Mr Corbett's Ghost (5 page)

‘
Is
it—is it possible?' whispered Benjamin, spying a faint hope that the old man was melted by pity. A light, easy, effortless phantom would be a wonderful exchange for the terrible corpse.

‘All things are possible to the willing soul.'

‘Then . . . will you—?'

The old man was overtaken by a fit of sniffling and snuffling that lasted out the passage of a cloud across the moon. Darkness shadowed him till he spoke again.

‘I bear you no ill will, young man: not even for trying to lay your victim at my coach door. In my line of business that's common. All I ask is that your soul should be willing.'

‘Yes—yes—yes! It is.'

The old man shrugged his shoulders.

‘Fetch down my box,' he said to the coachman; and that surly, humped and shadowy figure grunted with displeasure, for the box was large and awkward and cost great efforts to get down.

At last, with a faint jarring, it was set in the road, stout enough and tall enough for the old man to step down upon as he came out of the coach.

With mounting hope, Benjamin watched. To tell the truth, his present circumstance was such that any change would be of a hopeful nature.

The old man fished in his many coats for the key, while the coachman swung his arms vigorously and stamped his feet to keep warm.

The key was found and the old man knelt and unlocked the box. The coachman shivered and swung his arms more vigorously than ever, as if a deeper chill was come into the air.

‘I take them wherever I go,' said the old man, lifting the lid and displaying the telltale items from his wall of shelves. ‘For they're my only livelihood. My house has been broke into this many a night by . . . by gentlemen. Can you imagine it? Ah! Right on top! How fortunate we are!'

He lifted out Mister Corbett's jar and peered at it in the light of the moon. Abruptly, he stood upright and
turned to Benjamin. The road must have sloped thereabouts, and the old man been on an eminence, for he now seemed taller than Benjamin—by an inch or more.

‘Hold it for me,' he said, and Benjamin took the jar with trembling hands.

‘Some folks tie lovers' knots,' he murmured, more to himself than to Benjamin. ‘But we tie haters' knots, don't we, young man? Now—now—now it's done!'

He took back the jar with its black ribbon, in which there was now a second knot.

‘Look, Benjamin Partridge! Behold your ghost!'

BEFORE BENJAMIN'S EYES
—his amazed eyes—the apothecary's corpse was on the turn. It had begun to quake and seethe like milk neglected on the hob. Its thin hands seemed to overflow till, where there had been ten fingers, there were now twenty. Likewise the stockinged legs, the old brown breeches, the waistcoat with its stains of oil of camphor and smears of sulphur, the coat (his best), the woollen scarf that he, Benjamin, had given him on his first Christmas—and ever after prayed would choke him—all most subtly and silently boiled over till there was a second Mister Corbett rising like steam unequally from the first.

Extraordinary sight. But not yet done with. Consider the solid Mister Corbett, lying limp and disagreeable under the charitable moon. Being empty, his sides sank in, his face diminished, and the whole of him shuddered into a flabby nothingness—like a shrunken balloon. Then this, too, shrank and came down to a tiny spot of damp that might have been dew.

‘No more to him than that?' whispered Benjamin wonderingly to the old man. There was no answer. Benjamin turned. The road was quiet; the coach had gone. So absorbed had he been in the emptying of Mister Corbett, that all sound must have escaped him. Once more he was alone with the perished apothecary.

But the difference—oh, the difference! Beside him now, with both feet almost on the ground, stood the apothecary's ghost.

Gone was the gloomy weight, the listless, damning sack of flesh and bone and halted blood. In its place was a Mister Corbett better than new. Not the sharpest eye
could have told he was not what he seemed. This fellow could be passed off anywhere as the genuine apothecary.

Down to the same blueness about the chin and the same mole on the side of his nose, it was Mister Corbett. Even Benjamin, though he'd seen every inch rise up uncannily, was momentarily deceived.

‘Mister Corbett, sir—' he said uneasily.

