you know, he comes on her ladyship’s business.’
Holdsworth lingered in the passage, examining a large basket containing vegetables newly brought in from the garden. Mulgrave murmured confidentially in his brother-in-law’s ear. Mr Norcross nodded and slowly rose to his feet. The top of his skull was a dome of grey bristle. He had no visible neck, and something about his appearance reminded Holdsworth irresistibly of an unwashed potato. He put on his coat in a leisurely way, clapped his tye-wig on his head and came over to Holdsworth. It was almost as if without his coat and wig he had not been able to see his visitor beforehand.
‘Mr Holdsworth, sir,’ he said. ‘I hope I see you well.’
‘Well enough, thank you.’
‘Always glad to oblige her ladyship,’ Norcross went on. ‘And a gentleman like yourself. However, there’s ways and means.’ He tapped his nose at this point and nodded. ‘I don’t think I see you standing there, sir.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Norcross appeared not to have heard Holdsworth either. ‘When Mr Mulgrave came this morning, there you were at the gate at the same time. And the porter knows Mr Mulgrave, of course, he knows he’s coming up to see me, and that’s all right, and so he thinks you’re with Mr Mulgrave, as you happen to be exchanging the time of day with each other. And along you come, up to the house, I shouldn’t wonder, and you see the gentleman working outside and you slip away before I have a chance to clap my eyes on you. You want a private conference with Mr Oldershaw, and no doubt you turn the matter over in your mind and think maybe he’s working in the garden with the others. And as chance would have it, you direct your steps behind the stables, which is where the kitchen gardens are. If you did that, I shouldn’t be surprised if you was to catch sight of Mr Oldershaw among the lettuces and suchlike. But you could put it another way, and say I shouldn’t be surprised in any case because I wouldn’t know anything about it. Do you follow me so far, sir?’
‘Perfectly,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Will an attendant be watching over Mr Oldershaw?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course. We look after our gentlemen very carefully here. I should think an attendant will be in the kitchen garden the whole time. I expect he will be sitting on the bench by the door, or keeping an eye on one or two of the other gentlemen working there. He’ll see your black coat, and maybe he’ll think you’re one of the doctor’s colleagues. After all, you was here with him only yesterday, so that would be a natural mistake to make.’
‘How is Mr Oldershaw today?’
‘Quieter than yesterday, that’s for sure.’
‘Is he capable of rational conversation?’
Norcross shrugged. He pulled out a watch. ‘I am doing my rounds upstairs now,’ he informed them. ‘That’s why I didn’t catch sight of you.’
Without a word of farewell, he walked away, his heavy body rolling from side to side as though his thighs were made of granite.
Mulgrave joined Holdsworth in the passage. ‘This way, sir.’ He directed Holdsworth to a side door to a gravel roadway. ‘Follow the path past the stables, sir. The kitchen garden’s beyond.’
A groom looked curiously at Holdsworth as he passed the entrance to the stable yard but made no move to stop him. On the edge of the lawn, five or six elegantly clad gentlemen were trimming the grass along a belt of trees. Another man was standing on the bowling green, reading from a volume of Thucydides in a loud and carrying voice as if addressing a large but invisible public meeting. Two attendants chatted in the shade near by.
Holdsworth opened the gate into the walled kitchen garden. A third attendant sprawled on a bench near the door with a newspaper spread open across his knees and a pipe on the seat beside him. He looked up and then away, as if satisfied that Holdsworth was not one of the inmates absconding from his allotted work.
Three men were at work among the vegetables. Two of them, both middle-aged, were hoeing weeds. At the far end of the garden was Frank Oldershaw, a solitary figure on his hands and knees.
Holdsworth walked down the brick path that bisected the enclosure. Frank’s coat and waistcoat were draped over a wheelbarrow near by. He was kneeling in the freshly turned earth in black silk breeches and a fine white shirt. In his hand was a little fork with which he was harvesting radishes. He must have heard Holdsworth’s footsteps on the path but he did not look up.
‘Good morning, sir,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Would you allow me a few words?’
There was no reply.
‘We met briefly yesterday,’ Holdsworth went on. ‘I give you my word, I shall not act in any way you do not wish.’
Frank paused in the frantic digging. Still he did not look up.
‘If you do not wish me to be here, if I do anything that is not agreeable to you, you have only to call to that attendant and say I am troubling you, that I have no licence to be here. The doctor has no knowledge of my visit. He has forbidden me to talk privately to you.’
For the first time, Frank turned his head and looked up at Holdsworth. Despite the quality of his clothes, he hardly looked the gentleman now. The face was smeared with mud, the hands grimy, the fingernails broken. He was still on his hands and knees, and he swayed slightly to and fro, as though the weight he supported was too much for him to bear.
‘I must finish this row,’ he mumbled, ‘and the next. Else they will not give me my dinner.’
‘There is time enough for that,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Let us talk a little.’
Frank stuck his little fork in the earth, rolled his body over and squatted on the brick path. ‘I am so tired. I could sleep for ever.’
‘It is because they drug you.’
Frank nodded. ‘To murder grief.’
‘What? Do you grieve? Why?’
Frank shook his head but did not answer.
‘They tell me you saw a ghost,’ Holdsworth said, speaking casually, as though seeing a ghost was of mild interest but nothing more. ‘I suppose it was Mrs Whichcote’s?’
Frank let his head fall forward to his breast.
‘So it was? How did you know it was she?’
‘Who else could it be?’ Frank muttered. ‘Where else would Sylvia walk?’
‘Why? Because she died there?’
With his forefinger, Frank drew a circle, a zero, in the earth.
‘Tell me, pray – why did you go outside that night? Were you going to the necessary house?’
Frank shook his head. His face filled with flickering animation, the muscles twitching and dancing under the skin. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘Wanted air. Nothing mattered.’
‘You went outside,’ Holdsworth said. ‘You wanted air, and nothing mattered. I see.’
Frank shook his head with a vigour that was almost manic. ‘You don’t. You’re stupid. I could do anything. Don’t you understand? I was free. I was God. I was the Holy Ghost.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘And now I’m mad. My wits are disordered, do you hear? I do not understand anything. Nor do you. You’re a perfect blockhead.’
Holdsworth stood up. A shift had taken place in the conversation. Frank had spoken to him as an angry young gentleman talks to an inferior.
‘I am the Holy Ghost,’ Frank went on in a quieter voice. ‘And so I saw a ghost.
‘Are you happy here?’ Holdsworth asked after a pause.
‘I hate the place and all who live here.’
‘If you wish, perhaps you may leave.’
‘I cannot go home,’ Frank said. ‘I will not go home.’
‘Is that why you attacked Mr Cross? To stop them sending you home?’
Frank lowered his head and drew another circle in the earth, another zero. ‘Poor Cross. The fit was upon me – I could not help it. I can help nothing now. It would be better if I were dead. I wish I were.’
Holdsworth had felt the same way himself when they brought first Georgie home and then Maria. Unhappy people spoke a common language. He would have given his life for Georgie. Hadn’t Maria known that? He would have given his life to save hers too, but instead he gave her a wound the size of a penny piece and a desire for death.
