The Ely Testament (10 page)

‘Mr and Mrs Ansell,' he said. It was more of a statement than a question. Tom nodded.

‘I thought so! I am a friend of Jack.'

‘A friend of Jack?'

‘Jack Ashley, the senior clerk of Scott, Lye & Mackenzie. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.'

He stuck out his hand, to Tom then to Helen. As they shook hands, Tom was thinking, here is a tiny mystery solved, the mystery of Mr Ashley's first name. But who is this fellow?

‘Forgive me for getting things the wrong way round and not introducing myself straightaway. My name is John Jubb, and I am the senior clerk at the firm of Teague and Bennett, one of the oldest legal practices in the city of Cambridge.'

‘We are pleased to meet you,' said Helen.

‘But you are wondering why I am here?'

‘We are, rather.'

‘Jack Ashley and I have known each other ever since we were small. We were born on the same street in the same London borough in the same year which was – oh quite a long time ago now – and we played together very amicably, unlike most small boys. We shared first names too and Jack became Jack so as to distinguish him from me, John, when any grown-up wanted to call us indoors or to scold us, which was often enough. Anyway, both Jack and John went into the same profession, the legal one, and they have risen to the height of a senior clerkship in their respective establishments, and have kept in touch over these many years, and – to cut a long story short, Mr and Mrs Ansell, since you must be tired after your journey – Jack communicated the fact to me that you were arriving in Cambridge today and he asked me, well, asked me to look out for you.'

Finally running out of breath, John Jubb looked from one to the other as if for approval. Tom was a bit taken aback. Did they need looking out for? But Helen said, ‘How thoughtful of Mr Ashley. Thank you, Mr Jubb.'

Jubb was pleased. He said, ‘I must not detain you any longer but if I can be of any service, for example by informing you as to the sights of our fair city, whether town or gown . . . though I say it myself, I am a veritable mine of information. Did you know, for example, that Parker's Piece by this very hotel is so named because a college cook named Parker acquired the right to farm it once?'

Tom hoped that Jubb's other nuggets of information might be slightly more interesting than this. But the little round man showed no sign of leaving until Helen stepped in again.

‘That might be very helpful, Mr Jubb,' she said. ‘You see, I am commissioned to gather impressions of Cambridge.'

‘Are you?'

‘To write a magazine piece.'

‘My dear Mrs Ansell, I did not know that you were a writer. In that case, if you'll forgive me, I must insist – I must almost insist – on showing you and your husband around. Tomorrow morning, say. It is a Saturday and I am for once at leisure in the morning.'

‘I'm afraid I have to go to Ely on business for my firm tomorrow,' said Tom.

‘Of course,' said Mr Jubb, tapping the side of his nose as if he understood all about business. ‘Mr Ashley hinted that your work was to take you to Ely. But it would be my privilege to escort your fair lady about the town.'

So it was agreed that John Jubb would give Helen a tour the next day. ‘That was one way of getting rid of him, I suppose,' said Tom to his wife when the law clerk had finally quit the hotel lobby and they had been shown up to their rooms, a bedroom and a sitting room, each of which had a view across the expanse of Parker's Piece.

‘Do not be mean, Tom,' said Helen. ‘I quite took to Mr Jubb. He was so eager to please that I did not want to disappoint. Besides, it will be useful to have someone to show me the town. Useful for the article which I shall be writing.'

Tom thought, as he often did, that Helen not only had a nicer nature than his but good practical sense too. They ate a late luncheon in the hotel and then went on a preliminary walk about the town, admiring the fine old facades of the colleges and the glimpses down narrow high-walled lanes. It was a grey afternoon and lights were burning in some of the college rooms. Tom imagined scholars bent over dusty volumes while mist rose from the fens and the gargoyles crouched overhead.

They were walking towards King's Parade and he was on the point of describing the picture in his mind to Helen – it was the kind of thing she might put in her magazine piece, wasn't it? – when he became aware that she had stopped and was staring at something or someone on the other side of the street. Tom looked but could see nothing out of the ordinary, only cabs and carriages passing, and people on foot going in both directions.