But the ghost did not reply. It stood and stared at the boy in a manner most timidly solemn, like a child on its first day in school.

Now triumph, joy, and amazement struggled in Benjamin's breast. His misery was at an end. He felt—yes, he felt in that moment almost pleased to see the luckless man looking so much like himself.

‘Mister Corbett!' he cried, and took a pace forward.

The ghost shrank back.

‘Mister Corbett!' repeated Benjamin, advancing another step.

The ghost shuddered and put up its imitation arms as if to defend itself.

‘Mister Corbett,' said Benjamin for a third time, with much of the triumph gone from his voice. The ghost's aspect was not encouraging to it: its face expressed terror.

A cold discomfort entered the boy. He thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of defiance.

‘What are you staring at, Mister Corbett?'

The terror in the phantom's eyes grew extreme. Mister Corbett was staring at the apprentice who had hated him.

‘I . . . I never touched you, you know,' said Benjamin, and wondered if Mister Corbett had any notion of what had befallen him: if he knew of the house and the black ribbon and the desolate murderers' walk.

Being a spirit, no doubt such knowledge was possible to it. Benjamin shivered. Was it likewise possible that it knew now—for the first time—the scope of the apprentice's hate?

‘You brought it on yourself, Mister Corbett. You were as hard as iron,' said Benjamin unhappily.

The ghost's lips moved. Benjamin strained to hear. The voice was all but withered away, having no solid organ at its origin to give it resonance and substance.

‘I—am—in—hell . . .'

‘No you ain't!' cried Benjamin indignantly, for he was frightened beyond measure at such a striking notion. ‘You're on Hampstead Heath, Mister Corbett, as well you must know!'

But the news did not seem to cheer the apothecary's ghost tremendously, and its dread of its murderer did not seem much abated.

‘Cold. I am so cold,' it moaned, and plucked at its scarf in that mean and finicky way Mister Corbett had so often plucked at it when he'd been alive.

‘It's a cold night, Mister Corbett, so there's nothing unnatural in your feeling it. If—'

He stopped. There was someone coming. A horseman. He whipped round the bend in the road too quick for Benjamin to hide.

‘Happy New Year to the pair of you!' shouted the rider, and galloped on.

Benjamin wiped the sweat from his brow.

‘The Lord be praised, Mister Corbett! He took you for a living man!'

Sadly, the phantom nodded.

‘A living man, Mister Corbett! Think of it! It's only me that knows you're not!'

Filled now with a fine, nervous determination to make the best of his situation, he began to walk back towards the turnpike.

Then a grim thought struck him. What if the ghost should seek revenge? What if it should accuse him? Was that not the proper office of ghosts?

Several times he turned, longing desperately to ask,
‘Would you betray me, Mister Corbett?' But each time the question stuck in his throat and the ghost came on, bent-shouldered, stooping, with that aggravating spying air he'd ever had in life.

‘I'm so cold!' it moaned. ‘So very cold!' And it continued to spy and peer as if for a warm corner somewhere.

‘So it's you again, lad!' said the turnpike keeper, hanging his head out of his window like a battered sign. Then he saw the apothecary's ghost. He stared.

‘I thought—' he began. ‘I could have sworn—' he began again. ‘I could have taken my oath that—'

‘It turned out that he was only poorly,' said Benjamin, his heart beating furiously. ‘And now he's as good as new.'

‘I'd have gone bail for his being dead as mutton!' muttered the keeper, shaking his head, while the ghost of Mister Corbett returned his stare in a chilly, melancholy fashion, but spoke not a word.

‘Poorly, you said? Now you come to mention it, he does look a bit pale around the chops. And, no offence, it don't improve him any.'

‘I'm so cold!' whispered the ghost at last.

