An Instance of the Fingerpost (12 page)

‘I judge by results,’ I said pleasantly, for he was clearly enjoying himself, and it seemed churlish to spoil his entertainment by being annoyed. ‘And by the fact that the experimental method has produced good results.’

‘This experiment of yours, it is the core of the new medicine, for example?’

I nodded.

‘But how do you reconcile it with the notions of Hippocrates, which you physicians seem to think are so important?’

‘I do not need to,’ I said. ‘I see no conflict.’

‘Surely you must?’ Grove said in surprise. ‘For you have to substitute proven treatments for others which might be better, but might well be worse. Rather than trying first and foremost to cure your patients, you experiment on them to see what result is obtained. You use patients to gain your knowledge, not to make them better, and that is a sin. Bartolomeus de Chaimis says so in his
Interrogatorium Sive Confessionale
, and he has been seconded by the best authorities ever since.’

‘Clever argument, but untrue,’ I said. ‘Experiment is there to improve treatment for all patients.’

‘But if I come to you with an illness, I do not care for all patients. It matters not to me if others are cured when I die proving a treatment does not work. I want to be healthy, yet you say your wish for knowledge is greater than my need for health.’

‘I say nothing of the sort. There are many experiments which can be carried out without endangering the patient.’

‘But you are still setting aside Hippocrates. You are deciding to use treatments not knowing whether they will work or not, and that breaks your word.’

‘Think, sir, of a patient for whom there is no remedy. That person will die. In that case, an experiment which gives the chance of health is better than none at all.’

‘Not so. Because you might well be hastening death. That is not only against the oath, it is against God’s law. And the law of men, if it be murder.’

‘You are saying that no improvement in medicine is permissible? We have what we have been given by our forebears and can hope for nothing more?’

‘I am saying that by your own admission the experimental method is corrupt.’

It was hard, but still I remembered my manners. ‘Perhaps. But I treated you today and you show much improvement. You may dispute the source, but not, in this case, the result.’

Grove laughed and clapped his hands together with pleasure and I saw that he was really only amusing himself, seeing how far I could be provoked. ‘That is true, sir, very true. My eye is much better, and I am grateful to the new philosophy for that. And I will trust you on the dangers of any substance you dislike, and avoid them entirely. But’, he said with a sigh as he confirmed that his wine glass was empty, ‘our meal is over, and with it our discussion. A pity. We must talk more on this during your stay in our university. Who knows? I might even persuade you of the error of your ways.’

‘Or I you?’

‘I doubt it. No one has ever succeeded before. But I would be happy to hear you try.’

Then everybody stood while a young scholar read out thanks to the Lord for the food (or maybe it was for having survived it) and we all shuffled out. Grove accompanied me across the courtyard to see me out, pausing briefly at the entrance to his stair to pick up a bottle which had been left there. ‘Splendid,’ he said as he clutched it to his breast. ‘Warmth on a cold night.’

I thanked him for his hospitality. ‘I am sorry if I annoyed either you or your colleague, Dr Wallis. I did not intend it.’

Grove waved his hand. ‘You certainly did not annoy me, and I wouldn’t worry about Wallis. He is an irascible fellow. I don’t think he liked you very much, but do not concern yourself: he doesn’t like anyone. However, he is not a bad man; he has offered to visit Prestcott for me, as you say I should spare my eyes, which is kind of him. Now, here we are, Mr Cola,’ he said. ‘Good night to you.’

He bowed, then turned rapidly round and marched off to his room
and his bottle. I stood watching him for a moment, surprised by the sudden dismissal, so unlike the lengthy formalities of Venice; but then there is nothing like a north wind in March for curtailing civilities.

IT WAS NOT
until the next morning that I realised a catastrophe was in the making; the earlier part of the day was spent commiserating with Lower on the loss of his corpse.

He took it in good part; as he said, his chances of getting his hands on Prestcott’s body had been small, so it gave him a little satisfaction to know that the university wouldn’t be getting it either. Besides, he’d quite liked the lad, although he, and most of the members of the town, did think that the way he had maltreated Dr Wallis was quite unseemly.

