The Salisbury Manuscript

by Philip Gooden

  ‘Not at all,’ said Tom, ‘but why did you not make yourself known last night, Mr Cathcart?’

  ‘I . . . I was uncertain what to do. I did not know how welcome such an intrusion would be. Besides, seeing you was quite a shock to the system. I needed time to recover. It is twenty years or more since I last saw your father. I never thought to see him again in this life and of course I will not see him. Yet last night at supper, there he was . . . or rather, there you were. You do not mind me saying all this, Mr Ansell? Thomas?’

  Cathcart leaned across and made to grasp Tom’s hand. He was visibly affected by the meeting. The two men were sitting in an empty snug off the supper room in The Side of Beef from which there came the subdued noise of diners and the clinking of cutlery and glass. A bottle of red wine was on the table between them. Tom felt almost dizzy although he had taken no more than a couple of sips from his glass.

  He said, ‘I am Tom. But my mother tells me that my father was always called Thomas. I was called Tom to distinguish me from him if my mother wanted my attention . . . but of course by the time it would have regularly mattered to distinguish between us . . . he was gone.’

  ‘You do not remember him?’

  ‘He was a – he was no more than a presence when I was small. A tall man in a blue uniform. That’s all, I’m afraid,’ said Tom, recalling that he’d given the same inadequate description of his father to Mrs Mackenzie a couple of days earlier.

  ‘Ah, we did like wearing the uniform,’ said Henry Cathcart. ‘The women liked it too.’

  Tom looked at the man sitting opposite him. Henry Cathcart was plump and well fed, every inch the leading citizen of the town as Jenkins had characterized him. Tom had some difficulty imagining him wearing a soldier’s outfit. But then perhaps his father would have grown stout, had he lived. He was thinking like this in order to hold at bay other, more painful thoughts. He wanted to ask, ‘My father, what was he like?’ or ‘Did my father ever mention me?’ but these questions would have come too early in the conversation. Instead Tom Ansell said, ‘Were you there when he died?’

  ‘Not at the very moment,’ said Cathcart. He paused and Tom thought that he wasn’t going to say any more. But Cathcart swallowed half his glass and refilled it from the bottle then went on: ‘He fell ill of a fever shortly before we reached the Dardanelles. He wasn’t the only one to die on board and there was no time to put in and bury him and the others on one of the little islands in those parts. Your father was not a navy man, of course, but he had a sailor’s burial. We thought he had escaped the sickness. Others had gone ahead of him and Lieutenant Thomas Ansell seemed to be on the mend. But he went in the early hours of the morning, quite suddenly. He was the last to die on the voyage and so had the distinction of being buried alone.’

  ‘Can you describe it?’ said Tom. He was curious and at the same time half ashamed of his curiosity. Yet Henry Cathcart seemed pleased enough to talk about it. He told of how Thomas Ansell had been sewn up in a hammock which was weighted with a bag of sand at the foot; of how a plank had been prepared with one end over the side of the vessel; of how the men had been paraded on deck and the colours flown at half-mast. Prayers were said over the body by the chaplain. The men stood with heads bowed. A volley was fired. The order was given to tilt the plank. Hardly an order, said Cathcart, just a small upwards gesture of the hand by the ship’s captain.

  Henry Cathcart paused again. Saying, ‘I turned my head at that point for I could not look,’ he turned his head away, in imitation of his action more than twenty years before. Still with face averted he said, ‘I heard the splash as my friend’s body plunged into the water. Though I heard much worse than that in battle, and in the aftermath of battle too, I will never forget that splash.’

  When he turned back, his eyes were moist, and Tom felt the water gathering in his own. Both men resumed their drinking in earnest silence.

  ‘Your mother,’ said Cathcart eventually, ‘is she still . . .?’

  ‘Yes, thriving.’

  ‘Good, good. I am glad of that. I remember Marian Ansell clearly.’

  There was a wistful note to his voice and Tom wondered whether this portly middle-aged gent had been soft on his mother. He said, ‘Except that she is Marian Holford now. She remarried after my father’s death.’

  ‘Your stepfather was in the army?’

