walked with Mr Richardson in the garden at Jerusalem.
There was a burst of cheering and laughter. Holdsworth hung back in the shadows of the arcade, where a solitary lamp burned above the chapel doorway. He heard footsteps and two young men emerged into the court and walked unsteadily towards the next staircase. The supper party was ending. Holdsworth waited a moment and went up to Frank’s rooms. Archdale and the others had already left, and Frank was by himself, sitting by the window in his shirtsleeves and drinking brandy.
‘Holdsworth, my friend,’ he said, stumbling over the words. ‘My dear, dear friend. A toast, sir. I insist.’
‘It is getting late, Mr Oldershaw. The chaise will be at -’
‘No, no. Charge your glass. Damn me, you’re a fine fellow. Wait till we get back to London and I shall show my gratitude.’
‘I’ve found your ghost.’
Frank rose to his feet. ‘Are you – are you gone mad?’
‘No, sir. To be blunt, you stumbled into a little maidservant waiting for her lover under the tree, and she was too terrified of the consequences to tell the world what had happened. That’s your ghost. That’s your Sylvia.’
‘No, no – you’re bamming me. I don’t believe you. The cloak, the clasp -’
‘Were Sylvia’s. You were right there, at least.’ Holdsworth stared and stared at his own dark reflection in the windowpane by Frank’s head. ‘They found the cloak in the garden on the morning after Mrs Whichcote died. Mrs Carbury gave it to her maid. There’s no mystery about it, except in your mind.’
Frank sat down. ‘But I was so sure.’
‘Perhaps because you felt so guilty.’
‘Of course – first that girl at the club, then poor Sylvia falling foul of that brute of a husband -’
‘I don’t mean that.’
Frank poured himself more brandy and drank it off. ‘Well, it’s all done with now, ain’t it? And tomorrow we’ll be in London. You know, I don’t think I shall come back to the University – it don’t suit me, you see, and I don’t suit it.’
Holdsworth had the sensation that he stood at a crossroads. Behind him was the past, and before him was a multiplicity of futures, most of them dark and unattractive. He felt tired and angry and full of regret. ‘On the night Sylvia died, someone heard a struggle at the back of the Master’s Lodge. Her slippers were later found near by. She was with someone. I think it was you, Mr Oldershaw.’
‘What? You
‘How else could you know which cloak she was wearing? Even the shape of the clasp on the cloak? No one else mentioned it. And of course she would have wanted you to escort her through the streets. Who better to escort her than her lover?’
Frank stared up at him. ‘You’re a fool, Holdsworth, as well as mad. Did you know that? Don’t you know I shall ruin you?’
‘A witness heard a scream. Was she going to wake the college, Mr Oldershaw, and make a scandal about her husband? And no doubt you feared what her ladyship would say. She is an indulgent mother but even her indulgence must have its limits. Perhaps you tried to hush Mrs Whichcote and you succeeded too well. I cannot think you wanted to kill her.’
‘This is – this is nonsense. I cannot now recall who told me about the cloak – Dr Carbury, perhaps, or one of the college servants. But someone did. They must have done.’
At the door, Holdsworth looked back. He had nothing to lay before a magistrate but a cluster of suspicions. ‘You kept a cool head,’ he said. ‘You must have locked the Master’s gate behind you and thrown away Sylvia’s key as you fled back to Lambourne house.’
Frank was staring at him, red-faced, with the empty glass in his hand. He looked a child again, and on the verge of tears. ‘Damn you,’ he said. ‘She said I must make Whichcote divorce her, and that I must marry her.’
‘Well?’
‘But it was quite impossible. Her ladyship would have prevented it. And besides…’
‘Besides what?’ Holdsworth said quietly.
Frank shrugged. ‘She was only a woman, after all. She was older than me – she had no fortune – no connections. No, no – it would not have done. You must see that.’
‘So you killed her?’
‘But I – I didn’t mean to.’
‘You attacked her.’ Holdsworth thought what a fool he had been, for the evidence had been before him all the time. What had Dr Jermyn called it?
‘You can prove nothing, remember that. I’ll see you committed for slander, I’ll -’
‘You’ll travel alone tomorrow, Mr Oldershaw.’ Holdsworth paused in the doorway. ‘And remember this: you will never escape her now. Sylvia will be with you always.’
Chapel Court was deserted. The night was cloudy. Few stars were visible. Holdsworth walked through the arcade and into the darkness beyond. He crossed the wet grass towards the oriental plane and the Long Pond. There had been nothing scientific about this investigation, he thought, nothing that a man could write up in a pamphlet and put before the world. It had been a matter of shadows and nuances, of things half seen, half heard and half understood.
A matter of ghosts?
It was dark under the tree. With his arms outstretched before him, Holdsworth moved slowly beneath its canopy until he came to the bank of the Long Pond, close to the spot where Sylvia Whichcote had been found in the water. He looked through the branches. Lights burned in the first-floor windows of the Master’s Lodge. Colours had faded and shapes had become fluid, their outlines dissolving into the gathering night.
Maria. Georgie. A matter of ghosts.
The names formed in Holdsworth’s mind. With them came the memories, together with that familiar sense of emptiness. He touched them delicately with his full attention, as the tongue probes a sore tooth to assess its condition. Something had changed during these weeks in Cambridge. Something had shifted. The beloved dead were a little further away.
There was a flicker of movement on his extreme left, which he caught on the very edge of his vision. He turned his head quickly. The footbridge from the Master’s Garden was just visible, a grey curve over the water. For a moment, he thought there was something pale at the apex of the shallow arch – a sort of lightening of the gloom rather than a shape, partly obscured by the handrail. But the more he looked, the less he saw. His eyes were playing tricks on him.
Elinor?
What was he to do? He had wronged her. He had been foolish and cruel. But he could not help rejoicing too. She was innocent. Would she listen to him if he went to her?
While he stood in the darkness, with his hands in his pockets, thinking of Elinor, he became aware of sounds