To explain briefly – and this succinct account was the result of piecing together innumerable accounts until I understood what had happened – the escape of Jack Prestcott from the king’s justice was partly my doing. I had delivered the message about the lad wanting a visitor, and Dr Wallis, the very man who had been so rude to me at dinner, had gone in Grove’s place because of my medical advice. It was a kind act, both to Grove and to Prestcott, and I felt ashamed for deriving some small amusement from the result.

Wallis had asked that the prisoner be unshackled so that he might have more ease in prayer, and was left alone with him. About an hour later, still swaddled in his thick black gown and heavy winter hat, he had emerged so distressed at the imminent loss of a fine young life that he had scarcely been able to speak, merely tipping the jailer twopence and asking that Prestcott be allowed an undisturbed night’s sleep. Reshackling could wait until the morning.

The gaoler, who would undoubtedly lose his place as a result, had obeyed and it was not until after five the next morning that the cell was opened. Whereupon it was discovered that the person on the little cot was not Prestcott, but a bound and gagged Dr Wallis who had, so he related, been overpowered by the young criminal, tied up
and stripped of his cloak and hat. It had been Prestcott who left the previous evening and who had won, as a result, nearly ten hours’ start on any pursuers.

This intelligence caused a wonderful sensation; the population at large of course enjoyed the majesty of the law being made ridiculous but was aggrieved at the loss of a hanging. On balance, admiration for the audacity outweighed the disappointment; the hue and cry set off to find him, but I suspect that most were not wholly displeased when they came back empty-handed.

Having appointed myself Grove’s physician, I was naturally dispatched by Lower to examine his eye once more so that I could pick up gossip on the matter. However, the thick oak door leading to his room was firmly shut and locked, and this time there was no reply when I beat on it with my stick.

‘Do you know where Dr Grove is?’ I asked of a serving woman.

‘In his room.’

‘There is no answer.’

‘He must be still asleep.’

I pointed out that it was nearly ten o’clock. Did not Fellows have to rise in order to attend chapel? Was it not unusual for him to be still asleep?

She was a surly and unhelpful woman, so I appealed to Mr Ken, whom I saw walking around the other side of the quadrangle. He looked concerned, because he said it was Grove’s particular pleasure to take the roll at chapel, and persecute latecomers. Perhaps his illness . . . ?

‘It was only an inflamed eye,’ I said. ‘He was well enough to dine last night.’

‘What medicine did you give him? Perhaps that accounts for it?’

I did not like the suggestion that I might be responsible for making him ill, if he was so. But I hardly felt like admitting that my cure – which I had used as an example of the superiority of experimental medicine the previous evening – was merely water and eau de cologne.

‘I hardly think so. But it concerns me; is there any way in which we can open this door?’

Mr Ken talked to the servant and while they went in search of
another key, I stood outside the door, and pounded again to see whether Grove could be roused.

I was still pounding when Ken reappeared with a key.

‘Of course, it will be of no use if his own is in the lock, you know,’ he said as he knelt down and peered through the keyhole. ‘And he will be very angry indeed if he returns to find us here.’

Ken, I noted, looked alarmed at this prospect.

‘Perhaps you want to retire?’ I suggested.

‘No, no,’ he said uncertainly. ‘We have no love for each other, as you may have noticed, but in all Christian charity I could not abandon him if he were ill.’

‘You have heard about Dr Wallis?’

Mr Ken suppressed a twitch of very unzealous merriment just in time to maintain his sombre countenance. ‘I have indeed, and it shocks me that a man of the Church should be treated in such a shameful fashion.’

Then the door was open, and all thought of Dr Wallis was banished from our thoughts.

That Dr Grove was
corpus sine pectore
was indisputable, and it was apparent that he had died in considerable pain. He was lying on his back in the middle of the floor, face creased up, mouth open, with dried saliva dribbling out of one side. He had vomited and emptied his guts in his last moments, so there was an insufferable stink in the room. His hands were clenched so they more resembled claws than human hands, with one arm outstretched along the floor, and the other at his neck, almost as though he had tried to extinguish himself. The chamber itself was in total disarray; books lying on the floor, papers scattered about, so that it looked as if he had flailed around violently in his last moments.

