with the Master like he is.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, ma’am – I’ve missed my courses twice and soon it’ll be again.’
‘Has this been going on for long?’
‘Since March – he persuaded me to walk out with him one night under the big tree and… and he took advantage of me. Soon the baby will show. You’ll turn me out without a character and it’ll be the poorhouse for -’
‘Do stop talking,’ Elinor snapped. ‘You’re making my headache worse. Can you not marry Ben and be done with it?’
There was a knock on the door downstairs.
‘He’d lose his place and so would I, ma’am. And we’ve nothing to fall back on.’
‘Let me turn it over in my mind,’ Elinor said. ‘You have been a very foolish girl. But perhaps something can be retrieved.’
A visitor was coming up the stairs. Ben announced Mr Richardson. The servant’s eyes widened as he saw Susan standing red-faced by the door. Mr Richardson bowed, with a graceful flutter of his fingers. Elinor sent the servants away.
‘I do not wish to disturb the Master,’ Richardson said when they were alone. ‘But I wanted to find out how my dear friend does. Is there any change?’
‘No, sir. He is sleeping. The nurse is with him and has orders to call me when he wakes.’
‘Ah – what does the poet tell us? – “Tir’d Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!’’’ Richardson murmured. ‘I bring with me the good wishes of the entire fellowship, of course, and the assurance of our prayers. But one other reason I presumed to call again was that I had a piece of news. News that Dr Carbury may find cheering. And so, I believe, will you, my dear madam. Mr Oldershaw has returned to college.’
‘I am rejoiced to hear it. Is he paying a visit or -?’
‘Oh no. He seems fully restored, and I believe he intends to come back into residence, at least until the end of term.’
‘I shall be sure to tell Dr Carbury. What of Mr Holdsworth? Since Mr Oldershaw no longer has any need of him, I suppose he will return to London.’
‘Not yet. He has to complete his survey of the library, and it is not impossible that Mr Oldershaw may have need of him again. So I have arranged for him to have a guest apartment in New Building. When he heard how things were with the Master, he did not want to disturb him – or of course you, madam.’
Elinor bowed her head. ‘Is there news of Mr Soresby?’
‘He appears to have vanished from the face of the earth. But we have another visitor. Mr Whichcote is in college. I hope this won’t distress you.’
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.
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.
