There was a feverish gaiety about the young man that evening. It reminded Holdsworth of the night when the two of them had sat by the millpond in the darkness and taken more wine than was altogether good for them.
When Mulgrave withdrew, leaving them to their wine and nuts, the atmosphere changed. It was still light outside, but Frank rose to his feet and made a great to-do of lighting a candle.
‘Perhaps it’s as well Harry couldn’t join us,’ he said with his back to Holdsworth.
‘Yes. I have something I wish to say to you alone. This threat of blackmail from Mr Whichcote – do you wish me to try to help you? Or not.’
‘Oh, sir – I will be utterly confounded if you won’t.’ Frank turned his head. The gaiety had drained away from his face, exposing something pinched and desperate underneath. ‘If he talks about the club, it means ruin for me. And my mother -I believe it would kill her. I will do anything you ask, sir, anything – only save me from this devil.’
Holdsworth leaned back in his chair. ‘Mr Oldershaw, I cannot hope to be of service to you unless you tell me everything.’
‘Of course – whatever you like.’
‘Tabitha Skinner.’
There was silence. Frank looked away.
‘When I asked you about her this morning in the coffee house, you said you had not heard of her, and then you were very haughty and we left.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was unmannerly – I acted out of turn, I -’
‘But this afternoon I hinted to Mr Whichcote that he might be in danger of having a criminal charge laid against him. It was a bow at a venture but it struck home. Just as Tabitha Skinner has done with you. Young men drink and gamble and join clubs – that is reprehensible, no doubt, and their mothers will disapprove if they learn the truth. But you fear more than disapproval here, just as Mr Whichcote does. And I am persuaded that the key to this puzzle is Tabitha Skinner.’
Holdsworth waited. Frank came back to the table and poured more wine. He raised his glass and Holdsworth thought for a moment that the foolish boy was about to propose yet another toast. Instead he stared at the candle flame through the wine and said, ‘If I tell you what happened that night, will you promise not to tell a living soul? And also -’ He broke off and swallowed the wine. ‘I – I know I have not acted wisely.’
Holdsworth thought of his own behaviour since Georgie had died. ‘You are not alone in that.’
‘Well, then, sir. When a man is made a full member of the Holy Ghost Club, it is said he becomes an Apostle and an apostolic name is bestowed on him. I was made an Apostle at the meeting in February. And there is a ceremony that is done on these occasions, a part of the proceedings that must not be omitted. We were sworn to secrecy but I shall break my oath.’ He looked into his empty glass, which was still in his hand. ‘The candidate must lie with a girl. There and then.’
‘So Mr Whichcote provides a whore for the purpose?’ Holdsworth said, after the silence had grown too long.
‘Not exactly. The club is named for the Holy Ghost.’ Frank rapped the table with the spoon, as if to put a peculiar emphasis on the words ‘Holy Ghost’. ‘And so…’
‘So?’
‘We are taught that when Mary bore the Infant Jesus she was – in a manner of speaking – impregnated by the Holy Ghost.’ He sat back and at last put down his glass. ‘Now do you see?’
Holdsworth shook his head.
‘Mary was a young virgin, sir,’ Frank hissed.
‘Ah.’
Frank recoiled from the distaste in Holdsworth’s face. ‘Mr Whichcote made it seem – made it seem so entirely a matter of course. Indeed, something devoutly to be desired.’
‘I don’t judge you,’ Holdsworth said. ‘I judge him.’
Frank began to speak again, more rapidly: ‘A little room at the pavilion is fitted up as a bedchamber and the virgin waits there for the candidate. She is dressed all in white and tied to the bed. There was also an old woman in the room, though I did not see her properly and I believe she wore a mask. She was an ugly little thing like an old toad in a nun’s wimple. I was not meant to meet her – I was before my time, you see, for I was so hot for the girl I could wait no longer. I went in and the girl was lying on the bed, just as Whichcote promised. But – but as soon as I saw her, I knew she was dead.’
‘How had she died? By her own hand?’
‘I saw no wound on her. She was merely – merely dead. Her face was strange – terribly discoloured and disfigured. Her eyes were open.’
‘You told no one of this?’ Holdsworth said. ‘You realize that lays you open to a charge of misprision of felony at the very least?’
‘It’s worse than that, sir. Whichcote will say her death was my doing, that it was at my hand, and I forced him to help me cover it up. But I swear I never touched her, I never even saw her living face. You must believe me. I swear I did not kill her.’
At suppertime, Dr Carbury stirred. He became conscious and was sufficiently lucid to indicate that he was hungry. First, they got him on to his night-chair. Then they wiped down his stomach, as near as they could judge where the cancer was, with a decoction made from the leaves of deadly nightshade boiled in milk. They changed his nightgown and put him in his bed, propped up against the pillows. He was tired but still in remarkably good spirits, considering everything, and still hungry.
Elinor fed him with a light gruel of oatmeal and butter, and a spoonful or two of a jelly made of calves’ feet flavoured with lemon peel, cinnamon, mace and sugar. He asked for wine, and she allowed him half a glass. He seemed to enjoy the food, though he brought most of it up almost at once. Afterwards, he beckoned Elinor towards him, closer and closer until her face was no more than two inches from his, and she smelled the wine and the sickroom on his breath.
‘Soresby?’ he whispered.
‘No news, sir. As soon as there is, you shall know.’
Carbury patted her hand and said unexpectedly that she was a good girl. Tears pricked her eyelids.
They laid him down and in a few minutes he was asleep again. By now it was quite dark. Elinor left her husband in the care of the nurse. She went downstairs and ordered Susan to take up the sal ammoniac and quicklime to place in the doctor’s night-chair to neutralize the disagreeable smells.
Susan peeped through her lashes and asked whether her mistress knew that Mr Frank Oldershaw had returned to college.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Please, ma’am, Ben says Mr Mepal said he’s quite his old self again.’
As Susan mentioned Ben’s name, she twitched as if someone had touched her skin with the point of a pin. It gave the girl pleasure even to mention his name to a third party. Elinor shivered at the thought of what a man’s touch could do. It led her quite naturally to the next question, though she already knew the answer to it.
‘And Mr Holdsworth?’ she said. ‘Is he returned too?’
Another shiver, a tiny internal tremor, delicious and disturbing.
‘Yes, ma’am, but Mr Richardson decided it was better not to disturb you so they found him rooms in New Building. And he’s not the only one, ma’am. Mr Whichcote’s there too, and the bailiffs are at the gates.’
Elinor sent Susan away. The room had grown intolerably stuffy, which did nothing for her aching head. The stink from Dr Carbury’s night-chair seemed to fill the house. She went out into the garden to escape it. There was no one to stop her now: she could walk there whenever she pleased, day or night.
Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. Here the air smelled clean, of earth and growing things. She drifted down the path towards the gate that led to Mr Frostwick’s bridge over the Long Pond. She had in her mind some half-formed notion that she might take a turn about the college gardens.
But before she reached the gate she stopped abruptly a few yards away from it. It was only a trick of the light but it seemed to her that there was something pale moving behind the elaborate pattern of the ironwork: something pale and formless on the bridge itself.
But it was not in the least like a person. Or mist. Or like anything at all. Merely an impression of pallor, fleeting and fluid. There was nothing unsettling or mysterious about it whatsoever. But the harder she looked the less of it she saw, until it seemed to have evaporated entirely.
