The Anatomy Of Ghosts

41

Harry Archdale had intended to spend the hours after dinner at his books, but he had not reckoned on the unexpected reappearance of Frank. The two young men sat together at dinner and celebrated their reunion with a number of toasts. Afterwards, Frank had a fancy to go on the river and revisit old haunts.

They took a punt to Grantchester. It was warm work in the early evening sunshine. When they reached the village they quenched their thirst at the Red Lion for the better part of two hours.

Frank did not talk about his experiences since he had gone away. Harry did not like to pry. Indirectly, however, they arrived at the subject of Mr Whichcote and the Holy Ghost Club and found themselves in perfect agreement that they wanted nothing more to do with either the man or his club.

‘You know this business with Soresby?’ Archdale said as Frank was punting them towards Cambridge. ‘Didn’t you read with him last term?’

‘Yes. Not for long – I found it didn’t answer.’

‘He’s been reading with me this last week or two,’ Harry went on. ‘Devilish clever.’

Frank thrust the pole down. He twisted it and brought it up again. ‘I daresay. Still, he’s a thief.’

‘You don’t think there might be some mistake? Mind you, he ran off yesterday so I doubt there was. He wouldn’t do that if he was innocent, would he?’

Frank said nothing. He concentrated on negotiating a large willow branch that had fallen into the water.

‘And then there’s the letter he left for me in the book. Said he didn’t do it. Perhaps he didn’t.’

Frank squinted down at him. ‘What?’

‘You’re not listening. Perhaps he didn’t steal that Marlowe play after all. So I don’t know what to think.’

‘Do you have to think anything at all?’

‘Yes – he was most obliging to me, you know. In any case, if any a man needs a friend, he does.’

‘A friend?’

Archdale laughed a little awkwardly. ‘Well, perhaps not exactly that. But someone to lend a helping hand. Like you and that man Holdsworth.’

It was the first time Archdale had touched directly on Frank’s madness. Neither of them spoke. The punt glided through the weed-streaked water, startling a pair of ducks.

‘Ask Mulgrave,’ Frank said. ‘That’s what I’d do.’

‘Mulgrave? Why?’

Frank paused, allowing the pole to trail behind them, making a silver streak in the green water. ‘That’s what I do if I want something here. But perhaps Soresby can’t be found. Have you thought of that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Perhaps he’s drowned himself.’

Soon after this, they reached the landing place and walked in silence back to college. The gyp was in Chapel Court, unloading Frank’s portmanteaus and boxes from the same barrow that had carried Philip Whichcote’s belongings a few hours earlier.

‘Mulgrave, you know Mr Soresby, don’t you?’ Archdale said without any preamble. ‘The sizar?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you heard what’s happened to him?’

‘Mr Mepal said something about a missing library book, sir.’

‘That’s it. And have you also heard he’s made off? Stole away in the dead of night?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Mulgrave hoisted a box on to his shoulder and took a step towards the doorway.

‘Any notion where he might be? Are his parents living?’

‘I believe his mother is dead, sir, and his father works as a road-mender somewhere beyond Newcastle. But I doubt if he’d have gone there, sir. There’s bad blood between them.’

‘Anyone else he might have gone to, anyone who might know where he is?’

Mulgrave sucked in his cheeks and shifted his grip on the box. ‘I suppose Mr Soresby’s uncle might have some notion of his whereabouts, sir.’

‘His uncle? Who’s that?’

Mulgrave kept his eyes respectfully on the ground but he moved another step towards the door, staggering slightly under the weight of the box. ‘Why, sir, the night-soil man. Tom Turdman.’

With the exception of Mrs Carbury’s maid, Susan, and the duty porter, none of the servants spent the night in college. The porter guarded the main gate throughout the night. In theory he made regular tours of the college and never went to sleep, but in practice he rarely stirred from his lodge and often slept as soundly as anyone in Jerusalem. There was one other exception – sometimes the night-soil man came early, by special arrangement with Mr Mepal, and the porter would admit him at the main gate.

Since Augustus could not spend the night in college, Whichcote had settled that he would pass his nights at Mrs Phear’s house in Trumpington Street.

‘You might as well go now,’ he’d said when the chapel clock was striking seven. ‘I shall manage very well without you for the rest of the evening – you are all fingers and thumbs. Mind you give Mrs Phear my best compliments and be sure to say that I wish you to make yourself useful while you are there.’

Augustus walked slowly through Chapel Court, his mind groping for a possible future that did not include his being involved with Mr Whichcote’s ruin. The bailiff had advised him to look for another situation. Could he put his trust in Mr Holdsworth? If not, how could he even start? His present position would be no recommendation to a possible employer. He doubted that Mr Whichcote would give him a character. He was without friends, and in a town that was positively crawling with boys looking for employment, most of whom had an uncle here or brother there willing to extend a helping hand.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost collided with two undergraduates who were talking in the arcade by the porter’s lodge. As he cowered back, begging the gentlemen’s pardon, he recognized Frank Oldershaw and Harry Archdale.

