The Ely Testament

by Philip Gooden

  ‘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 t
here, 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.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The main thing is this,’ said the spy. ‘I overheard their plans for tomorrow.’

  ‘You have done well.’

  ‘Mrs Ansell is to be escorted round the town by this Mr Jubb. She’s to see the sights. While Mr Ansell, he said that he had to go to Ely on his firm’s business.’

  ‘Ah yes. So husband and wife will be separated for a time?’

  ‘It appears so.’

  ‘You have done remarkably well. And you left them . . . ?’

  ‘Tucked up snug in the Devereux. I don’t suppose they’ll stir again on a chill evening like this. I would not stir. Not if I was married to a woman like Mrs Ansell.’

  ‘You think she is attractive?’

  ‘Most attractive. And refined too. Can I ask you one thing?’

  ‘You can ask.’

  ‘You don’t mean them any harm, do you? Mr and Mrs Ansell?’

  ‘No harm at all. Yes, it is chilly,’ said the other man, changing the subject. ‘I am forgetting my duties as a host. Would you like a nip of something to ward off the cold and damp of the fens?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Let us have something together then. To toast your success as a spy.’

  The Man in the Moon

  As they’d arranged, Mr John Jubb called on Helen Ansell at the Devereux on the Saturday morning shortly after Tom departed for Ely. The lawyers’ clerk was full of good humour and information. He enjoyed being in Helen’s company, and she had quite taken to him and was prepared to be shown around the town, although she had to slow her usual walking style to fit with his pace. The sun sparkled on stone facades and brick walls which had been dull and blockish in yesterday’s gloom. With pride, Mr Jubb pointed out Peterhouse as the oldest of the colleges, and the Great Gate of Trinity with its alcoved statue of Henry the Eighth, and the covered bridge over the river Cam which had been much admired by the present Queen – who called it pretty and picturesque – and which was modelled on that one in Venice whose name for a moment escaped him . . .

  ‘I believe it’s called the Bridge of Sighs,’ said Helen.

  ‘That’s it, Mrs Ansell. It was on the tip of my tongue.’

  And by the time these and a few other sights had been admired, Mr Jubb was running out of energy and puff and suggested they stop at a coffee house. He took Helen to a place which was most suitable for ladies, he said, neither flyblown nor frequented by the lower type of person. Above all, it sold a refreshing mocha, untainted by chicory or horsebeans. The inside of Morris’s was almost as neat and bright as its gold-lettered and freshly painted exterior. The attendants greeted Mr Jubb like an old friend as well as a good customer and showed him and Helen to a stall near the back from where they had a clear view of the room. Judging by the number of people there, this was a popular place to chat or to read newspapers and periodicals.

  Once they had been served their coffee, Mr Jubb relaxed and tucked his small legs beneath the seat while Helen took out her notebook and pencil to scribble down a couple of points.

  ‘For your article, Miss Ansell?’

  ‘I find that I forget things if I don’t note them down. But two or three words are usually enough to bring it back.’

  ‘Like a painter’s sketches, I believe. I am full of admiration that you are so professional. Quite the modern lady.’

  It had occurred to Helen that anyone seeing them together might wonder at their connection. Father and daughter? The difference in years was about right. Oddly, Helen didn’t object to the idea, perhaps because her actual father had been a very distinct figure from John Jubb. Where the clerk was rotund, chatty and cheerful, Alfred Scott had been tall, silent and dour. And it turned out, as Mr Jubb chattered on, that the clerk was a widower but did indeed have a married daughter of about Helen’s age. She lived all the way up in Yorkshire so Mr Jubb did not see her or his son-in-law or his grandchildren very often.

  While Helen was half listening to all of this and enjoying her coffee and attempting to marshal her early impressions of Cambridge, her eye was caught by a well-dressed individual slouching in a chair close by. He was a pale-faced young man wearing spectacles whose lenses were tinged a light violet. He had long, lank hair which he tugged abstractedly with the fingers of one hand. With the other he was turning the pages of a magazine, reading it with furrowed attention. Parts of it he evidently didn’t like, because from time to time he tutted or shook his head slightly.

  Whenever Helen saw anyone reading a book or a periodical in public, she was curious to know what it was. In this case, it was easy to find out since the man was balancing the magazine on his cocked knee so that the cover was clearly visible. It featured a simple line drawing – slightly oriental in style – of a bare-branched tree with a sliver of moon rising beyond it. And the title The New Moon, also rendered with a faint Eastern flourish, appeared in large capitals to one side of the tree.

  For a moment Helen was undecided what to do, then she startled Mr Jubb by suddenly getting up from the table and approaching the young man. Jubb overheard and saw the following.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me for interrupting you . . .’

  The young man stopped tugging at his hair and looked up, peering through his violet spectacles.

  ‘Of course.’

  Helen hesitated before saying, ‘I couldn’t help noticing the title of the magazine that you are reading. The New Moon, isn’t it? I wondered where I might obtain a copy.’

  ‘I fear any such quest will be fruitless, madam. This is a printer’s proof. You are welcome to have a look at it, but I suspect that you will find the contents are somewhat repetitive i
n style.’

  He rose to his feet and held out the magazine. Helen took it and examined the moon-and-tree cover before leafing through a few pages, enough to glimpse a mixture of prose and poetry. She gave it back to the bespectacled man. By now, he had taken Helen in, taken in her attractiveness, her inexplicable interest in The New Moon. She didn’t have to ask anything further, he was only too happy to explain.

  ‘As I say, this is a proof of the magazine. Probably not as it will actually appear when it is offered in the booksellers and the station stalls but a simulacrum of how it might look. The thing is done only to give a general impression to the sponsors and subscribers.’

  ‘And called The New Moon because it is to be a monthly?’

  ‘Yes. Not too obvious a title, I hope. I do abhor the obvious.’

  ‘Obvious or not, I like the name,’ said Helen.

  ‘I ought to add that the items within these covers are similar because most of them were written by the same person.’

  ‘But you did not altogether approve of what you were reading? I saw you shaking your head occasionally.’

  ‘It is one of my maxims that the truly creative man is his own best critic.’

  ‘And I am looking at such a creator-critic?’ said Helen.

  ‘Arthur Arnett at your service,’ said the man, extending his hand. ‘A creator, a critic of the self as one should be – and editor of The New Moon. I’m the man in the moon, you might say.’

  Helen had already realized who he was. Even so, she was a little flustered by Arnett’s announcement although she managed to conceal it, more or less, by laughing at his witticism. She glanced back at John Jubb who was gazing at them both with a puzzled expression.

  ‘We are already in correspondence, Mr Arnett. We’ve exchanged letters. I am Mrs Ansell, Helen Ansell. I had the advantage of you once I saw the name of your magazine. You have been kind enough to commission a piece of writing from me.’