‘What is it?'

Helen shook her head, as much to herself as to him.

‘It's nothing,' she said. ‘I think I must still be a little on edge from that business this morning. Shall we go back now?'

Tom took her arm and they returned to the Devereux. He thought it just as well that Mr John Jubb had offered to escort Helen on the next day since he did not like the idea of leaving her by herself in this unfamiliar town. Back at the hotel Tom was handed a letter by the clerk in the lobby. He glanced at his name on the envelope without recognizing the handwriting and tucked it in his pocket.

It was only later when Helen was lying down in the bedroom and Tom was in the sitting room, idly leafing through the newspaper he'd bought at Liverpool Street, that he remembered the letter. He retrieved it from his coat pocket and took it to the window. The gasolier in the room was not yet lit and the afternoon light was fading fast. Tom looked again at the envelope. It was not surprising he hadn't recognized the writing since, now he looked more closely, the name and address appeared to have been written by a child. The letters of THOMAS ANSELL ESQ and DEVEREUX HOTEL were awkwardly formed and of slightly different sizes. Whatever was inside did not have the thickness of a letter.

Tom took a paper knife from the writing desk near the window. He slit open the envelope and his first thought was that it was empty. A slip of ragged paper fluttered down to the carpet. He picked up the fragment, which had obviously been torn from a book. He held it up to the light from the window, and read it. The words made sense but they did not mean anything to him. He read the scrap several times over without becoming any the wiser. He looked out the window. A large group of young men was playing football on Parker's Piece, in a raucous, good-natured way. Tom estimated there were at least forty players. He presumed they were students, gownsmen.

‘What are you doing?'

Helen was standing in the door of the bedroom.

‘I don't know. This was in the envelope that was given to me downstairs. It's a piece of poetry, I suppose. The funny thing is that I know it, half know it.'

‘Let me see.'

Helen scrutinized the bit of paper. She too looked puzzled until she said ‘Oh yes' under her breath.

‘Oh yes what?'

‘“
There's no art to find the mind's construction on the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust
”,' she recited. Then, ‘You still don't recognize it, Tom?'

‘I don't.'

‘These are the words of King Duncan in the play of
Macbeth
, after he has been told of the treachery of the Thane of Cawdor, the first Thane of Cawdor to whose title Macbeth succeeds. We saw the play not long ago, don't you remember?'

Tom felt slightly foolish. It was true, they had recently gone to a performance of
Macbeth
at the Lyceum Theatre with Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Tom recalled Miss Terry, with her long, red tresses and her green gown embroidered with gold, presenting a less ferocious version of Lady Macbeth than he expected.

‘These lines have been torn from a book of Shakespeare's works,' said Helen. ‘Duncan is identified as the speaker but nothing else has been included. What does it mean?'

‘Here is the envelope it came in. My name looks as though it was written by a child.'

‘Who delivered it?'

Tom went downstairs and spoke to the hotel clerk who passed him on to the outside porter who, after a lapse of memory that required a small coin to make good, was able to say only that some lad had approached and given him the envelope. ‘Some lad' was just a lad, normal height, not fat, not thin, with darkish hair under a cap, and so on. Tom almost asked for his money back but instead he returned to Helen who was sitting at the writing desk studying the envelope and the
Macbeth
fragment. While he was gone, she had drawn the curtains and lit the gas chandelier so that the room was more cosy but also shut-in.

‘The envelope was delivered by a child, a boy,' said Tom. ‘The porter couldn't tell me anything useful, but I suppose the same child might have written my name on the envelope.'

‘I don't think this is a child's writing,' said Helen. ‘It's more like an attempt on the part of the writer to disguise his or her own hand, by using the left instead of the right. The lettering is clumsy but it can still be read, while your name is spelled correctly and the hotel too. Devereux is quite a difficult word. I think an adult wrote this.'

‘An adult who likes playing childish games,' said Tom in irritation. ‘What does it mean, cutting a few lines out of Shakespeare and sticking them inside a clumsily addressed envelope?'

