The Anatomy Of Ghosts

37

On the same morning, while the college was in chapel, Dr Milton called at the Master’s Lodge. He was a dried-up little man, well past seventy, with a face like a prune and a snuff-stained waistcoat. His manner was never amiable but today it was worse than usual, partly because he had been forced to hurry his breakfast and partly because he had heard that his patient had had the temerity to call in a second opinion.

‘Well, ma’am,’ he said to Elinor when he had seen Dr Carbury, ordered a few ounces of blood to be taken from him, and prescribed more opium. ‘I do not know why you needed to send for Dr Jermyn. He can have added nothing of value to my diagnosis. The case is as plain as the nose on my face.’

‘Then there is no possible room for doubt, sir?’

‘None. It is a type of cancer that is beyond the reach of any physic.’

‘Perhaps a surgeon -?’

‘No, ma’am, no. As I have already told Dr Carbury, the location of the swelling rules out surgery entirely. The remedy would be as fatal as the disease, only swifter in action. The knife would kill him as it cut out the cancer.’

Elinor turned aside. After a pause, she said quietly, ‘How long?’

‘That is a harder question. It may be days or weeks – even months, though I doubt it. These matters are notoriously hard to calculate. So much depends on the progress of the disease and the constitution of the patient, you apprehend. I will continue to do my best, ma’am, but you should not expect miracles.’

‘No, sir,’ Elinor said. ‘Never that.’

He looked sharply at her, suspecting irony, then took out his watch and said his other patients were awaiting him. When he had gone, Elinor stood by the window looking down over the Master’s Garden and the Long Pond. She had known this day would come but had not expected it so soon. Her future had suddenly become a dark hole in the path before her; and she was sliding inexorably towards it, unable to change direction or even to delay the moment when she would fall into the pit.

There was a knock at the door and Susan came in to say that Dr Carbury was awake and was asking for her. She found her husband in bed, propped up against the pillows. Beside the window sat a hired nurse with her knitting. The illness had aged him still further overnight and also shrivelled his face and body. His eyes, paradoxically, seemed to have grown more youthful. She had never had occasion before to pay much attention to them but now she realized they were large and lustrous, like those of a wolfhound Frank used to have in the country when he was a boy.

Dr Carbury beckoned her towards him, nearer and nearer until her face was only inches from his. ‘Send the woman away,’ he whispered. ‘And have them bring me Soresby.’ His fingers gripped the sleeve of her dress. ‘It is most important, madam.’

She tried to pull herself away, wondering whether Soresby had returned from his illicit excursion the previous evening. ‘It shall be done directly, sir.’

‘Soresby,’ he whispered. ‘Soresby.’

They were interrupted by a knock at the chamber door. Mr Richardson appeared; Ben followed behind him, his face fixed in an expression of mute appeal because Elinor had ordered him not to allow anyone to come up.

‘Mrs Carbury, your servant, ma’am.’ Richardson advanced into the room. ‘My dear Dr Carbury, my gyp told me you had had Dr Milton this morning, and I simply could not keep away. I hope your indisposition is not serious?’

‘Dr Milton does not advise visitors,’ Elinor said. ‘He was most insistent.’

‘But I am hardly some chance acquaintance, ma’am.’ Richardson smiled, as if to take the sting from the words. ‘All of us in the combination room have been anxious for news and of course we are praying that it will be good news. Besides, you may remember that the fellows are due to meet at midday and this business with poor Mr Soresby makes it particularly urgent that we should do so. If the Master is too unwell to attend, I suppose I must do my poor best to take his place for the occasion.’

Carbury, who until this moment had given no sign that he had noticed his visitor, turned his head on the pillow and stared fixedly at the far wall.

‘I regret to say that the Master will probably not be well enough to join you today, sir,’ Elinor said. ‘The doctor has ordered him to rest.’

‘Oh dear.’ Richardson’s face became a picture of sorrow and concern. He neatly sidestepped Elinor so he could address the figure on the bed directly. ‘Goodbye, my dear friend, and you may be sure I shall pray for your speedy restoration to health.’

The tutor bowed again to Elinor. But at the door he stopped. ‘By the way – have you heard the news? Mr Soresby was not in chapel this morning. I sent over to Yarmouth Hall but his room is empty. I regret to say that he appears to have absconded. It’s scarcely the act of an innocent man, is it? But I hope that no harm has come to him.’

Dr Carbury groaned. Elinor turned. Her husband had not moved: he was still staring at the far wall.

‘Damn the man,’ he said. ‘Damn him. Damn, damn, damn.’

The smith, up early to tend his forge, had seen Frank Oldershaw walking south through Whitebeach not long after dawn. He had wished him good morning but Frank had not replied. The sighting confirmed that Frank was almost certainly making for Cambridge.

