Elinor looked up and surprised an air of calculation on the tutor’s face. ‘Why should you suppose it might?’
‘I feared the sight of him might bring painful memories of your dear friend, Mrs Carbury. I meant nothing else.’
She thanked Richardson for his consideration. She said nothing more and he rose to take his leave. After he had gone, she sat at her writing desk, pen in hand, but could not write another word. She thought about her dying husband, about John Holdsworth, almost within a stone’s throw of where she sat, and about Sylvia. Elinor did not know whether she loved or hated Sylvia now. Richardson had touched a sore spot when he mentioned her. All the memories were painful.
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.’