‘Think of what the words mean first.'

‘They're a warning against putting your trust in someone.'

‘Not quite,' said Helen. ‘They are more like a – I don't know – a declaration that you can never tell what someone is thinking or what they're really like inside from the way they look.'

‘Anyone who's been working in the law for more than a few weeks could tell you that. It's nothing new. We're still in the dark.'

‘Not quite,' said Helen again. ‘We do know one or two things. Whoever sent this is aware that you – that we – are staying in Cambridge at the Devereux. Since Mr Mackenzie said you were to be discreet about our trip here, there can surely be only a handful of people who have that knowledge and so could have sent this strange missive.'

‘A few in Scott, Lye & Mackenzie,' said Tom, thinking that William Evers knew, for one. ‘And of course Mr and Mrs Lye at Ely. Though I can't imagine why any of them would want to send such . . . such a warning. But if the sender took the trouble to disguise his handwriting then that must mean he feared I would recognize it.'

‘Or would recognize it in future,' said Helen. ‘It might come from someone you've yet to meet.'

Tom's head whirled with the possibilities. Perhaps it was no more than a silly joke, he told himself, a prank. He went over to the window, parted the curtains and peered out. The football players had finished and it was nearly dark. Lights were springing up in the houses around the edge of Parker's Piece. A lamplighter was working his way down a row of lamps along the street stretching beyond the hotel. Where they were overhung by trees, the blooms of gas showed leaves fluttering down as the evening breeze strengthened. For no reason, Tom shivered slightly.

A few hundred yards away the man stood in Regent Street looking up at the facade of the Devereux Hotel. He did not know which floor or room was occupied by Mr and Mrs Thomas Ansell but it would be easy enough to find out, if that became necessary. He turned up the collar of his coat against the colder air. He envied the young couple the warmth and comfort of their hotel rooms and the undoubtedly pleasant supper they'd enjoy in the hotel dining room this evening. He envied Mr Tom Ansell his wife, the pretty Helen. No, not the pretty but the beautiful Helen.

For a moment there, during the afternoon, he thought Mrs Ansell might have spotted him in the street. She had stopped in her tracks and stared quite hard at the general area where he was walking, trying not to look too hard in
their
direction. But the man did not think that he had been identified. He wore his hat low and his chin huddled into his coat. Besides, he had the knack of passing unnoticed, of being unobtrusive.

Like the lamplighter, now he came to think of it. The man watched as the lighter, who was moving off further down the street, set his ladder against the crosspiece of the next lamp standard, then clambered up three or four rungs, turned the gas-cock and held his own light to the mantle until it flared up. All this was achieved with a couple of practised motions. Perhaps the lamplighter was so accustomed to his trade that he could perform it automatically. The people in the houses along the street would scarcely be aware of his presence. Any more than they were aware of the unobtrusive, watching man who now shrugged himself further into his coat and set off towards the darkness of Parker's Piece.

The watcher walked towards the suburbs on the edge of the city, the terraced houses occupied by clerks, skilled workers and the like. He stopped about halfway along an ill-lit street off a long main road and knocked on the front door. It was opened within moments. There was a light burning in the hall but it was turned so low that the caller could see nothing beyond a silhouette. ‘Ah, it is you,' said the man inside.

He ushered the other in and gestured him towards the front room. There was a light in here as well but once again turned down so far that it seemed to emphasize the gloom rather than dispel it. The man indicated a chair to his visitor. He sat opposite and, by chance or design, in such a way that his face was mostly in shadow.

‘How was your spying?' he said.

The visitor did not quite know what to make of this blunt approach. Was he a spy? He supposed he was.

‘I was in the Devereux when they arrived, Mr and Mrs Ansell, that is.'

‘Not seen by them, I hope.'

‘I was situated behind a newspaper . . .'

‘Good.'

‘But close enough to overhear them.'

‘Even better.'

‘There was another person waiting for them. Some sort of legal fellow, a clerk, I believe. He introduced himself as a friend. Quite forward he was. Person by the name of Jubb.'