He worked steadily throughout the afternoon and the early evening until he heard the chapel clock striking seven. He put away his notes and walked across the court to Frank’s rooms. Frank himself was not at home, but Mulgrave was making everything ready for what he called a genteel little supper.
‘You’re setting three places,’ Holdsworth said, glancing at the table.
‘Yes, sir. Mr Frank asked Mr Archdale to join you.’
Holdsworth took up a newspaper and settled on the window seat. After a few minutes he heard a gentle tapping at the sitting-room door, which he had left unfastened. Mulgrave was in the gyp room and did not hear. The door swung open.
Whichcote’s footboy was outside. He jumped backward as he saw Holdsworth. ‘Beg pardon, your honour,’ he mumbled. ‘He’s to go out tonight.’
Holdsworth threw down the paper and went to the door. ‘Mr Whichcote?’
‘Yes, sir. We’re to wait till after sunset so the bailiffs can’t nab him. We’re to sup at Mrs Phear’s. I brought a billet from her this morning.’
Holdsworth motioned the boy into the room. ‘And you accompany him?’
‘Yes, sir, with the lantern to light him on the way back.’
Holdsworth heard a faint movement behind him and turned. Mulgrave was standing in the doorway of the gyp room.
‘What is it?’ Holdsworth said.
‘I thought I heard a knocking, sir.’
‘You did – as you see.’
Mulgrave bowed.
Augustus stared at the carpet. ‘Can’t stay, sir,’ he said. ‘Master sent me out for some wine.’
Holdsworth accompanied Augustus to the door. On the landing outside, he said, pitching his voice so low that only the boy could hear, ‘Are matters otherwise unaltered? Is your master at work in the same place? And does he leave his papers in that valise?’
‘Yes, sir. But for God’s sake, if he finds me out I’m as good as dead. He must not know.’
Augustus pulled back and jerked his head like a nervous horse. He slipped down the stairs, keeping close to the wall. Holdsworth went back inside and closed the door. Mulgrave was polishing the glasses on the table.
‘You did not see the boy,’ Holdsworth said.
‘No, sir.’ Mulgrave continued to polish the glass he was holding. ‘Mr Whichcote’s footboy.’ He set down the glass and limped towards the door of the gyp room.
‘What’s it to you?’ Holdsworth asked.
Mulgrave turned. ‘Nothing, sir. Nothing in the world. A tolerably promising lad, I find.’
‘I saw Soresby today,’ Archdale said. ‘I talked to him.’
Frank dropped his fork with a clatter. ‘The devil you did. So he’s hiding with Uncle Tom Turdman?’
‘Probably – I don’t know. He didn’t say.’ Harry turned to Holdsworth. ‘But there’s something he wishes to tell you, sir. He has some information – I don’t know what it is – and he’s uneasy about it.’
They were waiting on themselves – Mulgrave had been sent away. None of them had eaten much, though Frank and Harry Archdale had drunk a good deal.
‘And is this why he’s in such a difficulty now?’ Holdsworth asked.
‘I don’t know. But it weighs heavily on him. I – I took the liberty of suggesting he confide in you, as you are in a manner of speaking a neutral observer, and – and you are here on behalf of her ladyship.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Frank said.
Harry shrugged. ‘If anyone has the power to make things right for Soresby, to see the poor scrub is fairly treated, it’s her ladyship.’
‘I am happy to meet him,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Where?’
‘He begged me to inquire whether it would be convenient for you to call in at Mr Turpin’s Coffee House tomorrow. It is in St John’s Lane, at the Round Church end. He’ll be waiting there in the morning between eleven and twelve, and he would be infinitely obliged if you could find the time to see him.’
‘Ha!’ Frank said with a leer. ‘An assignation!’
Holdsworth said he would see what could be done. ‘Assignation’, an ugly word, made him think of Elinor, not Soresby. He might see her before the evening was done.
The meal proceeded with little conversation. Frank kept glancing at the clock. Harry, who knew nothing of the proposed expedition after supper, made his excuses and withdrew, saying with a virtuous air that he hoped to do a little reading before bedtime.
They listened to his unsteady footsteps on the landing. Holdsworth laid five keys on the table. They were tied together with a piece of string.
‘Should we wait, sir?’ Frank said in a whisper, though there was no one to hear. ‘Until it’s darker, I mean.’
‘Too dangerous. We don’t know how long Whichcote will be.’
‘What’s your plan?’
‘It will be better if I go alone. But would you be so good as to walk awhile in the arcade by the chapel, as if you’re taking the air? If Whichcote returns, he must come that way. You will see him coming through the main gate and you will have time to warn me. I am on the same staircase so no one will wonder to see me there.’
‘And then?’
‘And then we shall see.’ Holdsworth stood up and pocketed the keys. ‘It partly depends on Mrs Phear, does it not? How long she keeps him.’
‘Under the tree?’ Elinor said as Susan cleared away the supper things.
‘Beg pardon, ma’am?’
‘Yesterday you told me Ben took advantage of you for the first time in March. “Under the big tree.” Which tree?’
Susan, always rosy, became purple-faced. ‘Oh, ma’am – the one by the pond, the Founder’s tree. He fooled me something terrible, he did, said he wanted to see my new cloak – you remember, ma’am? You’d just given it to me, and I’m so grateful, truly I am. So I slipped out in the night, he came over the wall from his lodging and he wanted to touch the cloak, and he was saying it was soft and warm like my skin, and then it was fondling and kissing and sweet words, and then -’
‘Stop,’ Elinor commanded. ‘But it was night-time. How did you get out of the house?’
For an instant she surprised on the girl’s face a smug, almost mocking superiority. ‘Oh, ma’am,’ Susan said, ‘he made me come down the back stairs and let myself out the garden door. He’d left the gate at the bridge unlocked when he was doing his rounds. And he was there waiting for me.’
Elinor thought how cold the March night must have been, and how warm their desire.
‘But I learned my lesson, ma’am. Next time we tried it, I had a terrible fright. I was there first, see, and someone bumped into me in the dark.’ She stared at Elinor with large brown eyes. ‘So I never went there again.’
No, Elinor thought, you and Ben used the wash-house in the daytime instead. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘The person you encountered in the dark, the person who wasn’t Ben. I suppose it was Mr Frank Oldershaw?’
45
After supper, Mrs Phear made tea, humming as she set to work. Whichcote sat back in his chair. The curtains were drawn across the window, and the door was shut. He listened to the humming and the chink of spoons on china and the rustle of water into the pot. For the first time in days, he felt tranquil. When all this was done, he thought, he would move to London, and perhaps winter abroad in a dry and sunny climate where money would stretch further. He had had enough of the dampness of Cambridge with its Fen fogs and its dreary, provincial inhabitants.
Mrs Phear passed him his cup. ‘You look a little better now. I declare you seemed quite hag-ridden when you came to the house.’
‘It has not been easy, dear madam. I am like a rat in a hole. If you’d not been here to lend a helping hand I might be still in that sponging house.’
She frowned at him, rejecting his gratitude. ‘When will you send the first letters?’
‘Tomorrow, I think. To start with, I have a peer of the realm, a dean, an under-secretary at the Ministry of War and a member of the Royal Household.’