  ‘He was an attorney. Though he is dead too now. He was some years older than my mother.’

  ‘Ah, so you have followed in your stepfather’s steps, Tom. The landlord here told me that you worked for a London law firm.’

  ‘The landlord here is altogether too curious. But, yes, I followed my stepfather. He always said that the law was a safe trade since people would never tire of litigation.’

  ‘He was right enough there. So, tell me, you are down here on business?’

  ‘Yes. We have a client who lives in the close. And you, sir? What happened to you after . . . after your army service?’

  ‘I was wounded in the Russian War,’ said Henry Cathcart, clasping a plump hand to his upper thigh. ‘Nothing serious, though it was enough to disable me from further service and to leave me with a gammy leg. I was fortunate compared with many of my fellows. Now I own a store on one of the principal thoroughfares of this town. We sell not single things but several in different departments, clothes and drapery mostly and furnishings. I like to think that enterprises like mine are the wave of the future, places where people may buy everything they want under one roof. But owning a store is a far cry from the glory of war. Wasn’t it Bonaparte who called us a nation of shopkeepers?’

  ‘Shopkeepers who defeated an Emperor,’ said Tom.

  ‘Good, good,’ said Cathcart, dividing the rest of the bottle of wine between Tom and himself. ‘Shall we get another?’

  ‘The landlord owes me a drink,’ said Tom. He described how Jenkins had promised him a bottle on the house after his room had been broken into. Cathcart was all concern although Tom said that nothing seemed to have been taken. His anger and unease at the incident had dissolved under the influence of a few glasses. He was inclined to take Jenkins’s view that no harm had been done. Certainly he would not be alerting the police. He felt an odd wish that Henry Cathcart should not think that he, Tom, had a low opinion of the town.

  ‘Salisbury is a law-abiding place in general,’ said Cathcart, ‘although I hear there have been some robberies in the close.’

  ‘As recently as last night,’ said Tom.

  ‘Well, here is another mystery,’ said Cathcart after they’d started work on a second bottle of wine and pondered the puzzle of why a thief would want to take jelly moulds and toasting forks. The store-owner reached across to a neighbouring table and picked up a discarded copy of the Salisbury Gazette.

  After casting his eyes over the front page, he passed it to Tom, indicating a couple of paragraphs.

  Under the headline Developments in Search for Missing Sexton, Tom read the following item: We are assured by Inspector Foster of the Salisbury police that investigations are continuing into the mysterious disappearance of Mr Andrew North, one of the sextons at the cathedral church of St Mary. According to Inspector Foster, developments in the case are expected soon although he declined to say what they were. Our readers will recall that the sexton disappeared sometime during the night of October the fifteenth of this year. Mr North, who shared a cottage in the cathedral grounds with his widowed sister, failed to report for duty on the morning of the sixteenth although the alarm was not raised until later that day since it was assumed by his superiors that Mr North was ill at home and by his sister Mrs Banks that he had already departed for work. Mr North was last seen by Mrs Banks on the late afternoon of the previous day, telling her that he was going out for a stroll and that she was on no account to wait up for his return. We understand that Mr North had fallen into the habit of walking late and that there was nothing unusual in his request.

  There was speculation that Mr North might have suffere
d a serious accident or fallen victim to a sudden illness, but the absence of any report or sighting has deepened fears for the safety of the sexton. Mr North has been described as a man in good health and someone who has, in the words of his sister,‘all his wits about him’. Canon Eric Selby told the Gazette that Mr North was a good worker and a valued servant of the cathedral church, adding that he very much hoped the mystery of the sexton’s disappearance would soon reach a happy and satisfactory conclusion.

  Tom put the local paper back on the table. The main thing of interest to him was the mention of Canon Selby.

  Henry Cathcart said, ‘You’ll notice that they talk about developments without saying what they are. Inspector Foster probably hasn’t got a clue but it gives the impression he’s getting somewhere just as it provides the Gazette with a peg to hang the story on. A more honest headline would have been No Developments in Search for Missing Sexton.’