Holdsworth walked after him. Once he reached Cambridge, he tried Jerusalem first. Mepal, standing by the gates with his little eyes bright with curiosity, told him that he had not seen Mr Oldershaw since they took him to Barnwell all those weeks ago. He advised Holdsworth against calling at the Master’s Lodge at present, explaining that Dr Carbury was indisposed. Mr Richardson was unavailable, for he had just begun a lecture. Holdsworth asked after Mr Archdale, only to learn that the young gentleman was among Mr Richardson’s audience.

He walked back the way he had come and crossed the bridge. In Chesterton Lane, the gates of Lambourne House stood open. Could Frank have been so foolish as to go there? A man in a frayed brown coat was smoking a pipe on the front doorstep. He wore a red-spotted handkerchief round his neck and watched Holdsworth’s approach with a detached, faintly amused air, as a man with time on his hands might watch the antics of a stray dog. The door stood open behind him. Inside the house, someone was whistling ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’.

Holdsworth had never seen the fellow before but there was no doubt about his identity. There were enough of the breed in London, and Holdsworth had lived in fear of finding a pair of them – they rarely worked alone – outside his own door.

‘If you’re looking for Mr Whichcote, he ain’t here,’ the man said, removing his pipe and peering into the bowl.

‘Where is he, pray?’

‘A pressing engagement elsewhere, that’s what I’d call it.’ Like so many of his fellows, the sheriff’s officer had developed a taste for elephantine humour, a perquisite of petty power.

‘Do you mean to tell me he’s been taken up for debt?’ Holdsworth asked.

‘Ask me no questions, I tell you no lies.’

‘At whose suit? How much for?’

The man tapped his nose with the pipe-stem. ‘Ah – I cannot quite call the name or the amount to mind.’

Holdsworth sighed and felt in his pocket for a shilling. He held the little silver coin in the palm of his hand, just outside the officer’s reach.

‘A matter of eighty pound,’ the man said, his eyes on the shilling. ‘And fees and expenses. Suit of Mr Mulgrave.’

‘Where’s Mr Whichcote now?’

The man tapped his nose again, and continued to do so until Holdsworth had placed another shilling beside the first.

‘At Mr Purser’s in Wall Lane, sir.’

‘Mr Purser’s your master?’

The officer nodded. Holdsworth dropped the two shillings into the outstretched hand, smelling the wine on the man’s breath as he did so. ‘Do you happen to know if a young gentleman called here to see Mr Whichcote this morning?’

‘Big fellow? Fresh-faced?’

‘The very man.’

The man tapped his nose again but then looked at Holdsworth’s face and thought better of negotiating for more.

‘He was in a devilish hurry to see Mr Whichcote, I tell you that.’

‘Was that before or after he was taken up by Mr Purser?’

‘After. You’ve only just missed him. We sent him over to Wall Lane. Maybe he’s going to lend Mr Whichcote the ready. Mind you, he’ll need deep pockets. More to come before the end of the day.’

‘More what?’

‘More writs.’

They had shown Whichcote into an apartment on the first floor near the back of the tall, thin house. The building belied its narrow frontage, straggling back from Wall Lane under a cluster of ill-assorted roofs. He sat with his elbows on the scarred table, supporting his head. Everything he was, everything he depended upon, rested on his being Philip Whichcote of Lambourne House. He had worried enough about his debts before, but in his heart he had felt he was armoured against the worst consequences of owing money to other people. A gentleman lived on credit: that was entirely to be expected. For a man of his rank to be harried by Mulgrave, who was little better than a servant, was against the natural order of things.

Someone was knocking on the street door. The hammering seemed to pound in time with his headache, the one exacerbating the other. In a place like this there was necessarily a good deal of coming and going. He knew that Purser must be entertaining other guests, as he tactfully called them – the more fortunate class of debtors, those who had connections who were likely to pay their debts in the long run, one way or another, and in the meantime were in possession of sufficient resources to pay for their board and lodging at Purser’s. The bailiff’s charges were exorbitantly expensive but the sponging house was infinitely preferable to the debtors’ prison, the only alternative.

There was a tap at his door and Purser’s manservant showed in Mrs Phear. Abandoning ceremony for once, she came straight to him and took his hands in hers. Neither of them spoke until they were alone.

‘I came at once when I had your note,’ she said softly.

‘I am ruined, ma’am.’

‘Whose suit? And how much?’

‘Mulgrave’s. Ninety pounds would see me clear of him and deal with Purser’s fees too.’

She frowned, calculating. ‘Then we shall have you out in an hour or two at most.’