‘You, boy,’ Archdale said. ‘Do you know the town well?’

‘Oh yes, sir. I was born here.’ In the cellar of a rat-infested building in a court off Green Street. ‘Every nook and cranny.’

‘Do you know Audrey Passage?’

‘Yes, sir – off King’s Lane.’ Desperation made him cunning. ‘Not easy to find.’

‘Will you take us there?’

‘Yes, your honour. Now, your honour?’

Frank Oldershaw laid a hand on Archdale’s sleeve. ‘This is Whichcote’s footboy. I knew I’d seen his face somewhere.’

Archdale blinked. ‘So it is.’

‘But I’m looking for another situation, sir,’ Augustus put in quickly.

Archdale murmured to Frank, ‘Can’t harm, can it? This is something quite different.’

‘Please, sir,’ Augustus said.

Frank shrugged. ‘I pity anyone in Whichcote’s service.’

‘You’ll come with me, I hope?’ Archdale went on, still addressing Frank. ‘There’s music at the Black Bull on Wednesday and we might step in there afterwards if it took your fancy.’

The three of them left the college and walked down Bird Bolt Lane. Augustus congratulated himself – Audrey Passage lay on the other side of Trumpington Street between King’s Lane and the Black Bull Inn. He would have taken this direction for Mrs Phear’s house in any case, and she was not expecting him to arrive yet. There was a chance of a handsome tip – young gentlemen tended to be open-handed.

He led them into King’s Lane and then turned off to the left. The two gentlemen already had their handkerchiefs up to their noses. They picked their way through narrow lanes, scarcely more than open corridors between buildings, until they came to Audrey Passage. It was a dark and winding alley, a cul-de-sac with a communal cesspool at the far end. The cobbles were greasy and damp, despite the dry weather. The place was haunted by ragged children and scrawny cats.

‘Ask where Tom Turdman lives,’ Archdale ordered Augustus, his voice indistinct because of the handkerchief.

‘The night-soil man, sir?’

Archdale nodded. Augustus seized one of the larger children by his ear, who pointed them to a doorway halfway down the passage. The door stood open. The child said that Tom and his family lived in a room on the top floor, at the back.

‘You won’t want to go up there, sir,’ Augustus said to Archdale. ‘Shall I tell the girl to bring him down for you?’

Archdale nodded and the child sped off. The three visitors waited outside. Augustus shifted restlessly from foot to foot. Undergraduates were not popular in a place like this and nor were strange boys. There was a danger they might be attacked. On the other hand, the young men were strong, especially Mr Oldershaw, and they carried sticks.

The child reappeared and scuttled between their legs into the safety of the alley. A woman followed, negotiating the steep and narrow stairs with caution. The first thing Augustus saw of her was a cherry-red slipper with a pointed toe. Another joined it on the step. Then came the ragged hem of a dark blue dress to which age and use had lent a green patina. At length the whole woman appeared, though she kept well away from the doorway as though fearing the visitors might bring infection into her house.

‘Who are you?’ Archdale said, lowering his handkerchief.

‘Mrs Floyd, your honour.’

‘Who?’

‘My husband’s the night-soil man, sir. John Floyd, sir, they call him Tom Turdman. Nothing wrong, is there?’

Augustus stared at the cherry-red slippers. On the toe of each was a decoration, finely worked in silk, a geometric pattern that reminded him of the carpet in Mr Whichcote’s study at Lambourne House.

‘No, not in the world,’ Archdale said. ‘I understand he has a – a connection with Mr Soresby of Jerusalem.’

Mrs Floyd curtsied, as though honoured that the gentleman should be aware of anything concerning her husband’s family. ‘Yes, sir – Tobias is Floyd’s poor dead sister’s child.’

‘Have you seen Mr Soresby in the last day or so? I am particularly anxious to talk to him.’

The woman stared at the ground. ‘No, sir. He don’t come here. He’s a scholar, you see, up at the college.’

Augustus frowned at the slippers. They reminded him of something else. He was conscious that all around them were ears and eyes, that the building was invisibly alive.

‘Well, look here, my good woman,’ Archdale said. ‘Tell your husband I want to see his nephew, and – and that I wish him nothing but good. And if either of you sees him, let me know directly. A message addressed to me at Jerusalem will reach me – you may leave it with Mr Mepal, the porter. My name’s Archdale.’

The woman curtsied again and the slippers vanished from view for an instant, masked by the hem of the dress. In that instant, Augustus remembered.