  For some reason, Tom thought of the disturbing scene he’d witnessed the previous evening while he was standing on the station platform. The two dark figures, the way in which one had crept up on the other, the way both had subsequently vanished. He wondered whether to mention it to Cathcart. But he kept quiet. There could be no connection between that and the disappearance of Andrew North a month ago.

  The two men chatted generally for a bit longer. They avoided talking about Tom’s father, as if conscious that anything else in that line would have to wait until another meeting. Cathcart was drinking more quickly and in larger measure than Tom but he still felt woozy when the older man hoisted himself out of his chair and announced that he had to be getting back home. The store-owner enquired how much longer Tom was staying in Salisbury and expressed the earnest wish that, now he had made the acquaintance of the son of his long-lost friend, they would have another meeting before Tom’s return to London. They shook hands and once again Tom saw a teariness in the other’s eyes. Then Henry Cathcart, limping a little, squeezed his way through the narrow door of the snug.

  Tom sat for a while longer, toying with his almost empty glass, wondering where his appetite for supper had gone, and turning over what Henry Cathcart had told him about the death of his father. He wondered whether the store-keeper had ever told the same story to his mother, not face to face but perhaps in a letter. He rather thought not. Remembering the wistful way in which the store-owner had referred to his mother, he considered it unlikely that Cathcart had seen her again after his return from the Russian War. Such a meeting might have been painful for all sorts of reasons.

  Tom was about to stir himself and go to the supper room before it was too late when Jenkins entered the snug. The landlord was carrying a letter. He seemed on the verge of saying something but, maybe because of Tom’s melancholy expression, he simply handed it over, giving the slightest bow as he did so.

  The letter was addressed to Thomas Ansell, esq. c/o The Side of Beef, Salisbury. It was not stamped. He assumed it was from one of the Slater family. So it was, although not a family member whom Tom had met.

  Dear Mr Ansell, I understand that you are making a professional visit to my brother Felix on matters concerning my late father, George Slater. As you are doubtless aware, I am no longer a client of Scott, Lye & Mackenzie but I would be most obliged if you would take the time to call on me tomorrow morning at Northwood House. There is a local train from Salisbury to Wimborne travelling via Downton, where you should alight. The train arrives at 11.35 a.m. My coachman will meet you at the station.

  The letter was signed Percy Slater.

  The Sick Room

  Henry Cathcart let himself into his house. By instinct, he closed the door softly behind him. Inside, there was the same gloomy hush which generally lowered his spirits. But tonight Cathcart was in such a confused and unusual state of mind that he scarcely noticed it. Meeting the son of his old friend had thrown him back into the past so that, in the few minutes it had taken him to walk from The Side of Beef to his house, he had been quite unaware of the familiar streets and corners he was passing. He didn’t even notice the ache from the wound in his thigh, which tended to trouble him when he walked.

  Thomas – no, Tom – Ansell was pretty well the living spit of his dead father. When Henry had been chatting to him in the snug he might have been talking to the man himself. But then he would recall that more than twenty years had passed, and he would hear again that terrible splash as his comrade’s body slid into the water, and so the tears came to his eyes.

  The store-owner had spotted Tom at supper the previous evening and had at once been struck by the likeness to his dead friend. Surreptitious glances had been followed by outright stares and then questions to the landlord. Henry Cathcart had noticed young Ansell growing visibly uncomfortable under his scrutiny and – once Jenkins had told him the name of the new guest – he’d considered going across and introducing himself. But, as he’d explained to Tom, several things conspired to hold him back, chiefly the uncertainty over how he’d be received.

  That night he slept poorly, though this was not only on account of seeing Tom but because of another encounter he’d had earlier. The following day Henry Cathcart called three times at The Side of Beef in the hope that Ansell might be there. On the third occasion, he was told that Mr Ansell had just returned and was most likely in his room. Too impatient to wait for Tom to come down to supper, Cathcart climbed the stairs and met Tom as he was about to descend.

  It was extraordinary, he reflected, how similar were Thomas Ansell and Tom Ansell, the same features, the same build. Similar even down to the inflections of their voices. And then he wondered whether he was right. Did the son really look and sound so like the father, or was he wishing that on the young man?