‘If only it were that simple. They will all be at it now. God knows what the whole will amount to.’

‘Hundreds?’

‘Thousands, probably.’

Releasing his hands, she sat down beside him. ‘I cannot lay my hands on a sum like that. Can you raise the money, if you were given time?’

He shrugged. ‘As likely see a hog fly.’

She stared at him, her eyebrows a little raised.

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ he said quickly, alert as ever to her moods and even in this situation amused by her genteel abhorrence of a vulgarism. ‘I spoke without thinking. But truly, there is no hope left.’

‘What about the house? Can you raise anything on that?’

‘I have only a life interest. And I’ve already borrowed on the strength of that. If I cannot redeem the bill at Michaelmas, or failing that renegotiate it, I am entirely done for. I will lose the house.’

Without the house, there would be no meetings of the Holy Ghost Club. Without the house, he would not have a roof over his head.

‘Are you owed money?’

‘Perhaps a hundred or two. But I have no chance of laying my hands on a penny for months, if not years. You know what these young cubs are with their gambling debts. They run them up and then, if they cannot pay, what can one do but wait?’

She left him and went to the window. He knew what she would see there: the house had eaten up half the little garden. There was a scrubby little yard, a privy and a pigsty, where one could watch the lean backs of two hogs as they rooted in the mud.

‘Perhaps hogs can fly,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You are wrong to abandon hope,’ she said calmly. ‘I have sufficient resources laid by to deal with Mulgrave. That will buy us a little time.’

‘What use is a few hours? The writs will be flying again before I get home.’

She looked sternly at him. ‘Even a little time may be enough.’

The room was stuffy and smelled of illness. At first Dr Carbury was restless, turning this way and that as he tried to make himself comfortable. As the hours slipped by, he grew quieter. Elinor sat by his bed until she heard eleven o’clock striking, when she rose and tiptoed to the door. She waited there for a few seconds, listening to her husband’s heavy breathing.

The nurse, who was knitting by the window, looked up. Elinor whispered that she would soon return. She left her husband’s bedroom and almost ran downstairs. Without pausing for thought she left the Lodge by the garden door and walked slowly down the gravel walk towards the pond.

More than ever, she needed a clear head. She could no longer rely on the protection of her husband. She had known for months that he was ill, but it was only now, after Milton’s visit this morning, that she was forced to accept that he was dying, and that the melancholy event could be expected within weeks, or even days.

If she was not to be utterly ruined, Lady Anne’s support was more than ever essential. All her ladyship wanted was the restoration of her son to her. If Elinor could earn her gratitude by helping Frank, then truly anything might be possible.

Even John Holdsworth?

The last question set off an undesirable train of thought. Or, to be precise, not exactly undesirable in every sense, but certainly inappropriate, immoral and inconvenient. Breathing faster than usual, she reached the Long Pond at its widest point, opposite the oriental plane. It was here they had found Sylvia. After a moment’s hesitation, Elinor took the path along the bank to the gate by the Frostwick Bridge. She laid her fingers on the gate’s wrought-iron screen, touching it at the precise spot where Holdsworth’s hand had touched hers. The metal was cold, rough and unresponsive. She snatched her hand away. She opened the gate and walked quickly over the bridge.

As far as she could tell, she had the college gardens to herself. She slipped under the shelter of the plane, which enclosed her like an enormous green tent, with its branches hanging like curtains to the ground.

It was cool and private here. No one could see her. She could think of anything she wanted. Goodbye, Sylvia; forgive me and now leave me. She hugged herself and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a man’s arms around her.

Come what may, she decided, she would write to Lady Anne when she got back to the Lodge. She would tell her that Dr Carbury was dying.

But she was not alone after all. Wheels rattled and scraped on the flagstones of the chapel arcade. Someone was talking. Keeping well back, she changed her position so she could see through a gap between the branches. At first she thought Tom Turdman was making his rounds. She realized her mistake as a man and a woman appeared, framed in one of the arches of the arcade.

It was Philip Whichcote. And on his arm was a dumpy little lady old enough to be his mother.

As Elinor watched, they walked along the façade of New Building. Behind them came a barrow piled high with portmanteaus and boxes and drawn by two servants, scarcely more than children. Elinor recognized Whichcote’s footboy. The other was a tall, thin girl whose legs and arms had grown too long for her dress.

The rooms in New Building were arranged in sets served by three staircases. Whichcote went into the nearer of the staircases, accompanied by the lady. The barrow stopped and the servants set to unloading its cargo.

Whichcote was coming into residence. It was a sign, Elinor thought, a manifestation of God’s displeasure with her for her adulterous desires. How could she forget Sylvia when Whichcote was here?