockney than Cambridge. ‘I helped them make ready and I cleared up their foulness afterwards.’

  ‘And – and we’re friends, sir.’

  ‘If you say so,’ the girl said with a touch of scorn.

  ‘Very well,’ Holdsworth said. ‘You know that I am Mr Holdsworth. I am in the employment of Lady Anne Oldershaw. Let us begin at the beginning and first you shall tell me who you are.’

  ‘He’s Augustus,’ the girl said. ‘I’m Dorcas.’

  ‘And are you in service too?’

  ‘With Mrs Phear in Trumpington Street, sir.’

  ‘I begin to understand,’ Holdsworth said.

  The girl said nothing but her eyes lingered on his face.

  ‘Mr Oldershaw is a very rich young gentleman,’ he went on. ‘He has it in his power to reward you well and to find you both new situations. Do you remember that meeting at the club in February?’

  Augustus nodded.

  ‘And do you remember what happened in the pavilion? Were you there?’

  Colour flooded through Augustus’s face.

  ‘I see that you do. There is nothing to be afraid of – no blame attaches to you. Tell me about the young girl.’

  ‘How do we know you ain’t gammoning us?’ Dorcas said suddenly. ‘Maybe she put you up to it.’

  ‘She?’ Holdsworth said.

  ‘Madam. Maybe it’s a test.’

  ‘It isn’t. Augustus knows I am acting for Mr Oldershaw and he has no love for Mr Whichcote.’

  The boy nodded, but he kept his eyes on Dorcas.

  ‘A guinea,’ she said. ‘A guinea apiece.’

  ‘What about the situation?’ Augustus whispered.

  ‘A guinea’s a guinea when it’s in your hand,’ Dorcas said. ‘A promise is only a promise.’

  ‘If you serve me well, you shall have both.’ Holdsworth took out his purse and laid two guineas on the top of the nearest headstone, where they glinted in the sun. ‘You shall have these in a moment or two, when we are finished here.’

  The children stared at the coins.

  ‘Tell me about Tabitha Skinner,’ Holdsworth said.

  He knew instantly, by their stunned silence and their blank faces, that the gamble had paid off.

  ‘The girl,’ he prompted.

  Dorcas sighed softly, as if with relief. ‘She come from the Magdalene, sir – you know, up in London. Same as me. But she was pretty.’

  ‘So are you,’ said Augustus.

  ‘Mrs Phear brought her?’ Holdsworth said.

  ‘Yes. That’s how she does it, see? Brings them up here. She tells the Magdalene Board that she can maybe help place them in service and at least train them up while they’re here.’ Dorcas’s pinched little features contorted and became older than their years. ‘Very charitable lady, Mrs Phear. The girls have to pretend they’s a virgin when the young gentlemen come.’

  ‘You mean to tell me that Mrs Phear brings these girls up from London to be servants and then prostitutes them?’

  Dorcas laughed soundlessly, opening her mouth to reveal where her front two teeth had been. ‘Bless you, sir, the girls don’t mind. Not in the general run of things. Half the time the gentlemen are too drunk to mount them, but they get paid just the same. But Tabitha was different – she really was a maid.’

  Holdsworth turned aside. The smell of the pie made him want to vomit. After a moment, he said, ‘To put it plainly, Mrs Phear and Mr Whichcote procured a virgin to be raped?’

  ‘Tabitha said at least she’d lose her maidenhead to a nice clean gentleman and get a good price for it. Miracle she still had it to lose. She said maybe the young gentleman would fall in love with her and offer to marry her. And then she’d have a place of her own and drive around in a gold coach and I could come and be her lady’s maid.’

  ‘I saw ’em,’ Augustus said. ‘Her and Mrs Phear, when they come in the coach while the company was at supper. I lighted them down the garden to the pavilion.’

  ‘Did she speak to you?’ Holdsworth asked. ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘Didn’t say nothing, sir. She was all muffled up, too. Next thing I knows, she’s dead.’

  ‘Mrs Phear’s dressed as a nun,’ Dorcas said. She made a face.

  Augustus gave a high and nervous giggle.

  ‘Where did they go in the pavilion?’ Holdsworth said.

  ‘Little room downstairs,’ the boy said. ‘It’s fitted up as a bedchamber, all in white. I had to light a fire there earlier in the day and keep it high. It was all made ready for them, with wine and nuts and fruit and everything.’

  ‘Tell him how it happened,’ Dorcas said. ‘That’s what he wants.’