Fortunately, dead bodies do not trouble me greatly, although the shock of seeing this one and the horrible circumstances of its arrangement distressed me. But the sight terrified Mr Ken. I half-thought he almost made the sign of the cross, and only stopped himself in time to preserve propriety.

‘Dear Lord protect us in our time of sorrows,’ he said with a shaking voice as he saw the outstretched body. ‘You,’ he said to the servant, ‘run and fetch the warden quickly. Mr Cola, what has happened here?’

‘I am at a loss to say,’ I replied. ‘The obvious explanation would be a seizure, but the clenched hands and expression of the face would not indicate that. It looks as though he was in some great pain; perhaps the state of the room is a result of that.’

We looked quietly at the poor man’s corpse until the sound of steps on the wooden stairs roused us. The warden was a small, alert-looking man who maintained a great degree of self-possession when he saw what was within the room. He had a small moustache and beard in the old Royalist manner but, I was told, was in fact a Parliament man, who had hung on to his position not because he was a great scholar – the college paid little attention to that – but because he was a marvellous man with the money. As one Fellow remarked, he could make a dead pig yield up a perpetual profit, and for that the college respected him.

‘Maybe we should have a more definite opinion before we proceed,’ he said after he heard Ken and myself explain what we had found. ‘Mary,’ he went on, addressing the servant who was still standing in the background, ears flapping, ‘go and find Dr Bate in the High Street, if you please. Tell him it is urgent, and that I would be grateful for his immediate attendance.’

I almost opened my mouth to speak here, but again said nothing. To be passed over so rapidly did not please me, but there was little I could do about it. My only hope was that, my services not required and this a college matter, I would not be expelled from a most interesting situation. Lower, for one, would find it hard to forgive me if I returned without the story complete in all particulars.

‘It seems clear to me’, the warden said in a definite tone of voice that brooked no contradiction as we waited, ‘that the unfortunate man had a seizure. I can think of little else to be said. We must of course wait for confirmation, but I have no doubt it will be forthcoming.’

Mr Ken, one of those obsequious prelates who made a point of agreeing with anyone more powerful than he, nodded fervently. Both of them, in fact, seemed excessively eager to reach this conclusion, but it was mainly because of my sense of pique, I think, that I ventured my own opinion

‘Might I suggest’, I said tentatively, ‘that the particulars of this
business be examined more thoroughly before such a conclusion is adopted?’

Both looked at me with reluctance as I spoke. ‘For example, what ailments had the man complained of in the past? Did he, perhaps, drink too much the previous evening? Had he taken some physical exertion which strained his heart?’

‘What are you suggesting?’ Woodward said, turning round, stony-faced to confront me. I noticed that Ken turned pale at my words as well.

‘Nothing at all.’

‘You are a malicious man,’ he replied, taking me entirely by surprise. ‘Such an allegation is entirely without foundation. For you to bring it up at a time like this is monstrous.’

‘I know of no allegations, nor am I bringing them up,’ I said, completely bemused, yet again, by the unpredictability of the English. ‘Please assure yourself of my entire innocence on that. I simply wondered . . .’

‘It is obvious even to me’, Woodward continued vehemently, ‘that this was merely a seizure. And, what is more, it is a college matter, sir. We thank you for raising the alarm, but do not wish to trespass further on your time.’

Which statement was obviously a dismissal, and a somewhat offensive one. I took my leave with more politeness than they.

I HAD ALMOST
finished my tale, keeping my fellows in the coffee house enthralled by the account. It was, after all, about the most exciting occurrence to have happened in the town since the siege and, as everybody involved was known to my audience, doubly interesting for that. Lower immediately started wondering whether he might offer to examine the body himself.

We were trying to persuade him that the chances of being allowed to anatomise Dr Grove were slight, and he was protesting that such an idea had never crossed his mind, when he looked up behind me, and a faint smile flickered across his face.