‘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.