  ‘What did you say?’

  The housemaid, having taken his coat as he walked in the front door and hung it up, now returned with a question. Standing in the gloomy hallway, Cathcart had been too wrapped up in his memories to notice anything.

  ‘Cook asks what time you would like your supper, sir.’

  ‘Is Mrs Cathcart awake?’

  ‘I believe she was sleeping earlier, sir.’

  ‘Very well, I will visit her later. Tell her maid to inform me when she is awake and is ready to see me. And tell cook that I will eat as soon as she has the food ready.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘I’ll be in the dining room. You do not need to sound the gong, you might disturb Mrs Cathcart.’

  The maid bobbed slightly and went off to convey instructions to the cook and to Mrs Cathcart’s maid. Cathcart entered the dining room and sat at the head of the table. He would be dining alone, as usual. He reached out for a decanter and filled one of the glasses which was next to the single place-setting. Henry did not usually drink much. He was a believer in sobriety and industry although without taking those virtues to excess. Yet the surprise – the shock – of encountering Tom Ansell had already caused him to drink as much as he would have consumed over several days. Perhaps that too was a reversion to his earlier life.

  As he sat over his glass of wine (which eventually became several glasses) and, later, his supper (pork chops, broccoli, mash), Henry Cathcart mused over his meeting with Tom and his friendship with Tom’s father. He also thought about Marian Ansell, pretty and vivacious Marian. He had been not so much soft on her as smitten with her. He had thought his friend, Thomas Ansell, a lucky dog to have found and nailed her, a very lucky dog indeed.

  What was her surname now? What had Tom said? Holford, wasn’t it? An attorney. So Marian had married a lawyer the second time around. Perhaps she had had enough of the alarms of a soldier’s wife’s life, and wanted comfort and security. And she was a widow, also for a second time. Cathcart wondered whether those slightly pert features had grown dull or coarse with age. He wondered whether, since she had chosen an attorney, she might have settled for a prosperous store-owner. Or a veteran returning from the Russian War. Cathcart wasn’t to know what Tom had speculated, but the son of his old friend
had been right. Seeing Marian again after he was invalided home would have been too painful. He might have called on her with the pretext of wanting to tell her about her husband’s death and burial, but some scruple held him back. Even so, he couldn’t help envisaging how fetching she would have looked in her widow’s weeds.

  Thoughts of Marian Ansell led Henry Cathcart, with a sort of inevitability, to thoughts of another attractive woman: Amelia Slater, the wife of Felix, the residentiary canon. He had first encountered Amelia in his own store, Cathcart’s. She –

  He was interrupted by the appearance of his wife’s maid, who told him that Constance was awake and would welcome a visit from her husband.

  ‘How is Mrs Cathcart, Grace?’

  ‘She is not too bad this evening, Mr Cathcart, not too bad at all.’

  Grace spoke reproachfully, as if Mrs Cathcart’s condition, whether better or worse, was his fault. Wearily, Cathcart climbed the stairs. The upper part of his right leg was beginning to ache. As he approached his wife’s chamber, the atmosphere seemed to grow more gloomy although the lights in the passage burned no less brightly. He tapped on the door and entered, without waiting for a response.

  Constance Cathcart was sitting up in the single bed. She was reading. She looked up and smiled at her husband’s arrival.

  ‘How are you this evening, my dear?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I am bearing up, Henry.’

  She patted the bed as a sign that he should sit down at the end of it. He did so with care, knowing that he must avoid stretching the bedclothes tight over her slight body. Mrs Cathcart put down her reading matter. It was a religious pamphlet. Henry could see the name of some Reverend, followed by a string of letters, on the cover.

  ‘It’s a sharp evening,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Grace said it was cold out.’

  The room was hot and stuffy, not only because of the coal fire which radiated a steady heat from behind a screen – placed so that Constance should not be disturbed by the ministrations of the housemaid who tended it – but also because the windows were rarely opened even on the warmest days of summer. The advice of Constance’s doctor was for fresh air to be admitted to the room on a regular basis so as get rid of any impurities but Constance felt the cold very easily, complained of being chilly most of the time.