‘Cold, is he? Not surprised. He ain't dressed over warm. If you've any Christian charity in you, lad (as I hopes is in every mortal soul!) take him into the Spaniards' Inn for a tot of brandy and rum. Half and half, with a sprig of rosemary. That'll put roses in his cheeks! Go on, lad! Be a Christian on this New Year's Eve and warm your freezing friend!'

With all his heart the boy longed to go into the inn, for it was a cheerful place. Its windows shone and there was a smell of roast and onions in the air. But he feared the ghost's accusing finger . . . and cry of ‘Murderer!'

‘Go on, lad!' urged the keeper, a powerful minder of the world's business.

‘Directly! Directly!' cried Benjamin, backing towards
the inn and wondering how best he could escape. God knew whether the warmth of a parlour might not give the ghost strength for his damaging cry!

‘Would you betray me?' he whispered desperately.

‘Betray you?' echoed the apothecary's ghost.

‘Accuse me for . . . for revenge—?'

‘What would I want with revenge? I am in hell and want for—'

But what the phantom wanted for was drowned out by the keeper's impatient cries of ‘Hurry, there!' for his kindliness was of an interfering, bullying sort.

‘Directly! Directly!' answered Benjamin.

‘D'you want help with your friend?'

‘No! No!'

He took the spectre's hand. An unpleasant moment, that. Not so much the chill (as of a piece of cold air), but the lack of substance. There was nothing to grasp. His fingers closed in on themselves. Horrible.

He glanced back to see if the keeper had noticed. But for once that nosy fellow had seen nothing.

‘A near thing, Mister Corbett,' breathed Benjamin. ‘We must be careful. Though you
look
as good as new, there's less to you than meets the eye.'

They had entered the inn yard where tall coaches stood upon the moon-washed cobbles like dark ships becalmed on a silver sea.

Once more Benjamin stopped. The inn beckoned—but he was afraid. He stared back. The keeper was watching them all the way.

‘Give you a hand?' he bellowed.

God forbid! Benjamin shook his head and hurried on. Abruptly, a horseboy scuttled from the stables back to the warmth of the inn. He saw the wayfarers—even crossed their path—and briefly waved. He never noticed the uncanny circumstance of two figures approaching with but the sound of a single pair of feet.

This gave Benjamin a touch of confidence, but not very much of it. He glanced sideways at his murdered master, shuffling stoop-shouldered as though his overlong scarf was weighing him down.

He's bound to betray me, thought Benjamin gloomily, no matter what he says. It's in his nature to betray me.

But the ghost only shuddered and moaned: ‘I'm so cold. Who would have thought hell to be so cold?'

Benjamin Partridge bit his lip till the blood came.

‘You're no more in hell than I am, Mister Corbett. And well you must know it! It's a cold night—'

‘What's keeping you now, lad?' came the keeper's voice, surly with charitable intent.

A lamp swung gently in the inn's porch. To mark the New Year and good resolutions, someone had polished it and the landlord had bought clean oil. It burned brightly and set off the timber work to advantage.

Benjamin sighed. Sooner or later there was a world to be mingled with. Was not here and now as good a place and time as any?

‘You'll not betray me, Mister Corbett? You swear you'll not betray me?'

The ghost looked at him in terror and grief.

‘Not I! Not I!'

‘All right, Mister Corbett. We'll go into the warm, then.'

They passed under the porch lamp. As they did so, Benjamin's confidence suffered a sharp decline. He had made a detestable discovery. He had seen the lamp through the phantom's head! In the light—in a good light—the apothecary's ghost was transparent!

ONCE WITHIN THE
inn, a thousand fears had invaded him. Every flicker of flame had terrified him; every sudden leap of the fire, every glow of a lighted pipe had given him such dread as only the deepest shadows could partly dispel.

‘For pity's sake, Mister Corbett—keep out of the light!'

Desolately the phantom had returned his frantic looks, as if unaware of its own infirmity. It hung its head, ashamed of it knew not what . . . and followed its murderer close by the darkest wall of the candlelit parlour.