Frank turned and began to move away. Archdale glanced after him, shrugged and followed.

‘Sir,’ Augustus said, with a nightmarish sense that he was about to jump off a very high cliff with his eyes closed. ‘Sir, sir.’

The undergraduates turned back. ‘What is it?’ Archdale said.

‘The slippers, your honour, Mrs Tom’s slippers. I swear they’re the same as madam’s.’

‘Eh? What the devil do you mean? Which madam?’

‘Mrs Whichcote, sir.’

On the first evening after his return to Jerusalem, Frank supped in his own rooms. He had only Holdsworth to keep him company. Archdale, whom he invited to join them, cried off, saying he had one of Mr Crowley’s lectures in the morning. They were reading selected passages from Grotius, he explained, and Mr Crowley was not always kind if a man made a blunder while construing. Last week, someone had mistaken merx for meretrix, and half the college were still laughing at him.

‘Why?’ Frank had said. ‘What’s so droll about that? They sound much the same to me.’

‘Merx signifies an item of merchandise,’ Archdale explained. ‘But meretrix is a loose woman.’

Here Archdale blushed. Holdsworth thought of that hot evening when he had seen Mr Archdale vanishing into the darkness of the Leys in pursuit of a whore.

So Frank’s only guest was Holdsworth. Mulgrave served their supper in the keeping room. It was, Frank said drily to Holdsworth, quite like old times at Whitebeach Mill. Their table was by the window and they looked out over the garden, at the oriental plane and the Long Pond.

There was a feverish gaiety about the young man that evening. It reminded Holdsworth of the night when the two of them had sat by the millpond in the darkness and taken more wine than was altogether good for them.

When Mulgrave withdrew, leaving them to their wine and nuts, the atmosphere changed. It was still light outside, but Frank rose to his feet and made a great to-do of lighting a candle.

‘Perhaps it’s as well Harry couldn’t join us,’ he said with his back to Holdsworth.

‘Yes. I have something I wish to say to you alone. This threat of blackmail from Mr Whichcote – do you wish me to try to help you? Or not.’

‘Oh, sir – I will be utterly confounded if you won’t.’ Frank turned his head. The gaiety had drained away from his face, exposing something pinched and desperate underneath. ‘If he talks about the club, it means ruin for me. And my mother -I believe it would kill her. I will do anything you ask, sir, anything – only save me from this devil.’

Holdsworth leaned back in his chair. ‘Mr Oldershaw, I cannot hope to be of service to you unless you tell me everything.’

‘Of course – whatever you like.’

‘Tabitha Skinner.’

There was silence. Frank looked away.

‘When I asked you about her this morning in the coffee house, you said you had not heard of her, and then you were very haughty and we left.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was unmannerly – I acted out of turn, I -’

‘But this afternoon I hinted to Mr Whichcote that he might be in danger of having a criminal charge laid against him. It was a bow at a venture but it struck home. Just as Tabitha Skinner has done with you. Young men drink and gamble and join clubs – that is reprehensible, no doubt, and their mothers will disapprove if they learn the truth. But you fear more than disapproval here, just as Mr Whichcote does. And I am persuaded that the key to this puzzle is Tabitha Skinner.’

Holdsworth waited. Frank came back to the table and poured more wine. He raised his glass and Holdsworth thought for a moment that the foolish boy was about to propose yet another toast. Instead he stared at the candle flame through the wine and said, ‘If I tell you what happened that night, will you promise not to tell a living soul? And also -’ He broke off and swallowed the wine. ‘I – I know I have not acted wisely.’

Holdsworth thought of his own behaviour since Georgie had died. ‘You are not alone in that.’

‘Well, then, sir. When a man is made a full member of the Holy Ghost Club, it is said he becomes an Apostle and an apostolic name is bestowed on him. I was made an Apostle at the meeting in February. And there is a ceremony that is done on these occasions, a part of the proceedings that must not be omitted. We were sworn to secrecy but I shall break my oath.’ He looked into his empty glass, which was still in his hand. ‘The candidate must lie with a girl. There and then.’

‘So Mr Whichcote provides a whore for the purpose?’ Holdsworth said, after the silence had grown too long.

‘Not exactly. The club is named for the Holy Ghost.’ Frank rapped the table with the spoon, as if to put a peculiar emphasis on the words ‘Holy Ghost’. ‘And so…’

‘So?’

‘We are taught that when Mary bore the Infant Jesus she was – in a manner of speaking – impregnated by the Holy Ghost.’ He sat back and at last put down his glass. ‘Now do you see?’

Holdsworth shook his head.

‘Mary was a young virgin, sir,’ Frank hissed.

‘Ah.’

Frank recoiled from the distaste in Holdsworth’s face. ‘Mr Whichcote made it seem – made it seem so entirely a matter of course. Indeed, something devoutly to be desired.’