  ‘They were having their supper – and Mrs Phear comes out of the bedchamber and goes up to the house – and after she comes back, she goes into the room. They were having the toasts upstairs by then. And a few minutes later she sends me up to the master with a note. He comes down and goes in to see them. And then, in a while, Mr Oldershaw comes running down the stairs and goes in. He was that hot for Tabitha he couldn’t wait. Didn’t even close the door. That’s when I heard the girl’s dead.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  Augustus shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘She was all in white, and tied to the bed. Her face was funny. Her eyes were open – they bulged like marbles. Maybe she died of fright.’

  The boy sat down on the grass, wrapping his arms around his knees. Dorcas touched the top of his head in a gesture that was almost maternal.

  ‘It was just one of them nuts, boy,’ she said. ‘That’s all. I told you – she couldn’t move, could she, on account of being tied down. She choked herself on half a walnut. Found it in her windpipe when we laid her out.’

  ‘So then they took her back to Mrs Phear’s?’ Holdsworth said.

  ‘They put her in with me,’ Dorcas said. ‘All stiff and cold beside me. And I ain’t been free of her since.’

  ‘She haunts her,’ Augustus whispered. ‘Tabitha’s ghost.’

  ‘It is nothing but a bad dream,’ Holdsworth snapped. ‘And you, boy, what did you do after they found her?’

  ‘They sent me back with her, sir. Me and master carried poor Tabitha up the garden in a chair like she was too drunk to walk. Nearly dropped her once. She was flopping about all over the place. We got her in the coach and back to Mrs Phear’s. And when me and Mr Whichcote got back to the pavilion, all the gentlemen had gone home.’

  ‘All? What about Mr Oldershaw?’

  ‘Not him, sir – he was up at the house.’ The boy looked up and swallowed. ‘Mistress was with him.’

  ‘Mrs Whichcote?’

  There was a quick nod.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In his chamber. Master found out and flew into a terrible passion. He locked me in the cellar for the night, nearly froze to death. I never saw her again, sir, not till she was in her coffin.’

  And then? The upshot of it all had been that Sylvia had run through the streets of Cambridge to seek refuge at Jerusalem College. There, somehow, she too had died. Holdsworth said, ‘Did you hear nothing of what passed between them that night – Mr Oldershaw, Mr and Mrs Whichcote?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘He hit her,’ Dorcas said.

  Holdswo
rth swung round to face her. ‘I don’t understand you. How can you have been able to form an opinion on the matter?’

  ‘Because I saw the lady dead, sir. I helped Mrs Phear lay out her. He’d hit her –’

  Holdsworth, remembering what Tom Turdman had told him, said before he could stop himself, ‘On the head?’ He touched his temple. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, sir, she’d knocked her head on something. But I didn’t mean that. When we laid Mrs Whichcote out, we washed her all over. The bruises were on the back.’

  Holdsworth stared at the girl, looking for signs that she was lying. She returned his gaze but any liar knew how to do that. Why would she lie? ‘Bruises?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The skin weren’t broken, not so you’d notice. Just looked like someone tore off her gown and beat her with a stick till she was black and blue.’

  The Master’s illness touched them all, one way or another. Nobody knew for certain how grave it was, and Dr Carbury had a reputation for being as strong as a horse. On the other hand, no one could rule out the possibility that on this occasion his illness might be either fatal or at least incapacitating.

  Whichcote watched as most of the fellows who dined in college found one excuse or another to talk to Mr Richardson and do the civil to him. They were jockeying for position, he thought, and much good might it do them.

  Mr Miskin, who could not yet be entirely certain of his promised living, told the tutor a good story he had heard the other day about the Vice-Chancellor, and he also recommended a man who could supply the finest eels in the Fens; all Mr Richardson had to do was to mention Mr Miskin’s name and the thing was as good as done. Mr Crowley asked Mr Richardson’s opinion on a difficult passage in the Anabasis and listened with flattering attention while he elucidated a crux in a way that threw unexpected light on Socrates’ influence on Xenophon and his comrades. Mr Dow wanted to discuss an ingenious scheme he had devised for the construction of water closets for the use of senior members of the college, employing a particularly hygienic and efficient modification that was all his own. Even Professor Trillo, who never stirred from his rooms these days, found the time to dictate a few lines to Mr Richardson praising his latest volume of sermons and offering to lend him his notes towards a grammar of the Chaldean and Assyrian branch of Eastern Middle Syriac.