‘I don’t judge you,’ Holdsworth said. ‘I judge him.’

Frank began to speak again, more rapidly: ‘A little room at the pavilion is fitted up as a bedchamber and the virgin waits there for the candidate. She is dressed all in white and tied to the bed. There was also an old woman in the room, though I did not see her properly and I believe she wore a mask. She was an ugly little thing like an old toad in a nun’s wimple. I was not meant to meet her – I was before my time, you see, for I was so hot for the girl I could wait no longer. I went in and the girl was lying on the bed, just as Whichcote promised. But – but as soon as I saw her, I knew she was dead.’

‘How had she died? By her own hand?’

‘I saw no wound on her. She was merely – merely dead. Her face was strange – terribly discoloured and disfigured. Her eyes were open.’

‘You told no one of this?’ Holdsworth said. ‘You realize that lays you open to a charge of misprision of felony at the very least?’

‘It’s worse than that, sir. Whichcote will say her death was my doing, that it was at my hand, and I forced him to help me cover it up. But I swear I never touched her, I never even saw her living face. You must believe me. I swear I did not kill her.’

At suppertime, Dr Carbury stirred. He became conscious and was sufficiently lucid to indicate that he was hungry. First, they got him on to his night-chair. Then they wiped down his stomach, as near as they could judge where the cancer was, with a decoction made from the leaves of deadly nightshade boiled in milk. They changed his nightgown and put him in his bed, propped up against the pillows. He was tired but still in remarkably good spirits, considering everything, and still hungry.

Elinor fed him with a light gruel of oatmeal and butter, and a spoonful or two of a jelly made of calves’ feet flavoured with lemon peel, cinnamon, mace and sugar. He asked for wine, and she allowed him half a glass. He seemed to enjoy the food, though he brought most of it up almost at once. Afterwards, he beckoned Elinor towards him, closer and closer until her face was no more than two inches from his, and she smelled the wine and the sickroom on his breath.

‘Soresby?’ he whispered.

‘No news, sir. As soon as there is, you shall know.’

Carbury patted her hand and said unexpectedly that she was a good girl. Tears pricked her eyelids.

They laid him down and in a few minutes he was asleep again. By now it was quite dark. Elinor left her husband in the care of the nurse. She went downstairs and ordered Susan to take up the sal ammoniac and quicklime to place in the doctor’s night-chair to neutralize the disagreeable smells.

Susan peeped through her lashes and asked whether her mistress knew that Mr Frank Oldershaw had returned to college.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Please, ma’am, Ben says Mr Mepal said he’s quite his old self again.’

As Susan mentioned Ben’s name, she twitched as if someone had touched her skin with the point of a pin. It gave the girl pleasure even to mention his name to a third party. Elinor shivered at the thought of what a man’s touch could do. It led her quite naturally to the next question, though she already knew the answer to it.

‘And Mr Holdsworth?’ she said. ‘Is he returned too?’

Another shiver, a tiny internal tremor, delicious and disturbing.

‘Yes, ma’am, but Mr Richardson decided it was better not to disturb you so they found him rooms in New Building. And he’s not the only one, ma’am. Mr Whichcote’s there too, and the bailiffs are at the gates.’

Elinor sent Susan away. The room had grown intolerably stuffy, which did nothing for her aching head. The stink from Dr Carbury’s night-chair seemed to fill the house. She went out into the garden to escape it. There was no one to stop her now: she could walk there whenever she pleased, day or night.

Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. Here the air smelled clean, of earth and growing things. She drifted down the path towards the gate that led to Mr Frostwick’s bridge over the Long Pond. She had in her mind some half-formed notion that she might take a turn about the college gardens.

But before she reached the gate she stopped abruptly a few yards away from it. It was only a trick of the light but it seemed to her that there was something pale moving behind the elaborate pattern of the ironwork: something pale and formless on the bridge itself.

But it was not in the least like a person. Or mist. Or like anything at all. Merely an impression of pallor, fleeting and fluid. There was nothing unsettling or mysterious about it whatsoever. But the harder she looked the less of it she saw, until it seemed to have evaporated entirely.

Nonsense – there had been nothing there. The more she thought about it, the more she thought that the thing – the pallid patch – whatever one called it – must have been a trivial consequence of tiredness acting upon her imagination, and that there had been nothing really there on the bridge. Alternatively there was a simple physical cause, which the science of optics could explain in a flash. It was probably connected with the headache.

For some reason she wondered what John Holdsworth would say if she told him of these absurd thoughts. She shivered again. She was growing a little cold, and perhaps she should make herself eat something. She must keep up her strength, after all, for everyone knew that lack of food could give a person quite absurd fancies.